Outhouse to the Penthouse - How Guy Russo Turned Around Kmart [S1.E6]

Unlike the other interviews in this series, this is a retrospective tale, recounting one of Australia’s greatest turnaround stories

Guy Russo is one of Australia’s business masterminds. As CEO of McDonald's Australia and China for over a decade, both businesses excelled. His toughest assignment though was to salvage Kmart from the scrapheap. Under his guidance, he guided Kmart to retail supremacy in Australia.

The inclusion of a story like this in this podcast is an important one, as businesses never move in a straight line. This is a powerful and inspirational story of simplicity and optimism. A story of the power of long term thinking, honesty and how to get the best out of people. Guy was incredibly generous with his time and the resulting nuggets of gold that are littered throughout this podcast, will no doubt help clarify the thinking of all business owners, not just those going through a little rough patch.

This is the last episode of Series 1 of Scaling Up. We will be back in early 2020 with Series 2.