Built To Lead

Want to scale faster without the local hiring headache? Send me a direct message over at @jesswhatman_agentsync and let’s talk about building your dedicated offshore team. Holding onto household chores is secretly capping your mental bandwidth and revenue potential. Entrepreneurs delegate heavily at work to buy back time, yet continue drowning in laundry, meal prep, and domestic chaos at home. Tru...

How do you build Australia’s first AI-powered loan marketplace from scratch and scale it to 40+ employees and 8-figure revenues without taking a single dollar of external funding?  Julian Fayad, Founder and CEO of LoanOptions.ai, walked away from a $300k+ executive salary during COVID to launch Australia’s first AI-powered loan marketplace. Leveraging nine years of broking experience and a de...

Stop burning executive bandwidth on shiny AI tools while your team operates on zero context.  In this episode I sit down with former tech engineer turned AI strategist Josh Stevenson to expose the massive operational flaw holding teams back when it comes to using AI.  We dive straight into execution, breaking down the specific business utility of Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, eliminating...

When 3 early employees quit to start competing agencies, Forbes 30 Under 30 founder Lexie Murray didn't back down. Instead, she built a powerhouse 15-person agency and launched proprietary AI tech inside it.  Lexie is the force behind Be Seen Socials and has mastered the art of leading high-performing teams, creating an enviable workplace culture, and scaling operations while managing top-tie...

Ever wondered how to turn LinkedIn into a 7-figure client acquisition engine without relying on huge content teams or ad spend?  In this episode, I sit down with Matt Lakajev, founder of Link Ninja, who walked away from a $280,000 corporate salary at Zoom to build a $3M/year business with just six team members. Having coached over 2,500 clients, Matt unpacks his exact B2B frameworks, includin...

If your headcount is growing but your bottom-line profitability and operational control are slipping, your business design is leaking serious cash.  I In this episode I sit down with Jack Henderson, founder of Henderson Advocacy and one of Australia’s most aggressive operators. Jack went from getting fired from his first buyer’s agency job to scaling a multi-entity brand with over 120 interna...

What happens when a founder stops following the rules… and designs a business around how their brain actually works? Taki Moore, the founder behind Million Dollar Coach (and coach to Dan Martel, Erika Cramer and so much more) built a multi-million dollar business… and then deliberately stripped it RIGHT back.  But not only that…  He got rid of his entire sales team. Taking his business f...

From running two successful marketing businesses to shutting one down and selling the other, Mikhailla Fitzgerald has lived through the parts of leadership most founders don’t talk about. Today I’m sitting down with Mikhailla, Founder of 26 Talent Agency which was acquired and changed to Huume. Mikhailla is getting real on what actually happens when you sell your business, including how decisions...

Is your business bogged down by bloated teams and outdated marketing playbooks? In this episode, I sit down with Finder co-founder Jeremy Cabral to unpack the exact strategies he used to help scale Finder to over $100M in revenue. We also dive into why the next 12 to 18 months will define which businesses win and which fall behind. If you’re a founder looking to break through revenue ceilings, str...

Have you thought about the cost of using AI in your business?  Most founders think it’s going to be a great cost saver for them.  Build the automation, set it up once and replace a wage … but I’ve spoken to hundreds of founders building with AI right now and they are all making the exact same mistakes. In this solo episode I’m going to tell you what they are, what they’re costing you and...

Most founders treat recovery like a luxury or a reward for hard work, but high performance isn't sustainable when you're running on empty.  In this episode, I sit down with Jess Spendlove,  Executive Performance Coach, Accredited Sports Dietitian, author of For The Long Run, and former health advisor to over 30 professional sports teams, Special Forces units, and executive leaders at PWC...

She built a business that's sold 120,000 orders in two years, with the same ADHD brain she once thought was working against her. Tarah Elizabeth Clark is the co-founder of Voomie Supplements, a brand for busy brains. Since launching in May 2024, she's grown her team from 5 to 17, sold out twice in the first two months, and shipped over 120,000 orders. Today, we talk about ADHD, the culture Tarah's...

The year they went full time … they tripled.  In this episode, I sit down with Nakie co-founder Dean Leibbrandt to unpack the team and hiring decisions behind their growth. They went three and a half years without paying themselves, used Airtasker to survive Black Friday, and built a lean remote team around life rather than growth at any cost. Dean also shares the mistakes that cost them hund...

Most founders think the answer to "I need to grow" is to work harder. But Matt Srama learned the opposite. Matt Srama went from wrestling 100 kilo men on an NRL field to running Srama Property, the 2026 Buyers Agency of the Year and when his growth really started? The moment he realised he was the bottleneck.  In this episode, I sit down with Matt to unpack the discipline he carried over from...

Three multimillion-dollar businesses. One very expensive lesson in letting go. Lisa Jones is a best-selling author, keynote speaker and founder of SHE-com, a powerhouse community of 40,000 women backing female founders of product-based businesses. She's built, scaled and exited multiple companies, and she is currently in hypergrowth mode with one goal: a major exit.  In this episode Lisa spills ev...

Most brands don’t survive one trend cycle, let alone 20+ years. But Nikita Sernack has built Nookie through the pre-social media days, the rise of founder-led brands, international stockists, COVID, AND the launch of a second label (Rumer). In this episode, I’m sitting down with Nikita to chat about what actually keeps a brand relevant for that long. From building a cult customer base, to knowing...

Some business owners seem to always know the right person. The person with the answer, the intro, the opportunity, the client, or the advice you didn’t even know you needed. That’s what happens when you stop treating networking like awkward small talk and start building a real network. In this episode, I’m sitting down with Daniel Hakim, CEO of CUB and co-founder of BOA, and Kirsten Scott, co-foun...

Betts have just had a rebrand and chances are, you’ve seen it pop up on your social media. Behind that rebrand is Michael Breckler, the fifth-generation CEO of the 133-year-old Australian footwear brand, who has spent the last few years making some huge calls about where the business needed to go next. In this episode, Michael is sharing with me what really happened behind the scenes - from cuttin...

What does it actually take to build a brand people trust, talk about and buy from before you have a huge team behind you? Steve Chapman is the founder of Hyro, the Australian electrolyte brand growing fast with high-profile investors including Sarah’s Day, Quade Cooper and Daly Cherry-Evans.  Before Hyro, he scaled Shine to more than $60 million in retail sales across 7,000 stores, so he’s not gue...

Build the product. Find the team. Then go to market. That's the playbook everyone follows. Frank Greef did it completely differently when building Kinso AI. After founding Real Hub, merging with his biggest competitor Campaign Track and exiting Real Base with a team of over 400 across multiple countries, Frank came back with one unconventional bet. Forget the product launch. Build the audience fir...

What if using AI in your business gets to be easier than it looks online? Luke Heka has built over 4,000 automations across 250+ businesses through his agency Sellr, and in this episode, he’s breaking down what actually works when it comes to implementing AI inside a real company.  And the best part is that Luke is a huge advocate for keeping it simple so that you can get AI off the ground and run...

Making decisions on gut feel and hoping something sticks? There's a word for that…. It's called guessing. And it could be costing you more than you think. Grace Miller is the Head of Experimentation and Failure at Diary of a CEO and Flight Story, the team behind one of the fastest growing podcasts in the world, scaling from 100,000 to over 16 million subscribers. And none of that happened by accid...

Are you saving AI posts and prompts on IG? Are you using Chat GPT here and there but have no idea what it could look like to actually incorporate it into your business? Or even wondering if you should ditch the team and buy a Mac Mini to build your business with Open Claw? Take a deep breath and listen to this episode. The AI landscape is moving FAST and it can feel very hard to keep up with (and...

If you’re running a business and you don’t have a personal brand, you’re already behind.  But for most founders they’re already time-poor as it is … creating content and starting a personal brand feels difficult, exhausting and like just another thing to add to their to-do list. Today I sit down with Dain Walker who is the founder and CEO of Rivyl, Host of Agency Podcast and Author of The 90 Day B...

Usually you have to choose between scaling and building an epic culture, but TFM Digital is the exception to this.  They were named as one of the best places to work in Australia and landed on the AFR 100 two years in a row.  Today I speak with Taylor Fielding about how he attracts a-players, the biggest mistakes he’s made scaling so quickly and how he’s built a business that allows him to travel...