Sounds of Eclat

Panos, founder of Pana Organic, joins Nick and Lauren to trace the unlikely path that led him to chocolate, from cafés, restaurants and airport catering to an idea sparked by watching the film Chocolat.

He shares the early missteps, the lessons that came with growing a business and why he chose to see competitors as collaborators in building the organic chocolate category. Panos also opens up about the harder side of growth, including realising not everyone can come on the journey with you, balancing relentless work with family life and learning when to stay the course and when to pivot.

A candid conversation about building a business without a perfect roadmap and the persistence it takes to keep going.

After more than 20 years and 18 different roles within one multinational beauty business, Aurelie De Cremiers knows a thing or two about leadership.

She joins Nick and Lauren to reflect on a career spanning France, Australia and New Zealand, including the challenge of turning around a struggling business and discovering that its biggest problems weren’t strategic, but cultural.

Aurélie shares why trust is fundamental to a successful team, the difficult feedback that changed her leadership style and why getting results means little if you can’t bring people with you. Now an advisor and board director, she also talks about backing your instincts, navigating cultural differences and why leadership accounts for so much of a business’s success.

Performance coach, consultant and bestselling author of Better, Andrew Horsfield joins Nick and Loz to talk about the messy, uncertain space between where we are and where we want to be.

After 18 years working as a live, in-the-room facilitator, Andrew opens up about the vulnerability of putting his ideas into a book, and what years inside executive teams have taught him about leadership, self-awareness and creating meaningful change. Sometimes, he says, the problem a business thinks it has isn’t the real problem at all. And sometimes, telling a CEO the problem is them is exactly what needs to happen.

Andrew shares why changing our environment can be more powerful than trying to force new behaviours, how he protects his own energy through an “ideal week”, and why the discomfort we often label as imposter syndrome can actually be a sign that we’re doing something worthwhile.

He also reflects on the blunt piece of feedback that exposed his own need to be liked, the mentor who changed his trajectory, and a simple daily practice for getting better without a coach.

From leadership and performance to parenting, people-pleasing and learning to get comfortable with uncertainty, this is a conversation about what it really takes to move forward when you don’t have all the answers.

On this episode of The Sounds of Eclat, we sit down with Jarryd Roughead 283-game Hawthorn premiership player, Coleman medalist, multiple All-Australian, former club captain and now list manager at the Adelaide Crows. From a country kid in Leongatha drafted at 17 alongside Buddy Franklin and Jordan Lewis, to captaining four premiership sides, Jarryd takes us through the highs of a golden era at Hawthorn and the moment everything changed: a melanoma diagnosis on his lip in 2015 that returned a year later, having spread to his lungs. He opens up about the fear he never let himself feel, the immunotherapy trial that gave him his life back, and how leaning on his footy club as a second family got him through it. He also shares why he walked away from coaching to learn list management from the ground up, and how his own experience as a player now shapes the way he builds a team from the other side of the table.

Mandy Loftus-Hills, Partnerships Director at The Local Project, joins Nick and Lauren to unpack a career that didn’t exactly follow a plan.

From starting out in a cabling company to finding her way into real estate, publishing and eventually The Local Project, Mandy reflects on the people and setbacks that shaped her along the way, including a career-defining mentor, being unexpectedly fired and navigating the “champagne and razor blades” reality of sales.

She shares what she’s learned about the loneliness of leadership, becoming a better listener, going back to your technique when the results stop coming and why honesty and clear communication remain at the heart of how she leads.

On this episode of The Sounds of Eclat, we sit down with Michael Voss Brisbane Lions triple-premiership captain and former Carlton coach and Rita Cincotta, author, leadership expert and executive coach, to unpack what real leadership looks like when the cameras aren't rolling.

They trace their own leadership journeys (from a migrant household at age seven to being handed the captaincy at 21), get honest about their toughest moments a brutal first round of 360 feedback, losing a 22-year role at his boyhood club and share the frameworks they now use to develop the next generation of leaders.

The conversation covers self-awareness as the real starting point of leadership, why coaching beats telling, the 5:1 rule for giving feedback that lands, and why the best leaders learn to make everyone around them better, not just themselves. It's also the launch of Eclat's new Executive Leadership Program, built specifically for emerging leaders and the business owners backing them.

What makes us feel safe isn’t always what actually keeps us safe. Criminologist Dr Lucy Maxwell on offenders, gendered violence and the psychology of fear.

Criminologist, lecturer and Nick’s sister, Dr Lucy Maxwell joins Sounds of Eclat to unpack what her research into offender behaviour can teach us about public safety, gendered violence and the psychology of feeling safe.

Drawing on years of research and interviews with offenders, Lucy explores how offenders choose targets, why psychological comfort often drives our behaviour more than objective safety and the small ways men can help reduce women’s everyday anxiety in public.

The conversation also turns personal, from imposter syndrome and a paralysing fear of public speaking to the seven-year slog of completing a PhD and the daily reality of balancing motherhood, academia and advocacy.

“I didn’t enjoy football. The stress, the anxiety, I struggled.”

Newly appointed Carlton coach Josh Fraser joins Nick and Lauren in front of a live Eclat audience for this special episode of The Sounds of Eclat.

Josh opens up about the pressure of being an AFL number one draft pick, watching his Collingwood teammates win a premiership but missing out on selection himself, and the experiences that ultimately shaped the coach he is today.

He takes us inside his commitment to the Northern Bullants and their fight for survival, before unpacking an extraordinary 14 weeks at Carlton that saw him step into the interim coaching role, turn the team’s season around and effectively undertake a very public job interview for one of football’s biggest roles, all while mourning the death of his father, Bill.

A conversation about pressure, perspective, leadership and why, for Josh, developing people has always mattered as much as developing footballers.

The founder of Shift HR. A one-man show, why leadership problems are often clarity problems, and the uncomfortable questions AI is about to force the industry to answer.

Founder of Shift HR, a strategic HR advisory and consulting business, Nick Gearen has built a career helping organisations commercialise their people function, from remuneration strategy to employee relations, workforce planning to culture. He shares what it's really like being a one-man show in a broad and reactive industry. Why most leadership problems come down to clarity rather than generation, and why AI is about to ask HR some questions nobody has good answers to yet.

Two senior lawyers. One employer. Left on the same day. Built something of their own.

Sarah and Beck didn't rush into this. The conversation about leaving corporate legal started almost as a joke, took years to get serious, and eventually became the only obvious next move. They left on good terms, split roles without having to negotiate them, and built a specialist employment law firm that now handles some of the most sensitive and complex people challenges in the market. What makes their story interesting is the partnership how naturally it functions, how clearly they balance each other, and what they've figured out about building a business together without losing the friendship underneath it.

IN THIS EPISODE

Why two senior in-house lawyers left corporate at the same time specialisation, ambition, and the quiet accumulation of a shared idea The early shock of cash flow not arriving when the work does and learning that billable hours and money in the bank are two very different things How they found their respective roles without ever negotiating them and why that's been their biggest structural asset The feedback that stung: over-servicing clients and giving too much away for free AI in employment law where it helps, where it doesn't, and why a workplace investigation is not a task you hand to a machine The no arsehole rule written into their values and why they'll walk away from a client before compromising the environment they've built