Interesting conversations with interesting people

In this week’s episode, Ez is joined by Daniel Gaebler, a men’s mental health advocate, published author and business owner. Daniels mission is an admirable and important one - to change the way men think and to increase the impact leaders can have in small businesses specifically for their employees mental health.

With one in eight men experiencing depression and one in five men experiencing anxiety at some stage of their lives, we’re so pleased to have Daniel on the podcast to discuss this important topic. 

In this ‘interesting conversation’, we chat through; 

• Daniels own trials and tribulations
• The social norms of masculinity which leads to men bottling things up 
• How Daniel faced his inner demons
• Challenges facing men’s mental health 
• A life changing moment for him that turned his life around with the help of a coach 
• How and why businesses should care about mental health
• How businesses can support their employees and recognise mental ill health 

We hope you enjoy the episode! 

A link can be found below to Daniels Book ‘The Centered Tradie’.  

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61101289-the-centred-tradie

 A slightly different episode this week as instead of having a guest, our Directors, Ez & Emma chat to each other in honour of Spencer Lanes' 3rd birthday. 

What makes a good entrepreneur? How do you cope and deal with life’s inevitable challenges and knocks? A few questions that Ez & Emma share their thoughts on.

Emma and Ez talk about some of the adversity they have faced in recent years, battling cancer and the death of a sibling. Their responses to these awful situations and how they’ve shaped their lives, resilience and mindset more broadly. 

They chat through their own career histories spanning 25 + years of recruitment, what they’ve learned along the way and what lead to the creation of Spencer Lane. More broadly, they talk about the characteristics that successful entrepreneurs share, based on their own experiences but also from hundreds of business owners that they have advised and recruited for over the years.

Some insights, a few laughs, the odd tear and we hope an 'interesting conversation'.

For many Marketers it's an age-old question - do I specialise or generalise? 

In this episode, Emma is joined by Kelly Gurr, a 20-year marketing leader with experience working in many different industries with B2C, B2B and B2B2C audiences from two different continents. 

As an M shaped marketer, she shares her journey from achieving deep experience across branding, marcomms, events and product marketing to overcoming imposter syndrome as a manager.

Kelly shares how she has overcome the challenges faced as a generalist, her advice on transferable skills and attitudes, and her trust in continued learning, great culture and self-belief.  

Kelly also talks us through how her diverse experience has helped her to create innovative strategies and really shapes how she builds and leads diverse teams.

In this episode, Emma is joined by Mo Hamdouna the MD of Mo Works a Creative Agency, and Co-Founder of Hatch Quarter.

Originally from Jordan, Mo moved to Australia around 13 years ago to study before starting and building his own business. 

We talk about what he learned from working in a number of different countries before moving here, what prompted the move to Australia, and where his entrepreneurial streak came from. Mo also shares his experience of being a migrant who has English as his second language, and how he approached some of the challenges he came across. How did his experience translate, did people appreciate the large global corporate clients he was working with and how did he manage to ultimately establish himself and his business.

Mo also talks about how he has built his team with a continued focus on multiculturalism and diversity, and the impact that has on design. He believes this mixture of different experiences, different ways of seeing things and different markets worked in, as a collective gives them a really unique perspective and service offering.

We end with Mo sharing some great advice and tips that he has learnt along the way.

www.spencerlane.com.au/podcast

In this episode, Ez is joined by Simon McSorley and they're talking all things EVP (employee value proposition). 

Simon has well over a decade of agency and in-house technical recruitment experience and is the founder of Crew Talent Advisory, a unique recruitment business focused on the tech space. They truly partner with businesses they recruit for. Often, they will be based on their clients' sites, getting to know them, understanding their EVP and marketing them in a way that is only possible when you get to know people. It's this unique first-hand view into a variety of businesses and the insights it has produced, that we wanted to delve into. 

Simon and Ez talk through what EVP is, what it should include and how to communicate it effectively. They also discuss the impact this has on businesses being able to attract & retain talent.

Simon also gives some practical tips on how to start building your EVP. 

As mentioned in the episode, a few links below; 

Valve employee handbook - https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf

Bolster employee handbook - https://handbook.blstr.co/#welcome

Net guru career page- https://www.netguru.com/career/paths/ror

We hope you enjoy the episode!

How do you balance a successful career with your life outside of work, and having a family?

In this episode, Emma speaks with Emma Rundle who is the Director - Marketing & Communications for ANZSOG.

Emma talks to us about her career and how she has balanced her work success with raising a family. She shares with us some of the decisions she made along the way, including going part-time,  the positives and some of the challenges associated with it. In hindsight would she make the same decision now?

We think this is a really important conversation to be having, particularly in regard to defining what success looks like for you, and moving away from success only being defined through the lens of career success.

A massive thank you to Emma for being so open in sharing her journey with us on The Spencer Lane Podcast.

In this episode, Emma talks with Ann Pocock about her journey from corporate Marketer with businesses such as Spirit Telecom and Accenture, to Marketing Consultant and coach.

Ann shares her personal experience of where she has seen businesses go wrong, and where, in hindsight, she has made mistakes herself.

Having worked with a number of SME clients Ann also shares her experiences of working directly with CEOs and/or business owners, the positives and some of the challenges that come with that.

This is a great episode for anyone looking to gain insights into the challenges that another Marketer has faced, and how they have overcome them. Also highly relevant for any business owners who are looking to understand how to work more effectively with Marketing.

In this 'interesting conversation,' Emma talks with Charlie Morton, Executive Director Media, Communications & Engagement at Victoria Police.

Charlie talks us through his career starting as a journalist in the UK and his time working as the Chief Press Officer for the UK Ministry of Defence, before moving to Australia in 2009.

Charlie talks through the overall approach to Media & Comms, and the focus on Community Engagement, before talking about how the media landscape has changed in recent years due to Social Media, and how this affects a role like his.

We also talk about the unique challenges faced over the last couple of years due to the pandemic, and how Victoria Police and his department specifically have dealt with this.

Charlie also gives his advice on how to deal with a crisis situation from a Comms perspective, in addition to some boarder thoughts around building teams and what he's learnt thus far in this career.

Given the huge focus on policing in Victoria generally but more specifically over the last couple of years, we hope that this episode with give you some interesting insights, into managing such a high profile comms team.

In this episode, Emma is joined by Max Kalis who has taken his background in innovation & design strategy into career coaching.

Max talks through his career path to date, from various roles in his 20's where he was working out what he wanted to do. To working in innovation labs in one of the UK’s main banks looking at organisational & cultural change. It was during this time that he realised the key to all of this work was people.

He gives great context to the terms ‘design’ & ‘strategy’ and how they can be used successfully in career coaching. Max also gives lots of examples, tips and suggestions to really bring the subject to life, and demonstrate how you can use the principles and framework in your own thinking and lives.

Max is engaging, entertaining and very informative, there is so much to take away from this episode.