Regardless, one thing led to another, I started becoming more involved in workshops, which grew into programs. General community support grew into providing advisory services, and from there that really became a bit of a launchpad for me into not only having a few of my own businesses. I was also very much active in building communities, then building ecosystems and providing services that support growing businesses and start-ups directly, which then led me to the activities I’ve been doing in Australia since I’ve been here since 2016. I joined a company called Creative Enterprise Australia when I moved here. Which was a prime innovation hub for innovation in the creative industries which we called creative tech. We would do everything with education, even within curriculum through the Queensland University of Technology to support founders to start, based on an idea they had. We provided incubation services, offices for rent, a coworking space, accelerator programs and investment into those companies. It’s quite a broad set of activities, and it was a big opportunity for me to really develop as a professional program manager and director within this space, and to really continue to develop my community, ecosystem building and business support skills as well.

You are now a Founding Partner at Innovation Architects, tell us a little bit more about this organisation, its purpose and the projects you’ve been involved in? 

The important first thing to say is Innovation Architects are ecosystem builders at heart. We’re all incredibly passionate about this space and bring a very diverse set of experiences and skills to the table. We’ve all been founders, entrepreneurs, investors and innovation facilitators amongst many other things. We truly believe in the force of entrepreneurship to create change, and I guess extrapolating from there, businesses are the vehicles to really materialise some of that change. That’s really what we believe in.

We also know as ecosystem builders that it takes a village to support businesses to grow, to be successful and to therefore create the impact that we are after creating.

We’ve built a business around this which technically focuses on business growth advisory for businesses that consider themselves being in innovation and selling innovative products or models. As Innovation Architects, we provide direct services to those companies, or we’ll work with larger organisations including governments, universities and private organisations to interact with the start-up ecosystem through program work. These entities or organisations are looking to catalyse innovation internally, but also externally looking at innovating or investing in the future of their sector by working together with younger more dynamic and innovative companies. That brings us to the world of running hubs, incubators and accelerator programs amongst other things. 

You’ve worked extensively with this large range of different entrepreneurs at different stages of development, what are some of the biggest opportunities in the ecosystem right now to better support these entrepreneurs in achieving strong outcomes?

Probably two things come to mind initially when you ask this. First of all, within the ecosystem (and defining what the ecosystem is a challenge in itself), let’s at this stage call it the community around businesses that is required to enable the success of those businesses. From my perspective within the ecosystem, we’ve lost touch with what sound business practice looks like. In a way, we’ve focused so much on the innovation side of things that we actually have lots of young companies (and by young I don’t mean necessarily the age of the founders, I mean young, dynamic, agile and innovative companies) that are really good at what they do on that side of the equation and maybe not that experienced or focused on setting up a sound business to start. I think that’s a huge gap, and it’s one where we as Innovation Architects feel we have a role to play. We’ve played in the innovation space for quite a while.

Can we do that? Can we help you do that? Can we provide you the tools to think about that, and can we keep you accountable to take that first step, then the second and then the third? The second thing that I would give as advice is your drive and motivation really needs to be internal. We call this a locus of control, and it’s because we see so many problems around us all the time.

We tend to sometimes victimise ourselves a bit and not take full control of the opportunity to create change within a suboptimal situation.

Really working with the founders directly on how you continuously find the energy within yourself to continue to do this work is really hard. There’s a huge personal element to working with businesses, and it’s all around doing that. There are links obviously to the overall health and wellbeing and therefore productivity and drive of the founder. I guess the last thing we tend to focus on is saying we all know we want to do good, but we also need to think about the fact that we want to do good by doing good business. It links back to business in the broadest sense of the word. Regardless of what structure and business model you have (it can be a variety of different things), but ultimately, it’s the overall health of your business and organisation that is going to enable the impact that you are after.

It’s easy to get stuck in this situation of you constantly having to do good around you, but you also need to find the time to focus on building that good business or entity to get there. This is easier said than done, I do recognise and acknowledge that. But that would be the three things that I would take into any program that I lead.

What practical advice would you give to other founders to help them stay on top of their mental health and burnout?

I’ll start with a story. I’ve definitely had difficult periods in my life for a variety of reasons. I’m hyper aware of where I am at any moment in time from my energy levels to my overall mental wellbeing, which I think is crucial.

Taking the time to reflect on when you’ve experienced hardship and how you went through that allows you to see what were the things that allowed you to take that first step back into a better direction.

Another thing, and this is actually quite recent, is very much around that management of energy, which before I never really thought about so much. But I was in a situation recently where I was working really hard and I still am. I was pushing later and later at night. 11 o’clock became 12 o’clock which became one o’clock. I started realising I always was just continuously tired. I was going to sleep late, getting up early, and back into it. I’m a father as well, my son is about three years old now. What I did is actually try to change that around and say, “I still want to do the same amount of work, but how about I go to sleep early?” I was tired and getting up at 4:30 in the morning to do two hours of work before life even starts. That’s working really well for me right now, but that being said, I put a lot of flexibility in my day as well, because I do want to see my son. I do want to have breakfast with him, and I do want to have dinner with him. I want to be there. It really made me think the fact that you do need to change things from time to time, that you do need to be in control of how you manage your energy and time, and that you can experiment with that. One of the founders at Techstars, another global group I’m quite involved with, always says it’s about work life harmony, as opposed to work life balance. I guess I was never really sure about what that meant.