1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?

Managing channel growth while managing the migration of the business model to online.

2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?

In 1981 I attracted investors and opened a large gym in Sydney CBD. Have opened 9 in total. In 2002 transitioned to becoming a franchisor.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

In bed by 8:30 and awake by 4:30 for reading and exercise. At my home office desk around 8:00 and typically finish around 5:30. Plenty of Zooms. Primary task includes strategy, marketing and content creation. No commute!

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

It's hard to achieve any objective unless you have a competitive offer strategy for your target markets (both B2B and B2C). Then it's about execution. I tell all our small team and all our business parters that (like them) I failed one subject at school - mind reading! Therefore we seek to over communicate (both live and recorded). We embrace the scalability that tech offers. (Ooops. That's 3!)

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. We used to procrastinate on so many goals and projects as we kept asking "how" instead of "who". Slowly we are delegating, outsourcing and automating so many tasks. This way we can adapt and execute better and faster.

6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?

Start with an org chart with 4 basic functions (marketing, sales, fulfilment and finance). Give each function clear KPIs that are in alignment with shareholder KPIs and have measurement and reporting processes on those numbers. Then have training systems to train people to achieve those numbers, so you can have other people manage these functions, not you. Eventually you want to train someone as general manager, so your name is not in any box except shareholder. Leadership capacity happens when you've built effective team capacity. You need to be constantly recruiting and constantly training.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?

We had a culture problem when our area sales manager became the neck of the business and we did not feel welcome in our own stores. The person was doing a great job but the culture did not feel right. Without cause, at great risk, we painfully terminated them, but with the positive intention that we'd bump into them one day and they'd say "It was the best thing that happened to me." Three decades later we've done loads of business with his company and even collaborated on a Youtube project this very week. We're great friends.