How Turia Pitt's Spend With Them campaign is changing lives
Turia Pitt continues to be an inspiration to many as her latest business endeavour to help those impacted by the bushfires that have ravaged the nation has had a huge impact on those who need it.
The 32-year-old motivation speaker and her friend Grace McBride started an initiative called Spend With Them to help support businesses that have been affected by the bushfires, and the two-person team have been overwhelmed with support.
Pitt herself said that “s*** got real” as the team initially started off small.
"Within an hour, we had over 10k followers. Grace was fielding phone calls from the Today Show and The Project (I was still working out how to switch between my personal instagram account and the @spendwiththem account ). We worked until 11pm, answering every email and DM that came in," she explained in a recent Instagram post.
"At 5 am the next morning, we were overwhelmed. We had more than 50,000 followers. Hundreds of emails. Thousands of DMs. Kelly Rowland gave us a shoutout. That night, we went to bed at 2am. We didn't get through all the emails or even a quarter of the DMs."
By day three, the two person team were drained both physically and emotionally and took on all the help they could get.
"My sister-in-law. Mates from the surf. A friend's mum. A copywriter in Sydney. Dani at @soda_sydney jumped on board and the legends at Westpac Group (@westpac) started helping us too," she added.
Pitt finished her post by saying, "To say it's been a crazy week is an understatement. But we can't thank you enough for the way you've supported these businesses. Who knew that purchasing a bar of goat milk soap or a jar of honey could have such an impact? The ripple effect has been enormous."
She shared some good news stories from people who have reached out to the business account, saying just how much the initiative has helped out their businesses.
“Mate we have done more coffee orders in the last 24 hours than the entirety of our business! It’s insane and they keep coming. It seriously has created another job already. We just hired someone to pack orders for tomorrow,” one business owner excitedly shared.
“The outpouring of love that people have just wanted to help. Thanks so much!”