Not knowing an industry is a challenge many executives face when they climb the ladder, so we thought it would be good to speak to someone who overcame that challenge to deliver some incredible results. Our guest this week is Sean Simmons, COO of Fallon Solutions: a category leader in the trade services industry.

Sean’s role is wide ranging. He has a lot of people-facing duties including training, recruitment and customer services, but he also analyses things at a macro level using highly sophisticated data modelling.

Sean’s history is even more wide ranging. He used his experience in managing rock bands to help him land a role at Amazon during the boom times of the late 90s, and he helped scale whatif.com to the point of acquisition by Expedia for $280m. Sean came on the radar of Arete because of his persistence in landing his current role. He was repeatedly turned down because he lacked the relevant industry experience, but as you will hear, he is living proof of what can be achieved with lateral thinking and persistence.

Episode Highlights:

- The definition of ‘category leader’

- How education inspired and empowered Sean

- How Sean used his experience in music management to help him get in the door at Amazon

- What it’s like to work for a founder-led business

- The implications of being publicly listed

- How Sean managed to land his COO role despite not having the desired experience

- How Sean has compensated for not having industry experience in his day-to-day work

- How long it took Sean to get up to speed with an unknown industry

- What an MBA did for Sean

- How Sean is creating recurring loyalty in customers

Useful Links:

Sean Simmons on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-simmons-profile/

Richard Triggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtriggs/

It’s always good to talk to someone with such wide-ranging experience, and it’s even better when they’re incredibly successful. Cheryl Barrett is the CEO of Southern Cross Support Services, which provides NDIS care across Australia. What started ten years ago as two people in a lounge room has now grown to 1,045 staff across Australia.

With Cheryl now at the helm, we talk to her about how she got the job and the varied journey that got her there. Can you believe her first interview for the job took five hours? Cheryl tells us how that went and describes, among other things, her motivation for giving something back to the community.

Episode Highlights:

- If there is any difference in not-for-profit and private sector standards

- How Cheryl negotiated a male-dominated industry

- How Cheryl started giving back to the community

- Equality in politics versus the private sector

- Cheryl’s executive journey

- How Cheryl negotiated a five-hour interview

- How Cheryl did a self-development program to help her become a leader

- The challenge of attracting talent in a provincial area

- The importance of mentoring your staff

Useful Links:

Cheryl Barrett on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cheryl%E2%80%93barrett/

Richard Triggs on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtriggs/

Arete Website: areteexecutive.com.au/

Just how do you learn the ways of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across the world if you’ve never done it before? Scott Douglas tells us how. The Managing Director of Asia Pacific for WernerCo gives us an insight into his rise to the top of the management tree, and the inner workings of a truly global business. He’s on the phone to the global CEO and he’s answerable to a whole host of staff and a supply chain across different continents. Oh and by the way, he was the man who set up the Australian operation from scratch.

We’re talking to a real international high-flyer on this week’s Arete podcast. Stay tuned if you want to learn more about M&A, different work cultures around the world and how a company that distributes something as simple as a ladder can still innovate and improve the product.

In this episode you will learn:

-How Scott has managed an upturn in demand from COVID

-The logistical challenges of distributing products in the current climate

-The value of an MBA to Scott

-The halo effect explained

-How the Australian markets compare to the Asian markets

-How Scott manages international teams

-Balancing the demands of private-equity backers

-Strategic direction versus transactional direction

-How to acquire expertise in mergers & acquisitions

-What ‘strategy’ really means

-When it’s the right time to spend your time sitting on other boards

Extra Resources:

Scott Douglas on Linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/scott-douglas

For a free copy of Richard Triggs’ best-selling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market, go to: http://www.uncoverthehiddenjobmarket.com

In this episode I speak to someone who has accomplished a very rare thing these days: a hugely successful manufacturing operation in our own country. Where most would outsource to Asia, Scott Trenoweth and his family have proven what can be possible if you invest in local talent. The Associate Director of Thunderbox Industries recounts his journey to the top of the family business, which has grown from 4 employees in 2002 to over 100 today. It was genuinely inspiring to hear from someone who places such value in homegrown talent and innovation. Listen up to hear how Thunderbox did it.

In this episode you will learn:

-The strength of Aussie manufacturing

-How Scott started his career straight out of high school

-Automation in manufacturing

-What motivated Scott to return to the family business after he’d left previously

-What an Associate Director does on a day-to-day basis

-How Scott stays competitive as a manufacturer in Australia

-Why Scott gets by without a Linkedin profile, coach or any external business advice

-How to break into high-end manufacturing

-How enthusiasm and energy can bring success without the need for academic qualification

-How to upscale your product range at the drop of a hat

Extra Resources:

Scott’s toolbox range: https://www.rhinoboxes.com.au/

For a free copy of Richard Triggs’ best-selling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market, go to: http://www.uncoverthehiddenjobmarket.com

Richard Triggs on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtriggs/

We cover some heavy global matters on this week’s Arete podcast with Larry Quick: a man whose job it is to help companies understand how macro issues could affect their everyday business. The senior analyst and strategist (and acting MD) of Resilient Futures was incredibly insightful. He basically deconstructed the major systems of the world and explained why they are important to you, the business leader.

Larry is a very well travelled man in both a geographical and a career sense. Originally from Perth, he served time in the army and spent a decade in the UK working in the fashion industry, before returning to Australia. He then worked as a sales manager before eventually founding an internet business well ahead of the time most people even had the internet. Nowadays he specialises in conditions analysis.

Pre-COVID he was flying back and forth to the USA, presenting his ideas on macroeconomics, community economic development and how they fit into wider society. His methods were so effective that he managed to predict the GFC two years before it happened! There’s no doubt this man is worth listening to.

In this episode you will learn:

-Why it is important to understand global financial conditions

-What our economy is currently threatened by

-Digital saturation explained

-How not going to uni helped Larry

-How Larry battled leukemia and used it as a positive

-Why life is too short to work yourself into the ground trying to build a legacy

-The ‘value of work cycle’ explained

-How environmental and social systems are collapsing

-The dangers of the US printing more money than the entire GDP of Australia

-How working from home can bring more value to local communities

-How climate change is intertwined with the COVID economy

-Why past information doesn’t have the currency it had before

Extra Resources:

Larry’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larryquick/

Email Larry: [email protected]

Larry’s company website: www.resilientfutures.com

Buy Larry’s book: “Disrupted: Strategy for Exponential Change” here

Subscribe to future Arete podcasts at www.aretepodcast.com

For a free copy of Richard Triggs’ best-selling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market, go to: http://www.uncoverthehiddenjobmarket.com

Too many businesses treat health & safety as a box-ticking exercise, but if you listen to our guest this week, you’ll realise what an empowering force it can be for an organisation. We speak to Gareth Davies, MD of SafeAssure: a firm that offers specialist advice on workplace safety and environmental management systems.

He knows what to do in a crisis and he also knows what to do to stop you having one in the first place. He explained how the suicide of someone close to him piqued his interest in looking after people in the workplace.

Gareth has seen firsthand the worst that can happen to people if their workplace is dangerous to their physical and mental health, having given evidence in court and sat by more than his fair share of hospital beds. This is an important listen for anyone who cares about the wellbeing of their employees.

In this episode you will learn:

-What inspired Gareth to go it alone

-The importance of mentoring

-The difficulty of working with your spouse

-What you need to think about to make your workplace safe

-Why you might need a gap analysis

-How long a Health & Safety audit process might take

-How Gareth made strategic alliances work

-What the Arete Champions’ Forum has given to Gareth

Extra Resources:

Gareth’s company website: https://safeassure.com.au/

Gareth on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gareth-davies-au/

For a free copy of Richard Triggs’ best-selling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market, go to: http://www.uncoverthehiddenjobmarket.com

Wouldn’t we all like to get inside the heads of our colleagues to understand why they might be resistant to change? Meg Hooper makes a living out of doing just that, and she was kind enough to share some great advice on how to understand the human side of change management.

Meg is the Director and Principal Consulting Psychologist of her own firm, Carousel Consulting, and is an active member of the Arete Champions’ Forum. Her background is seriously diverse, starting out on a path to become a marine biologist and ending up in psychology almost by accident. Oh, and she spent a while as part of a circus, just for good measure!

We talk about her wide-ranging journey and the simple things we can all do to make change management as painless as possible.

In this episode you will learn:

-How best to approach organisational change

-How Meg knew it was the right time to roll the dice and go out on her own

-The benefits of planning a long way ahead when affecting change

-Real-life examples of successful change management

-Why partnering with key stakeholders in an organisation is more effective than simply making recommendations

-The concept of “pre-silience”

-What Meg has got out of the Arete Champions’ Forum

-The dangers of change at the wrong time

-What needs to be in place in company culture to empower employees to be flexible and open to change

Extra Resources:

Meg Hooper on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meg-hooper/

For a free copy of Richard Triggs’ best-selling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market, go to: http://www.uncoverthehiddenjobmarket.com

The social impact of what we do in business is becoming more and more important, so it was great to speak to someone who is making a success of marrying up the old corporate world with the socially conscious world of startups. Sandra D’Souza is the CEO of Ellect: a digital marketplace that connects small businesses with corporate buyers/investors, where every transaction has a social impact.

Sandra gave us a really interesting insight into just how much opportunity is out there for smaller businesses to connect with big investors, if only they could make the right connections. What Sandra is doing is highly successful but remains a relatively untapped niche.

Maybe your business could benefit from what Sandra does at Ellect?

In this episode you will learn:

-What drove Sandra to build a socially-conscious business

-The scale of untapped demand for corporate investment

-Why the type of business is as relevant as what it sells

-How COVID has changed the way we look at supply chains

-The value of an MBA versus real-life experience

-Why you need an open mind to keep learning

-The dangers of victim orientation

-The Wealth Dynamics psychometric test

-Why you need an exit strategy even when your business is doing well

-Diversity in the corporate world

-How supply-chain diversity is challenging the commonly held wisdom and actually making businesses more profitable

Extra Resources: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandradsouzaaust/

Ellect website: http://www.ellect.biz

Roger Hamilton’s Wealth Dynamics test: http://mywealthprofile.com

If you crack change management then you’ve cracked a key component of business, so it was great to talk to Don McKenzie from the Adizes Institute about their methodology for collaborative leadership and the importance of understanding which part of the lifecycle a business is in.

Don is the MD of the Adizes Australia operation and an active member of the global executive team, having previously built up his own businesses to achieve some amazing results. He also knows what it’s like to get stuck with a business at the wrong time of the lifecycle, so he shares some valuable lessons with us about how to do it and how not to do it.

If you’re interested in learning about some of the nuances that often get ignored when people talk about leadership and change in business, then listen up on the Arete Podcast here!

In this episode you will learn:

-The underlying organisational challenges of a global business

-The ‘recrimination phase’ explained

-The works of Dr Adizes Ichak

-How to systemise process and make conflict constructive

-How to delegate at the right pace

-The importance of reward systems

-What makes company founders quit

-The connection between company culture and strategy

-The importance of cultural due diligence

-The difference between consulting, mentoring and coaching

-How Don quickly transitioned from flipping burgers at uni to running the family business and selling it at a massive profit

Extra Resources:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/domckenzie/

Adizes Website: http://www.adizes.com.au

Adizes Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/adizesofficial

For a free copy of Richard Triggs’ best-selling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market, go to: http://www.uncoverthehiddenjobmarket.com

We all need someone like Rex Urwin in our lives. The Managing Director of Mind Matters and an expert of all matters of the mind makes it his business to empower leaders and entrepreneurs to break through their limits and be their best selves. Unlike most business coaches out there, Rex sees beyond the rigid structures of the workplace.

This conversation mainly focuses on how we can revolutionise the way we perform by gaining control of our breathing. Who knew that our thoughts are so inextricably linked to the way we breathe?

Listen up for 45 minutes of free advice from a man who has already inspired major organisations such as Queensland Rail, Australia Post and Flight Centre.

In this episode you will learn:

The importance of good breathing

Is the human brain an unlimited mechanism?

How to smash glass ceilings

How to combat limiting beliefs

How to perceive obstacles to make them less harmful

The link between breathing and anxiety

The difference between breathing and ‘being breathed’

How to get out of the loop of fight-or-flight mode

Why we should tap into our inner child

Real-life examples of leaders & entrepreneurs who have hit their peak using Rex’s techniques

Rex’s company website: http://www.mindmatters.me

Email: [email protected]

For a free copy of Richard Triggs’ best-selling book, Uncover the Hidden Job Market, go to: http://www.uncoverthehiddenjobmarket.com