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Kaila Colbin
Founder and CEO at Boma and Crusaders Leadership Programme™, leveraging sports as a gateway to values-based leadership
Kaila Colbin is a prominent figure championing values-based leadership through the Crusaders Leadership Programme™ that draws insights from successful sports franchises.
Her focus is on building a community of intentional, intelligent, and courageous leaders by utilizing sports as a platform for leadership development.
Kaila's expertise lies in entrepreneurship, strategy, idea generation, event management, and networking.
She holds a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Hotel/Motel Administration/Management from Cornell University and has a diverse educational background including studies at Riverdale Country School and Singularity University.
Kaila has been associated with various organizations in leadership roles including being the Co-founder of the Crusaders Leadership Programme™, Founder and CEO at Boma, and Member of Global Women (New Zealand).
Her professional journey includes roles such as Certified ExO Consultant at OpenExO, Chairman of the Board at Natural Gourmet Institute, Contributor at Mediapost, and Director at ChristchurchNZ.
Kaila has also been involved in several entrepreneurial ventures and initiatives like Co-founder and Trustee at Ministry of Awesome, Curator at TEDx events, Chief Marketing Officer at MiniMonos.com, and Director of Communications at PMI New Zealand.
She is known for her exceptional communication skills, ability to connect with people, and her relentless drive to turn innovative ideas into reality.
Highlights
Blame vs. Accountability He runs into his room, slams the door, and locks it.
Oh, come ON, I think. Stop being such a child!
Ungenerous: he is, in fact, a child. One of my stepsons, facing one of life’s adversities, and finding it beyond his ability to cope.
After half an hour, he lets me in, but still isn’t ready to engage: face-down on his bed, pillow over his head. I wait.
“Are you hurt?” A grunt and a headshake: No. “Can we talk about what happened?” A grunt of indeterminate nature. “Come on, buddy, help me understand.”
Eventually, he emerges from under the pillow. Eventually, through tears: “Lochee punched me in the head.”
“Oh sweetheart, I’m so sorry he did that. Punching someone is not okay. Did he just walk up to you and punch you out of the blue?”
“Well… not exactly.”
“Okay, then what happened?”
“We were play wrestling and I pinched him BARELY and then he punched me!”
“Hmm. Is it possible that you pinched him a little harder than you thought?”
“Fine! Forget it! It’s all my fault! I’m the worst kid!” Back under the pillow he goes.
It’s a constant struggle, the search for ownership and accountability without descending into shame and blame. Despite its pretense at ownership, we know a passive-aggressive “fine, it’s all my fault,” isn’t actual accountability—but why not?
They certainly seem similar. Oxford Languages defines blame as “responsibility for a fault or wrong;” “responsibility” is offered as one of the definitions of accountable. But they also have this for accountable: “The fact or condition of being required or expected to justify actions or decisions.”
“Shame and blame” yields “bad person” and “all my fault.” There’s no point in nuance, no point in looking deeper or in trying to understand what happened: I’m the one who failed; I’m the one who let everyone down; I’m the worst kid.
Accountability, on the other hand, drives insight. When we hold ourselves accountable, we want to know all the details: What exactly happened? Where was the breakdown? What's my role in this—mine to own—and what's someone else’s to own? What can I learn from this? Accountability requires an unflinching acknowledgement of the facts.
Blame is about who; accountability is about what. Shame is about finger-pointing (at others or at ourselves); ownership is about understanding. Shame and blame are about punishment; ownership and accountability are about acceptance.
Blame tells me who to be mad at; accountability tells me what I need to learn. Shame creates victims; ownership creates freedom and power.
We get there eventually, me and my stepson. He apologises to his brother for pinching him and his brother apologises to him for punching him. They seem to mean it. No doubt we’ll find ourselves back in a similar situation soon enough—these are the lessons of childhood, and they need to be repeated over and over. But I have confidence in their ability to learn.
I only hope we adults can hold ourselves accountable to the same standard.
There’s a terrifying genre of post going around LinkedIn. It starts with a promise: “Here’s how I went from 0 to 7 million followers in 30 days and you can too.” It unravels step by step: “Start by using TopicBeastAI to find out what topics are popular. Then use QopyQat to find out which posts on those topics get the most engagement. Then use FormulaiQ to derive the underlying post structures. Then use PostFaker to generate your own version of each post.” Set aside whether the suggested tools are effective. Set aside whether the process generates the sought-after followers. The entire idea of it is fundamentally, vomitously broken. I know: It’s not new. But it is enabled and accelerated by generative AI. It’s bad enough to outsource creativity to ChatGPT. What this type of process does is outsource our lack of creativity. When we ask our AI tools to find a “proven formula,” by definition, what they come up with is not new. It’s a reconstitution of what everyone else has done.
The irony of it all is that generative AI itself functions in this way: by digesting and regurgitating content. And where that gets us, as Azeem Azhar pointed out last week, is “reversion to a bland mean.” The bland mean is an issue even before we get to AI hallucinations or tools designed to “poison” content to protect copyright. And all THAT is even before we get to the concept of model collapse: “the degenerative process that large language models like ChatGPT can experience when they're trained on AI-generated junk data.” Model collapse is what you get when AI ingests all the existing data, pulps it, and then spits out so much rehashed content that it begins to feed on itself. We’re not far off. A couple weeks ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted, “openai now generates about 100 billion words per day. all people on earth generate about 100 trillion words per day.”
He said that like it’s a good thing. Last month, Vice reported that, already, “a ‘shocking’ amount of the internet is machine-translated garbage, particularly in languages spoken in Africa and the Global South.” In the face of this impulsion towards pre-chewed dreck, rather than striving to be more creative and innovative, we’re trying to copy the very reduction in creativity generated by AIs themselves. Instead of developing our own positions, opinions, points of view, we’re absorbing existing content and spitting out what we think is expected from us. We’re turning ourselves into human versions of generative AIs. The reason to share on LinkedIn is not that you’ve found a way to digest and regurgitate popular content. The reason to share on LinkedIn is that you have something of value to offer. If you are crafting what you share to reverse-engineer popularity, you’ve already lost.
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Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
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Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.