WA Business Icon Changed My Life

It’s always best to start at the beginning…

As an entrepre-amateur I often wonder how does anyone become an entrepreneur? Starting your own business is not really a career path that is pushed by schools, unis or parents. Entrepreneur is not in any job guide or on any career site. You cannot take entrepreneur 101 at uni or TAFE – in fact these institutions make you ready to move into already established organisations, not teach you how to start your own.

When I tell people that I am starting my own business, I am met with expressions of surprise. So what qualifications do you need to become an entrepreneur? You need an idea, a concept that is unique and sellable. You need to find a hole in a market and then have the determination and drive to develop a product or service that fills that hole. This combination of creativity, business savvy and determination to see it through is rarely found in one person – yet it is the key to entrepreneurial success.

I have always had the determination and drive, I would learn the business savvy along the way, and about 6 months ago I was challenged to come up with an idea – and this is how:

As you look back on your life, there are a number of defining moments – choices that you made that have resulted in you ending up where you are today. Sometimes you know that they are big choices – you spend time and effort researching and agonising over them, other times they are a snap decision that results in something extraordinary – the beginning of an adventure.

My snap decision was to fill in an application for the WA Business Icon 2009 competition. A very wise tutor at my uni had told me about the competition a few weeks before and I thought this would be a great thing to put on my resume to give me an edge when moving into industry. The competition as I knew it was a WA version of ‘The Apprentice’ in which contestants competed on tasks and got eliminated after each round. There were a number of industry leaders that were involved in the competition including Rick Hart and Richard Goyder (CEO Wesfarmers) and all contestants were invited to attend networking events in which many prominent WA business leaders were available to network with. I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to make some contacts in industry for when I graduated in 2010 so I was hanging out by the phone hoping that I would get the chance to have an interview.

I was called a few days later and asked to attend an interview at the AELC offices in Midland and a week later received a phone call asking me to be one of the 32 contestants in 2009.

Getting results on the phone during an early round of the WA Business Icon competition at CCI

On day 1 of the competition, 31 other contestants and I turned up at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Western Australia. We were excited, nervous and keen to start the roller coaster ride called Business Icon 2009.

Over the next week, we were trialled and tested in a number of real life business scenarios. In one week, my team members and I created a viral marketing campaign for a new business, raised over $2,000 for two wonderful not-for profit organisations and created a climate change program for the City of Swan. These were current business challenges that many of our young minds had not even considered before – you should have seen the energy and creativity that arose from a group of intelligent young people that put their fresh point of view to a modern day issue.  After each challenge, one group won which meant that all participants went through to the next round, and from the other groups, people were judged on their individual input. Individual input was judged by the moderators who were our ‘flys on the wall’ – they followed us around and recorded the input and activities of all team members.

It was interesting to have a group of people in a room, all of whom were used to being leaders, trying to reach a common goal. I imagine it is a small scale version of world leader meetings when everyone, although with a common goal – such as climate change, is also trying to fight for their own interests – that of their country. If anything is ever going to get done, you are forced to compromise, to give and to take, to push in your areas of strength and to let others push in your areas of weakness. For future competitors here is a bit of hindsite advice: you have a better chance of getting through the rounds if you have a cohesive team that works productively.

Wearing Angel Wings, fundraising during the competition with other competitors

On the Friday night, after our climate change challenge which was done in a group of three, we attended a networking event. For any future contestants – this night and the final dinner is the real prize. Whether you were eliminated in the first round or survive through to the final four, you are still invited to attend both events. Make sure you do some research, know who is there and who you want to talk to and make the most of this amazing opportunity to mingle with some of your state’s biggest business leaders and HR managers.

At the networking event we got to mingle with the judges and people from industry in a social environment. You could feel the nervous energy in the air because it was during the networking event that they announced the final four. By the end of the week, after pushing through 15, 16 hour days, I remember feeling absolutely exhausted. Finally, the judges had made their decision and Rick Hart, the gentle giant, whipped out his bit of paper to put us out of our misery.  This was a big cut – down from 12 to 4.

You could cut the tension with a knife as Rick called out the finalists. I could hardly believe it when my name was called! As the news sunk in the adrenaline starting pumping and I felt ready to tackle our final challenge.

Our final challenge was to create a product or service for the new ‘tween’ market which includes 8 – 12 year olds. They are a difficult target market in that they want to be seen as being older and more sophisticated, but in reality they are still children – so the challenge is finding a product that appeals to the ‘wanna-be’ grownup tween and the parents who see their kids for the age they are. This product or service also had to be ethically and morally sound which was a challenge in a target market that wants to be grown up and is being pitched products such as push-up bras and facials.

We had to come up with our product or service, create a business plan and pitch the idea to our 8 judges who were acting as venture capitalists – oh, and in front of a 300 strong audience. Piece of cake! Not! We were given the outline on Friday night and had to pitch it at 12pm on Monday – essentially we had 48 hours to come up with a concept and an entire business plan.  The pitch had to go for 5 minutes, followed by 8 minutes of questions from 8 prominent judges.

As a student, I never contemplated how many decisions and areas need to be considered when starting a business. Start with the concept – that you think is fairly simple – and then think about management, human resources, marketing, finance, target market, insurance, business models and the list goes on and on. We had to consider all these areas in 48 hours and try to plug the holes in our concept so that we didn’t fall apart in our 8 minutes of question time.

My concept was an active program for tweens that involved some young fit healthy rolemodels coming in to teach movement to music choreographed classes.

On the day, I have never been so nervous. My heart was jumping out of my chest. I was as prepared as you could be for 48 hours, I had finished my presentation at 8pm the night before, spent a few hours rehearsing, got a really good night’s sleep, got up early and continued rehearsing until it was time to go. When we got to the event, names were drawn out of a hat to determine the order we would go in. I was up first. In hindsite, this was probably a good position to be in – I was able to get it out of the way, I was the first up so I had the audience’s attention and I was able to watch all the contestants after my presentation.

I felt like my presentation went well! After feeling a bit shaky at the beginning I found my feet and cruised through the presentation that I had rehearsed over and over. Then came the tricky bit, the 8 minutes of unprepared questions.  Again, the first question was a bit shaky, but I just slowed down and thought about all the research I had done. The rest of the questions were like a blur, I could hardly remember a word I had said up on stage, but as I sat down, I felt happy and confident and so proud that I had gotten up there in front of all those people and held my own.

With judges, including Richard Goyder and Ric Hart, at the final of WA Business Icon 2009

By the end of the presentations, It didn’t matter to me if I had won the competition, I was so happy with how far I had come, but as it turned out, I did win – and it felt amazing to have all my hard work recognised. I remember thinking that Business Icon was the most amazing experience and it had come to an end. Little did I know it was only the beginning!

Since the competition I have had an amazing few months. I wake up every morning and I pinch myself because I can’t believe the kind of opportunities that are presenting themselves to me. I have received emails from many wonderful, interesting people congratulating me on my achievement. Every time my phone rings with an unknown number, I hold my breath because I don’t know who is going to be on the other end of that line. I have been in the paper and I was a guest speaker at the Melbourne Business Icon final event.  I have attended a number of networking events and met some amazing people.

But the most amazing thing to come out of the competition is a new path – An opportunity to make my idea a reality – an opportunity to start GymBtween.  This was an opportunity too good to pass up. I am now being incubated out of the AELC offices and have access to an amazing office full of business resources in both books and friends. I have a number of different mentors who are there to advise me in a number of different areas – finance, IT, franchising, you name it. I have an amazing, successful, business savvy woman who gives up her very valuable time to listen to me, teach me and give me more and more things to think about. I have an amazing support network of family and friends. Without these things – this journey would be a much harder and lonelier road. So with this blog I hope to share them. I hope to be a guide for those who are taking the same journey –  share my experiences, learn from my mistakes and don’t be afraid to break the mould and take on your own adventure.

Video of my GymBtween presentation at the 2009 WA Business Icon Final.