Current role: CEO, Co-Founder and Executive Director
Current organisation: hipages Group
Last role at PwC: Senior Accountant
Time at PwC: 1996 - 2001
What’s the one career achievement you’re most proud of?
There are many milestones that we have met with hipages Group, but the one I’m most proud of is leading the team to IPO.
What’s been your biggest career challenge and how have you overcome it?
Leading hipages Group to IPO! This is likely another reason behind why it was such a proud moment when we got there. It wasn’t an overnight journey. The biggest challenge for me was the delegation piece. When listing, you need clear leaders who are experts in their field. You need to work together as a strong team and, most importantly, you need to be able to give the public confidence that you can do this well. By putting trust in my senior leadership team, I was able to overcome the demands of what is required from a company to successfully list on the ASX.
What’s the most valuable lesson you learnt during your career at PwC and how has that helped you get to where you are today?
Embrace the hustle: Big goals can be daunting if you don’t build personal stimulation and the opportunity for wins into the process. An empowering competitive spirit is one that enjoys the journey as much as the wins. Business is an unrelenting sport, so to embrace the hustle is to be at one with the curve balls that you have to face and to thrive on solving what needs to be solved.
What was your dream job ‘growing up’ and why?
My dream job was actually to be a business owner. I never really wanted to do a job in the traditional sense of a job. I love the ability to control your own destiny, use your imagination to create something new and different, and actually solve someone else’s problem.
If you could have an hour lunch with anyone - dead or alive - who would it be and why?
I would love to spend an hour with Thomas Edison. I would love to hear his story about inventing something so fundamental that changed people's lives meaningfully. I would like to know his story, how he succeeded against competitors and created a real business from his real-world perspective. I think there would be a lot of lessons that are constant, and would hold true today and into the future.
How are you and your business making a difference for your customers, employees and society?
hipages Group is a collection of technology businesses that are transforming the trade industry, making better lives for everyone.
Personally, I am driven by a passion for technology that liberates others to free up their time for higher-value business activities. This is exactly what hipages Group delivers. Our effortless solutions help tradies streamline and grow their business, and delight their customers.
In regards to our people, we create an inclusive, diverse, collaborative ‘one team’ culture that I am really proud of. We’ve recently won the Pausefest Work Sweet Work Award 2021 and were listed second place in WRK+’s Best Places to Work 2021.
Our success is a reflection of our people living our values, playing to their strengths, and embracing the hustle to get the job done. They truly live our hipages Group DNA to ‘Make it happen’.
What are some of your learnings from the recent IPO process of hipages Group?
- Play to your strengths: Everyone should understand how and where they add value. Playing to your strengths means you can never do it all. It requires surrounding yourself with the best talent and processes to complement whatever your art form is. The end game is always about value creation. Understanding your role, and that of others is a fundamental strategic requirement..
- Business readiness: You have to know your numbers and you must set the right level of expectations.
- Insurance is challenging: A huge part of our journey was securing insurance. It is essential to operate and you have to get it right, but it’s a hard pitch. Bring in the experts to help you and allow plenty of time for applying.
- Be ready for the time commitment and process: It is a rewarding result, but it comes with long hours and sacrifices to family time and spending time with your team. If you’re a CEO and Founder, that can be hard.
- What happens to you as a Founder after listing: I wasn’t quite ready for how my day-to-day would shift. A third of my time is now developing strategy. A third is meeting external parties to deliver on that strategy. Then you have board requirements that you don’t feel when you are a public company.
As the co-founder of hipages Group, what inspired you to create Australia’s largest online tradie marketplace?
The company was born in 2004 following a painful renovation that I was doing in my first home. During this time, I realised very quickly that there had to be an easier way to connect tradies with their customers, and vice versa.
I also had, and will always have, a passion for technology that liberates others to free up their time for higher-value business activities. It was this passion that inspired our founding business, hipages.
Fast forward, and here we are. A collection of technology businesses that are transforming the trade industry, making better lives for everyone. Our effortless solutions help tradies streamline and grow their business and delight their customers.
hipages Group recently acquired a New Zealand-based competitor business and a stake in an Australian property management platform. What’s your vision for the future of hipages Group?
Yes, excitingly, this now makes hipages Group the clear trans-Tasman market leader connecting trusted tradies to homeowners. Jeremy and the Builderscrack team have built a great business around a strong technology platform and an incredibly loyal tradie base.
We will supercharge their growth by leveraging the strategic and operational experience we gained from scaling our business in Australia, as well as helping them to grow their brand to capture the huge market opportunity in New Zealand.
Overall, hipages Group is a data powerhouse so strong that we’ve been able to conceptualise a unique roadmap known as the Tradie Ecosystem, our industry compass. This ecosystem enables our company vision ‘to become the most trusted partner in the tradie industry’.
We’ll continue to follow this to address the huge total addressable market and secure disciplined inorganic growth opportunities which provide access to adjacent markets or sectors while delivering the best product and service for our customers.
