Build It. They'll Come.

After years of hard slog trying to build sales on his online services marketplace Airtasker, Tim Fung then found rapid scale-up of the business challenging once growth started to kick in ... including managing his own role as CEO, which he says completely changed every year as the company grew. But even though Airtasker is yet to make a profit, Tim Fung says he’s motivated by the jobs Airtasker has created in its 9 years of operation, which translated into $143million in total sales through the Airtasker marketplace last year, empowering the 150,000 “taskers” who’ve earned money on the site, supported by almost 1 million paying customers.In Part 2 of our chat, Tim reveals why he chose to list on the ASX while keeping all his shares, and staying on as CEO; how they navigated through the COVID pandemic and why listening to others and being open to taking advice is sometimes crucial.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a stint working in finance at Macquarie Bank, and then working pro bono at one of Sydney’s biggest modelling agencies, young Tim Fung got noticed by one of the agency’s owners, who gave Tim opportunities to help a small team start up a sim-only mobile virtual phone network operator, which turned into Australia’s 4th-largest mobile service provider Amaysim. Living through that successful start-up helped give Tim Fung the confidence needed when he and a friend came upon their simple idea, whilst moving house, to try and match those many people with skills and talents to those customers who needed jobs done—anything from gardening and fixing leaks to drafting up contracts and assembling IKEA furniture —and to do that via a digital marketplace, where customer and “tasker” decide on the price. While Airtasker was born less than a decade ago, it still took a number of years of struggle to get traction in the marketplace, and demonstrate credibility in order to win the trust of end users, who after all had to feel confident about letting strangers into their homes to perform the tasks. But 9 years on, Tim has built an e-commerce platform in Airtasker that boasts 950,000 paying customers, and hundreds of thousands of genuine and rave reviews from customers. Last week, when Tim Fung IPO’d Airtasker, publicly listing it on the ASX, the share price skyrocketed in its first trading days, buoyed according to The Australian Financial Review by Millennial traders giving Airtasker a definite thumbs up. How exactly did Tim Fung turn his humble idea into the Airtasker phenomenon? In Part 1 of our chat, we’ll find out how and where it all began.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Once Epic Pharmacy Group’s co-founders Cathie Reid & Stuart Giles had carefully worked through their GFC-inspired near-death business experience, they pulled back on their own risk-taking, but persevered with their bold expansion vision. But this time, with their pharmacy business profitability and growth on track, they did it with the benefit of partnerships and then later with Quadrant private equity to help guide their expansion into cancer care oncology clinics, the Icon Cancer Care group, not only in regional Queensland and NSW, but across Australia and also into Asia. Then came another life-changing deal to bring in other partners, in the form of Queensland Investment Corp & Goldman Sachs consortium in 2017, which led to a valuation on the group, widely reported as more than $1billion. By 2020, Cathie – who’s also been a huge supporter of Brisbane Lions’AFLW team, and on the board --  and Stuart debuted on the AFR Rich List, with an estimated wealth of $550million. So how does Cathie Reid, the girl who grew up in the La Trobe Valley, view that massive wealth and the responsibility of philanthropy? And how the heck does space tourism, and international cricket through an Australian Premier League new startup now fit into her life’s picture? Find out in Part 2 of my chat with Cathie Reid.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Growing up in country Victoria, Cathie Reid worked part-time, as a schoolgirl, in the local pharmacy re-stocking shelves & vacuuming floors, thinking her life trajectory would likely involve marrying her teenage sweetheart and life would be sweet and uncomplicated. Well, that plan fell apart when the sweetheart marriage fell apart!  But armed with a solid work ethic from her mum and dad, and her pharmacy degree,  what Cathie did next, is an inspirational tale of how uncertainty in life can be seized and turned into genuine possibility and reality! Cathie decided then and there she would lead an epic life! Over the 2 decades since Cathie Reid and her 2nd husband Stuart Giles slowly but strategically built up one of Australia’s largest private pharmacy groups – Epic Pharmacy, for aged care facilities and private hospitals -- and integrated cancer care services group, Icon Cancer Care. They did it without a well-known brand name; they worked with competitors, not against them; and they had to put their tears and fears when the Global Financial crisis swamped them in 2008, to one side to work their way out of a deep mire of debt. Along that journey to build their impressive business, and create serious wealth, she’s managed to indulge her AFL passion (once a Victorian, always a Victorian!), as a Brisbane Lions board member and become a philanthropist, through their Epic Good foundation.  In Part 1 of my chat, Cathie Reid reveals how they bootstrapped & built their business, how failure is never far away, and what she’s learned as a startup queen and a leader of people.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Part 2 of our chat, Adore Beauty founder Kate Morris talks of the fun, if scary ride scaling up her start-up, when rapid growth starts to happen.  Find out what was the hardest part of the 20 year journey from starting her idea in a garage, to building her online website selling beauty and skincare products – now one of the largest in Australia -- to taking her business baby public and listing on the ASX. The joy was watching employees and team members grow and flourish. She also reveals what role the humble Tim Tam biscuit plays in Adore’s customer shopping experience! And she explains why internal culture is so critical to team success.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While studying at uni, Kate Morris loved working part-time selling beauty products behind the cosmetics counter at Myer. But she quickly came to believe many women customers felt somewhat intimidated by the whole buying experience at a physical cosmetics counter. So with no business experience, barely any tech skills, the 21-year-old dropped out of uni, borrowed a $12,000 loan from her partner James’ dad, and began to disrupt bricks & mortar beauty shops with her online startup, at a time when no-one else was really blazing an e-commerce beauty trail in Australia. Kate thought she could create a better customer experience, by doing it online: giving women more easily accessible information on makeup & skincare products to empower them to make better purchases for their needs.  But it was no overnight success. In Part 1 of our chat, Kate explains what a hard slog was Adore Beauty’s first 12 years, but how that set her business up for rapid growth in the last 8 years. And in late 2020, Kate and James floated Adore Beauty Group on the ASX, described in the media as “one of the hottest listings of the year”.  Brought up in Tasmania Kate tells how her parents encouraged independence and a strong work ethic in her and her siblings; and how you need to embrace failure.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Building a successful, sustainable movement in the medical field is never easy. But Cerebral Palsy Alliance Ceo Rob White and newborn intensive care specialist Professor Nadia Badawi, Macquarie Grp Chair of CP took on that herculean task 15 years ago. They believed that by inspiring, engendering and funding best practice global research into better understand CP, that together with some of the world’s best researchers including Australia’s own Professor Iona Novak and Sarah McIntyre, who were there from the beginning, they could help find better preventions, treatments and ultimately a cure for children and babies with Cerebral Palsy. Not only did these collaborators pursue their lightbulb idea, by building a world-respected Research Foundation from the ground up, but along the way they helped decrease not only the incidence of CP in this country, but how severely it affects those CP kids and babies.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When visionary charity CEO Rob White got together with dynamic neonatal intensive care expert Professor Nadia Badawi, they set about building an entrepreneurial startup - CPA Research Foundation- within the not-for-profit Rob White was already reforming into a modern, focused charity - Cerebral Palsy Alliance. The Research Foundation, created from scratch 15 yrs ago, had the vision to fund world-leading researchers to find better prevention, treatments, and ultimately a cure for those children and babies living with cerebral palsy, a condition affecting 17 million people globally, and 1 child born with it every day in Australia. Along the way to ensuring the Foundation’s success, the pair forged a deep and enduring professional partnership, while making a remarkable difference every day to the lives and outcomes of children and their families coping with CP. Today, researchers alongside clinicians have reduced both the rate and severity of CP incidence in this country. Find out HOW they built it, and achieved success.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

While business entrepreneur Garrick Hawkins made his fortune as a young man in the more traditional fields of stockbroking, finance & investment banking, over the past 3-decades he’s been quietly creating & building his legacy in the less trodden field (pun intended) of horticulture. As a schoolboy Garrick Hawkins’ dream of one day owning a farm, & building his family a country house and garden on it, became a larger vision which has been slowly, tenaciously, beautifully realised in Oberon NSW, west of the Blue Mtns. Starting with 1 working sheep farm in 1984, Garrick Hawkins was inspired by the grand European gardens, as he set out to create and build – with the partnership & help of talented local trades and craftspeople -- a vast cool-climate garden but with a unique Australian country flavour, that now spreads across an entire valley, and is one of the largest privately- owned, cool-climate gardens in the world. How one man’s folly became a garden for all Australians to enjoy, and how that finance guy learned to slow down and enjoy watching his legacy blossom and flourish.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Business strategist Ralph Evans not only helped build a boutique consultancy that actually merged and morphed into Boston Consulting Group in Australia, one of the world’s largest & most respected management advice companies, but  Evans unwittingly turned into an entrepreneur! He went on to advise and invest in the management buyout of Aussie wine brand Orlando, which went on to make its investors a tidy bundle;  and he then turned around a rather moribund Austrade, Australia’s official booster for Australian trade, by transforming it in the 1990’s into an outward-looking, entrepreneurial organisation to help local companies seize the benefits of exports. Over the past few decades, Evans has been involved in Venture Capital and advised Venture Capital funds, and more recently he’s turned his strategic analytical skills to the vexing issue he says is so urgent -- climate change. In a new book, called Toast, Evans builds a business case to persuade the community, as well as the sceptics and deniers he says, for why we must take far greater action on climate change. How to check out Toast, by Ralph Evans:-- https://www.amazon.com.au/Toast-Climate-enormous-Australians-effects-ebook/dp/B08CGVRLCX https://www.bookdepository.com/Toast-Ralph-Evans/9780648880424 https://www.booktopia.com.au/toast-ralph-evans/book/9780648880424.html  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.