First Act

Over the past five years, Sonia Majkic has made $25 million with her Australia-wide digital marketing company, 3 Phase Marketing. She’s been named on AFR’s Fast 100 List and won numerous accolades for her work helping businesses of all sizes grow and prosper. But Sonia didn’t have money growing up. Immigrating from Serbia to Australia in the ’80s, Sonia’s family struggled with language, community...

Catherine Velisha is passionate about all things fruit and veg, but that wasn’t always the case. It was never her intention to run the family business, Velisha Farms. Yet since taking on the role of managing director, Catherine has taken the family’s market farm to new heights. In a male-dominated industry, she is a force to be reckoned with. When she’s not busy navigating the ins and outs of the...

Like many great entrepreneurs, Man of Many’s Frank Arthur has two driving forces that kicked off his early career: a major passion and a job at Macca’s. The passion was for product design – which would later become his bread and butter. But not without some surprising career moves along the way… Born in Ghana and raised in Dubbo, this ideas man found his calling when he and then-flatmate Scott Pur...

Natassia Nicolao is on a mission to save the beauty industry from water waste. As the founder of Conserving Beauty, she has developed a range of waterless beauty products that are a real game changer for the sector. When you consider two-thirds of the global population will live with water restrictions by 2035 and that beauty products are usually made from 50-70 per cent water, you get some idea o...

Does an apple a day keep the doctor away? Dr Vincent Candrawinata knows the answer. He’s the founder of Renovatio, one of Australia’s fastest-growing health and wellness brands specialising in anti-inflammatory relief. At the core (boom-tish!) of his operations are apples from Orange, NSW. Yes, apples from Orange. The highly respected antioxidant researcher, food scientist and clinical nutritionis...

Entrepreneurship may have seemed an unlikely choice for Leela Cosgrove, founder of business growth consulting firm Strategic Anarchy. Growing up in Brisbane’s housing commission estates, Leela was surrounded by less-than-ideal circumstances. Fortunately, she had strong female role models - in the guise of her mother and grandmother - who led her to believe anything was possible. Today, Leela heads...

He’s the Aussie chef who’s made it in the US, popping up on shows like Good Morning America and The Drew Barrymore Show. And every day, he’s serving up Aussie breakfasts and coffees to discerning New Yorkers at his impact-driven restaurant in Nolita, New York: Charley St. But we first met Dan on season five of MasterChef Australia when he was making ‘dude food’. He’s since become a globally renown...

Daniel Flynn is an eco-warrior. As the managing director and co-founder of Thankyou, Daniel and his team are flipping consumerism on its head to deliver meaningful change. In a world where brands often pay lip service to social impact, Thankyou is the real deal. Since launching Thankyou in 2008, the brand has grown from selling a single product to over 50 lines that are available in supermarkets a...

Cook, media publisher and entrepreneur, Marion Grasby wears a lot of hats. As one of Masterchef’s favourite contestants, Marion quickly won the hearts of Aussie viewers with her Thai-Aussie flavour fusions. Although she missed out on the crown, Marion quickly parlayed her fame into a cook book deal before launching her brand, Marion’s Kitchen. Today Marion is the head of a next-generation food and...

If you’re mad about pets, you’ll be mad for our next guest … Justus Hammer. Justus is the founder of Mad Paws, Australia’s largest online pet care platform. Dubbed ‘Airbnb for pets’, Mad Paws matches pets with trusted pet sitters. It’s a fabulous alternative to traditional kennels and has proved a massive success. But Mad Paws isn’t his first venture. Justus is also the man behind Australia’s larg...

Sarah Cordiner’s used to breaking boundaries. As the first woman in her family to get a higher education, Sarah bucked convention from the start. Education is her passion and it drives her purpose. As one of the world’s leading edupreneurs, Sarah has helped thousands of small business owners use their expertise to create new revenue streams. She’s the queen of online courses, has been cited by For...

Simon Cohen knows a thing or two about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. As the founder of CohenHandler - Australia’s number one Buyers Agency - his job is to find the ultra-rich the most extra homes. He’s gone from starting a business with just $5000 in his bank account to becoming the highest-grossing buyers’ agent in Australia. A natural salesman, Simon has quickly carved out a niche in a...

Pete Ceglinski is a surfer, industrial designer and ‘eco-preneur’ whose game-changing invention, the Seabin has captured millions of kilos of waste from our oceans. It’s a simple idea - a bin for the sea - yet its footprint is indelible. Since launching the business with a crowdfunding campaign, Pete and his team have taken Seabin global, saving 1000s of sea creatures from being trapped in plastic...

From his early days as a Dutch backpacker bartending in the ’70s gangster’s paradise of King’s Cross to growing his family business from a backyard caravan, Richard Kuipers is a man with stories to tell. At 75, he’s passionate about sharing what to do and what NOT to do when running a family business – based on his learnings from creating one of Australia’s largest removal companies, Two Men And A...

Jane Cay is one of the most humble entrepreneurs you’ll meet. She also happens to be one of Australia’s leading fashion retailers and has grown her business from a small boutique store in country New South Wales, into an online empire with more than 150 staff. But retail was never the original plan for Jane. It wasn’t until she fell in love and returned to the Snowy Mountains that this accidental...

People, culture and organisation are Michelle Fotheringham’s bread and butter. As the cofounder of Werkling – an on-demand talent platform - Michelle spends her day-to-day immersed in helping businesses assemble their dream teams. But it wasn’t always the case. Michelle is a self-described corporate escapee who took the plunge into startup land during the pandemic, after realising people wanted to...

Jax Garrett puts the ‘game’ into ‘game-changer’. In 2018, the Newcastle-based entrepreneur founded GGWP Academy, an E-learning and Influencer marketplace platform to help gamers globally become full-timer creators and connect with sponsors. Jax has skin in the game – she’s a gamer herself and her son competed in a Pokemon tournament in the US when he was just nine.  With an intimate knowledge of t...

Jaimie Fuller always loved sports so it seems inevitable that he would one day find his place at the helm of a sporting company. His passion led him to become an outspoken advocate; championing fairness, equality and justice in the games he loved. Taking a stand is just part of who he is and even when his business crumbled and he filed for bankruptcy, he took the failure in style with a mea culpa...

Sharon Williams is a marketing maverick and PR maven. While other agencies were still wrapping their heads around personal branding and business strategy, Sharon was coming up with her own trademarked formula - the Taurus Bullseye - which has led countless businesses and corporations to success. She’s managed to do all this while being a single mum to three children and a survivor of multiple brea...

Luke ‘Cookie’ Cook is on a mission to change how we see and speak about mental health. Since launching his business Cuppa. TV during the pandemic, Cookie has put conversations about mental health and wellbeing on the national agenda. His daily discussions with movers and shakers in the wellness space have delivered a dose of optimism to a nation in need. He joins us to share the inspiration behind...

He may be the cofounder of one of Australia’s most successful legal startups, but Tom Willis’s driving purpose is to help businesses be seen. Marketing is his raison d'être and he’s spent over a decade at the forefront of the digital marketing space. As General Assembly’s go-to lecturer for all things marketing, he's taught thousands of students, marketers and business owners the ABCs of the lates...

Anaita Sarkar knows how to back herself. The serial entrepreneur left behind a career in marketing to found her first brand, Olivia & Co, despite having no experience in fashion or small business. Several years later, horrified by the amount of waste her products were contributing to the planet, Anaita switched tack again to create Hero Packaging. Since launching in 2018, Anaita’s compostable mail...

TV viewers may remember her as the red-jacketed judge on Shark Tank. But long before she landed on TV screens, crushing or uplifting the dreams of the nation’s entrepreneurs, Naomi Simson founded online success story, RedBalloon. From humble beginnings in Naomi’s Balmain backyard, RedBalloon has grown to become a multimillion-dollar enterprise and is just one of the many strings to her bow. Today,...

#nofilter should actually be synonymous with Roxy Jacenko – the PR maven, entrepreneur and influencer is always unabashedly herself. In a world of pretenders, Roxy is the real deal. From founding one of Australia’s most innovative PR agencies to pioneering the influencer movement with the Ministry of Talent to starring in her own reality TV show to taking the world by storm with her daughter Pixie...

Stephen Hunt knows a thing or two about the pub business. He began his journey as a humble dish pig and decades later is the proud owner of the Hunt Hospitality Group, where he employs over 300 people and turns over millions in revenue. If you live in NSW’s Hunter region no doubt you’ve been in one of his many pubs. But how does someone go from dishwasher to pub mogul? Stephen’s is a story of life...