Executive Stories

Richard Brimblecombe is the CEO of StockCo, the largest specialist livestock financier in Australia. When listen to Richard speak you can see there is a real urgency in what he is doing and that he has no intention or resting on laurels when he achieves his next lofty goal. There is always something more ambitious on the horizon which invariably involves biting off even more than before.  You get the feeling that to strive for anything less would be boring for Richard.  I think it all boils down to passion for the individuals and industry his work directly affects – and for the last 20 years that has been farmers.  Richard is super busy guy so I appreciate him taking the time to come and chat with me!

Alan Jones is the current QUT CEA entrepreneur in residence for the Collider Program 2018. What does that even mean?  And what is a well known VC from Sydney hanging out with #startups at QUT?  Alan and I grabbed a few rays of sun in a Brisbane city park for bit of a pop up podcast where he tells me all about it and his new VC fund M8 Ventures.  Nothing like being spontaneous!

For those that know me, they know I love wine. It is a passion of mine and it’s the reason I know my latest guest on #ExecutiveStories with Lloyd Heinrich, CEO of The Wine Society. We, of course, had to conduct the interview over a few glasses of wine (Bindi Original Vineyard Pinot Noir and a Deep Woods Single Vineyard Cabernet – which was amazing so seek it out!). Lloyd has had a fascinating career journey. He is onto his 5th career now and is bringing a wealth of experience to it. In this episode we discuss:

• Lloyd’s journey which started out as him being an engineer
• His MBA and transition to Boston Consulting Group – ever wondered what it’s like to work in place like this?;
• His career with Coles and Red Bubble; and
• The Wine Society and how it has transformed from a not-for profit to a corporate entity that is allowing wine producers from all over Australia to be competitive in the market and allow us, as consumers, to try some of the very best wines. Oh he, also runs the market place fromtheproducer.com through the Wine Society which he co-founded and built from the ground up.

There is vibrancy and colour to this conversation that I just didn’t want to call short. Listen to this over a glass of good wine if you are lucky enough. Regardless, listen because it’s a good one!

This week on Executive Stories we chat with Stuart Clout, the CEO of thedocyard, an online deal M&A management system. Stuart is a former lawyer turned tech entrepreneur who set about forming thedocyard when he couldn’t find a solution in the market place to run his M&A deals better.  M&A deals tend to be weighed down by Word checklists buried in reams of emails resulting in all the deal stakeholders (buyer, seller, investor, lawyers, bankers, accountants and bankers) having little visibility of who is up to where in the deal.

His transition from law into business means that he has personally experienced the different mindset required to run a SaaS company compared to a traditional law firm where he cut his teeth and formed his bad habits (I can say this as it takes one to know one!).  Stuart has deferred the dream of sitting on the beach at Peregian and gone all in to turbo charge thedocyard by moving his family to Sydney (where we caught up). After all that’s the epicenter of where his target clients are.

We chat about the problem, the tech solution, sales techniques and experimenting with different pricing models as Stuart finds thedocyard’s niche and fine tunes it into a future global company.   

Being an M&A lawyer myself I have taken up thedocyard to run my deals and can personally recommend it!

Justin Fischer is the CEO and Founder of Brüllen Pty Ltd, a business that manufactures and exports soft service ice cream and frozen yogurt machines. You may recognize his name or his business from the Married at First Site TV show. Justin’s appearance on MAFS is certainly a talking point in our conversation but we also delve into how he started his first business, what life experiences lead him to where he is today and what drives him. Relationships are of course, an interesting topic for Justin, and he is extremely open with his separation with his de facto partner many moons ago and the effect that it had on his business.  

If you ever wondered whether the guy portrayed on a reality TV show is the same or any different in real life – then you will have to listen in and make up your own mind!

We all know Dr Glen Richards as the founder of Greencross Vets, not to mention he is also one of the Sharks on the TV show “Shark Tank”.

Glen’s entrepreneurial journey is inspiring and impressive and probably why we all know him so well. My conversation with Glen delves slightly from his conventional story. We start our chat taste testing a Monday Food Company pumpkin loaf, one of Glen’s portfolio companies, I had cooked the day before. This launches us into a conversation on where food is going, why we should be interested in our health and the price you pay for quality. Glen also delves into:

• what other investments he has that solve a problem surrounding food or nutrition;
• why he decided to join Shark Tank  - and Steve Baxter’s role in his decision;
• how he now uses his experience - successes and hard learnings – to benefit the next waive of CEOs and founders
• what life is like post Greencross.

Thanks to Glen for giving up his time to come on the show and to Vmation for their fantastic filming as always.

Ben is the CEO of eagle.io, a cloud-based data acquisition and streaming analytics platform for environmental and industrial monitoring and control applications. Sounds complicated? I agree. Don’t worry Ben gives us the rundown of what eagle.io’s technology does and explains what the internet of things means in real terms and how software like eagle.io can improve environmental and industrial outcomes.

Ben started out as a consultant and has a great journey of how he built O2 Group. He became involved with Eagle.io because he was one of their customers who was searching the world over for a solution his business needed. He loved the solution so much that after he left O2 Group and he became their CEO.

Although a tech CEO now, Ben is still passionate about the environment and provides some thoughtful opinions about how it is being legislated and how this legislation is being enforced (or lack thereof!). He’s a smart startup founder and inspiring CEO. I hope you enjoy!

This week on Executive Stories, I chat with Joel Edmondson, CEO of Q Music. I loved my chat with Joel because it’s not often you get to delve into the creative side of life. We chat:

• music and the arts – should STEM by STEAM?
• politics (why not?!)
• economic impact music has on the economy; and
• the controversial lockout laws and the effect they have on the music industry.

The main theme from our conversation is why music is so important to society and the economy in general. Joel provides some great insights and interesting opinions (without opinions life would be boring!). I hope you enjoy.

Susanne was my first guest to join me for an Executive Stories Live Stream. For those that missed the live stream you can watch it here http://www.executivestories.com/live-stream but I am guessing the reason you are reading is because you want to listen to the podcast version.

Back to Susanne, founder of Families in Transition, a management consulting company focusing on family and privately owned businesses. Susanne has a passion for working with families and privately owned business who want to make positive change to improve the way their business is run. What I wanted to explore with Susanne was how she has brought her life’s experiences to truly and empathetically advise her clients in what is not only a business matter but a deeply personal one too.  After all Susanne is from a family business so is well placed to tell us and her clients about the actual emotional and business pressure points of a family business.

This personal overlay gives her a unique ability to advise her clients on creating more sustainable family businesses and how to focus on governance, leadership and all the other people aspects of a business.

My chat with Susanne is a continuation of the Executive Stories mantra – real chats with executives and directors to find out what drives them and take a walk in their shoes. Enjoy!

This episode of Executive Stories delves deep into conversation with Ray Merlano,  the General Manager of Data#3. Ray still has his American accent but after 35 years here feels as Australian as Vegemite. He started off in science and math and it is this background in STEM which says has helped in thrive in the role of an executive at Data#3. Ray is big into sport and you can tell that there is a competitive drive to him, which is why you will see this GM at startup events and keeping his finger on the pulse for new business opportunities. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with Ray and I hope you enjoy it too!