Podcast

From Pizza Hut & KFC to McGuigan Simeon Winess and ISS

Guest – Dane Hudson
February 2023

This episode’s guest is Dane Hudson a seasoned international leader who provides coaching, mentoring and advisory services to CEOs, Founders and C-level leaders through his company, Impactful Leadership Consulting.
In his career, Dane has held a range of key executive roles including Senior Vice President and Chief of Finance and Development for Yum Restaurants International (NYSE listed owners of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut), CEO of ASX listed Australian Vintage (one of Australia’s largest wine companies) and Regional CEO of ISS Asia Pacific (one of the world’s largest facility services providers) with responsibility for over 200,000 employees across Asia.

From founder to 20 year business success story

Natalie Ashdown
March 2023

This episode’s guest is Natalie Ashdown. Natalie is one of Australia’s most senior and experienced coaches and a recognised speaker and author. Her passion, vision, creativity and commitment assists and supports individuals, teams and companies to create lasting cultural change using coaching skills. Natalie is one of just 18 coaches in Australia to hold the International Coach Federation Master Certified Coach credential (MCC).
Often working with HR, L&D professionals and executive teams to implement strategic initiatives and designing leadership programs that target organisational change; and she is sought after for her expert facilitation skills particularly in coaching managers to coach their teams and is regarded as a mentor by many.

From Property Guru founder to Climate Change warrior

Steve Melhuish
March 2023

This episode’s guest is Steve Melhuish, a tech entrepreneur, investor and board advisor based in Asia for the last 18 years. He’s founded 4 companies, scaled teams from zero to 1,500 staff, built a tech platform used by 40+ million monthly consumers, raised $400M+ funding, executed 5 M&A deals, took a company IPO on NYSE, launched a climatetech venture fund and invested in/mentoring ~25 greentech start-ups. On top of that he’s passionate about tackling climate change & inequality.

From inloop and Ianternpay to NAB acquisition and devcycles

Chris Simon
March 2023

This episode’s guest is Chris Simon. Chris is the technical co-founder of https://www.inloop.com.au/, home of Australian Fintech success stories https://www.flexischools.com.au/ and https://www.lanternpay.com/ (Recently acquired by NAB).
Since 2021 he has been coaching startup CTOs through Dev Cycles Technology Advisory (https://chrissimon.au/services/) as well as supporting executives & boards with strategic technology advice, and engineering teams with training, mentoring and consulting.

Learns from a one-company career journey

Ron Gottlieb
March 2023

This episode’s guest is Ron Gottlieb, the owner of Ricky Richards (Sales) Pty Ltd. Originally founded by Ron’s late brother Norman and then joining him shortly thereafter, the company has specialised in the development and distribution of commercial and industrial textiles for the last 40 years. Since its inception, Ricky has grown to become the industry leading distributor and supplier of choice in the markets that they service. Their unparalleled standards for doing the right thing, quality stock holdings, and the company’s philosophy of making work enjoyable has driven Ricky to success.

From Boston Consulting and Hotels.com to Air Wallex and Amber

Mandy Davis
April 2023

This episode’s guest is founder and director of DHaRCO, Mandy Davis.
Davis is a downhill rider and racer who calls Sydney’s Northern Beaches home. Like many founders she created the brand after finding there wasn’t something that suited her needs. When she couldn’t find any clothing that suited what she was after in terms of comfort and style she founded DHaRCO, but well before that she has had a career in corporate, experience leaving that behind and plenty of hard yards along the way.

From Carlson Wagonlit to DHaRCO

Mandy Davis
April 2023

This episode’s guest is founder and director of DHaRCO, Mandy Davis.
Davis is a downhill rider and racer who calls Sydney’s Northern Beaches home. Like many founders she created the brand after finding there wasn’t something that suited her needs. When she couldn’t find any clothing that suited what she was after in terms of comfort and style she founded DHaRCO, but well before that she has had a career in corporate, experience leaving that behind and plenty of hard yards along the way.

From the RAAF to Leadership Consultant

Clifford Mofgan
April 2023

For this episode we are joined by Clifford Morgan, an endorsed organisational psychologist and leadership expert with over fifteen years of service with the Royal Australian Air Force. His years of service leading and coaching people – both in uniform and out – bring a wealth of experience that provides a unique perspective to assist his clients.
As a coach Clifford has worked with CEOs, military commanders, government executives and business and community leaders across a wide variety of industries.

From school leader to NFP and The Smith Family

Mike Williamson
April 2023

For this episode we are joined by Mike Williamson, a person with a fascinating career.
He started in management consulting in London, he moved to the education sector where he rose to become a senior leader in the schooling system.
then he morphed his career to the not for profit sector where he went on to hold senior leadership roles in organisations such as Bicycle network Victoria, The Brotherhood of St Laurence and The Smith Family.

From having a stroke to running 3 businesses

Ali Flynn
April 2023

For this episode we are joined by Ali Flynn who has a truly remarkable story.
After studying and working as a psychologist, the shift to motherhood left Ali with uncertainty around her future career. A suggestion from a friend prompted her to try her hand at personal training but before things could get too far disaster struck when she had a stroke and was hospitalised with a long road to recovery.

But that didn’t stop her and she went on to launch and run 3 businesses with a team of 23 all while battling health disasters in her family and her own growing serious health complications.

Today she is the founder of Altitude fitness Armidale and the co founder of Tri-altitude Performance.

From Lawyer to founder to community leadership

Dina Coppel
May 2023

In this podcast we are trying to learn lessons from leaders with different backgrounds. From corporate to military and beyond.
This episode’s guest is Dina Coppel who started as a high flying lawyer who decided to follow her passion and took a hard left turn and became an entrepreneur and a founder.
As life progressed she became a parent and a partner and found herself living in different parts of the world and ended up founding a community to help others.

From military college to war in Afghanistan

David Neal
May 2023

Today’s guest is David Neal. David is a leader, strategist, founder, project and change manager, as well as a practical consultant for clients such as the ADA NSW, University of Sydney, Australian Defence Force, Prescare, RSL Queensland, MedReleaf, and KPMG. He is one of the authors of ‘Growing Good Leaders’ which focuses on developing high performing teams and running projects. He travels throughout Australia and overseas helping others to simplify the complex. His time serving in the military has provided him with vast experience in leadership, complex problem solving, project and risk management. He has chosen mate ship, family and helping good people as his path.

From new leader to covid in 1 day

Elly Wright
Jun 2023

For some time I’ve been grappling with other sorts of leaders who would add different experiences for us to learn from. I’ve wanted to hear from some younger leaders and their hard yards, so that’s what we will be doing in this episode with our guest Elly Wright.
Her story is pretty straight forward, she was in the travel industry, she got her first break into management right as the covid restrictions started to hit.
Her story of how she dealt with that and overcame multiple other challenges is fantastic listening and has a stack of lessons in it!

From university student to School for Life Founder

Annabelle Chauncy
Oct 2023

Every leadership role has it’s own hard yards or challenges and in this episode we’ll be delving into what exactly it’s like to found and run a non for profit organisation in a country like Uganda.
In this episode I’ll be speaking with Annabelle Chauncy OAM.
While Annabelle grew in up in rural New South Wales and completed a Bachelor of Arts/Law at Sydney University. Her passion lies in developing and implementing strategy, governance, business development, fundraising and speaking to promote the work of the Foundation School For Life.
She has won far more awards than we can fit here but amongst them is the Medal of the Order of Australia, the Paul Harris Fellow and the Women of the Future Award.

From HR newbie to organizational development powerhouse

Jess Lawton
Nov 2023

Trigger warning: suicide
Our guest for the episode is my incredibly dear friend Jess Lawton
She has over 17 years of experience in human resources and organisational development, is passionate about working with people and teams and her goal is to challenge status quo and use her experience in change management, strategy, business design and development to hone in on organisational leaders and teams.
She is a certified gallup strength coach, life and NLP coach and has recently supplemented her psychology and sociology degrees with further education and has added in strategic psychotherapy, clinical hypnotherapy and counselling to her toolbox.

From Provision CEO to Not for Profit CEO

Steven Johnston
Nov 2023

People management can be one of the hardest challenges for leaders and that is no different for this episode’s guest Steve Johnston. In fact he even admits it himself in this episode. Repeatedly.
And that’s saying a lot, because if Steve can find this a challenge, the rest of us surely will as well.
Steve has an extensive career and is a seasoned and experienced non-executive director and CEO.
He’s worked in retail, trade, and wholesale, in hardware, automotive, toys, sporting goods, outdoor, consumer durables markets and optometry. The last of those was as the CEO of Provision for over 10 years.

From humble beginnings to coach of the Australian Cricket Team

John Buchanan
Dec 2023

We often compare leading a workplace to coaching a sports team because there are so many similarities to be drawn. So many in fact that for this episode we are picking the brain of a truly great Australian sports coach for his leadership wisdom.
John Buchanan is renowned for his remarkable success as an international sports coach for the Australian men’s cricket team
Now, he utilises his extensive experience to transform deep-seated understandings of top-tier sports performance into triumphant strategies and actions within the corporate sphere.

Corporate Climber to Culture Champion in NFP

Jono Peatfield
Dec 2023

This episode’s guest is a leader who radiates approachability and kindness, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t faced his fair share of hard yards.
Jonathon (Jono) Peatfield is CEO of Life Ed NSW/ACT. He manages a team of 80 people delivering health and wellbeing programs to around 280,000 children right across NSW and the ACT, with support from the infamous mascot Healthy Harold.
After graduating in Commerce/Psychology from Australian National University, Jono went on a varied and very unique career pathway that saw him move from being in sales leadership and national account management with national hardware business, Otter Group to Head of Partnerships at Batyr, a social enterprise that focuses on preventative education in the area of young people’s mental health.
Recently, Jono has been working with the Thrive by Five movement to promote equitable, affordable and accessible access to early learning so that every child can thrive.

From aspiring career to cancer warrior

Dane O’Connor
Dec 2023

Trigger warning: terminal cancer and depression
We’ve discussed how hard it can be to lead when battling personal illness on this podcast before. But how do you handle things when you have a terminal illness?
That is a question that Dane O’Connor has absolutely answered.
Dane is a Senior Business manager for the Department of Regional NSW and he is also a member liaison Officer for the Cancer Council NSW.
On top of that he lives with a terminal brain cancer and is currently living well beyond the odds that were given to him at his diagnosis.

From optometrist to optical Industry guru

Juan Carlos Aragon
7 Jan

For this week’s episode we are joined by JC or Juan Carlos Aragon. He is a long term 30+ year veteran of the global optical industry.
He has been my colleague and my boss in the past and he is truly one of the most experienced and wise leaders that I have had the pleasure to work with.
He is a proven successful global business and people leader with over 39 years of multi-functional experience in establishing, managing and profitably-growing successful businesses in Asia Pacific, the Americas and Europe, within medical device companies.
Currently he is CEO of Visioneering Technologies (ASX: VTI), a growing vision care company within the myopia management and prebyopia segments of the market.

From childhood dream to triple Olympic superstar

Sami Kennedy-Sim
21 Jan

For this weeks we are taking a look at the hard yards and lessons that come from competing in the highest levels of Olympic sport. While this episode doesn’t focus on leadership challenges, the hard yards and lessons will be ones that can help many of you in your careers.
Sami Kennedy-Sim is a 3 time Australian Winter Olympic representative, Australian flag bearer and World Cup silver medal winner.
Since childhood she worked her way towards achieving at the very highest levels of world sports and she encountered many challenges along the way.

From Coogee to the Cosmos

Tamara Davis
4 Feb

This week we have possibly our smartest guest on the podcast. Tamara Davis is a Sydney born and bred Astrophysicist and someone I have personally known since childhood.
She has skyrocketed through the fields of academia and has experienced leadership in a way many of us may not have been through before.
Managing teams of authors, balancing egos and ensuring people get the support to develop and achieve in the academic space takes skill and Tamara has that in spades.

From school teacher to Poverty Elimination Crusader

Janepher Nansunga
26 May

In previous episodes we had Annabelle Chauncy, the founder of School For Life on to talk about her journey and challenges with the foundation.
This time we are going a step further and talking to Janepher Nansunga, one of the other founding team members of School For life.
Jan’s story is not just hard yards in leadership but also hard yards in life.