Here comes 2023 when Build It. They’ll Come returns! With more amazing Aussie entrepreneurs who start with a humble business idea, an itch that needs scratching, and build that startup idea into an empire, a movement or just a damn good sustainable business. Great guests are in store for you in upcoming episodes, candid interviews offering real insights and tips into how they turned their lightbulb moment into reality, including the considerable ups and downs. So stay tuned! Please subscribe, sh...
Dec 23, 2022•47 sec
When founder duo Genevieve Hewson & Lauren Emerson went to their very first Trade Fair to sell Walter.g fabrics to the interiors trade, theirs was just a fledgling company, and they claim they had no idea about the business side – Genevieve admitting she phoned her dad in a panic to ask how to charge wholesale buyers GST! But the pair quickly learned everything about the business of selling. Within their first year, they took the plunge into the massive, but scary and highly competitive US t...
Oct 02, 2022•37 min
Sydney-based high school besties Genevieve Hewson and Lauren Emerson say they are two peas in a pod, both cut from the same cloth, which is an apt, because when this pair fell head over heels in love with hand-blocked silks, cottons and linens, hand-printed by local village artisans in India, they followed their passion & created a startup. So obsessed with the look, feel & process of these hand-printed textiles, based on designs by the girls, but using centuries-old Indian craft techniq...
Sep 05, 2022•33 min
Mixing and experimenting with a home brew from his kitchen bench, brewer Ben Holdstock came up with the Heaps Normal zero-alcohol “recipe”. From there the 4 co-founders turned on its head the traditional way of building a beer company, by forgoing building their own expensive brewery from the get-go. But the real mic drop moment for their little company was being accepted into the Startmate accelerator program, that gave them access to some great mentors, and crucial investment dollars, and set ...
Aug 21, 2022•28 min
With no less a mission than to change perceptions and actions around drinking alcohol, Heaps Normal founder Pete Brennan & 3 mates created from scratch a beer with zero alcohol but, they reckon, still full of great flavour. In just 2 years the foursome have built an impressive new brand in Heaps Normal, the non-alc beer now sold in over 4,000 bottle shops, restaurants, even supermarkets in Australia & overseas. And while Brennan and the team have been on a wild, scale-up journey with the...
Aug 07, 2022•26 min
After building a sustainable & successful industrial oil waste recycling business servicing Australia’s east coast, entrepreneur Dexter Dunworth craved other challenges… and what he chose came with considerable risks! The professional boxing ring! And as it turned out, not just for the exercise or discipline, but he wanted to actually fight far younger boxers on the pro circuit in the US. So how did that leap into the unknown then lead him into “giving-back” to the community back on home soi...
Jul 24, 2022•23 min
From a standing start back in the late-1970s, young uni-dropout Dexter Dunworth, along with his older brother David, started out with 1 truck collecting used industrial oils from car and truck service centres around Sydney, cold-calling potential customers promising to get rid of their smelly oil waste. It was oil recycling long before recycling became part of our business lexicon. From that humble beginning, the brothers scaled up to include collection, treatment plants, then recycling it as fu...
Jul 11, 2022•30 min
With reproductive rights in the US now so uncertain, serial entrepreneur and campaign builder Wendy McCarthy knows exactly how to try to protect those rights in Australia; why she believes in bringing other women into the tent to succeed; and why she thrives on change. Pt2/2 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jul 03, 2022•30 min
One-time teacher turned women’s advocate & activist Wendy McCarthy loves to shake cages, but then painstakingly build consensus around an idea that needs action. Over 5 decades she’s founded her own mentoring business & built from scratch organisations, movements, even political campaigns that focus on bettering the world for women and their families. She’s what you might call a portfolio entrepreneur! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Jun 19, 2022•32 min
The onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic completely whacked for 6 so many in the food and restaurant industry. Matt Moran’s successful fine dining restaurant empire was no exception. In Part 2 of our chat, Matt talks about the terrifying first few days and weeks when Covid hit, in March 2020, when their revenue just stopped. Overnight, stopped. How he and his teams got through that, including several lockdowns, reveals a lot of about this particular entrepreneur, but Matt’s story is no doubt repli...
Jun 05, 2022•29 min
Uber-celebrity chef and restaurateur Matt Moran takes us into the heart of his food, farming and produce world. After falling instantly in love with cooking, namely French cooking, as a wide-eyed, teen apprentice back in the 80s, he talks of how he then built a restaurant, cookbook and consultancy empire, with the help and support of several great mates and mentors, having opened and operated about 30 restaurants in 35 years. This high-flying Sydney-based entrepreneur now has a massive new plan ...
May 23, 2022•45 min
While Covid panicked share markets in early 2020, BetaShares ETFs co-founder Alex Vynokur says a curious thing happened: it was markedly less so in ETF investing. In fact he had managed to grow to $10 billion in Funds under Management (FUM) within BetaShares’ first decade, but somewhere in these past 2, pandemic-dominated years their FUM skyrocketed to $20billion. The reason? Well it’s a revolution called Millennials and Gen Z’ers, who are flocking to invest in ETFs. Alex Vynokur calls this tren...
May 15, 2022•22 min
When Alex Vynokur emigrated to Australia from Ukraine as a 16 year old, he was struck by the choice and opportunity offered by his new home, compared with the deprivations growing up in Soviet Ukraine. Even though the teen spoke no English when he arrived here he set about taking full advantage of what was on offer. After completing university, he moved into financial services, working in funds management, including a stint working for Malcolm Turnbull’s financial business, in his pre-PM days. B...
May 03, 2022•35 min
The hip, all Australian-made Ultra Violette sunscreen had only been going a short while when the Covid pandemic struck. After initial panic and quickly testing disaster scenarios, Bec and Ava realised they needed to junk them, and step back on the accelerator! Fast-growing online sales in skin and suncare showed these founders they would flourish through Covid if they could stay nimble and lean. The endless Melbourne lockdowns, they say, made them and everyone else resilient. So what happened to...
Apr 10, 2022•26 min
So why do two young women, both with great jobs in the beauty industry, toss all that certainty & stability away, and put everything on the line (including re-mortgaging the house!) to back themselves into a startup? Particularly when the all Aussie-made sunscreen product they create will have to compete in a super crowded sector, where mass-market products fly off supermarket and chemist shelves. Are they crazy brave? Delusional? What’s going on? Well, take a listen to Part 1 of our chat wi...
Apr 03, 2022•30 min
The investing landscape has changed so dramatically in just the past few years, where discussion and action around ESG now dominates all boardroom and company leadership discussions. Ethical Partners Funds Management founders Matt Nacard and Nathan Parkin were ahead of the game on this trend, having built their Ethical Partners Funds Management boutique firm, from scratch 3 and a half years ago, to the point where it now has almost $3.5 Billion in Funds Under Management, precisely because of its...
Mar 20, 2022•26 min
How Ethical Partners’ founders Matt Nacard and Nathan Parkin built their funds management business on the laudable twin foundations of achieving above-market returns for their investors, but equally important, making genuine ethical investing decisions – be they around climate change mitigation, modern slavery elimination in supply chains, products that don’t harm. After family trips to poor villages in Cambodia awakened their urge to do something practical to alleviate poverty, they raised mone...
Mar 13, 2022•42 min
Dr Ben Hurst loved the huge numbers of younger people who increasingly engaged with HotDoc online, at the height of the Covid testing & booking vaccinations. But madly chasing new patients is not his core motivation. Improving the patient experience is! And being a former practicing doctor means Ben Hurst puts patients front and centre of HotDoc’s culture and growth. How the online platform more easily allows patients to interact with their doctors, with a few mouse clicks, rather than endle...
Feb 27, 2022•25 min
Working as a young medico in a Melbourne maximum security prison, Dr Ben Hurst realised that perhaps one-on-one healthcare doesn’t necessarily help the most people manage their health problems, nor did it give him the creativity he desired. But it wasn’t until he was sitting with friends in a bar in New York city, that his lightbulb idea struck him: he heard about a novel business in the US, enabling patients to make online appointments. That simple nugget of an idea that a patient could have ac...
Feb 20, 2022•27 min
2 decades ago Mark Kelly thought globally, but acted locally, creating then building up his Global Surf Industries by appealing to the mass market of beginner & intermediate surfers rather than world champs; and offering customers certainty of supply and consistently good quality brand surf and paddle boards. GSI flourished to become a major supplier of boards in some 74 countries around the world. Along the way, Mark Kelly became a political activist, without really meaning to, by thinking ...
Feb 06, 2022•19 min
Mark Kelly only learned to surf on a board at the age of 30, but that cemented his lifelong love of the ocean, first sparked when his dad took him scuba diving as a teen. Kelly came to adore surfing and its calming connection with the sea and nature. Having learned the international sales, marketing and distribution ropes working as a senior exec with massive global brands Adidas and Bausch + Lomb, Mark Kelly took the leap to start his own surfboard and stand-up paddle board business. Always wit...
Jan 30, 2022•38 min•Season 4Ep. 2
Barry Lambert has built not 1, but 3 business empires over the past 4 decades, but he doesn’t consider himself an entrepreneur! Starting out as a 16 year old, who began work at the Commonwealth Bank Taree branch, Lambert went on to create and build Count Financial, a grouping of accountants which he expanded into a large franchise operation. After listing Count Financial on the stock exchange in 2000, he sold it to CBA for $373 million just a decade later. His empire no. 2, CountPlus, among othe...
Jan 16, 2022•44 min•Season 4Ep. 1
How do you maintain your momentum, your optimism, your entrepreneurial spirit in the face of devastating bushfires that torched one of the jewels in your business crown, not to mention Covid-enforced lockdowns & border closures’ uncertainty? Hayley & James Baillie’s biz empire - and their leadership - have been sorely tested in the past 2 years. Bushfire ripped through their Southern Ocean Lodge in windswept Kangaroo Island, leaving little but ashes. Then various Covid border closures me...
Dec 05, 2021•23 min
Part 1 – As thoughts of travel escape to exotic locales starts to take shape as we open up from COVID-19 lockdowns and border closures, you might dream about the luxury lodges, or “luxury redefined” as they describe it, that married couple Hayley and James Baillie have created & developed in their Baillie Lodges portfolio. In some of Australia’s most spectacular, but often remote locations, Hayley and James took a punt almost 2 decades ago that other travellers with a bit of coin would share...
Nov 28, 2021•44 min
When Katherine McConnell was a Macquarie banker specializing in asset finance she knew there was a genuine & untapped opportunity that no big bank could take advantage of. And that was to provide new ways to help ordinary householders invest hefty upfront charges in renewable energy in their homes, be it rooftop solar, battery or blinds. So she mortgaged her family’s home, scrimped and saved every penny, including her kids’ (former) private school fees, and created Brighte, which essentially...
Oct 17, 2021•56 min•Season 3Ep. 30
Adapting Aspen Medical’s outsourced healthcare hospitals, clinics and highly-trained medical personnel to suddenly and expertly deal with the COVID-19 pandemic was an extraordinary challenge for the company. But one it executed highly effectively. Not only did Aspen Medical operate strict infection control protocols on some of the early repatriation flights out of Wuhan into Australia, and successfully manage Covid-infected crew members on the stricken Diamond Princess ship stuck in Japan, in ea...
Oct 10, 2021•37 min•Season 3Ep. 29
When Glenn Keys AO spent his boyhood living above his parents shop in regional NSW, little did he know that he was soaking up his folks' entrepreneurial spirit. That childhood revolving around the family small business, instilled in Glenn an ability to take calculated risks and back himself. And that combined with his adult training as an engineer, and work in the military, equipped him to bet big to pursue an idea in 2003 to provide quality healthcare outcomes for clients around the world that ...
Sep 26, 2021•41 min•Season 3Ep. 28
As Apple iPods, then iPhones, Music streaming services like Spotify and now COVID-19 have all seriously disrupted the music industry over recent decades, how has Michael Chugg navigated these potential minefields, and turned the internet from a disrupter into an opportunity for musicians? And is there a future for the live music scene, when life and borders open back up post-COVID? Well for an entrepreneur who has demonstrated such currency, impact and longevity in the industry, his insights int...
Sep 19, 2021•30 min•Season 3Ep. 27
How 15 year old Michael Chugg transformed his love of music, and particularly Aussie rock music, into a major business empire, that ended up bringing to Australia, promoting, staging concerts and touring many of THE biggest music stars & bands in the world. Stars like Elton John, Robbie Williams, Bob Dylan, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, the Police, Dixie Chicks, Madonna and so many more. Michael Chugg backed himself, built relationships in the music business not just locally, but in the UK and the...
Sep 13, 2021•40 min•Season 3Ep. 26
After great success in the UK with her hand-made, artisanal, ethically sourced chocolate company, Coco Chocolate, with 2 stores in Edinburgh and a successful contract supplying Harvey Nichols' signature chocolates, Rebecca Knights returned to Australia, with small children, and was thrown what she calls a few curve-balls. But in Part 2, Rebecca reveals how start-up entrepreneurs must be resilient enough to navigate the disasters & learn "new tricks" as she puts it. Rebecca reckons she was lo...
Sep 05, 2021•19 min•Season 3Ep. 25
