TSQ - TradeSquare: Recent Episodes
Catherine van der Meulen
With Australia's business landscape pivoting, transforming and reshaping, we have an opportunity to create the model for the future that aligns with the worlds needs.
TradeSquare is Australia's first business to business marketplace connecting people, brands and organisations into this diverse eco - system in a unique global landscape.
Adrian Falk is the founder of Believe, an Australian advertising and PR agency that has been operating for the past 20 years.
After living the New York lifestyle for a number of years, Adrian returned to Australia, to launch Believe after experiencing so much on a global stage that he could then apply his knowledge to a local market.
In this podcast, Adrian shares lots of bite sized tips to creating great PR angles and approaches by understanding your audiences and getting focussed on your goals to creating a meaningful business.
Adrian also shares wonderful case studies of entrepreneurs and organisations that he has worked with that are creating impact through valuable news stories, influencer marketing and sharing stories that connect.
Hon. Damien Tudehope is the NSW Minister for Finance and Small Business and reflects in this podcast on where NSW has come from on their journey to recovery.
Over the last 2 years, the NSW Government has injected over $10 billion into recovery support through JobSaver, targeted packages and grants to enable small businesses to re emerge and into an economic environment where businesses can thrive the most.
With strong focusses and investment into regional areas, development of online presence, improved technology and IT operations, NSW small businesses now have the opportunity to thrive through Rebuilding, Recharging and Renewing.
And with these three R's being the theme of the NSW Small Business Month in March 2022, Minister Tudehope sees it as an opportunity to collaborate, share, learn and grow.
Minister Tudehope has been championing for local small businesses to work more closely with government and see them as a friend to further enable their positive turnaround and growth
Catarina Pinto Moreira is the co-founder of the Explainable Analytics for Machine Intelligence Initiative and Senior Lecturer at the School of Information Systems at the Queensland University of Technology, a multi - disciplinary academic, artist, continuous learner and community leader.
Catarina was presenting the findings of her PhD, when she was asked about her roots in Portugal, and realising she didn't have the depth of knowledge she should have in this area and realised she was in fact disconnected from her roots, and went on to study Eastern philosophy.
She moved from the University of Leicester to Queensland University of Technology after an offer letter and a universal sign from an Australian bottle of wine.
Her work now is focused on how systems make predictions, how people make paradoxical decisions, quantum physics, the human touch & understanding and how to bring these two in alignment.
Knowing that we are becoming more isolated in a tech world, Catarina shows incredible leadership through her community projects and inspiring the next generation, by living her life and career in doing good.
Deborah Fairfull is a passionate entrepreneur and admits she's had the entrepreneurial bug for most of her life.
Following a series of businesses, Deborah realised that you need to grow personally to be successful in business and recognised that the connecting thread to all of her ventures was personal development , life long learning and well-being.
With a strong curiosity for continuous learning, self reflective feedback and awareness of behaviours she definitely knows that the current topic of well-being at work is extremely pertinent and has only been amplified by Covid.
Deborah has been able to create a global team and scalable solutions by enabling her business with the right technology to have even further impact and democratise wellbeing.
She also recognises that through partnerships and the joy of collaboration, you can reach more like minded people to build out your community, and knows that with every $1 spent on wellbeing has a return on human investment of $6 over 2 years.
Sonja is a happy, optimistic, curious, creative and clever woman who launched her own business in IT software over 20 years ago after being fired from a corporate role and launched Women in Technology Association after confronting a near death experience.
As a "story teller", Sonja is all about the character of the story, choosing their own life adventure and having a positive impact through their choices. Knowing how meaningful stories are to connect authentically, this became one of the foundations of the Women in Technology Association.
In this podcast Sonja shares a number of amazing women from across the globes stories who were ahead of their time as coders and instigators in the revolution of science, computing and technology.
Sonja has recently sold her business for 8 figures and shares that to be successful, you've got to get up one more time, be resilient, know yourself and be future focused.
Divya sees the notion of identify as an interesting thing particularly with one of her life roles as a geneticist and has established a research field at QUT aligned to Stress Genomics.
Through her role she looks at the positive and negative social factors aligned with genetic factors that contribute to stress, mental health and well-being.
Knowing that a key contributor to our response to stress is Belonging, Divya shares some of the key actions that we can take to create a deeper sense of belonging through connection.
Knowing that our DNA is not our destiny, Divya has contributing many years to debunking the myths of the role it plays in our lives.
Sharon Robson sees the world through different eyes, without barriers or boundaries, and through Enterprise Agility, Sharon supports organisations to do the same... to think differently.
On this journey, Sharon encourages organisations to leverage the greatest assets of the organisation - the people, by engaging with them in meaningful and valuable ways.
With a strong focus on collaboration, collaborative thinking, harnessing a "social media style of thinking" and holistic thinking, Sharon believes that mind melding needs to be a deliberate and strategic approach to work towards established goals.
Sharon sees collaboration much like a big jigsaw puzzle building everyones insights, knowledge and intel together to grow.
Sharon is passionate about remote working enabled by technology to support teams to collaborate effectively.
Ricardo has brought together three things he loves with an intersection between business management, applied psychology and technology to create Mindcheck.me, a platform designed to check stress, anxiety and depression and the contributing factors underlying them.
With a strong focus on breaking the stigma about mental health, 250 000 people have taken the test which measures across 19 contributing factors, to identify opportunities to create positive change.
Many organisations have been too afraid to measure mental wellbeing, with the fear blocking good initiatives to enable moving forward.
By changing business practices, increasing mental literacy, enabling emotionally intelligent leaders organisations can design their leadership with wellbeing at the heart.
As a mother of three, business owner and indigenous woman, Kylee was the first in four generations of women to not be part of the Stolen Generations.
Kylee shares that she had a colourful upbringing empowered through the lens of story telling which she later in life connected to her roots and has gone on to build into the core of her business.
With a strong focus on collaboration, discovery of a new way to approach business and engaging businesses through slowing down through uncertain times rather than ramping up.
As a woman, Kylee chooses to challenge women on their mindset in the art of saying no.
Carol is a Dungaree woman, who grew up in an Aboriginal mission in the northwest of New South Wales. For many years, Carol worked for the Government before activating Murawin as a consultancy to support the government with key projects that then employed and enabled other Aboriginal people. By offering insightful and robust research for clients they were on a mission to close the gap in Aboriginal disadvantage in Australia. With the desire to assist their clients to develop meaningful ways to connect, they also developed Tiddas in Business to support small to medium sized businesses with micro financing, mentoring, collegiality and what they needed to be spiritually strong. With a strong responsibility to contribution, Carol reminds us that we all bring something to the table to learn, share and grow from one anothers' experiences no matter your roots. Carol is driven by mutual respect, reciprocity, asking for what you want and being courageous.
Renee has spent her life immersed in technology, solving problems and building communities and launched Connected Code 12 months ago to support more girls through the education experience of learning code.
With the program now supporting 1500 girls in 8 regions across Australia, Renee has been focused on making technology education more accessible and approachable to unlock more potential, with human centred solutions.
With a strong focus on advancement of women and girls in technology, Renee is unlocking creativity to cultivate curiosity for change.
"Interaction is a form of communication. Communication (usually) starts with a word. Words trigger emotions. Emotions trigger actions."
Yifat and Lee are the co-founders of Punct, a UX design agency born out of a need for businesses to hone in on the customer experience through messaging and was developed to leverage the power of words to generate desired actions, behaviours and experiences out of every customer interaction.
Through communicating with human instinct to listen, respond and connect, you can deliver the right words, at the right time, for the desired outcome.
But when is that right time to engage UX in your strategy.... when it's taking too long to communicate your message, your marketing leads are getting stuck in the funnel and not converting or your support tickets are an endless cycle of red flags.
This Podcast is a practical learning experience to support you in being successful.
Lisa Pagotto is an entrepreneur, a visionary, a change maker and a leader in the travel industry and is extremely passionate about what she does.
Crooked Compass is a business that was launched 8 years ago, with her consistent interests in the lesser known. This stemmed from her adventurous spirit when she left school and travelled to places like Tunisia, Africa and Turkey while the rest of her peers were off backpacking to the UK.
By stimulating her curiosity she designed the company to support travellers in getting into the unknown parts of the country and creating unique experiences.
But as we all know, the travel industry is a very different landscape in 2021 and Lisa and the team at Crooked Compass have consistently pivoted, navigated and moved with the motions and limitations of travel to build out a successful business with a long term view.
Lisa shares so many key steps in her learning experience, that can apply to any business owner working through a changing landscape and is a big advocate for taking time out of your business to recalibrate and reinvigorate your spirit.
Shai Zarivatch is the Trade Commissioner for the Israel Trade and Economic Commission in Australia with a strong focus on driving trade and economic development opportunities between Australia and Israel forward and integrated into the world economy.
Collaboration and partnerships between Australian and Israeli companies is critical to the mission and mandate of the Commission in Australia to share knowledge, evolve trade relationships and activate technology and innovation capabilities. This activation of capabilities can be seen across Fintech, Medical and Health care, Artificial intelligence, Big Data, Agri tech and many more areas as we continue to live in a digital world.
Rosemary grew up in the UK and as a child travelled the world as her father was a hotel designer, which gave her a strong sense of adventure and opened opportunities to volunteer all over the world.
With the freedom to explore different career opportunities, Rosemary landed in the Not for Profit space to lead School's Plus to give every child the opportunity to succeed at school and create a level playing field.
Through the funding from School's Plus donors, it enables them to bring to life projects in over 1000 schools in some of the most disadvantaged areas across Australia.
Rosemary has seen the challenges of schools over the last 18 months not only with the blending of physical and digital education, but the on going impact of wellbeing, physically and mentally on students, teachers and school leaders. With a strong focus now on how they support the leaders with their well-being to ensure that this impact flows through the entire school system.
Rosemary is an authentic leader, on a mission to enable fun whilst creating learning experiences for the future prosperity of the Australian community
Sean is a passionate, solutions driven entrepreneur who curated his business Banksia Consulting Group in August 2020 with the name Banksia derived from the knowing that Banksias grow in any condition, show signs of resilience and flowered twice a year reflecting renewal.
Banksia is focused on supporting a transformation of the Aged Care Sector with technology solutions.
By making the invisible, visible through person centred care and taking the institutionalised approach out of aged care.
Francesca is a woman who feels like she is changing and evolving every decade, but in the essence of who she is, is an entrepreneur and an activist who showcases entrepreneurs and change makers.
She launched Social Global Grind as a complete accident after being asked by a beauty company to support their celebrity clients to navigate their brand presence through Twitter and has gone on to build this into a business that supports small businesses through their social media strategy and presence in curating and teaching.
In this TradeSquare Learning Square episode Francesca shares tips and strategies to building an authentic brand, with original content, creating a voice for social justice to connect in a meaningful way through the essence of who you are.
As an entrepreneur and business owner, Jack founded The Entourage out of frustration and dissatisfaction of having no where to go and learn beyond the walls of a University or TAFE. He embarked on creating the The Entourage, an organisation for entrepreneurs and business owners with elite business coaching, training & community.
When Jack studied some of the worlds most recognised brands like Apple, Facebook and Mercedes Benz he recognised that their success had amplified through their DNA and knowing exactly who they were as a company.
Jack shares some of the stages to developing your brand DNA through three core stages and some of the prevalent misconceptions of creating growth and scale in an organisation.
As a self confessed business junkie, Fiona has owned and operated many of her own businesses over the last 25 years, recently sold a tech start up, activated Tech Ready Women and the Remarkables tech accelerator at the University of Technology Sydney. And loves the ability of businesses to ideate, to find a problem, and curate a solution.
Over the last 18 months, the University has faced many challenges particularly in supporting Australian corporate organisations to upskill and reskill for the Future of Work through AI, Data Literacy and the Layers of technology that drives the change for which that have created many dynamic solutions for.
Fiona has a strong call for action for people and organisations to embrace a true and meaningful learning and development and life long learning culture through curiosity, learning pathways, peer to peer learning, knowledge sharing and rewarding and recognising these across the organisation.
Zahrina Robertson is a leading personal brand photographer and videographer who encapsulates creativity, artist talent and a business mindset to support people and organisations create impact with their brand imagery and photography.
In this TradeSquare LearningSquare episode Zahrina shares key tips to being visible and authentic through brand story telling presented in beautiful photos and video content that amplify the growth of your brand. By first identifying a holistic view of what problems your business is trying to solve and then creating meaningful connectivity.
beyourbrand
www.zahrinaphotography.com
As a proud Darlot woman, who grew up in Western Australia's Western Desert region who's grandmother was part of the stolen generation and a big part of her identify and why she is so passionate about health and education in the regions and particularly with Indigenous communities.
Jen works with key stakeholders to understand the challenges and identify opportunities through the awareness of connectivity.
Covid force radical transformation to enable a remote workforce and opened doors to what was possible, which is a key to unlocking regional and remote Australia.
The digitisation of Australian industries including agriculture, tourism, the arts and small business to name a few amplified the reliance on the NBN network to deliver on its capabilities and connection to communities.
Kate wears many a hat, but as a non Indigenous woman, and the background as a former corporate lawyer, landed in a role leading PwC's Indigenous Consulting after waking up one morning wanting more meaning in her work and having a conversation with a great mentor about that journey.
Kate leads with a key vision, to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island business owners and businesses the opportunity to play in the mainstream and creating shared value.
Knowing that organisations truly need a social licence to operate, Kate shared a timely case of Rio Tinto in 2020 blowing up 60 000 years of history and the ramifications and consequences that followed.
During Covid, Kate witnessed pivots and change, changed production lines and new opportunities opening for Indigenous businesses but knows that there is a lot more work to be done to create and action change.
For Australia to move to more equal and unified outcomes, Australian businesses are encouraged to engage with Indigenous communities through employment and procurement of products and services to have greater economic participation.
Stuart Haines is the founder and Managing Director at Haines Consulting, a business he launched 6 years ago to support the growth of Australian businesses. Haines Consulting soon recognised the opportunities for businesses through Government funding and grants and how this funding channel could support Australian businesses on both a local and global scale.
With a strong focus in Australia on food exports, technology through AI and Blockchain development, advanced manufacturing and Australian Made, digital capabilities have only enhanced this impact as a vital response to Covid.
With manufacturing in Australia employing 1 million people and indirectly 1.8 million, and generating 1.8 billion dollars for the Australian economy it plays a key and vital role in the successful economic recovery of Australia.
Stuart highlights the proactive and supportive nature of the government to further enable industry growth and how vital this is to the stimulation for the future.
Kris Flowers is the Managing Director at Maynard Barrett, a unique insurance brokerage that has a strong commitment to their local community in Elsternwick, Victoria.
With businesses in Victoria pausing in 2020 for 6 - 9 months, it gave businesses the opportunity to understand the depths of their organisation, where there were high risks and learn how to make better and more informed decisions for the future.
Kris shares some great advice with Australian businesses aligned to leveraging the support of experts in finance, accounting, tax and insurance and how having the right people to walk beside you is a key to ensuring a viable and sustainable organisation for the future.
Dai was forced to leave her birth country of Saigon at the age of 7 after being exposed to the Vietnam War and went in search of finding others like her, to explore and share stories.
Dai is passionate about shining a light on Diverse and Inclusive Leadership and enabling diverse voices to shape our future.
Through her work in South West Sydney and the activation of an entrepreneurial hub, Dai has connected with thousands of refugees and migrant business owners who have been resilient and vulnerable in taking action forward by enabling digital capabilities in their businesses.
As a former journalist, story telling is a key part of who Dai is, and she shares her Top 5 tips to enabling you and your business as a thought leader and creating an authentic and genuine voice.
The Regional PR Co. was born out of necessity 4 years ago, by founder Georgie Robertson after her partner had lost his job and they were forced to move back to Wagga Wagga in Australia's Riverina area, New South Wales.
Realising that the regions of Australia were in a real need for PR to create a national voice of all of the wonderful, diverse, innovative and entrepreneurial activities that were coming to life in the regions, Georgie activated the business to enable the change.
One campaign that she highlights and recognises as transforming the regions of Australia is Grace Brennan's - "Buy from the Bush" that showcased Australian businesses, connecting them through stories and enabling a deep human connection.
Georgie shares some key and fundamental actions to creating meaningful and authentic publicity to grow your brand.
As the CEO of PEXA, Glenn is fuelled by passion, resilience and a customer centric approach to creating successful organisations.
Knowing that purpose, people, community and continuous learnings are some of the key aspects to enable positive business impact, now and into creating sustainable futures, Glenn has recognised that it is through a collective approach of organisations coming together that will stabilise the economy.
Through this dynamic and thought provoking conversation Glenn explores;
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The idea of "experimentation" and this being an evolution of innovation
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Cyber awareness and some of the actions to take to step forward and be prepared
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An outside in approach to continuous company learnings and education
As an Australian, Katriona was raised with cultural and linguistic diversity and is proud to celebrate cultural diversity by bringing her whole self to the table.
She has recently joined the Xero leadership team after connecting to the mission and purpose of the organisation, and their interest in enabling founders and leaders with the tools and education to keep small businesses humming.
Over the last 12 months Katriona has seen Australian businesses adding so much value to the world by
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Remaining open and being resilient
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Enabling a regional approach which has amplified job creation
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Building a decentralised workforce
Katriona is focused on challenging the status quo by building teams and talent differently, speaking up in difficult times to enable a point of view and keeping Xero as a rocket ship while introducing the future foundational structure.
Einat Sukenik is a ‘rare bird’ who is leading the TradeSquare team with the grace and elegance of a swan, whilst paddling at the rate of knots beneath the surface, building, moulding and disrupting the business model of Australian wholesale.
As the CEO of TradeSquare, Einat was always excited but challenged by the knowing that technology could solve some of the worlds biggest problems, and at scale. And also that the people of every organisation are the most important capital and how the collision of both tech and dynamic people can either be a make or break.
She explores Start ups as either a vitamin or painkiller, unpacks the art of collaboration, the most important capabilities of startups, culture in a digital world, perceived vs diverse leadership.
As a trained teacher, Jo has been lucky enough to have had transferrable skills that have enabled her to create, grow and activate her business, Pointer Remote.
Jo is an extremely passionate advocate of bringing businesses and people together with remote work, knowing that there are so many positive opportunities to explore in regional and remote Australia.
Jo believes that all organisations need to embrace doing work differently and adapt a diverse mindset which will in turn support change for the future, through recruitment, up skilling programs and a focus on decentralisation.
Jo has challenged the status quo and made choices to challenge the stigma of women living and working in regional Australia.
Rachel wears many hats in her life as a CEO, mentor and community member to name a few and a proud advocate of the regions across Australia.
In her role as CEO of Regional Development Australia in the Riverina she has watched dynamic, resilient and innovative business people and community members putting their money where their mouth is to enable innovative ideas, take risks and step forward to activate change.
A key project that Rachel has been involved with is "Country Change" working with councils across the area to feature, promote and share the livability of the regions.
She feels that there are so many positives about the regions but they are constantly challenged to develop the workforce for the skills and placements need to be filled to really cultivate growth in the area.
Simone Novello is a partnership expert and truly understands the growth opportunities that the right partnerships enable often between small businesses and corporate organisations.
Simone shares the "3 Golden Rules" to creating meaningful partnerships that support in creating a sustainable organisation with values aligned partners.
With this month being focused on "Choosing to Challenge" in alignment with International Women's Day, Simone shares some of the ways that she has been challenging the status quo and disrupting traditional industries.
Sarah Liu founded The Dream Collective - a global Diversity & Inclusion consultancy as a side hustle to ultimately solve a problem that she was faced with in her career. As a young, Asian woman, Sarah often faced the systemic barriers to succeed in her career and wanted to support in advancing women to more leadership positions.
Through realising it was no longer about "fixing women" but about "fixing the system", The Dream Collective enables businesses with creativity relating to hiring, training and promotion to challenge the status quo and challenge with a sense of urgency.
A key initiative that she is super excited about is the "Male Allies program" to equip more men to refuse to accept the status quo and equipping them with the knowledge of diverse thought relating to the future of leadership.
As a proud mumma of 3, Noa has spent the last 19 years in Australia (with Israeli origins) understanding, nurturing and evolving organisational behaviour within organisations.
Spark & Rumble was born out of Covid where Noa found an opportunity to support organisational thinking, design and creation. Through creating space that allows transformational change through sparking imagination to explore, discover and get down and dirty with curiosity.
Through Think Play, Noa unpacks topics like communication, politeness and constructive conflict to get to the heart and soul of an organisation to enable further growth.
As TradeSquare celebrates women from all over Australia this International Women's Day, we invite you to choose to challenge the status quo and design for good for our futures.
Rob is a person who loves numbers and in particular the stories behind the numbers.
After spending many years supporting Australian businesses trade out of financial difficulties and identifying what went wrong, he joined The Davidson Institute founded by Westpac to support Australian businesses with financial education.
2020 saw pivots, adjustments and growth of some organisations and saw many resilient and hopeful Australians plan for their future.
Making positive decisions based on accurate numbers ensure businesses can really connect to the impact and sustainability of the organisation.
Rob shares some extremely practical tips to create positive cash flow, something we know is a very relevant point of education for every Australian small and medium sized business. For more info on The Davidson Institute www.davidsoninstitute.education
Dianna grew up in Regional Australia in Wagga Wagga and ran away to join the navy to drive warships and had her sights on never returning to regional Australia. However when she did return, and fell in love with a farmer she began the journey of reinventing herself in a regional context.
She became involved in a number of new projects aligned to entrepreneurship and innovation to support in accelerating regional business.
The launch of Regional PitchFest came out of identifying a gap in the scene of entrepreneurship to recognise the talent in our regions and to put these great examples in front of people to tell that story and be that megafone back to the metro areas.
In 2017 she took a leap and led a program with Australia Post with 87 events across the country to promote opportunities in regional Australia. which led her to her role at Bridge Hub and the links between metro and regions to drive investment into the regions.
With hot topics in the Bridge Hub office being on carbon capture and water, Dianna is certainly flying the regional flag with a sustainable focus and environmental lens.
Following a stint in small business selling hot dogs in his University days, Bill has played in big and small businesses and now leads Small Business Australia to support small businesses on their growth journey and sustainable futures.
Last year, Bill and the SBA team launched "Buy Local" to encourage customers to shop with local organisations and buy locally made products. In 2021 they have launched "The Digital Business Cadets" - a modern apprenticeship bringing younger digitally savvy people together with older small business owners to support one another with a trade of skills
They have teamed up with organisations like NAB, Telstra and Snap Design to further educate their small business customers with key resources to survive and thrive.
As a 28 year old Melbournian entrepreneur, Erin is passionate about creating more justice and supporting people who are facing barriers in their life through creative ways to enable change.
Through the launch of Empty Esky - a national tourism movement of foodies and adventurers who are on a mission to support small businesses in regional Australia affected by the bushfires and covid, Erin and her co founder Elle have thought outside the box to create sustainable tourism and activating more Travel with Purpose.
Knowing that community is the key combined with a deep desire for collaboration and supporting one another, regional communities have used creativity to re think the future.
Ben leads the Australian Made Campaign as the Chief Executive Officer which is a Not for Profit organisation on a mission to administer and promote the Country of Origin of Australian Made products. The Australian Made symbol is a highly recognised and trusted symbol underpinned by a strong criteria of credentials to ensure that this trust lives on.
Having this symbol really takes the hard work out for consumers who in 2020 really got behind Australian Made products in an effort to support local organisations to survive and thrive and having the confidence in the credibility of its origins.
Ben and the team at Australian Made witnessed incredible organisations leading their industry with innovation to transform, pivot, adopt more technology and enable their digital capabilities by diversifying their businesses to suit the needs of the world.
With a strong focus in Australia on Advanced Manufacturing, we can see this movement to support Australian Made will only be amplified further on the local and global stage.
Amy is a key an intrinsic part of the Global Procurement team at EY (Ernst & Young), a team of 450 procurement professionals engaging with suppliers and organisations to support EY and their clients.
With a strong focus in Australia and New Zealand on Indigenous procurement, she has researched, listened, learned and sought opportunities to collaborate with organisations on a collective mission.
Working with Indigenous Australian entrepreneurs like Dwayne Good from Inspire Travel Management, Mundanara Bayles from the Black Card and Laura Thompson from Clothing the Gap and alongside organisations like Supply Nation, Amy has supported in facilitating key sector practices to enable growth and future prosperity.
Knowing that we all have a role to play to recognise our past injustices, to working towards closing the gap and identifying that we still have significant work to do to change the disparities of our economy.
Working for Westpac many years ago, he was thrown out of the traditional 9 - 5 corporate role to spend 18 months out in the "real world" to understand customers needs, pain points and what it was like to run a small to medium sized business. But when Westpac decided to discontinue this model, John stayed on to lead Western Sydney Business Enterprise Centre for which he has been Executive Director for the last 30 years.
WS Business Centre supports Australian small businesses to reinvent themselves through time of change, advise on the future needs of Australian small businesses and supports with activating the digital capabilities of businesses.
Managing the Business Connect contract with the Australian Federal Government in Western Sydney, the government increased their contract by four times to support over 42000 organisations in an 8 month period. Something that they wouldn't be able to have done without transforming their digital capabilities.
With 40% of Australian small businesses still not enabling digital capabilities, John encourages businesses to seek support from trusted advisors to support in navigating the future path of doing business in Australia.
Before our podcast recording for TradeSquare hosted by Catherine van der Meulen, Victor Perton had been dishing out his daily dose of optimism, to thousands of people across the world in 69 countries, which as you will hear, is incredibly infectious.
After returning to Australia from the US, Victor recognised a change in language of Aussies to be more pessimistic and often negative and launched the Australian Leadership Project and the Centre for Optimism to listen, learn and activate change.
Through the leadership of unlocking optimism, Victor recognised that it is the human choice to stay stuck or move forward.
And through our freedom as Australian’s to communicate, have a voice and shared through humour we can maintain our freedom for the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.
As the Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Deloitte and the Chair of the Australian information Industry Association, Rob is passionate about technology, innovation, the future of Australia’s Digital economy underpinned by valuable digital infrastructure.
As both a realist and an optimist, Rob recognises that 2020 has been an "interesting" year where all organisations have needed to learn the art of stretching their digital muscles, enabling further knowledge and skills and taking risks to be able to accelerate.
The shift to a digital world has enabled new and productive ways that in 2019 we may have seen as near impossible. From retail, supply chains, manufacturing and primary industries all have re imaged what economic freedom looks like for the future through digital capabilities.
Although the globe is working through periods of uncertainty, digital infrastructure, cloud transformation and cyber security are key attributes for certainty for a functional and successful economy.
After 30 years in business, Anne began to see a high failure rate of small businesses and wanted to create a voice for them.
Knowing that Small Businesses need to keep up to date with a high volume of obligations, they often go into a state of overwhelm all while wanting to conquer the world with unique products and services.
Anne believes that the basics of having the guiding framework of a sound business plan can enable business to step forward with intention and create clear objectives and structures for the future prosperity of the business.
As advocates, digital champions and leaders of small business, the SBAA believes that through a mobile responsive website, being ATO compliant to get support, and enabling layers of software and digital capabilities to propel small businesses to the forefront of their industry.
As an entrepreneur, Laticia grew up in regional Australia and has a strong driving passion to see the emergence of unsung heroes and heroines of regional and remote Australian businesses to be brought to the forefront of the Australian business community.
With a strong focus on Mind, Body and Business, Laticia believes the culmination of all three are what is needed to propel forward with success.
Knowing that there are barriers in regional Australia including businesses not wanting to embrace the digital economy, connectivity and digital infrastructure, Laticia is focused on empowering businesses through education, accessibility and building connectivity in communities.
She feels that often businesses are trapped by overwhelm and a lack of time, which she believes regional living and business opportunities allow people and organisations to step into a new role of purpose and meaning.
Reggie Cabal is leading, driving, shaping and responding to the needs of the ORIX corporate and small business customer through curating services and providing bespoke solutions.
Through listening to their customers they have designed a Subscription based and Pay as you Go, financial services and car leasing service through innovative thinking enhanced by innovative technology.
By creating an innovative organisation culture, failing fast when needed, being adaptable and not make assumptions have propelled ORIX to the forefront of their fleet.
Following a career in the corporate world, John has spent the last 10 years dedicated to providing support to Australian Small and Medium sized businesses, and particularly through his role as Executive Officer at Bayside Business Enterprise Centre in Sydney.
Knowing that disruption creates opportunity he believes that small businesses have the opportunity through personalised service, having a strong interpersonal aspect to the business combined with a holistic approach to digital capabilities, will support their future growth and economic development.
By fostering innovation, accelerating collaboration, creating meaningful partnerships, up skilling and re skilling, addressing market needs and shortages will create competitive advantages for scale and new markets.
For more information on Bayside Business Enterprise Centre - https://www.baysidebec.com.au