The Australian Small Business Champions Conference invited leading experts to share their business insights at The Star, Sydney, over two speaker- driven days Saturday 21 – Sunday 22, April 2018. The 2018 conference inspired Australian Small Businesses to “Grow, Shape & Plan” their businesses learning from experts who have real experience to share. The conference gave speakers the chance to assist small business owners with specialised advice rather than generic business wisdom.

CEO of Castaway Forecasting Michael Ford, sponsored + MC-ed the conference.

Michael Ford’s focus for the two days was drawn from one of his mantras; “there is always a better way”. Too many times over his career, Michael saw the damaging effects of bad cash flow on businesses and their owners and teams. He now shares his understanding of the power of forecasting as a driving force for positive change and value improvement in business. Michael co-founded Castaway Forecasting, a software tool that makes it easy to build 3-way forecasts that present a clear model of the financial future. Michael summed up the conference learnings: “there’s no one recipe for being successful or falling down in business … but there’s one ingredient that the strongest have: they keep getting up one more time…”

CEO of Breed Australia and former Sydney Kings Coach Bob Turner, spoke to delegates about coaching, managing and leading: “people want to know that you care before they care what you know”. Mr Turner focused on the topics; vision, energy and passion in business. “Breed Australia has been an incubator of small business for almost 20 years.  We have witnessed firsthand the difficulties of starting and maintaining a small business and have joined Precedent to sponsor the Local Business Awards,” Mr Turner said.

Christopher The left the crowd hungry as he focused on ‘taking the watermelon & strawberry cake to the world’. Christopher founded his patisserie, Black Star Pastry in Newtown and spoke about the company’s best practices for success. Black Star Pastry work the old-fashioned way, handmade with love and integrity. They strive to capture the beauty contained in nature and deliver it to each customer with as little tinkering as possible. They want each customer to taste immediacy, freshness and life.

The Australian Small Business Champion Conference occurs every year. We look forward to attending the conference in 2019 and encourage all small businesses to register for the conference and enter the associated Small Business Champions Awards as Steve Loe leaves us with these thoughts: “Small businesses don’t give up. I believed in this conference and I will never give up”.