In Good Company

What if being a high performer isn't actually about doing more? This week, we're taking In Good Company out of the studio and into a live panel conversation hosted with our friends at Hub Australia, where we tackled a big question: is our obsession with doing more, achieving more and constantly being 'on' actually helping us perform at our best? Joining us are Kim Keedle, who's...

Ever wondered what really happens behind the scenes on Shark Tank? Or what happens when a PayPal disaster nearly sinks your business before it's even set sail? This week, we're joined by Chris Tabone, founder of Koda Sail, who's got a few stories to tell. And trust us, they're good ones. From starting out in graphic design to travelling the world, working as a Contiki tour guide an...

This week we’re chatting with Em’s personal trainer, nutritionist, personal hype woman and tech entrepreneur, Sammi Szalinski! After years dedicated to ballet, an injury forced Sammi to take a different path. Now, she’s on a mission to shake up the health and fitness industry with Complete Coach, an AI-powered platform helping coaches spend less time on admin and more time doing what they do best:...

This week, we're joined by sports fandom consultant, IGC member and all-round good human, Tom Meredith! After years working in sports marketing, Tom decided to back himself and go out on his own, launching PLYMKR in December. His mission? Helping agencies, brands and sporting organisations connect with fans in ways that actually mean something. But starting a business is about more than having...

We've spent the last couple of weeks looking back on our first year in business. The wins, the lessons, the pivots (all six of them). But enough reminiscing. It's time to look forward. This week, we're turning our attention to Year Two of In Good Company. We're talking about what we're most excited about, what's changing, and what's next. Think a new platform, a fresh a...

We've had 21 brilliant guests on the podcast, and they've given us far too much good advice to keep to ourselves. So we've pulled the best of it into one episode. We cover taking the leap and backing yourself, the money conversations nobody warns you about, finding the right people, and actually looking after yourself along the way. It's the stuff we wish we'd heard on day one....

It's our birthday! One year ago today the first episode of In Good Company went live, so we're doing something we're famously bad at: stopping to look back. We go from footy-club acquaintances to a 37-day LinkedIn reply to naming a business 24 hours after one coffee (RIP "Sauced"). Then it gets real - the money worry that nearly stopped one of us before we'd even started,...

Christina Zigouras has been a bank teller, an English teacher in Japan, a bookkeeper in her family’s concrete business, a building designer, a TAFE teacher, a board director, and she is now running as an independent candidate in the Victorian state election. She will tell you she simply changed her mind a lot. What she actually did was build a career out of going and learning whatever she did not...

Tom Robertson joined us fresh from Commonwealth Games Australia headquarters in Glasgow, just hours after wrapping up his contract as their social media lead - but his path there has been anything but straightforward. What started with a weekend shooting content at a Melbourne athletics meet quickly turned into a call from Puma, and before long, V1 Studios - with two staff within eight weeks and c...

This week, we sit down with Sionainn Hayes, founder of SHE HR - a boutique HR firm built around a simple philosophy: people matter. Five years into running a business she once swore she’d never start, Sionainn gets refreshingly honest about what she’s learned along the way - from delegating before she felt she could “afford” to, to realising that being great at your job doesn’t automatically make...

This week we're joined by Broden Kelly - actor, comedian, and member of Aunty Donna, the sketch group that turned a YouTube channel with no network behind it into a Netflix series, a production company and their own streaming platform, Grouse House. Broden takes us back to the unpaid years, the two-star review that nearly finished them, and the slow build to a sold-out Netflix deal - plus the...

This week, host Emily sits down with the person she's been wanting on the podcast since day one - her mum, Debbie Hill. Debbie didn't set out to build a business from scratch; she came up through the ranks of her father's gas company, Supagas, starting on the phones and chasing invoices before eventually running the whole thing as CEO. She opens up about proving herself in a male-dominated family...

This week on the podcast, we're joined by Jo Marshall, founder of Culturise and Chair of Gymnastics South Australia, for a conversation about what it really *feels* like to build a career, a business and a life. It starts with elite gymnastics and building a career around workplace culture. But it quickly becomes a conversation about the stories we tell ourselves. Jo reflects on leaving the Au...

This week on the podcast, we sit down with Stephen Deeble, founder of Adelaide production house Visualism, who stumbled into a TV newsroom job at seventeen (his school's ultimatum, not his idea) and has spent twenty-five-plus years since chasing the same feeling: kid in a toy shop, not a job. Steve gets honest about the moment he realised a nine-to-five, even a fun one with agency perks, wasn&...

This week we're talking to Ashlea Caygill, a graphic designer turned in-house AFL photographer turned now-freelance music and festival photographer who's about to jump on a plane for European festival season. Ashlea walks us through leaving a secure job at Richmond during Covid, the terrifying stretch between quitting and actually knowing the money would come in, and the studio shoot that...

Steve Tabone hypes up 70,000 people at the footy for a living — and he told us sitting across from two people with a microphone was scarier. That's the whole vibe of this one. Steve built Active Beats from the ground up, scaled it with a team of subcontractors so his business doesn't fall over every time he says no to a gig, and somehow still makes it home for tennis with his kids most nig...

aura Pitt spent years chasing a version of success that looked good from the outside — the titles, the hours, the hustle — before realising it wasn't actually making her happy. An In Good Company member who's worn more hats than most (educator, counsellor, kids' yoga teacher, and yes, a part-time fairy), Laura gets honest about the moment she finally walked away from the safe path, the...

Three kids under five, a full-time footy job, and a startup on the side. Former Hawks premiership player Matt Spangher joins us fresh off welcoming baby number three to talk about Pocket Mentor - an app born from the very unglamorous realisation that busy people don't have time to find real mentors.  We get into the actual mess of building something new: an accelerator that oversold itself, a...

This week on the In Good Company podcast we're talking business with Maddie Edwards — content creator, skin-positivity advocate, and the sole trader running her own one-woman content empire. We get into what actually goes into building "content creation" as a real business: the $100-a-week budget she saved before anyone paid her a cent, the unglamourous sides of being an influencer,...

Paddy Quay left Collingwood Football Club with a camera, a good eye for opportunity, and what he calls "a little ego" — and somehow turned that into one of the most interesting content businesses in Australian sport. In this ep we get into the exact moment Paddy saw the gap (spoiler: it involved an athlete getting paid thousands for a brand deal he couldn't execute himself), the chao...

Nick Maxwell captained Collingwood to a premiership. He also had no idea he was a leader until his teammates sat him down and told him.  We talk about what it actually takes to lead when the structure disappears, why the "I'll just do it myself" habit is the quiet killer of growth, and the one piece of advice that changed how Nick makes decisions under pressure. He's honest about...

Sally Capp has had one of those careers that makes you feel exhausted and inspired at the same time. From lawyer to venture capital founder, to the first directly elected female Lord Mayor of Melbourne (through a pandemic, no less), to startup investor - she's done it all with what she calls a "have a go" attitude. In this interview, we get into the stuff nobody puts in their bio: th...

We're back. And honestly? A lot has been happening. Em and Karina pull up a seat and catch you up on everything - the burnout they didn't see coming, the financial reckoning one of them had to sit with, and the very humbling realisation that they'd built the hamster wheel they were running on. This one's real, a little chaotic, and very self-employed. Exactly what we're here fo...

In Part 2, we shift from structure to strategy — unpacking how the AFL actually operates as a commercial beast. Using Gather Round as our lens, we break down how the league creates value across multiple layers — from corporate hospitality and partner opportunities, to tourism outcomes for host states and incremental revenue streams for clubs. But it’s not just about the dollars. We also explore th...

You can take the girls out of the AFL… but you can’t take the AFL out of the girls. With both Em & Karina having worked in the industry, we’re heading back to our roots to unpack all things AFL - but through a business lens. Coming to your ears from South Australia in the lead-up to Gather Round, this is Part 1 of a 2-part series diving into the  business  of the AFL. In this episode, we break...