How do you add 200m in revenue in 2.5 years?

This week Sean interviews Ben Marsonet the Group CEO of Altus Traffic to understand their rapid transformation.

Ben Marsonet’s had an incredible journey.

From Traffic Controller at 18, to Group CEO of ANZ’s largest traffic management business.

2.5 years ago they had $140m in revenue, under new ownership and Ben’s leadership they now have $350m in revenue having completed 4 acquisitions in just 12 months.

You’ll love this week’s humble and inspiring guest on the ScaleHQ podcast. Join us as we unpack Ben’s story, and the secrets behind this rapid growth.

Some of the highlights from this week’s episode:

03:55 - The current scale of Altus.

10:00 - The pivotal inflection points that have led to the significant transformation.

14:15 - When is the right time to take on private equity investment.

22:12 - The biggest challenges under private equity ownership.

26:51 - The ingredients that led to the 140m-350m. transformation.

35:42 - Ben’s biggest learning as a new CEO.

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Watch or listen to the full episode on:

• Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

• Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

• YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

ScaleHQ website: 

#growthjourney #scaleups #ceotips

From Startups and Success to Burnout: A 15-Year Entrepreneurial Journey.

Only 2.3% of businesses successfully scale beyond $10 million.

And of those, even fewer manage to succeed in building 4 successful companies in a 15 year period. But that’s exactly what Ryan Trainor has done.

Since the age of 24 Ryan has founded and led or co-founded, a labor force company, three successful education businesses and the largest video game and entertainment venues business in the southern hemisphere.

But these sorts of achievements unfortunately can take a significant toll on your physical health and your relationships with those around you.

Ryan, after burning out in 2022, realised he had to take a look at how he was managing his ambitions, his health and his relationships.

You’ll love hearing both the strategies that helped him succeed as a serial entrepreneur, and how he’s grappling with the impacts of his burnout.

Here are this week’s best bits from the full episode

02:18 - The foundations of Ryan’s repeated successes.

07:48 - The issues that arise when you start assigning genius to what you’ve done.

11:47 - Was building to step back a plan, or an accident?

17:25 - How to manage financial risks when you step back from CEO.

23:07 - What happens when you ignore the signs on the way to burnout.

33:28 - How to find success at home when you’re used to finding it in your business.

Watch or listen to the full episode on:

• Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

• Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

• YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

• ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/96

#BusinessGrowth #Burnout #Relationships.

This week, Sean deep dives into unique approaches to events as a potential (and often ignored) way to bring potential clients through your pipeline.

Just wrapped up a ScaleHQ podcast episode with Morgan Ingram (4x LinkedIn Top Sales Voice who’s helped Salesforce and Zoom revolutionise their sales effectiveness), that's a goldmine for any business leader looking for a unique way to bring prospects into, and through their pipeline. 🎙️

Did you know that only 30% of companies are hitting their sales targets using traditional methods? 🎯

We explore why traditional tactics aren't working like they once did. 🤔

But what truly stood out in this conversation was the resurgence of face-to-face interactions and events as an interesting opportunity for deeper engagement (and usually free of creativity from your competitors so easier to stand out). 🤝

It's not just about booths at the event anymore; think hiring a bar with drinks, demos, and immersive experiences NEAR the event (listen for details) as just one example. 🍹🎉

You’ll love this week’s episode, here are some of the key bits:

03:25 - Why buyers aren’t responding like they used to

08:17 - Content isn't just king, it's the whole game! We dive into why

11:36 - Events? Think beyond booths. Imagine lounges, demos, and mini-conferences

17:39 - How you convert your interactions into business opportunities

25:11 - How to measure ROI with events

30:15 - The future of video content + live events as a unique combo

Watch or listen to the full episode on:

• Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

• Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

• YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

• ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/95

#Sales #EventActivations #CustomerAquisition

Sales expert Talila Kroy breaks down her secrets to recruiting sales people, to help you take your customer acquisition to another level.

Roughly 50% of sales campaigns fail, you can’t just hire a few people off LinkedIn with “Salesperson” as their role and hope to see your profits increase.

When it comes to hiring salespeople, you need to find someone with the right motivation and mindset.

This week, Talila Kroy from emple returns to the ScaleHQ podcast.

Talila is an expert when it comes to recruiting and managing sales teams.

This episode, she breaks down her secrets to recruiting sales people, to help you increase the likelihood that you’ll end up with a high performance sales team.

Here are the best bits of this episode:

07:24 - Finding the right motivation behind salespeople.

18:41 - Why your culture matters so much in the hiring process.

22:43 - Mastering writing the job advertisement (it matters more than you think!).

29:17 - Setting expectations about remuneration when hiring.

34:46 - Designing your first and second interviews.

42:56 - When do you assess your applicants?

Watch or listen to the full episode on:

#BusinessPodcast #ScaleUpBusiness #businessgrowth

How can you maximise the performance and potential of your team?

This week, Sean breaks down one of the best and most simple talent management tools around, the 9-Box Grid.

To maximise the performance and realise the potential of your team, you need a structured approach to how you assess that performance and potential, and a clear plan on how to maximise it.

Or to move them on!

Whatever the right decision is.

The 9-box grid is a commonly used framework by leaders around the world.

It's a simple diagram that allows you to assess your team members based on two important factors: their current performance and their future potential.

In this episode I unpack the 9-box talent grid, how it works, the pros and cons, and what to do with people once you've assessed where they fit!

Here are the most important parts of this weeks episode:

04:31 - What does the 9-box grid look like?

08:08 - The pros and cons of the 9-box grid.

11:29 - How to assess performance and potential using the grid.

18:51 - How to optimize your professional development budget.

Watch or listen to the full episode on:

• Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

• Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

• YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

• ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/93

#BusinessPodcast #businesspodcast #businessgrowth #ProfessionalDevelopment.

Growing your company purely through word-of-mouth is a great way to build your brand, and it is a key indicator of a good business when you are able to get to 7-figures.

But if you want to scale to 8-figures and beyond, you'll need a scalable customer acquisition system. And that means if you're in a B2B business - you'll likely need sales people.

It's not just as easy as hiring a salesperson and expecting them to implement an effective sales process into your business. Unfortunately, they just do not, and will not come with that.

You'll need to build it yourself or get help from someone to do so, so that you can set those salespeople that you hire up for success.

This week, I interview Talila Kroy an expert when it comes to building and refining sales process that leads to better conversion rates in all types of businesses but particularly B2B.

This is the first of two episodes - this week is about ensuring you have the foundations in place before you start recruiting, next week we'll unpack the recruitment and assessment process.

Here are the best bits of this episode:

04:59 - The most common mistake Founders make when hiring salespeople

11:26 - Massively improve speed-to-competence by developing a success model first

15:08 - Sales remuneration design.... have I accidentally made them lazy?

21:04 - Getting the sales targets and KPIs right (and they're two entirely different things)

30:11 - How to effectively manage performance of your salesperson

37:13 - Getting onboarding right builds both confidence, and competence

43:32 - Insights into building a capability assessment model

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Watch or listen to the full episode on:

Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/92

Visit our guest:

Website: www.emple.com.au

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emple-australia/

Unlock your sales potential with a FREE 20-minute session at 

• https://pages.emple.com.au/saleshireready
🚩 Are you Sales-Hire Ready?

#BusinessPodcast #businesspodcast #businessgrowth #business #leadershipinsights

Markets get crowded. So how do you differentiate?

This week, I interview Rowan Kunz, who has managed to scale his business in a market with super-low barriers to entry - its as crowded as you can get!

Rowan's the Founder of Art of Smart Education, a 14-year old tutoring and mentoring business that helps high school students navigate the tricky world of succeeding academically WHILST navigating their way into the course and career pathway best suited to them.

Art of Smart have achieved 5x firsts in Australian education and built a strong competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace and this week, I wanted to find out his secrets to success so you can leverage those principles in your own business.

Here are the highlights this week:

16:28 - Tackling differentiation in a crowded, low-barrier-to-entry market.

25:35 - Overcoming scale constraints.

30:48 - The 3 C’s that helped Rowan scale.

42:14 - If you could change anything about the education system, what would it be?

46:54 - Expected impacts of AI in education

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Watch or listen to full episodes on:

• Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

• Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

• YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

• ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/87

Visit our guest:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowankunz/

• Website: artofsmart.com.au.

#qualitycontent #businesspodcast #businessgrowth

When you are scaling your business, its easy for alignment that you once had to start to become loose.

Priorities start taking tangents.

The left hand stops talking to the right.

Then you apply MORE growth pressure and all of a sudden you have a dysfunctional business that's not aligned.

That's a quick way to undo all your good work.

Creating alignment (and re-alignment) is a critical leadership practice when you're in a growth business.

Ignore it at your peril!

This week, Sean interviews Karen Traversi Kovaleski.

Karen has created alignment in companies from start-up to More than $100 million.

In this episode, Karen breaks down her 5 step method to realigning a business that's veering off track.

Here are the best bits of this week's episode:

04:58 - The challenge of alignment (and what happens when you apply growth pressure).

14:31 - Karen’s 5 Steps to alignment framework.

20:41 - Unpacking Step 3, “Motivate”.

24:04 - The role of feedback loops in being able to evaluate alignment effectively.

34:48 - Removing the fear of failure in your team.

37:26 - What CEOs struggle with the most when trying to create alignment.

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Watch or listen to the full episode on:

• Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

• Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

• YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

• ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/91

Visit our guest:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karentraversikovaleski

#businesspodcast #businessgrowth #podcast

When the growth in your business has stalled, it's time for new leadership and a new strategy. General Manager Alena was appointed and she tripled her business by doubling down on product and culture...

Axial Training's growth had stalled. But by appointing a new General Manager who had a vision for what the business could become, Axial had it's growth potential unlocked.

In the following 8 years, Alena Smith doubled down on product and culture, which led to 350% growth and material competitive advantages in it's market.

I don't know many owners who would be unhappy with those kinds of results from a General Manager they'd appointed!

This week, I interview Alena's to extract the lessons she learned in turning Axial around.

Here are the highlights of this week's episode:

05:04 - Alena’s story

07:01 - The Axial business model

14:31 - Differentiating on “how” you deliver, when you can’t on “the what”

20:07 - What did Alena double down on to build a competitive advantage?

30:28 - The importance and challenge of saying no to opportunities when scaling

33:29 - Stepping back and letting your team find solutions

45:46 - Figuring out what type of leader you want to be

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Watch or listen to full episodes on:

Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/90

Visit our guest:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alena-smith-02106541/

Website: www.Axial.edu.au

#BusinessPodcast #GrowthStrategy #BusinessDecisions #Leadership

How do you start again? After scaling a successful services company, Esha Oberoi found herself starting all over again as a brand new start-up founder. This week I find out what lessons she integrated into this next journey.

1 in 2 Australians will face mental health illness sometime during their life.

1 in 7 Australians are on anti-depressants, whilst 1 in 3 psychologists do not have capacity to accept new clients. The increasing need for mental health support is not an isolated issue in Australia, this is a global pandemic. We need solutions to aid the under-resourced mental health workforce we already have.

This is inspired Esha Oberoi to act. The original Founder of AFEA Care Services (one of Australia’s most successful private in-home aged and disability care services) has now stepped back onto the AFEA board, and is now the Founder inspiring and driving the dynamic team behind Leora.ai, a wellbeing and self-care support bot helping companies step up support for their teams.

This week, I delve into her experience leaving a successfully scaled business to start all over again.

Some highlights from this week's episode:

02:10 - Unpacking Leora.ai

06:18 - The challenge to be solved when it comes to mental health

12:24- Taking the steps to founding a new company

21:29 - The importance of self acceptance during a step-back or exit

30:08 - Important lessons brought forward from the success of AFEA, into Leora

37:22 - Tips to scale your business to 8-figures and beyond

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Watch or listen to full episodes on:

• Spotify: https://loom.ly/NuK50WA

• Apple: https://loom.ly/-oy8jL4

• YouTube: https://loom.ly/u_vibuw

• ScaleHQ website: www.ScaleHQ.com.au/89

Visit our guest:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/eoberoi/

• Website: www.Leora.ai

#businessgrowth #businesspodcast #softwareengineer