Twenty-one Australian entrepreneurs and business leaders reflect on what they learnt in 2022

There has been no shortage of challenges for businesses in 2022, from the tech downturn and inflation to recruiting in a tight labour market and finding the best way to implement hybrid work arrangements. 

So what have Aussie businesses learnt this year? And how do they plan to apply these lessons to 2023?

SmartCompany Plus asked 21 entrepreneurs and business leaders to weigh in.

Christina Hobbs, co-founder and CEO, Verve Super And Verve Money

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Manage your ego or it’ll manage you! This was an incredibly rough year for the leadership of our business, but it’s also been a transformative time. 

We’ve learnt that to thrive through adversity we need to drop the ego, take off our masks of perfection, and accept ourselves and everything around us complete with faults and imperfections

I began 2022 as a new mum with a three-month-old just stepping back into full-time work. At the same time, my co-founder and our COO discovered her mum had cancer, so she promptly went on leave after holding the fort during my maternity break. In that context, we needed to raise capital, launch a new product, and manage our care and work responsibilities. It was a time of really heightened stress that was bringing out the worst in us.

So my co-founder and I brought on an awesome business coach to help us through it and to help our relationship shift from surviving to thriving. 

I’m now ending the year feeling positive, relaxed and completely in tune with my co-founders. I’ve learnt to drop the ego, be vulnerable with our team, and shine a light on those little parts of me I normally try to hide.

Andy Miller, co-founder and CEO, Heaps Normal

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Sometimes, we’re a little bit naive. First-time founders, in a category that’s new and without strong precedent (at least in Australia) and a team largely recruited from outside our industry. It could very easily have been an impediment to our growth in the last year. Instead, we’ve found an advantage in not knowing everything and embracing a learner mindset. 

It has become a positive force in our business that comes to life in our values: “return the empties” (our internal language for being humble and grateful for the opportunities we’re given as a young company), build each other up and question normal.

Regular self-reflection and journaling have helped us balance our bullish optimism with a clear record of our views on a specific topic and what we anticipate its impact being. This has helped us avoid relying on our future selves to be ruthlessly objective in assessing the accuracy of our own predictions. After all, most of us are so bloody good at post-rationalising our own thoughts and actions, right? 

An early example of this was some of the early conversations we had with our Startmate mentors, who challenged us to think about the kind of company we wanted to be and the impact we thought we could have in a short period of time. Our perspective on these questions changed dramatically in just 12 weeks. The lesson for us is one that has continued to be reinforced for us, particularly through challenging moments in the last 12 months. 

Keeping a record of your thought processes, particularly those that help determine major goals and outcomes, enables the type of reflection over time that builds your decision-making muscle, which ultimately makes you a better leader. If you don’t document your thoughts, you’ll never be wrong. But you’re also less likely to learn.

Katy Stevens, vice president for APAC, Culture Amp

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I have learned that you need to plan at the high level for a lengthy time horizon (three-plus years) to give your people clarity on direction and what’s important, but equally to be ready and willing to adapt thoughtfully as conditions shift. Don’t be wedded to a plan that is made for a world that no longer exists, and keep communicating openly about where plans and priorities need to shift.

What I believe is critical to navigating a rapidly changing environment is your people, and the culture that you intentionally create together. Hire carefully, understand what allows your people to do their best work and act on that, and support them to grow their skills and career. Talented people working in those conditions will make good decisions each day that will help your organisation respond and adapt quickly.

Sarah Agboola, founder and CEO, Mtime

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This year has taught me that there is only so much we can control, and what truly matters is how nimble we can be in our decision making.

It’s been a tough year for anyone in recruitment and it’s been no exception for us at Mtime. Often the challenges we faced weren’t things we could have foreseen or they were things we had no control over. We were able to weather the storms by being as nimble as possible in our decision making with the help of a cashflow model that flexed based on our key business levers.

By the end of the year, my cashflow forecast had become my best friend and I was able to use it to take my team on the decision-making journey with me and flesh out our possible scenarios in easy-to-understand terms.

Even though some of the numbers will ‘feel’ painful (missed targets, delays in growth), I learned to harness the power this gave me in considering what to do next, what to stop doing, where to spend more/less etc. With every new challenge, I could take the data and feel empowered to make choices despite how much instability was around me.

Cam Grant and Chris Grant, founders, Unyoked

Cam (left) and Chris (right). Source: supplied.

Our biggest takeaway is the importance of making sure you’re taking time to switch off and decompress, which, counter-intuitively, we found was most needed at the times when we had to be most switched on.

One interesting thing we learnt (Stress Proof by Mithu Storoni, strongly recommend) was that if you’re at peak stress for long periods of time, your neural pathways can actually change, making you more susceptive to being stressed more easily — ie the more you are stressed, the more likely you are to keep being stressed.

In a year where, like most startups, we went through a (long) fundraising round, had to stay agile and adapt to a frequently changing and uncertain economic environment, and prepare against warnings of continued wild weather, stress was something we experienced in a not small dose. In the second part of the year, we really mixed things up to make sure we were able to do all of this sustainably.

What did that look like? Getting a dose of nature as often as possible (even the park counts). Going for a walk around the block between meetings at least once a day. Doing walking meetings outside whenever able. Keeping up with meditation each morning. Going for a swim whenever we could even if only for a quick dip. Learning more about stress. And, building in time to do nothing for 10 mins a day, just sitting there without phone or book or laptop nearby.

Yep, sounds simple, but many of the most powerful things are!

Sian Murray, creative director and co-founder, Pleasant State

Pleasant State co-founders Sian Murray (L) and Ami Bateman. Source: supplied.

2022 has been a big year of personal growth for me. As we launched Pleasant State in the midst of the pandemic, the COVID-19 landscape was all we had ever known. As things began to return to “normal” we very quickly realised that many of the strategies we had in place in 2021 didn’t have the same results in 2022.

The digital landscape shifted dramatically this year. Privacy updates among many other things had a clear impact on our ROI across a number of our digital platforms, meaning we had to adapt and diversify our channels.

From day one, Pleasant State has focused heavily on brand and authentic relationships with our customers. This carried through in 2022, but the rapidly changing landscape taught us to keep a close eye on consumer trends, ensure we were first movers and identify opportunities to engage in face-to-face communication with customers.

We launched two revolutionary new products in 2022, thanks to the support, patience and pre-orders of more than 2000 customers. This highlighted that now more than ever, building a community of like-minded people around our brand is so important. Organic and engaging content that provides a two-way channel of open and transparent communication with our customers was crucial to our success in 2022.

Above all else, 2022 taught me to never lose sight of my ‘why’, to hold my space confidently and always give myself and the business permission to keep pushing forward. It’s the only way to create meaningful change.

Ben Barlow, managing director, New Edge Microbials

Source: Photo by Mark Jesser.

This year our team has been boosted by specialist skills that our people have brought with them when they made the tree change from the cities to our region, and we are a better organisation for it.

We are investing heavily in people and research and development and we are also expanding our manufacturing capacity to meet the underlying demand for biological agricultural inputs.

Our business has doubled in the last three years and we see that happening again in the next three years, so we are confident that the megatrends requiring softer agriculture will see biological products that are driven by deep science grow much more in coming years than we have seen in the past.

The global biologicals sector is growing at a rapid rate and I’m very pleased that we took the decision to invest heavily in NEM some years ago to capitalise on this exciting trend.

I think 2023 will be another year of strong growth and emerging opportunity in our core business and some strategic imperatives we are considering also look very promising for us.

The world has changed and outperforming enterprises that have high barriers to entry, that are profitable, and are “growing at a clip” have become very attractive assets in the current investment climate. I am very pleased that NEM is one of those enterprises. 

Alice Williams, founder, Ovira

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Ignore the noise.

Startups can be hard enough when things are constantly up and down internally, but add to this the constant changes we saw throughout the year (limited funding, customers spending less, higher costs etc) and it can create a very tough emotional rollercoaster.

It’s easy to default to a mindset and actions based on fear, but switching off from the noise and focusing on moving the company forward paid off. We invested in longer-term projects, continued to grow and innovate, and my team is happier for it.

Alex West, CEO, Swoop

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We need to stop just thinking about how to look after ourselves and actually practice this. And for me, rather than just thinking about my employees’ wellbeing, I want to encourage them to think about it.

Part of this is encouraging the team to be more vulnerable and open to actually speaking about it, letting people know when they need help. So far all of the work we have done on this has been really beneficial, the staff have got a lot out of it. 

Laura Bell Main, founder and CEO, SafeStack

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For many companies that were born or grew in the summer conditions of 2015 onwards, 2022 was the year that many of us experienced our first downturns. Frothy valuations and extreme growth triggered by the preceding pandemic, and the shift to working from home, caused ripples that we will no doubt be feeling for years to come.

Our companies had grown in simple, healthy markets but now need to survive in complex, uncertain times and that has been an adjustment. Between the ongoing pandemic, global conflicts, market uncertainty, mass layoffs overseas and political unrest — there have been a lot of economic factors. Learning to lead in this rapidly changing environment has been hard, especially when balancing running sustainable businesses that can weather the coming cash flow challenges and the increased cybersecurity risk around us.

For many of us, cybersecurity breaches came much closer to home. These events which had been plaguing other markets for years suddenly affected us or our businesses directly. While we had all known that we needed to protect against cyberattacks, cyber threats had remained ephemeral, faceless, nameless challenges that we felt unable to address or could delay until later.

2022 has reinforced that no matter the size of your organisation, cybersecurity is important. While the market conditions we now face together will require us to cut back on spending and change our plans, it has become essential for every organisation to reduce cybersecurity risk. Rather than focusing on heavy financial cybersecurity investment, 2023 will require us to use the people and resources we already have, working together to make our data, systems and people more secure.

Mike Halligan, co-founder, Scratch

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This year I learnt the importance of prioritising my mental health so I can better look after my team. A stressed, overworked manager isn’t able to communicate well or motivate the company to do its best work.

By putting my own mental health first, not only have I improved the day-to-day for my team, but I’ve also been in a better position to support them with anything they’re going through.

Cat Bloxsom and Morgan Collins, founders, Cardigang

Cat Bloxsom (left) and Morgan Collins (right). Source: supplied.

We both come from corporate backgrounds, so we’ve worked in environments where our management style is dictated by the values of a big business and you’re limited by the constructs. We’ve been in our business full-time since March, and it’s been a huge contrast building a business from the ground up that is an extension of our personal values. 

We’ve built a business to work around the lifestyle we want to have, and have extended these ways of working to our employees. Our employees have responded really well to flexible working and autonomy. We’ve developed a high trust culture and we value and practise openness which is reflected in our communication style and sharing of ideas. 

As we provide a lot of freedom in how we work, it’s really important to make sure every individual feels supported and valued. To do this, we check in regularly, make sure we’re giving feedback, recognise good work and make ourselves visible. 

Aaron Bassin, CEO and co-founder, Bridgit

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Good times don’t last forever.

For the first half of 2022, we were in a really good economic environment. Investor funds were flowing, property prices were booming, and it was easy to feel on top of the world from a business point of view. But small changes can lead to a big impact. We’ve got a war going on in Ukraine, additional outbreaks of COVID-19, high global inflation rates, cost of goods have increased, and all this has had a significant impact on the economy and investor appetite.

With the above in mind, 2022 has provided a great lesson to focus on the business fundamentals; it should never be about growth at all costs. When times do get tough, it’s important to make those tough decisions quickly and have a clear vision of your roadmap so that you can keep moving forward, the good times will be back.

Jodie de Vries, managing director, Tiny Hunter

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It is pretty fair to say that the past few years have a been a wild ride. Like many businesses, we went from being five days a week in a studio, to five days a week working remotely, and then last year to somewhere in the messy middle with a hybrid life. Leading a hybrid business is a whole topic for another day but for us, the biggest learning has been around intentionality when it comes to connection and collaboration. 

Whether remote or hybrid, connection and collaboration require more intentional thought. When do we need to connect in real life, for that irreplaceable energy exchange? When do we need to meet virtually, and what tools, frameworks and participants are going to give the optimum outcome? How can we stay connected virtually, but still be productive rather than drowning in notifications? How are we making sure we are checking in with each other to make sure everyone is okay? Being more intentional and reducing ambiguity by really deep diving and defining how we work, means that no matter what we are doing, or where we are, we are happy, connected and performing at our peak.

I’ve always placed huge emphasis on culture and during 2022 we also added a new value — we play, we celebrate — so that we all became more intentional about taking the time to celebrate the wins in real time, and having more fun together. Because we share stories around our values weekly, it has really driven a shift, a shared sense of pride and positivity.

My takeaway from 2022 is to look at everything with a lens of intention — rethink, redesign, reinvigorate.

Zoe Lamont and Frank Coorey, founders, My Chef Healthy Meals

Frank Coorey (left) and Zoe Lamont (right). Source: supplied.

You don’t have to go it alone. Tapping into your network is powerful!

The other day we googled ‘what industry gets hit first in recession’. Manufacturing was on the list and suddenly everything made sense. In less than six months our margins disappeared. With price rises across food, freight, packaging, energy and wages, and the supermarkets locked in six-month pricing, to keep the business running, we needed help. 

Of course, we’ve engaged coaches and consultants, but we’ve also shared transparently with the team and our suppliers about what was happening, and have listened to their ideas. While one of us was hesitant to move into a home delivery model, there was enough enthusiasm from across the team (drivers, meal packers, operations manager) and from our suppliers (local olive farmers, vegetable growers, artisans), that we’re now diversifying from being a 100% wholesale ready meal manufacturer to launching a home delivery model.

So it turns out, the lesson for us was the more people we transparently engage with, the more people that can both contribute and benefit from the revised business strategy. In the coming year, we’re implementing a team bonus structure, as well as home-delivered meal kits to support our regional suppliers. 

Justin Jarrett, founder and owner, See Saw Wine

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My greatest lesson from 2022 has been learning to say “no”. The past two years have seen immense pressure placed on small to medium enterprises. An expectation to pivot and adapt in the face of COVID-19 saw me and the See Saw team saying yes and stepping away from core business.

Saying no, focusing on our core values of sustainability and supporting other small businesses, and doubling down on business goals has resulted in increased profit, and a renewed energy to drive us forward.

Emma Elliott, director, The Little Big Dairy

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This year has taught us that our business grows and thrives when every team member understands their responsibilities and are held accountable through constructive feedback. Conversations are vital as soon as team members don’t uphold their responsibilities. Not only do team members feel valued, they can see their contribution to the company’s success.

Through clear communication among our team we have learned of shortages of milk due to flood-affected communities, found better ways to optimise our nutrition programs, and learned how to improve our use of plastics. When we foster a culture of accountability, responsibility and great communication, everyone wins.

Nick Hudson, CEO, The Push Up Challenge

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Set your team members up for success to work from home. A hybrid work model is the way of the future, but staff need to be supported to get their home office set up in a way that allows them to kick ass no matter where they’re working from. This could mean paying for a second monitor, allocating a budget, or giving them ergonomic tips and an Uber Eats voucher every so often.

Whatever it may be, investing in their working environments both in the office and at home will allow for a more seamless working week and better productivity.