For media personality and entrepreneur Scott Bidmead, completing his journalism degree at Griffith University’s Gold Coast campus was just the beginning of a wild love affair with reporting and creating businesses that has taken him all around the world.

Scott Bidmead interviewing Jason Momoa in Los Angeles

Scott left his dream job interviewing celebrities for the Today Show and Roadshow Media in Los Angeles at the end of last year to come home to Australia to complete his vision for his corporate wellbeing startup Euda.

He used the isolation time to ramp up his wellness website and app, as well as film segments for Junkee Media from his home lounge room in Sydney.

And like much of his career before that, Scott has made the most of fortuitous timing, using his creativity and inventiveness to turn the coronavirus pandemic into an opportunity to provide much needed mental health support.

“We’ve combined that with a movement to promote awareness around mental health, especially, right now during such a tough time,” Scott says.

“I’ve always been passionate about mental health and wellbeing.

“I’ve had some friends and family members affected, and so I’ve always been passionate about it.

“And then I had this idea for the startup, which is essentially the business itself is called Euda, which stands for eudemonic well-being, which as Aristotle said, is the ideal form of fulfillment and happiness.

“It’s a suite of tools, corporate tools for HR teams to boost wellbeing with corporate psychology.

“During this crazy tough time, we will release it to the public for free. So the core app we’re going to be releasing for free to the public. And then, essentially people can use it and help with their own wellbeing.”

Since graduating from his journalism degree at Griffith University in 2013, Scott has hosted a travel show on Network 10, moved to Sydney to work on the LifeStyle series for Foxtel, before taking up a reporting role based in Adelaide for the national program Totally Wild, and filming travel stories in China.

“It was a great adventure and I had an amazing experience, and some of the things I got to do as a part of my job was quite surreal,” Scott said.

“Just the experiences flying gliders and helicopters, patting cheetahs, and pandas, and all this random stuff. And got to go swim with sharks and sea lions in Port Lincoln, and some really cool experiences that I don’t think I would have done otherwise.”

During his time based in Adelaide he spent a year as Chairman of Headspace in South Australia, where he learnt more about mental health and where treatment programs were wanting.

Since then he has started his own media company, Mead Media, and the wellness startup Euda.co, crediting Griffith for honing his entrepreneurial skills.

“I did journalism specialising in public relations and international relations,” he said.

“I think it’s about taking the right opportunities.

“For people wanting to be a journalist, I think if you really want to do it, it is hard, but you have to learn, you can’t just be one thing anymore. It’s better if you have multiple skills.

“You need to be diverse I think in order to really succeed because that’s the thing I’m having to film myself now, which is obviously normally the camera guy’s job. So just the ability to do those things will definitely help you in your career.”

He’s proud to be able to provide some hope and support when the world has changed so quickly.

“If you just have a think about how many of those have been impacted by isolation, and locked down, and not seeing friends. And people losing jobs and people losing money,” he said.

“It’s pretty clear to see just how much of an impact it’s going to have on people’s mental health.

“So I think there just needs to be so much more focus, more action taken around it, more proactive things. I think we live in a very reactive world where it’s all about waiting until something’s broken to try and fix it versus trying to build resilience and build, put foundations in place preventative measures so that’s what we are trying to promote.

“We’ve just created a very simple app, so that you can measure your wellbeing, you can monitor it, and then you can also take simple action to improve it.”

You can hear more of Scott’s story on the Griffith University podcast Remarkable Tales

https://soundcloud.com/user-101730111/episode-41-scott-bidmead