I’m often asked, ‘What have you learnt by interviewing over 100 of Australia’s top entrepreneurs? Do they have anything in common? And if so, what? Did they all get lucky or did they do something others didn’t?

I’ve learnt a lot from these people about entrepreneurship so I thought I’d dedicate an episode to sharing with you what I have learned from them all.

We’ll cover how to:

• build a culture 
• use language to shape the mindset of a company
• make your own luck – there is a 3-step formulas
• use your weaknesses to create a super power strength
• compete with the big firms even when you’re on a tiny budget
• level the management hierarchy so you are seen as being ‘one of the team’
• start a meeting and break the ice
• write a cultural statement that sets your company up for success – with examples from Swisse Vitamins that saw them win “Best Employer” over multiple years
• give feedback 
• create a content machine that delivers outstanding results 

About Bernadette Schwerdt:

Bernadette is an award-winning Australian entrepreneur, author, speaker and advertising copywriter.  She is the founder of the Australian School of Copywriting, and is the country’s leading copywriting coach. Bernadette’s flagship online courses have helped over 10,000 business owners and freelance writers create cut-through content that places them at the top of their field and on page one of Google. 

She was a former senior account director and copywriter for global advertising agency Young & Rubicam Advertising and created award-winning campaigns for clients such as Apple, Amex, Optus and Colgate. She has a Bachelor of Business in Marketing, is an accredited MBTI and NLP practitioner and has lectured in marketing, consumer psychology and digital marketing at Melbourne University, RMIT, Swinburne and Victoria University.  

She is a popular TEDx speaker, the author of two bestselling books about online entrepreneurship (How to Build an Online Business and Secrets of Online Entrepreneurs) and a ghost-writer of Catch of the Decade, the business biography of the billionaire brothers behind Catch of the Day, Menulog and Scoopon; the ghostwriter for top business coach Kobi Simmat – How to Build a Business Others Want to Buy – and more recently How to Build a Billion Dollar Business for Radek Sali, the former CEO of Swisse Vitamins.  

Prior to her business career, she was a professional actor and appeared in some of Australia’s most iconic shows including Neighbours, The Games, Round the Twist, Winners and Losers and Jack Irish, and worked alongside Margot Robbie, Guy Pearce and many others.  

She was the inaugural in-house mindfulness coach for the Carlton Football Club’s AFL players and coaches and has conducted meditation workshops for Melton Council, Melbourne City Council and others.

She was recently named in the Top 50 Small Business Leaders in Australia.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Bernadette’s Website
• Bernadette on LinkedIn

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

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Lyndal Harris is one of Australia’s top podcasting consultants. She’s launched hundreds of podcasts for a huge range of businesses and she’s here today to share her knowledge about how copywriters and any other small business owner – can start, launch and market their podcast.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How a podcast can build your business
• What a podcast is and how it differs from other audio and video mediums
• Why an audio podcast often trumps a video podcast
• The best duration and publishing schedule for a podcast
• How to invite high-profile guests onto your podcast (even if you don’t have any listeners)
• How to build an audience for your podcast using email and social media
• Why evergreen content of a few episodes can be as powerful as creating ongoing episodes
• The technical elements of launching a podcast – hosting, editing, formats, platforms, software etc.
• How to find the right statistics to measure the success of your podcast
• How to find paid sponsors who can fund the production of your podcast

About Lyndal:

Lyndal Harris is a Podcast Consultant and is passionate about simplifying your podcasting journey and getting your message out to the world.

She is the founder and creative force behind Podcast VA, who have launched hundreds of podcasts for both Australian and international clients, who collectively captivate millions of listeners worldwide. And quite a number of these shows have hit #1 in the charts! 

Lyndal and the team reduce the stress and make your podcasting journey simple by offering a variety of launch and management done-for-support services, online training, as well as coaching and audits.

She started supporting clients with podcasting in 2015 and niched her VA business back in 2016 and was the first Australian VA to provide podcast-only support.  

Mentioned in this episode:

• Lyndal’s Website
• Perfect Podcast Planning Checklist
• Podcast Analytics Tracker Spreadsheet

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

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If you like to learn how to do any of these, then you need to listen to Philip Taffs. He has worked as a Senior Writer and Creative Director in both Melbourne and Manhattan. He’s worked with major players like Menulog and Playstation and helped launch the Honda CR-V & Odyssey into Australia. 

He has taught copywriting at AWARD School, Strategic Communications at LaTrobe University, Public Relations at Deakin University, and Advertising, Media and Social at Swinburne, and his bestselling novel, Bubby, was recently re-released in the U.S. to great acclaim. 

You’ll hear how he did it all and some important lessons on how you can get your foot in the door to launch your copywriting career even if you don’t have any experience.

Here’s what else you’ll learn:

• The connection between copywriting and novel writing
• How to market a novel and find an agent
• Advice for copywriters looking to write a novel
• How he’d market his novel differently if he had the time over again
• How he got his foot in the door of the advertising industry
• How to connect with Creative Directors of leading advertising agencies, even if you don’t know them
• How he launched the Honda CR-V into Australia; the highlights, the low-lights and everything in between
• The importance of being ‘nice’ in business and why it will win you work
• How he landed a job in New York
• How to network and find the right people to speak to
• What advertising life in NY was like and the differences in writing copy for the United States
• How novice copywriters can get noticed and find work even if they don’t have any experience
• What he thinks of AI and how it is being used in copy and branding
• Insights/techniques/formulas/processes he teaches that resonate most with the students

About Philip:

Philip Taffs has worked as a Senior Writer and Creative Director in both Melbourne and Manhattan.  He still has a client out of London and handled recent projects for Menulog and Playstation.

Major brand experience includes Honda (helped launch the Honda CR-V & Odyssey into Australia), Esanda Finance (headed up the account at Publicis Mojo), Australia Post (Joint Creative Director), and Cabrini Health (Creative Director). 

As well as running his own creative consultancy, he has taught copywriting at RMIT and AWARD, Strategic Communications at LaTrobe University, Public Relations at Deakin University, and Advertising, Media and Social at Swinburne.

Philip’s novel, The Evil Inside, was published by Quercus London in 2014.  (Same publishers as Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.)  In February 2024, it was re-released in the U.S. under the new title, Bubby.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Philip on Facebook
• Philip on LinkedIn

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

This podcast is brought to you by Copy Club

He helps the C-suite understand the future of labour, how to maximise AI productivity gains and how to gain a deep technical understanding of what is possible. He is a director at the Institute for Open Systems Technologies and has worked at Google and CSIRO and is a leading voice in how to understand the opportunities that AI offers us today and into the future.

If you’re looking to discover how AI is impacting copywriters and the writing industry, this is the episode you have been waiting for.

You’ll learn how to:

• Take advantage of the opportunities (and understand the threats) in the evolving landscape of AI
• Explore new developments relevant to copywriters, including changes in platforms like Upwork
• Understand, access and create your own Custom GPT to help clients create better copy
• Monetise Custom GPTs for your own purposes
• Examine niche applications of Custom GPTs and understand the relevance of large language models for copywriters
• Compare the emerging competitors to ChatGPT and use the right ones for your needs
• Get the most from models like Anthropic’s Claude Opus
• Use speech recognition programs to write your copy
• Get a job as a copywriter or screenwriter for computer games (and get paid more than ever before)
• Take advantage of the errors that ChatGPT makes when ‘hallucinating’ and turn that into a money-making opportunity (as a fact checker or sub editor)
• Understand the role Chat plays in Search Engine Optimisation (and why Google is in danger of becoming irrelevant).
• Create your own Chat Bot
• Assess how the ‘helpful, harmful or honest’ used my language models skews the results we get

About Greg:
Greg is a lecturer in computational linguistics at Macquarie University, an author of 7 books and an award-winning music composer. His client list is a who’s-who of top businesses, governments and not-for-profits in Australia and around the world. His is also famous for his work preserving and restoring endangered and extinct languages.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Greg on LinkedIn

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

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If so, then this is the episode for you.

Matt Davies is a leading copy editor. He specialises in the health care and government sectors and has created a thriving business that lets him work on his terms so that he has the time and space to pursue his true passion – writing novels. He’s already written three and he is just going from strength to strength.

In this episode, Matt outlines:

• what a copyeditor does
• the differences between copywriting, copyediting, and proofreading 
• the key skills and knowledge required to be a successful copy editor
• how to balance paid work with creative work like writing novels
• how to upskill so you can offer editing as a service 
• how to collaborate with other editors and clients when working on large scale projects like Royal Commissions and government policies
• the challenges and strategies involved in creating accessible documents for individuals with disabilities
• how to stay updated on industry trends and best practices in copywriting, copyediting, and accessibility standards
• how to edit to ensure your work meets web useability guidelines 
• why the Australian Style Guide manual is an essential tool of the trade for editors and how to access it for free
• the future trends and developments in copyediting
• how to write your first chapter to hook those all-important publishers.

About Matt:

Matt Davies has been working full time as a professional writer and editor since 2006. 

Since starting his freelance business, Matt has written or edited hundreds of documents for various government agencies and private-sector clients. His services include copywriting, editing, web accessibility and proofreading. 

Matt has ghostwritten several business books and copyedits university textbooks for medical, pharmacology and nursing students, having managed more than 20 of these book projects over the past 15 years. 

Matt has also written dozens of scripts for health education videos. Topics have included depression, parenting with cancer, family violence, problem gambling and healthy eating for clients such as Beyond Blue, the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre, Peter Mac, the Royal Women’s, the Cancer Council and Nutrition Australia.

Matt also writes fiction. His first novel, This Thing of Darkness (for the young adult market), came out in 2018, followed by two novels for older readers: Things We Bury in 2022 and The Broken Wave in 2023.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Matt’s Website
• Reference – Style Manual 

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

This podcast is brought to you by Copy Club

In today's episode, we explore the riveting tale behind the meteoric rise of Swisse Wellness, as recounted in the new book, “How to Build a Billion-Dollar Business” by Radek Sali, the visionary entrepreneur and former Swisse CEO. I happened to be his co-author on this project so I thought it’d be interesting to have a chat with Radek about the ghost-writing process and to share some hints and tips on how you too can add ghostwriting to your suite of services.

The book details how Radek and his team turned a company that had $15 million in revenue and 30 employees, into a colossal $2.1 billion empire with over 1000 employees. He openly shares the highs and lows of his incredible journey, from teetering on personal bankruptcy, to engaging the world’s top celebrities as ambassadors. The book also covers how he steered Swisse from the brink of collapse and spearheaded the sale of Swisse to the Hong Kong based Biostime, which became one of Australia’s largest ever private business transactions.

In this episode, we look at:

• The benefits of writing a business book
• Why a hard copy book is so much more powerful than a collection of online blogs and articles
• What can people learn from Radek’s business journey and how to apply it to their own business
• How he chose his ghostwriter and what he looked for in a collaborator
• The challenges of writing a book with a collaborator
• How to hold your ghostwriting client accountable and challenge their assumptions
• Tips and hints for how other business leaders can get the most from a ghostwriter
• The connection between copywriting and ghostwriting
• Strategies for advertising and promoting a startup

About Radek:

Radek Sali is the former CEO of Swisse and a brand visionary who revolutionised the vitamin and supplements industry. Under his leadership, Swisse surged from a $15 million company with 30 employees to an astounding $2.1 billion enterprise with 1,000 employees in less than a decade. Swisse became Australia’s largest global wellness company and the number 1 natural health brand in Australia and China. Swisse was awarded Australia’s Best Private Business 2012 and The Best Place to Work in Australia for 2015 and 2016 and in 2012 Radek won GQ Australia’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. Currently, he is the Founder and Chairman of Light Warrior Group, Light Warrior Wellness and Wanderlust Group and is the Founder and Director of Stratosphere, Conscious Investment Management and Anthem.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Radek on LinkedIn

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

This podcast is brought to you by Copy Club

Beyond journalism, Jewel is a sought-after speaker, lecturer at universities and schools, and has led a team that won a Walkley Award and served as a Walkley Awards judge.  

I’m talking to Jewel today about her life as a journalist and how her writing life has changed over the years in response to the changing media landscape, in response to the ways that we consume media, and in response to the way in which the success or otherwise of a story is measured and much more.

If you’d like a masterclass in how to research a topic quickly, and come up with world class content quickly that you know is going to be read by thousands of people, that has the potential to spark Senate enquiries – as her story on people smuggling did – you could take a leaf out of Jewel’s writing life.   

In this episode, I talk to Jewel about how she:

• skills up and becomes an expert on a topic she may know little about
• uses publicly available content to get the facts and figures she needs to write a story
• uses specific templates to write her stories and attract attention 
• crafts headlines that get clicked
• stays updated with the technology and trends in journalism 
• uses AI to fast track her research and transcription process
• chooses her stories and the specific angles that will be of most value to the reader
• stays safe in a world where journalists are not always certain they will be 
• got her start in journalism and the advice she’d give any young writer getting started today
• deals with procrastination 

About Jewel:

Jewel Topsfield is the social affairs editor at The Age. She was formerly the Indonesia correspondent of The Age and Sydney Morning Herald from 2015 to 2018.

In 2016 she won the prestigious $20,000 Lowy Institute Media Award, which recognises journalists who have deepened and enriched the discussion of global issues in Australia.

She led the team that won a Walkley Award for its reportage on claims Australian officials paid people smugglers to return a boat of asylum seekers to Indonesia. This also led to a Senate Inquiry.

Jewel has been a journalist for 16 years with Fairfax Media.

She is regularly invited to give lectures at universities and schools and moderate and speak on panels. In 2019 she was a Walkley Awards judge in the long feature writing category.

Prior to being appointed Indonesia correspondent in 2015, Jewel was the education editor of The Age.

She was also the launch deputy editor of Fairfax's online opinion site in 2009.

Her experience also includes a three-year stint in the Canberra Press Gallery covering federal politics, immigration and education.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Jewel on LinkedIn
• Jewel on Facebook

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

This podcast is brought to you by Copy Club

Amber Renae is many things. She started out as an engineer and then pivoted, seamlessly into becoming a celebrity stylist. It’s a logical next step, isn’t it?  

She quickly realised she has a talent for not just making people look good, but helping their content look good too and so she created a course that helped others monetise their expertise. She is now a leading specialist in helping entrepreneurs and influencers create online courses so they can live their dream life.  

In this episode, we look at how to: 

• Get your online course up and running
• Monetise your knowledge and expertise
• Build a membership community (she has over 150,000 followers)
• Use social media to build your personal brand
• Write a Facebook advertisement 
• Manifest your dream life
• Overcome adversity and turn obstacles into opportunities
• Manage depression and anxiety

About Amber:

Civil Engineer, serial entrepreneur and TV star Amber Renae inspires women to build their Dream Life and Business. 

Not only is she an icon for style, but she’s also an icon for women's empowerment, through her phenomenal entrepreneurial success story, having built three, 6-figure businesses in arguably the toughest Industries, she is passionate about sharing her advice, wisdom, and experiences to her peers and 150,000 strong global community.

Australia’s leading voice in E-Learning; Amber Renae educates thousands of students in all corners of the globe on a range of topics from entrepreneurship, digital marketing, influencer marketing, and the power of personal branding. She’s the star of the hit US reality show Dream Life which documents the creation of her latest e-learning project, and is the author of Dream Life: The Creative Entrepreneurs guide to Amplifying your Online Business and building your Dream Life

Mentioned in this episode:

• Amber on Instagram
• Amber on LinkedIn
• Amber on Facebook
• Amber’s Website

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

This podcast is brought to you by Copy Club

Leanne is a copywriter who has taken a right turn and has reinvented her brand to become a specialist in copy and AI. 

In this podcast Leanne reveals:

• why she changed direction
• why she is excited about the future of copywriting and why all copywriters should be
• how to get the most from AI
• how to talk to clients about using AI
• why being diagnosed with ADHD was a revelatory and positive experience
• how to get PR as a copywriter

About Leanne:

With over 15 years of writing and editorial experience, Leanne Shelton started Write Time Marketing as a freelance copywriter in 2014. The business has since developed into a thriving SEO copywriting agency that predominantly focuses on website copy, article writing, email marketing, and book coaching/editing. It also offers content marketing training on various topics.

In early 2023, Leanne embraced her biggest competitor and became a ChatGPT trainer – running webinars, workshops, one-on-one sessions, and in-house organisational training for teams. The move has seen her receive PR recognition from The Australian and 6PR Perth Radio.

As the result of her quick-thinking business pivot, Leanne is now a sought-after keynote speaker (including DigiMarCon Australia 2023) and a regular contributor to LinkedIn Australia’s Tech Newsletter. 

In November 2023, she also became co-host of ‘The AI Train’ podcast with Tim King.

In addition, Leanne is the founder of the Marketing and Me Meet Up group and host of the ‘The Leanne Shelton Podcast’.

Outside the office, Leanne enjoys dancing, yoga, meditation, running, reading business books and psychological thrillers, listening to inspiring podcasts, and chilling with her hubby and two daughters.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Leanne on LinkedIn
• Leanne on Instagram
• Leanne’s Website

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

This podcast is brought to you by Copy Club

In this podcast we cover:

• How to build your personal brand by finding your writing voice
• How to manage anxiety and overwhelm 
• Why journaling and exercise are critical for managing stress
• The power of solitude to foster creativity
• How to promote a book and use social media to harness the crowd
• What success looks like, why we need to stop comparing and how to celebrate our personal wins
• How to come up with ideas for a newspaper column
• The writing process for fast-paced, quick-turnaround newspaper content
• Why you should never read the comments on your articles

About Kerri:

Kerri Sackville is an Australian author, columnist, and social commentator. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Sunday Times UK, SBS Life, news.com.au, mamamia.com, The Australian Women’s Weekly, and Prevention Magazine. 

A long-time contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Age and Sunday Life magazine, Kerri’s columns are regularly amongst the most widely read across the sites.

Kerri has written five works of non-fiction and contributed to three anthologies. Her latest book is The Secret Life of You: How a bit of alone time can change your life, relationships, and maybe the world (Pantera, 2023).  

Kerri is a regular guest on ABC radio, commercial radio, and podcasts around the country. She lives in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs with her kids and cat. 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Kerri on Instagram
• Kerri on Facebook

Listen to the episode below. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or add the podcast RSS feed manually to your favourite podcast app.

This podcast is brought to you by Copy Club