Business Leaders Share Valuable insights about Business Success

I had the pleasure of being invited to attend the NAB Connected women’s forum today to hear 4 inspirational panellists (Naomi Simson from Red Balloon, Janine Allis from Boost Juice, Nicole Newman from The Food Purveyor and the Hon. Kelly O’Dwyer, Parliamentary Secretary to the Federal Treasurer on the Government’s Support and Advocacy for Small Businesses in 2015) share their wisdom about life and business, which was expertly facilitated by David Gall, Group Chief Risk Officer at NAB.

One of the overarching themes was a reminder to the audience that regardless of what stage you are at in growing your business or your career, the human traits that can derail a person on their journey aren’t unique to those who are struggling or yet to achieve their dreams. The difference is what we choose to make the struggle mean to us and whether or not we allow this to stop us trying.

I wanted to share some of the highlights from today:

‘Hope is not a strategy’ Naomi Simson

Naomi Simson shared some of her early challenges stating ‘hope is not a strategy’, action is required however action with vision is critical to moving successfully forward. I loved her story of walking through Martin Place in Sydney in her early days having tied red balloons to her briefcase with the URL of her website in the hope that someone would see it and go to her website.  Given her extraordinary success it’s stating the obvious that she moved on from this as a strategy to more productive approaches.   The humanness of this provided a gift to the audience by reminding us that it’s easy to forget the journey that takes one to extraordinary success. This is another great story of a person who has achieved extraordinary success through determination, courage and strength. Qualities we all possess. We get to choose if we step into our courage or away from it.

‘When choosing a mentor also look to mentors who have different viewpoints to you to help you gain perspective’ - Kelly O’Dwyer

The benefits of a great mentor that you can trust is well known, the invitation from Kelly to also look to a mentor who you may not naturally gravitate to is sage advice.   This helps to stimulate new thinking, explore different perspectives and to gain insight into your blind spots.  

Nicole Newman very powerfully connected the impact that businesses have when they purchase services from their suppliers. In particular the smaller suppliers, reminding us about the connection of where the products we consume come from and the positive ripple effect on communities and families. It was incredibly valuable to have Nicole’s input as a newer business that has seen significant growth in the past few years and the challenges that rapid growth has and how to manage this.

 When Janine Allis was asked what advice she would give to her younger self she said none, talking about the value of naivety and how knowing the pitfalls may have stopped her from achieving success.

 Valuable insights from amazing business leaders that we can take on board and learn from.