Sounds of Eclat

A candid conversation with Eclat CEO & COO. Why experiences, routines and traditions matter more than ever.

In this special Spitball edition, ECLAT CEO Nick Maxwell and COO Lauren Blackwood pull back the curtain on running the business themselves. From the observations they've made watching members grow together, to the challenges of wearing too many hats, navigating HR as a former teacher, and the debate around work from home, Nick and Loz share what they've learned running a startup — and why experiences, routines and traditions matter more than ever.

• What Nick has observed from three-plus years watching small business owners come together at ECLAT. The power of a problem shared and different-industry perspectives
• Loz's transition from teaching and sport into people and culture, and the fine line between being a colleague's friend and making the hard HR call
• Why the experience economy has taken over since COVID and the story of the ECLAT member whose teenage daughter changed his life at a criminal psychologist talk
• The work from home debate, why both believe early-career growth is stunted without being physically present and learning from the people around you
• Nick's morning gym routine, accountability to self, and why traditions like the same camping weekend every year are non-negotiable
• Loz on the 5:30am start, kids' sport as the great equaliser, and why your friendship groups shift when you're deep in a startup
• An honest conversation about women in the workplace, the emotional strength often mistaken for weakness, the intuition that goes underused, and the self-doubt that holds talented women back

Broke in Canada. Knocking on doors for a local rec centre. Thirty years later, still at it.

Shane Ward spotted something in a door-knocking gig in Canada that most people would have dismissed as a summer job. He saw a model, a mindset, and eventually a business the Finn Agency, an outsourced sales force he's been running for over 30 years, with key staff who have been with him for much of that journey. He's a straight shooter and a deep thinker on leadership, people and the long game. His advice for business owners navigating a difficult 2026 is characteristically steady: stop thinking about today's problems and start mapping where you want to be in five years then work backwards.

IN THIS EPISODE

How a broke trip to Canada and a door-knocking job became the foundation for a 30-year business The shift from doing everything himself to working on the business and the time discipline that made it possible to scale The 'show don't tell' leadership philosophy, traced back to watching a gun tree planter silently double his output in two days Early feedback on the line between being approachable and being a leader people respect and how long it took to find it Why daily training not just onboarding is the single biggest contributor to the business working the way it does His advice for 2026: think in five-year blocks, work backwards, and don't be afraid to strip back and go again

An integrated agency. A rare edge in the Chinese market. And a deep frustration with brand strategy that lives in a PDF.

Steph built Mulberry Marketing on the belief that brand is a system of belief not a logo set, not a colour palette, and definitely not a document that sits unopened in a Google Drive folder. Her edge is real: one of the only Australian agencies with genuine reach into the Chinese market through WeChat and Little Red Book. Her obsession is making sure strategy actually lives in the businesses she works with, not just in the work she delivers. She's candid about the harder parts of the journey. Growing a team, losing clients, scaling back, and sitting across from people she'd invested in and letting them go. She learned to separate ego from decision-making. She's still curious about everything.

IN THIS EPISODE

How Mulberry works as an integrated agency and the specialist Chinese marketing capability that almost no Australian agencies offer The hardest decision: letting go of her team when the pipeline dried up and learning that success isn't measured by headcount Why curiosity is her core hiring criteria and how it drives fresh thinking across industries she hasn't worked in before Using AI to automate her weekly client update process what used to take 90 minutes now takes minutes The brand strategy failure that shaped her most: a well-resourced client back to clunky messaging within weeks of delivery What she's teaching her kids: empathy and compassion because in a world increasingly shaped by AI, the human skills are the ones that will matter most

The Cadel Evans homecoming. The Queen's visit. Seven days notice to close St Kilda Road.

Eliza Vesey has spent over 20 years producing events that most people only ever read about. She now runs Moments Made, her own events business, and the conversation about what it takes to do that alone where the buck stops with you in a way it simply never does inside an agency or a club is refreshingly honest. Her real currency is relationships. Her real superpower is knowing exactly who to trust, paying for that trust, and building events around it. The feedback that landed hardest came from a close friend who told her she was trying to do too many things at once and not doing any of them properly. She used it.

IN THIS EPISODE

A career that started with 10,000 cancer survivors forming a pink ribbon on the MCG and never looked back Working on the Queen's visit, Oprah, Princess Mary, and a Cadel Evans homecoming parade with a jersey nearly printed 30 centimetres instead of 30 metres The real challenge of going out on your own and why thinking at the bigger-picture level is harder when the detail keeps pulling you back in Why supplier relationships are the most underrated currency in events and why she'll pay more for complete trust The feedback from a close friend and client that shifted how she thinks about taking on work Event depression the real, flat feeling that follows every adrenaline crash and what that feels like as a founder

Thirteen years. One clear purpose. Two words: lifting potential.

Jeremy Nichols founded Composure after a career that took him from young consultant to firm owner to the executive team of an ASX-listed business. He knows what good organisations look like, and he knows what gets in the way. His view on culture change is unsentimental: the clients most ready to do the work are usually the ones already performing well who want to go further not the ones in trouble, because those leaders often created the culture they're now asking him to fix. It's an honest lens, and it runs through everything in this conversation from feedback at the senior level to the work-from-home debate and the generation that's never quite sure what they're missing.

IN THIS EPISODE

The journey from consultant to owner to ASX-listed executive and why he launched Composure to give others the development he was given Why the best clients are often the ones who are already good and why shifting a culture a previous leader built is the hardest assignment there is The habit of making the call how reaching out consistently has compounded into what people mistake for luck Building trust before delivering feedback to senior leaders and why the Enneagram creates the personal language that makes hard conversations land A clear position on work from home: leadership is a contact sport, and the nuances of trust simply don't build over a screen His concern for the generation who have only ever known the post-COVID working world and whether they know what they're missing

260 AFL games. Two new careers. One very clear sense of what comes next.

Brad Ebert spent the better part of two decades at the elite end of Australian football West Coast, Port Adelaide, 260 games. What he's built since says as much about his character as anything that happened on the field. Hey Diddle Wines started as a pipe dream with a Port Adelaide teammate. Phillips Coaching is where his purpose in the athlete transition space really comes alive. Together, they paint a picture of someone who made the most of football and was equally ready for what came after which, it turns out, is a far less common combination than it should be.

IN THIS EPISODE

The origin of Hey Diddle Wines pipe dreamer conversations, a winemaker from Rockford, and the decision to build something real rather than just lend a name to it The humility of moving to Melbourne and realising nobody knows or cares who plays for Port Adelaide and why that was exactly the grounding he needed Why footballers are better equipped for business than they think but need to slow down for collaboration His uncle's advice: 'Remember the ones on the way up they're the first ones you meet on the way down' Phillips Coaching's work across the full athlete journey from school-age development to the entrepreneurial mindset course for players stepping out of sport The motivation shift: from self-focused to genuinely wanting to give back including making space for his wife's career after 15 years of following his

No guest. Just the two people who run this place turning the mic on themselves.

This one's different. Nick and Lauren pull back the curtain on three-plus years of building Eclat what they've observed watching the community grow, what they've wrestled with as operators, and the conversations they don't always have in public. Nick on what happens when a sole trader walks into a room full of people from completely different industries and someone asks a question they'd never have thought to ask themselves. Lauren on the transition from teaching into people and culture and the fine line between caring deeply about your team and having to make the hard call. Both on the debate that isn't really a debate: flexibility matters, but early careers are built in rooms, not on screens.

SHOW NOTES

What three-plus years of watching the Eclat community grow has taught Nick about the value of a problem shared across industries Lauren's transition from teaching into HR the caring instincts that transferred, and the hard decisions that took time to sit with Why the experience economy has accelerated since COVID and the story of the member whose teenage daughter changed his life at an Eclat event A shared view on work from home: flexibility matters, but early-career growth happens in person An honest conversation about women in the workplace the emotional intelligence often mistaken for weakness, and the self-doubt that holds talented women back The traditions, routines and accountability structures that make it possible to run a startup without losing yourself in it

A physio. A personal health challenge. A program that has now reached 25,000 young people.

Megan Dickinson co-founded the Live Life Whole Project after watching women and girls navigate serious health challenges without the right information or support. What started as workshops in secondary schools has grown into a multi-state, multi-audience preventative health education program and the turning point was a piece of brutally honest feedback from a year nine girl that sent Megan home rattled, and back to the drawing board. Her response to that feedback separating herself from the work just enough to let the criticism improve it is a masterclass in building something that actually works rather than something that feels comfortable.

IN THIS EPISODE

The personal health origins of the Live Life Whole Project and the decision to build a preventative program rather than wait for the system to catch up How honest feedback from teenage girls completely reshaped how the workshops were delivered Stories from parents whose daughters have finally recognised the signs of endometriosis, disordered eating, and other conditions and sought help The 'train the trainer' ambition reaching parents, teachers and coaches, not just the girls themselves Battling red tape and government budgets to champion prevention over treatment The vision for national and international expansion with New Zealand already on the calendar

A tip from Mick Turner. A quietly confident kid from Geelong. Thirty years of player management from the inside.

Peter Lenton has been inside AFL player management for long enough to have watched it transform entirely and to have formed very clear views about what's been gained and what's been lost in that transformation. His current stable includes Zak Butters and Jack Ginnivan. His career started with a referral to a kid nobody else was chasing: Nick Maxwell.

IN THIS EPISODE

How a tip from the late Mick Turner started a three-decade relationship with Nick Maxwell and the humble family that made it straightforward Why an accounting background became his point of difference attracting the players who could think past the bright lights The shift over 20 years in parental influence over player decisions Gambling, mental health and social media as the defining challenges for today's AFL players and knowing when to refer rather than fix The 'street fighters' versus the top-10 draft picks why players who've had to earn it tend to handle both the career and the end of it better The industry problem nobody wants to fix: agents signing kids too early, giving them everything, and leaving them with nothing when the dream doesn't arrive

A science degree. A brand agency. A personal health diagnosis. And an entirely new business born from a mobility aid store visit that left her cold.

Samantha Freidon built Milkshake Creative on the somewhat unconventional foundation of a science degree nobody thought she'd ever use. The test-and-learn rigour of the scientific method, it turns out, is exactly the discipline most brand-building is missing. But it's Wayfarer her assistive technology startup, born from a personal health diagnosis at 27 and a morning spent in a mobility aid store finding nothing that felt like her that gives this conversation its second, deeper dimension. Mobility aids need to go through the same transformation glasses did. She intends to be the one who makes that happen.

IN THIS EPISODE

How a 'loving redundancy ultimatum' from her now-fiancé pushed her to launch Milkshake Creative and how a science background became her biggest point of difference A personal health diagnosis at 27 that began stealing her mobility and the moment in a mobility aid store that sparked Wayfarer Why mobility aids need to go through the same shift glasses did: from medical equipment to a genuine category with choice and agency Two surprises about running a business she wasn't ready for sales and numbers and the shift from hiding to asking every question The brand strategy frustration she can't shake: a PDF that gathers digital dust rather than a belief that lives through the business Wayfarer's vision convertible systems, jewellery-inspired bracing, and a community for people who believe their disability is the least interesting thing about them