Brendan Green has been running his company for 18 years, and along with these two directors has built GCG into one of the leading independent health, safety, and hygiene companies in Australia and they are not done yet. This growing business is reinventing the way the industry delivers its services through tech enabled innovation. GCG is a great example of what happens when talented people get together and play the long game.

Episode Description: Mark Holloway is a working class guy from Birmingham in England, who is not just football crazy, but is himself a very decent centre-forward. His life changes direction when Sydney Croatia spots him and bring him to Australia to play semi-professional football. At that point, this cryogenics engineer switches to sales and becomes a very effective troubleshooter, nicknamed Mr. EBIT, for his consistent ability to make profit! He then gets to work on building a very...

Episode Description: Mat Stillone started his first business Protein Supplies in his garage! So successful was it, that it eventually took over the whole house. This bold startup initiative, in the ‘better for you food’ sector, followed a period of deep reflection by Mat, who had suffered from anxiety in his late teens and early 20s. Mat felt he needed to express himself and do more of what mattered to him. Since then, he has started three more companies, all of which have become successful....

Episode Description: Straight from the ready fire aim to school of hard knocks, Mick Spencer started his first business at age 22. On-the-go, a sports branded apparel business started literally in his garage and became a multi-million-dollar business challenging the status quo in a traditional market. Just when he thought he cracked it, COVID appeared and put pay to his plans of world domination, rather painfully, Mick had to call in the liquidator. Yet, even after all that he managed to get...

Mike sits down with Kelly Jamieson, the co- founder, and MD of Edible Blooms for a chat about their 18 yearlong success story alongside her sister Abbey. Their online gifting business that delivers delicious bouquets of chocolate, among other things to homes and offices (every 2 minutes) is the #1 gift delivery business in Australia. Points of Interest: When your business partner is your sister 1:30    Country girl at heart-lessons from your mum! 2:40 An online business in 2005! 4:15 Start a...

Episode Description: The Deal Doer's Deal Doer Mike sits down with John Willcox-Jones, founder of Oasis Europe for a chat about all things deal-doing. John has been responsible for literally hundreds of transactions, mainly acting for business owners seeking a successful exit from what is often their life's work. About John: John has worked in industry since 1972 holding management positions in sectors as diverse as building products, retail furnishing and horticultural machinery. During the...

Pat Farmer the Ultra troubleshooter. Our first guest for the new season of the Troubleshooters Podcast is Pat Farmer. Pat is an Australian Legend - famous for his ultra running feats, including running from the North Pole to the South Pole in 2012. Pat is an inspiration and an Ultra Troubleshooter. Leaving school at 14, Pat became a household name as an ultra-marathon runner in the 1990s, setting a number of Australian and world records. He later became the federal member for Macarthur South,...

Episode Description The Troubleshooters Podcast: Season 1 Wrap up! In this episode we have wrapped up Season 1 of the Troubleshooters Podcast with some highlights of each episode. Mikes only goal when he started this podcast was to bring you the insights from everyday heroes who have had a go, genuine business troubleshooters, who've overcome adversities and dealt with whatever life has thrown at them. It’s been his pleasure to interview our guests this season. 12 episodes of genuine...

Episode Description: In this episode Michael speaks to John Florey, CEO of Loving Earth; a bean-to-bar chocolate and functional food business based in Melbourne. In our last podcast, we spoke to Loving Earth’s co-founder, Scott Fry who alluded to an exciting future initiative, well John Florey the CEO joined us to talk more about the opportunity to invest. Listen & discover how you could own your very own chocolate factory-or at least part of one! Watch the following video and if minded,...

This month Michael speaks with founder and co-owner of Loving Earth, Scott Fry. Loving Earth do things a little differently; namely they put the environment first and have a clear vision for supporting the communities that they work with. Scot speaks to Michael about the challenges he has faced building his business from scratch as well as what the future looks like for Loving Earth. It’s a fascinating story that I hope you will enjoy. Scott announces at the end of the episode that he and the...

This month, Michael speaks with entrepreneur Luke “Cookie” Cook. Together Michael and Luke discuss the challenges Luke faced with his previous business, FUNLOCKA, and how the ending of that business put him on to road to helping thousands of others through his new venture Cuppa.tv. Luke speaks candidly about his own mental health and the importance of wellbeing – an important lesson we can all learn.

In this month’s episode of the Troubleshooters Podcast, Michael speaks with Jacinta McCombe, the owner and founder of Nectar Cold Pressed. As a juice brand that was exposed mainly to the food service industry prior to the pandemic, Jacinta’s business was heavily impacted by the shutdowns in early 2020. Instead of succumbing to business challenges of the time, Jacinta and her team worked hard and found a way to survive when many around them couldn’t.

Michael McGrath speaks with co-founders of MerchGirls Pippa Joseph and Hannah Chipkin who Mike describes as the ‘dream team’. Listen to these founders share their inspiring story of how they came together to start their company (from a bedroom), and how they have developed their start-up into the successful merchandising company it is today servicing many large enterprises.

An inspiring episode with Michael McGrath who speaks with Kunal Sawhney, founder of equity research company, Kalkine.

In this month’s episode of the Troubleshooters Podcast I speak with the CEO and founder of B.Okideas, Kietah Martens-Shaw. Kietah shares with us her truly inspiring story of how overcoming cancer inspired her to start her own business. Resilience, passion, determination – Kietah is the epitome of an entrepreneur and troubleshooter.

This month we speak to Richard Skarzynski who is the CEO of Coraggio, a peer advisory board based in Australia. Richard has a fantastic story - the son of immigrants, he was a banker who turned his personal skills and love of music into his first business. The business went on to become one of the most successful construction finance companies in Australia, before the GFC came along and everything changed. Now Richard helps other entrepreneurs and business owners tackle their personal and...

In this episode of the Troubleshooters Podcast we speak to David Astone and Peter Gordon of Design to Production.  These guys are a dream team - Peter is an industrial designer and Dave is the manufacturing and operations guy. Together they have built a wonderful business that has managed to combined cutting edge design with cost efficient production. They have been at the forefront of digital signage solutions and have now moved well beyond signage supplying the likes of Wrigley with next...

In this episode we speak to Stuart Edgley the Managing Director and founder of Emerald Planet. Stuart optimizes the entrepreneurial necessity to hustle and then combines that with the smarts to anticipate and pick opportunities at the right time like nobody else I know, and if that isn’t enough, he works tirelessly to improve our […]

In this episode we speak to Stanislav Roth the CEO of Source Legal. Stan is a disrupter because when he started his business over 10 years ago, he refused to play by established rules. In other words, even though lawyers have been selling us their time for 100 years, his firm do not sell their […]

In this episode we speak to Rob Silver the founder and CEO of Rivium, a data analytics and cyber security business. We explore Robs journey, including his various failures and set-backs – his first real venture of over 10 years failed. Robs tenacity and resilience allowed him to start over and eventually build a successful […]

We aim to put you in touch with real life business lessons that may help you save valuable time rather than trying to figure it all out on your own. Each month Mike McGrath delves deep into the lives and careers of business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders that have spent time in the tough school […]