Episode Description
The Troubleshooters Podcast: Season 1 Wrap up! In this episode we have wrapped up Season 1 of the Troubleshooters Podcast with some highlights of each episode. Mikes only goal when he started this podcast was to bring you the insights from everyday heroes who have had a go, genuine business troubleshooters, who’ve overcome adversities and dealt with whatever life has thrown at them. It’s been his pleasure to interview our guests this season. 12 episodes of genuine troubleshooters each with their own unique stories. Listen to the Best bits by clicking above and if something resonates then find full episodes on the website or wherever you like to listen to your podcasts. In the meantime, lookout for Season 2 coming soon..
About our guests:
Please find below a list of guests this season in order of episodes & their LinkedIn profiles. More information about each guest is available in the full episode descriptions.
Robert Silver-Tesserent https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertasilver/
Stanislav Roth-Source Legal https://www.linkedin.com/in/stanislavroth/
Stuart Edgedly-Emerald Planet https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-edgley/
David Astone and Peter Gordon-Design to Production https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-astone-1891612a/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-gordon-60807260/
Richard Skarzynski- Coraggio https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardskarzynski/
Keitah Matens-shaw B.OKideas https://www.linkedin.com/company/bokideas/
Kunal Sawhney KALKINE https://www.linkedin.com/in/kunal-sawhney-6a63a346/
Hannah Chipkin & Pippa jospeh Merch Girls https://www.linkedin.com/company/merchgirls/
Jacinta McCombe Nectar Cold Pressed Juices https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacinta-mccombe-865b51a9/
Luke Cook-Cuppa.tv https://www.linkedin.com/in/cookluke/
Scott Fry-Loving Earth https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-fry-74813a34/
John Florey- Loving Earth https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-florey-maicd-17271913/
Transcript
The Troubleshooters Podcast: Season 1 Wrap up!
Note: This has been automatically transcribed so is likely to have errors! It may however help you navigate the points of interests for you.
Mike: Welcome to the troubleshooters podcast with me your host Mike McGrath.
Wow Season One of the troubleshooters podcast is done and dusted. And what a pleasure. It’s been for me to interview our guests. As you know, I started this podcast join COVID It seems like a lifetime ago already. You will no doubt recall those almost biblical scenes with everyone at home and in lockdown, and our cities with nobody and I’m a big thank you to all our guests. I so enjoy getting to hear their stories, and I hope you have to. My only goal when we started was to bring you the insights from everyday heroes who have had a go, genuine business troubleshooters, who have overcome adversities and dealt with whatever life has thrown at them. So sit back and relax as we wrap up season one by listen to some of the best bits and the highlights from each episode. If something resonates, then the full episodes are on the Oasis website, or wherever you like to listen to your podcasts. So enjoy.
Mike: In our first episode, we spoke to rob silver, the founder and CEO of Rivium, a data analytics and cybersecurity business. I love listening to Rob’s journey, including his setbacks, if you remember, his first business went broke. Rob’s tenacity and resilience allowed him to start over and eventually build a successful business, which was bought by a listed cybersecurity Business Core test run late in 2019. Enjoy this snippet of my conversation with Rob, where we consider the idea that the nerds have won. Yes, the tech nerds went from weirdos to super cool in the space of a decade, including Rob himself.
Mike: Well, Rob, back to you. Let’s kind of go back a bit. We’ll talk about your more recent success towards the end. But let’s go back a bit in your background. So you know, were there any entrepreneurial tendencies emerging? Rob, when you grew up? Were you the guy that was going to be an entrepreneur right from day. Or? Did it come to you later?
Rob: Look, I was always quite a busy child busy doing things my parents called me scooter, which was indicative of me skirting around doing things all the time and keeping myself fully occupied on on doing different things. And it was quite funny. I come from a very strong public servant background, all of my family are in public servant-based roles. So I was a bit of a black sheep. And I guess I did sort of show some exploratory entrepreneurial sort of activities in the early days, even whilst I was doing another job working at nighttime, I started a web dev company at one point, that didn’t work. But it was an online content directory of Tasmania. That’s the state I originally was born. And whilst I secured a few customers, it didn’t really take off. I think it was a little bit before its time. So I’ve moved on to other things.
Mike: So how did you get into tech? Are you a nerd? Were you the original nerd? Were you or did you always have your head in a computer?
Rob: You know, my parents would never buy me a computer. So I had to save up my own pocket money to buy that and I ended up buying a Amstrad computer notebook back in the early days for three and a half $1,000 Which ended was a significant amount of money back in those days for remember
Mike: They Were grey Weren’t they the abstracts they were with a green screen?
Rob: Correct.
Mike: In Episode Two, I spoke to source legals Founder CEO, Stanislav Roth. Stan is a disrupter. Because when he started in business over 10 years ago, refused to play by the established rules, unlike other legal firms, sauce don’t sell their time. Here’s a snippet where Stan, a risk averse lawyer with a family plucks up the courage to back himself and become an entrepreneur.
Mike: You know, when you decided to start swords, that’s always a big leap, right? You go from a paycheck. And then you decide, okay, I’m going to do my own thing. Well, what was going through your mind and how stressful was it to make that call and then jump, you know, one day, you’ve got a paycheck to next minute, you need some clients before, it’s
Stan: very stressful. And in fact, I couldn’t make the decision for quite a long time. I think it took me at least a couple of years to get enough courage to do it. And even then, I left my job after 10 years to this engineering company, which was really fantastic experience for me. And I still couldn’t quite, I was already really wanting to start my own business. And I had this idea, but I didn’t have enough courage to do it. So I went to another job, like a senior lawyer in a very large construction company, and really, really hated it. So I won’t be lost there for about 10 months, which is very uncharacteristic for me. Stay up and I’m a stickler when I commit to something but I really hated it. And it became very clear to me that I need to start my own business, no longer really prepared to look for another job and to do it all over again, I really wanted to start my own business. I wanted myself into doing it. If you know what I mean.
Mike: sometimes that kind of adversity can be a trigger, can’t it? Yeah, he made the move. It’s not what you thought it was gonna be. And you know, if you need it pushing, maybe that was the push. So you started Stan, you jumped in holding your nose. And away you went. So tell us about some of the highs and lows in that journey? I mean, it’s not easy. You were relatively new to Australia. I mean, I was the same. I think I started in m&a here with Oasis about 12 years ago. And yeah, I didn’t really know anyone. And you know, I had to kind of plow that furrow, if you like. And it wasn’t always easy, though. Sometimes I used to scratch my head and say, What the hell have I done? Tell us about some of those times.
Stan: It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy. Because I, you know, I started without clients, like I wasn’t leaving private practice where you have a bit of a client base, and you could, you know, take with you. But I was in house, really. So I started without clients. I started with a relatively small network, but a good network, and knew that I had a network of people who liked me and respected me and you know, who I could approach. And that’s where I started, I started with essentially looking at my network, writing down names, and calling them and going for coffee, and things like that.
Mike: I loved my chat with Stuart, the managing director and founder of Emerald. Planet. Stewart, for me is the real deal. He epitomizes the entrepreneurial necessity to hustle. And then combine that with the smarts to anticipate them pick opportunities at the right time, like nobody else I know. Stuart didn’t really like school, and kept bucking himself, refusing to believe he couldn’t do whatever he set his mind to have a listen to how Stuart reflects on where you start isn’t where you finish. And like many entrepreneurs, he can’t believe how far he’s come soon.
Mike: tell us a bit about Emerald planet in what are you doing that?
Stuart: Emerald Planet, a manufacturer of energy efficient products, we came out of the energy efficiency markets nationally. You know, the New South Wales energy efficiency scheme started up under what was called the GE gas game back in 2006. And we identified an opportunity then to supply services into the energy efficiency and carbon abatement markets.
Mike: So as to how did you do that? So we’re back into 2006? Seven. What are you doing at that point before you start?
Stuart: Yeah, sometimes you pinch yourself mark and you wonder how you got to where you got, you know, one thing’s for sure where you start ain’t where your finish? Isn’t that the truth? My back in the day, I was running a hospitality company. I’m a chef by trade. I was providing services into a company called Ramsey healthcare, where we ran right, we ran all their commercial kitchens. So my business was running commercial kitchens in the Ramsey Healthcare’s operations with hospitals and clinics and things.
Mike: Was that your own business? Yeah,
Stuart: yeah. Yeah.
Mike: When did you start that? The I mean, the oversee, trained as a chef, right? Yeah. And so when did you kick off by yourself,
Stuart: but we kicked off back in about 2002 In business, and we had an intimate relationship with Ramsey healthcare at the time. Yeah, my background was restaurants and cafes and things. And then we moved into commercializing that, and providing services into these organizations and Ramsey healthcare, we’re the largest. So I used to serve as all of his commercial kitchens. And we’ve built up brigades of catering teams really to, to serve us. And I think that gave me some real business understanding the ability to be able to grow teams, and operations. And then a friend of mine came along in around about 2006, and introduced me to the carbon abatement schemes, and, you know, targeted the philosophy around providing services and products into commercial and residential markets, an example would be lighting, which was a core business. Yeah, upgrading inefficient lighting into efficient lighting, and then reducing energy. And as a byproduct of reducing energy, we can reduce carbon emissions, and a byproduct of reducing carbon emissions is that there is a carbon trading scheme. So as long as it’s measurable, carbon credits can be created, and they can be traded, which offsets the cost of servicing a customer. So we can go into a home and basically take out your old inefficient lighting, replace it with efficient lighting, create carbon credits, and the cost of those carbon credits can often pay for the whole service. So he identified that opportunity and came to me and said, Listen, I’m looking for somebody who understands how to run teams and how to run servicing. And that gave us this leap out of hospitality and into the energy efficiency markets. And it wasn’t long until we realized that there was serious growth in this sector.
Mike: Dave Astin and Peter Gordon of Design to production are a force to be reckoned with. Peter is an industrial engineer and Dave is in charge of manufacturing and operations. Together, they have built a wonderful business that has managed to combine cutting edge design, with cost efficient production. Listen into this preview about how they got started. These guys are tight, and they epitomize what a true complementary partnership looks like.
Peter: what happened there, we sat down in a pub and had a few drinks and made the decision to consider doing something ourselves.
Mike: Great. Look, I think there’s important points here really around partnerships and teaming up, because I remember back in 70, when I sort of met you guys, and started working with you, I was quite excited, because I felt you were a great team. And so you know, I saw that, you know, paid on the one and was very good at sort of design, he was quite creative. And he sort of had that kind of help fellow well met. And then Dave, you are the production guy, like the nuts and bolts, how we’re going to make it how we’re going to do it. So I think that’s quite important. A lot of businesses I see where people partner up, and they’re sort of the same, the magic is in the differences in a way, you know, so the, the sum of the parts is less than the sum of the whole, really, if you can get the right partner,
Peter: I think would have been a lot more challenging if we both enjoyed the same tasks at work. Like if we were both competing over the same task to draw the sketch of what it’s going to look like, or for both saying, I think it should be made this way. Or, you know, I think there’s a better way to do it. You know, we had trust in each other to sense that. Well, Dave, thinks that this is the best way to make it. I’m not gonna argue, you know, I’m gonna back up 100%. Yeah, vice versa.
Mike: Yeah. And so you decided to start the business, who came up with the name design to production?
Peter: Dave?
Dave: Look, we both did. And we did a lot of time on the kitchen bench with, you know, prototyping and going back and forth before we got our first office. And yeah, we came up with some cool sketches. And we were sort of saying, what are we about? What are we about and Dave, and Pete is the two initials that sort of needed to represent something. And so we sort of, you know, form that into Design and production. And so we said, you know, it’s going to be a little bit of a play on words with the DP. Yeah, that’s what we rolled with. And then when everyone sort of meets us, they do sort of give us credit.
Mike: So before we get into the story, design to production, because it’s a great story, and you’ve built a fantastic business. Let’s go back a little bit further. So was there anything in your backgrounds that suggested you were going to end up running your own business building a company being entrepreneurs, you know, were you always those kinds of people pay,
Peter: I never saw myself as owning a business. To be honest, both of my parents are school teachers. My father teaches industrial arts, material science and manufacturing technologies and things like that. And so there was yes, kind of always had a passion for that. My mother was quite artistic as well. She used to paint and do drawings and the weekends, she sent me off to do drawing classes in the park, and things like that. And so I was always quite creative. But in terms of owning my own business, I remember when I first started working for myself, my parents were just so nervous thinking, you know, we have nothing to be able to offer you in, in knowledge of how to run a business because they were very hard working, and they had to work ethics, but they really didn’t have any experience in running a business. So I never saw myself to do that, to be honest. And for many years after I finished university, I studied industrial design. I was making furniture, but it was a bit of a labor of love and only making guesses designing things for friends. Very Yes, wrong approach to the way a business should be set out. I guess,
Mike: David, you ever done metalworkers score or anything like that?
Dave: I did. I didn’t take too much of a liking into it. I don’t know I sit there. And I think about it, and I go, You know what it must choose that or what it must choose that. And remember, I did a little bit of experience in the kitchens. And then she sort of just went into one thing to the other and guided me around and I was a bit of a brat, you know, in my younger days. And when I sort of found myself at this place, I didn’t put you know, when I say I was a bit of a brat that’s probably me talking very nicely. But I just thought that this was the opportunity to really make up for all my school years and really put some serious effort in.
Mike: In episode five I sat down with Richard Kaczynski from coraggio. Richard is one of those entrepreneurs that got started early really early. Richard now helps other entrepreneurs through a fantastic initiative. He runs coraggio, a business dedicated to putting business owners and leaders in touch with their peers for support to help them grow and prosper. Richard being a similar age to me, has been able to reflect on a long and successful career, including the ups and downs, and how during the GFC the banks made a move on his business. He now counsels business owners on the importance of managing debt and controlling cash flow.
Mike: I mean, you were telling me that, that one of the challenges for you at that point was sort of that credit squeeze brought on by the GFC affected you quite badly. And you’d move banks, you followed the management in New York.
Richard: Yeah, we’d always be with the National Australia Bank for five odd years, and some of the banking relationships we have with and then move to the CBA. And as you do, you know, nothing’s forever. And banking change. But you know, I think all the banks at the time, they just didn’t have the money. Nobody had the money. Yeah. That was saying not just to us, but every Australian business, they just don’t have the money to support the facilities. And suddenly, we had suppliers saying to us, look, it’s been great 25 years, but you know, we’re really keen to work with you, but it’s cod. And it’s like, well, it’s pretty hard to run a payroll, pay everybody cod and then what your suppliers to pay you cod when they want to pay you in 60 days or clients are incinerated?
Mike: Yeah, on that, on that the idea of sort of troubleshooters. Right, is that, periodically, you get a correction? Absolutely. I left school in 80. Unemployment 10%. You know, there’s nobody that didn’t know a couple of people who are unemployed. And it was seemed so difficult to get jobs. And yeah, it was just a, just a downer time for two or three years. And then we boomed and then 9090 comes along, and we’ve got interest rates at 15 or 16%, full on credit squeeze that goes for two or three years. And then 10 years later, we get the correction in 2000. That remember the tech bubble? Yeah, absolutely. And then the GFC. So, you know, if you wait around long enough, trouble is coming. Right? Yeah. And Australia has been very lucky, because it’s sort of avoided some of the impacts of some of those recessions, you know, we’ve done relatively well, in the GFC. If you look on a global basis, but it’s still, you know, it’s still a big problem. And I think that a lot of the younger entrepreneurs that I’m talking to, and working with, you know, they don’t always understand that that cash is king, and that you’ve got to, you got to squirrel it away, and there are times when to push it. And there are times when not to push it really.
Richard: And the big learning curve, Mike is like everything else. Credit as a business, you know, and just because something’s approved today, doesn’t mean it’s approved tomorrow. Yeah. Whereas with cash at Bank, there’s no debate about cash or bank. And I have to say, certainly what we’ve seen in in COVID, and businesses that have survived through COVID. Apart from that, obviously, it’s the support of the government in support of the banks. But the ones that have really survived through COVID are the ones that had cash at Bank, we often talk about how much cash you need to trade through periods of bad but it’s, it’s the ones that do have a strong cash balance. If we take what is lesson number four, I think lesson number four is Kashlinsky. Exactly. And it was interesting. I was listening to a presentation the other week by an industry body and they’re saying the best time to learn from a bank is actually when you don’t need money. The bank seems to sniff and know when the times are tough, and then you need the money. But there’s a lesson learned there. So I think, don’t just assume because the bank, like anything rang us and said, Look, I’m sorry, it’s been a great relationship of 20 years, or whatever it might be. But yeah, sorry, you’re gonna have to cut the facilities and they have every right to do so.
Mike: In episode six, we spoke to kietah from Bok ideas. I was genuinely humbled to talk to this real life Troubleshooter. Her story, if you haven’t listened already, is inspiring. And her business was born through her own journey, which includes surviving cancer. She’s a real inspiration. So if you get a chance, go back and have a listen. I guarantee it will lift your spirits
Mike: To regain hope is a big deal. And I’m just intrigued on the source of the anxiety and the depression is it is it this damn thing might get me. Right. And, you know, I might not be long for this world, or was it? I can’t do this stuff I want to do I don’t feel great. Now. What was going on that was really driving that sort of need to take action, think of others and annex engage in these kinds of feel good?
Kietah: Yeah, good question. I think a lot of the anxiety for me came from, so every six months, I would have a checkup. Right. So three weeks before a checkup, I would have so much anxiety. If as is it back? What’s going to happen? Is it going to be worse, then once I get the test, I needed to wait another two weeks for results. So every six months, I would have nearly a two month period of just anxiety of what if and Yeah, exactly. And not only that, I went into a bit of a hypochondriac mode where I was like, Oh, this is like I’ve got a rash maybe it’s back or maybe something’s worse or you know, my stomach doesn’t feel good. And I would constantly admit myself into hospital and just be like, Oh, I don’t know what’s wrong. Maybe it’s back and I’d constantly be on in fright mode and I really needed to, I guess, distract my mind a bit. And like we said earlier have that that sense of purpose and something that I really wanted to do because I’d lost all of the things that I wanted to do in terms of activities, sport, a lot of my friends were traveling around the world, how could I create a sense of achievement within myself and for myself?
Mike: What began to emerge it sounds like from that was some of these gifts ideas, some of these ideas about how you could help through gifting how you could help people in either similar circumstances or other circumstances that were driving similar feelings? Which is that the spoke quality Yeah, thoughtful end of the market.
Kietah: Yeah, it’s all about now four years in, I just think the best way to describe it is bespoke, custom handcrafted, right. Like, we have an amazing group of girls and women that are hand packing these boxes. So that recipient when they open the box, they look at that and we want them to cry of happiness, to smile to, to feel loved, and have that sense of a hug in a box type of thing.
Mike: Kanal Sawney is the founder and CEO of cow coin and independent equities research firm canal is a big thinker. Inspired by his hero, Steve Jobs. He started his business from his kitchen table, just after the GFC he now employs 450 staff, listen to canals passion, as he seeks to bring world class investment research to mom and dad investors all over the world.
Kunal Let’s talk about what I see. I’m a huge fan of technology. I think there’s a huge space in the electric vehicle space. Huge opportunity there. So people should look at that Evie space. And when I talk about Eevee space, just don’t look at Tesla look at what Tesla needs to be a Tesla Tesla needs lithium batteries, Tesla needs a lot of sensors. So, there are a lot of technology businesses around that. So supplying That is correct. So we have to look at the ancillary industries. Now, this time, when I was in India, again on the electric vehicle space, I saw Tata Tata, which is a huge industrial house and India, the biggest company in India, they are manufacturing electric vehicles now. And imagine if, you know 1.3 billion people, out of which 300 million people are a middle class who can afford these electric vehicles, start buying Tata electric vehicles or Tesla electric vehicles, this space is going to zoom. And by 2030, there’s a number of research reports which say that electric vehicle market is going to double. Okay, and in some European countries, especially Norway and some of the other countries, UK as well, where they’re saying they’re going to phase out petroleum vehicles by 2035 or 2040. You will see a huge demand for electric vehicles. Okay. So, this is the first piece and I think the second piece, which is where I see a huge opportunities in the listed companies related to cryptocurrencies, okay, so, you know, v’s and you will see more and more of these companies getting listed related to cryptocurrency. So I see this piece also developing into into a huge piece.
Mike: In Episode 8, we spoke to the veritable Dream Team, Piper, Joseph and Hannah Chipkin. This positive and energetic duo teamed up in 2015 and decided to start their business based in Melbourne, they built a highly successful operation called merch girls in this snippet, they tell us how they quit working on their own in favor of a partnership. And a very successful partnership with this as well.
Hannah: Wow, to find a business partner is probably the hardest thing of business. And a lot of people have expressed their I’m gonna call it envy. But it’s not in the wrong word of our partnership. My husband included because he’s not envious, but he’s really really, he understands the the landscape and he says, you know, often you know how lucky the two of you are that you have that you found each other. So I think we like we did a lot of hard work in the formative years before we joined our businesses and we learned a lot on our own without each other. When we came together it was honestly a stars aligning kind of moment. That’s not often that you can say that about a relationship that you you come across. So I don’t know how we it was meant to be I suppose. But every day I’m very thankful for this partnership because it’s gotten us to where we are today.
Mike: It’s a really good point. And you know if you can find a business partner with complementary skills, so would you say your skills complimentary. In other words, you don’t? Do you ever argue over that? Or is it? Is it very clear how things delineate
Pippa: we sort of have a secret little rule? I think it’s whoever’s most passionate because we actually totally agree. We actually agree on a lot. But we use a special secret rule site, whoever’s more passionate about their direction, or you know, a solution. So we sort of pitch to each other. We’re like, Okay, I’ll teach to you and she’ll pitch and then it’s like, whoever’s more passionate than we just know. Okay, that’s the way that we’re going.
Mike: I started this podcast at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, it was a difficult time for everyone in business, the hospitality industry took a real hit. In this episode, I was joined by Jacinta McCombe from nectar, cold pressed juices, a real life COVID Troubleshooter. If ever, there was one. This was a terrific conversation that I knew would help and inspire many take a listen to this short excerpt with your center as she unpacks the near death experience where sales literally dried up overnight. And yet somehow, she refused to give up and got to work, ensuring a rapid pivot, which allowed the business to survive.
Jacinta: Leading up to much 2020 When there was I guess, the first shutdown locked down, and no one knew what was happening prior to that, so it’s been say, six good years of business for us growing and adapt. We had just pre in the previous October 2019 moved for the very first time into our own facility. But prior to that, we’ve been sharing kitchens or sharing factories, sharing spaces, just purely because of the financial requirements have you. So we bit the bullet in 2019 to finally move into our own factory and propel and then not six months later was the pandemic. So He who controls most of the finance side, I was just dying inside, like, how are we going to even manage this, we’re barely
Mike: so you’ve taken on a new lease your center, right? You’d probably bought equipment, you’d say you’d paid your dues, you know, beg borrow and steal is the entrepreneurial Entrepreneurial Handbook. And then you finally say, Okay, it’s time. And then within literally, within five months, we’ve got a pandemic,
Jacinta: It was pretty unbelievable. So when it first hit literally, because a lot of our cars were a better few products in more premium space, the majority of our customers at that time were cafes, and restaurants, hotels, all of which just stopped overnight. So we had all rooms full of juice that there was no one to tell it to because everyone was closed. And I think most cafes and restaurants at that point, middle of middle to late March 2020, were closed for a minimum, a minimum of eight weeks, some of them started to reopen again. So we had nothing to produce. We had heaps of juice that we couldn’t sell to anyone. On top of that all of our juice has a shelf life. So for the eight weeks, we were close, we were going to lose eight weeks shelf life on juice that we had in our core room. So we’re sort of lucky, we had about two, three weeks buffer there, because we had a little bit more shelf life. We just had, we just didn’t know when the next orders were going to come in from the cafes or restaurants.
Mike: So just center, let’s just contextualize it. That’s pretty grim. Basically, your sales just fell off a cliff in that early pandemic, restaurants, cafes, hotels, probably the most dramatically hit sectors other than airlines at that point in the cycle. And, you know, I would say that the odds were not looking good at that stage. I mean, there’s not many businesses that can bounce back from that. So what on earth did you do, and take us through that thought process?
Jacinta: Initially, the easiest thing to do number one was just to turn all of our, or as much attention to possible as pushing sales throughout our website. But we can if we can push as many sales as we can through the website, we can at least get the case.
Mike: then you went online to try and get to that market that was ultimately drinking your juice. But you know that So you went from b2b to b2c? Did you have any online presence at that point or not?
Jacinta: We had a website but really and we’ve always had a shop on our website, but we’ve never put any effort into driving sales because our relationships are all with the cafes and restaurants.
Mike: Okay, how did you solve the delivery aspect of that?
Jacinta: We just tried to do as much of it we ourselves like we targeted these sorts of areas where we had our own truck or we could just physically deliver it ourselves. We still had staff and we still had ourselves like for us to do as many as we could to save money. It was just trying not to pay any extra people.
Mike: Another COVID troubleshooter and all round inspiring guest was episode 10 with Luke cookie cup from Cupa. TV, having Just gone broke and lost everything in early COVID. Luke asked himself one simple, simple question, how can I help people feeling like I do? The answer that question and his ability to take action, even when he wanted to crawl into a ball and give up, spawned a great business, which has helped 1000s. So pour yourself a cuppa and listen into some of my chat with Luke,
Luke Cook: My entrepreneurial brain kicked in, I was starting to come up with, you know, other ideas, or I was contacting close mates just to keep food on the table and stuff like that. But in reality, personally, I hit the ground pretty hard. I went through a bit of a guilt trip, because I was 39 years by this stage, because Mark was about three to three and a half, four years old at that time when it happened. Yeah. And I just had a kid, I had nothing else left. So I went on a guilt trip of I can’t believe I’m 39 years old. And I’ve put my family into this situation. And so I hit the ground pretty hard. But I think you know, as an entrepreneur and founder, and someone who’s always got ideas like that, at least I was looking up, and he took me to go to the coffee shop one morning. Yeah. And the coffee shop for me was my morning joy. Right? It was where I could get my double shot latte and just spend some time by myself just walking to and back from the coffee shop. And I started thinking about my own mental health. But then I started thinking about the mental health of others, because I knew COVID was an issue. But I knew that mental health and well being would be the biggest thing I remember posting on LinkedIn, that comment that I know COVID is bad, but let’s start thinking about everyone’s mental health and well being and few people fired back at me because of the way that I said it and stuff like that that cave is really serious. We got to don’t try and downplay COVID and all that type of stuff. But in harsh reality, I knew that I was only one person of millions going going to go through struggling times. So you know, walking back from the coffee shop or caught my business partner, then Joe, who was who’d been on the entrepreneurial journey with me since day one. Yeah. And I just said to Joe, how do we, you know, how do we help people just start their day with some positivity and inspiration. And I just said to her, I said, Let’s start a, you know, a morning cup. Let’s, let’s try and create a cafe for you where you have conversations with experts and personalities. And let’s just help people start their day with something that isn’t a bad news story. And I got home, I thought about a name of a business called CUPPA of life at the time. I looked at free images on the internet, I downloaded a cafe backdrop, I ordered it on Office works for $40. And it got delivered two days later. And within a week we started our first virtual Cafe, which we opened it up free of charge we had Gus Worland from triple Lam, who’s also the founder of gotcha for life, which is a charity around mental health. And we had the first conversation around mate ship and you know, connection and being there for others during hard times. We had about 100 people show up. The next week we had people like Kerry Panos Layne Beachley Come on, because at the end of the day, all these experts lost all their jobs.
Mike: In my final episodes of this season, I spoke to Scott Frey and John Florey of Loving Earth, Scott, the co-onwner has sat down with me to talk about the humble beginnings of loving Earth. And then John came on to talk about the exciting future. This plant based regenerative chocolate and functional foods business in Victoria is combining healthy and organic products with a passion for the environment, and the communities in which their ingredients are sourced. Listen, how, Scott and John, talk about being purpose driven, and give us their take on the future.
Scott Fry: So I was in Mexico actually working on commercializing organic coffee. That was the main project that I was kind of working on. And when I came back to Australia, I sort of kind of started all over again, a little bit, but obviously, I still had all of those contacts. And I was still looking at how could I get this going, and Australia and all that. I guess a lot of things are about timing, right. And when your Confluence things come together, and at that time, there was a fellow called David Wolfe, who was had quite a high profile. He was sort of advocating raw foods, he was advocating a lot of these super foods and cacao and things like that. It’s quite charismatic, and he just published a book. And so there was those things kind of going on that was developing some in some interest in Macau, and these different things and a lot of these foods that that were sort of being advocated came out of the Amazon and and central South America, because I spoke Spanish and handle those contacts. I get I kind of saw the opportunity and jumped in and the market was just ready for it. was just the perfect time, the beginning of 2007. And I just started, I built myself a website and Dreamweaver, you know, I got small volumes of material in just packing it in the spare room of my house and going down to the post office and shipping it out. The new trend, it was a whole new movement, particularly around raw foods, minimally processed foods, and we were kind of right there at the right time. And I had all the contacts and yeah, we it was it just kind of scaled, I managed to get my first little kitchen that we were in for a bit over 12 months, and I moved to another facility that we’re in for 12 months, and then I moved again to a bigger facility. And at that facility, we had the opportunity to expand a little bit without moving. So yeah, I was able to kind of expand the business without having to invest too much money in in capital infrastructure. Yeah, because food manufacturing, obviously can be quite capital intensive. And because the business is all self financed. Yeah, we managed to just kind of grow up that way.
Mike: And so John, I know that the guys have been around now for over 10 years. Right? Yeah. And I understand that you joined the business reasonably recently, what attracted you to loving Earth and what’s exciting to you about loving us and the future and, and how this capital might be able to be deployed,
John: I think it’s a really, really good brand to start with. And it’s well known in the marketplace, as a vegan organic product. You know, the world’s changed. People are much more interested now in what they can do what they can give back. And I spent most of my life working in corporates. And really, you know, if I look at some of the corporates I’ve worked for, they talk about sustainability. But really, it’s a marketing slogan. Yeah, these guys are loving Earth. They’ve gone beyond sustainability, they know into regenerative and they, they’re genuine. They want to give back and, you know, I think when I think about my children and the planet, they’re going to inherit from us. Then I think I’d like to be involved in that and give something back.
Mike: Well, there you have it. 12 episodes and 12 troubleshooters. I hope you enjoyed that wrap up. Thanks to our listeners who have been with us since day one. And if it’s your first time here, you’re very welcome. Hit subscribe and look out for season two. As we bring you another round of genuine business troubleshooters to inspire and motivate you to keep going even when the going gets tough. Follow us on Instagram at troubleshooters underscore podcast for episode previews and more best bits as well as updates about season two. And if you have enjoyed the episode, please leave a review. Only good ones please and five stars will be very nice. Thanks for being here. Until next time, good luck and stay safe.