Mid Market Matters

“Trena Blair is an expert in expanding business from Australia into the US, with New York as their market entry point.” (Forbes, 2018).

Trena Blair, Founder and CEO of FD Global Connections, is a highly accomplished global businesswoman and professional speaker. In this episode, she discusses the opportunities for global expansion and the common mistakes companies make as they scale globally. Trena has spent considerable time preparing Australian businesses to launch into the USA and believes that to be able to expand successfully, businesses must understand who their customers are in those markets and make sure they have the right leadership structures, systems, policies, and processes in place.

Alan Rich has operated his own business strategy and mentoring business with a great number of clients in financial services since 2003. This experience led to the creation of Clarion Group, whose business model is to buy into, and closely manage for growth, financial services businesses throughout Australia. In this session, Alan talks about Clarion’s Hub & Spoke growth model that focuses on buying into financial services firms, creating workable and successful client referral programs, growing those businesses, and obtaining significant value uplift for the business owners.

Thomas Dudley, a passionate advocate for employee-owned businesses, shares how he creates national recognition for employee ownership and supports the businesses that implement it through Certified EO, a certification program in the United States for employee-owned companies he co-founded in September 2017. In this episode, Thomas also shares why business owners should start thinking about their succession in the early stages of their business and explore the use of employee share ownership as part of this strategy.

David Reid and Darrin Drew, Directors of Business 360, give advice on creating an effective workforce restructuring plan to help business owners cope with the ‘new normal’, and share what businesses should watch out for as they consider restructuring either due to diminished economic circumstances, or alternatively opportunity driven through good business planning.

Darryl Bates-Brownsword, Co-Founder of Succession Plus UK, sits down with Craig West to share his journey from being an engineer to ending up in the consulting space through his passion to help business owners get the most from their life’s work and successfully exit their business on their terms. Darryl also discusses the importance of having your own IP to improve your business' value, and how it can help you engage your clients and give you the opportunity to understand their issues better than they do.

Michael Haynes, Director of Listen Innovate Grow, worked with companies in Australia, Brazil and Canada before becoming a B2B specialist. In this episode, he shares what the modern B2B looks like and how important it is to implement innovation and best practices to improve customer experience and drive business recovery post-COVID-19.

Natasha Hawker, Director of Employee Matters, joins Craig West to share her views on the future of work post-COVID-19, why she thinks Jobkeeper is a ‘game-changing’ opportunity that many businesses are missing out on, and how business owners can take advantage of the current ‘downtime’ to improve their business systems, efficiencies and value.

From doing forensic services to working in the Interpol in Lyon France to building his own international aid agency, Hands Across the Water, Peter Baines has had a remarkable journey doing humanitarian work and organising not for profit programs to support the needy, especially children. In this session, Peter shares his life experiences and the lessons he’s learned, how SMEs can start supporting a charity to enable business growth, and how a ‘Crisis Clock’ approach can help business leaders get through tough times.

For Michael Lane, business should be fun and fast. In this session, Michael, Director of Success Resources, the world’s largest provider of educational events, gives his best advice on how to be successful in business and shares how strategic partnerships could work well even in a COVID economy, and why every business owner should dilute their equity in their business to succeed.

Craig’s motto is “Know first, Be first , Profit first” and in this session he explains why the lack of understanding of future trends has become the number reason that strategic plans fail, and shows how industries will be transformed by the fourth industrial revolution and what opportunities this presents for the middle market.