The Mentor with Mark Bouris

The Australian business community has been starving for resources and support over the past couple of years. In partnership with NRMA Insurance, Survive and Thrive is the first original series from Mentored. Business owners, like yourself, open up to Mark Bouris and put themselves through the wringer to Survive and Thrive as a proprietor.  Rhys Gordon, the owner of Little Tokyo , appears on the fi...

It's not how much weight you carry, and it's the way you carry it. — Lena Horne . Australian Olympic diver Mel Wu has been in the business of professional athleticism since she was 12 years old. She has cultivated a solid mindset to deliver peak performance in and out of the pool.  Like countless businesses across the country, Mel has had to stay focused despite the unpredictability of the pandemi...

Intuition; by definition – it's your immediate understanding of something; there's no need to think it over or get another opinion—you know.  Your intuition arises as a feeling within your body that only you experience.  So, for this week, I want to take you through the five key moments taken from previous guests of The Mentor who followed their gut instinct in business.   The strategies we'll cov...

Good ideas are most apparent when we experience a moment of frustration.  Josh Abulafia and Elle Curran co-founded ChefPrep because they were fed up with the compromises of mainstream read-made meals.  ChefPrep is a two-sided online marketplace where customers can select ready-made meals prepared by restaurants like Butter, Bourke St Bakery and Huxtons.   Mark, Elle and Josh discuss minimising the...

Clayton Larcombe is the Chief investment officer at P.A.C Capital , an independent investment manager and as of current, is taking on two key interests that include esports and innovation funding. Clayton took his corporate skills and become the largest shareholder of eSports betting company, Picklebet .  Esports (the spectator sport of video gaming) is experiencing strong growth (12% annually), w...

Pinot and Picasso is a paint and wine sipping studio, a franchise business buoyed by the success of people desperate to get away from their screens.  Founders Aaron Carrasco and James Crowe are high-school mates turned business partners who set up their first franchise in Sydney's west three years ago. Mark Bouris chats with Aaron and James about assessing and rationalising risk when deciding to t...

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Thank you for tuning in for another year of The Mentor with Mark Bouris!  It's been a big year, but as the saying goes, next year is even bigger.  The Mentored team go a bit rogue, so expect some looseness this episode.  Mark Bouris and the team discuss their favourite Mentor episodes, a peek behind the scenes, Jono's moustache, moving on from 2021 and preparing for 2022. Join the Facebook Group....

When you discover a win-win solution for both the customer and the merchant, you’re sitting on a goldmine.  Mr Yum is a QR code food ordering platform, a dine-in order & pay, pick up or delivery platform for your restaurant. Kim Teo is one of four founders who came up with the idea of Mr Yum and operates as the Chief Executive and is one of the main reasons why the platform exists. Mark and Ki...

Glen James hosts the successful financial podcast – My Millennial Money. After spending ten years as a financial advisor, Glen realised he could share his knowledge on a bigger scale for a millennial market. My Millennial Money is part of this growing wave of young people seeking to understand their finances.  Mark and Glen chat about approaching your finances, adopting and forming a money philoso...

The growth in the payments industry has taken off in the past few years, and there is a buy now pay later for everything.  Refundid is an instant-refunds fintech startup that avoids waiting times for products bought online.   In a funding round led by Afterpay-backed venture capital fund AP Ventures, Refundid raised $3 million in equity and debt funding six months after launching last year.  Four...

'If we're not innovating, and we're not trying out something different, then what's the point?'  The Daily Aus is Australia's leading social media-first news publisher, and it's quickly becoming the most trusted news publisher amongst young people, and traditional media is taking note.   Co-founder Sam sam Koslowski joins Mark Bouris to discuss how the publisher continues to reset the thinking of...

The rise of mindful drinking has taken hold internationally and now Australia is riding the wave with new products such as hard seltzer –alcoholic sparkling. In the space of less than two years, the category has exploded into the Australian retail landscape. Andy Skora and Will Morgan launched independently-owned, FELLR in 2020 and anticipate 500% growth in next FY2022. They saw that the pre-mix c...

As more people rely on ready-made meals, growing your own food is quickly becoming a dying skill.  Sarah Rani picked up a hobby out of necessity after pushing herself to complete burnout from her job in community service. In My Patch went from side hustle to full-time business as her digital community began to grow.  It’s a digital platform for beginners or the “garden morons club” as she affectio...

David Coleman MP is the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. Head to health offers multiple ways of searching for digital mental health resources. If you or you or someone you know needs help, please reach out.  StandBy — Support After Suicide  on 1300 727 247 Lifeline  on 13 11 14 Kids Helpline  on 1800 551 800 MensLine Australia  on 1300 789 978 Suic...

The rise of the passive investor has taken off, particularly amongst young millennials and gen-z who recently found it difficult to enter the stock market.  At least here in Australia, the surge of younger investors into the market has been driven in part by Spaceship and other new entrants offering low fees.   Andrew Moore is the CEO of Spaceship and has overseen the growth of over 200,000 young...

Aimee Stanton lives a stark difference from how she once lived as an adolescent to how she approaches her business life as the co-founder of Tiny Stays today.  Aimee and her brother Ben Stanton decided to launch a tiny home business to help people get off-grid and take a break from their busy lifestyle and go back to nature for a few days.  Tiny Stays found scalability in scaling down.   Aimee and...

"How do we create an ecosystem that's built on trust but also on value exchange as well?" And Paul Weingarth is an Aussie entrepreneur who is the co-founder and CEO of Slyp –came upon the concept after receiving a 50cm receipt with the purchase of a single item.  Paul wants you to ditch the paper receipt for a smart, customer-centric digital receipt and embrace the opportunities that come with it....

When long-term mates Nik Mirkovic and Alex Tomic decided to launch their own business, they had a fairly solid understanding of consumer behaviour and market trends.  Mirkovic and Tomic invested $20,000 dollars of their own money into a teeth whitening company – HiSmile which is now worth over $200 million and continues to be self-funded. Early on into starting HiSmile, the boys quickly identified...

Growing your business online starts and ends with an effective digital marketing strategy and storytelling.  Relying on organic growth is tempting – it doesn’t cost much, but it’s just not going to get you very far. Davie Fogarty is the founder & CEO of Davie Group, a company he founded in 2018 which sells ten consumer brands, including The Oodie, Calming Blankets and Pupnaps.  Learn how to gr...

If you’re a young woman on Instagram, chances are Bangn Body has likely popped up in your feed. The brand’s main product, a yellow-tubed body lotion, has become iconic on social media and has turned over more than 8 million dollars in revenue for the 28-year-old founder, Priscilla Hajiantoni.  Beauty influencers ranging from small, medium and large followings share themselves holding the yellow pr...

If you think NFTs are just an internet fad, then maybe now is the time to take it more seriously.  NFTs – non-fungible tokens – represent unique digital files such as audio, art and video that can't be replaced by something else. One-of-a-kind but in digital form.  Robbie Ferguson, the co-founder of Immutable , a trading solution for NFTs built on ethereum, wants to be at the global forefront of a...

Amanda Williams cut her teeth in politics as a media advisor in federal and state politics. Here, she learnt how to build someones public image and reputation, starting from ground zero. Amanda was dubbed by the media as a “rising star of the federal media team” – not only was Amanda making a name for her MP, but she was also building one for herself.  But one day, after an almost deadly accident,...

Chris Lamont has been the NSW Small Business Commissioner since June 2020. Chris has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. Having grown up in regional Australia, Chris has a solid interest in supporting regional communities.   Mark and Chris discuss how to deal with landlord disputes, confusion around COVID-19 relief payments, and why NSW isn't hearing from the commissioner...

Fred Schebesta is the co-founder of Finder.com.au , one of the largest comparison websites and has recently launched the finder app that combines personal finance management with automated product comparison. Finder is now worth over half a billion dollars – all without funding.  Fred is Australia’s highest-profile advocate of cryptocurrencies and sees Bitcoin replacing fiat currency in five years...