Paul Breen

Paul has owned and operated companies for the past 15 years. He has enjoyed extraordinary successes tempered by some disappointments. It is the combination of these unique experiences which provides him with a real world perspective and a deep understanding of the factors that contribute to business prosperity.

Paul’s approach is at once entrepreneurial and rigorous. He doesn’t sit in an ivory tower. He takes companies that are fundamentally tactical and turns them into formidable strategic enterprises that are best in class. He does this by approaching matters in a black and white way – this removes noise and allows the core problems to be dealt with and the improvement process begun rapidly. The result of this is a precise actionable plan that fits within the business culture and provides a road map to make it happen.

Paul has been involved with companies of all sizes, some well-known and some not. These include privately owned businesses, corporations and private equity firms. In the last five years he has held board directorships in six private companies across four countries. He is currently the chairman of the international advisory board for a specialty retail group that operates in five countries.

Paul is the originator of “pop-up” retailing in Australia/New Zealand and is perhaps best known for founding, growing and selling the seasonal retail chain, Calendar Club, which operates 170 stores each year. This venture commenced in 1996 with less than $200,000 of invested capital and within seven years was worth in excess of $10,000,000. He co-founded an investment and advisory business focused on small-medium sized enterprises with sales of $2m-50m. He was a co-owner of a 25 store supermarket chain. He was a co-owner of, and mentor to the founding CEO, of an electronic payments business which grew from start-up to $400,000,000 in annual sales and was sold to a listed US company.

Paul currently has interests in two emerging entrepreneurial companies and is an active Director for 6.2.

Paul is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Melbourne Angels Investment Group.

About 6.2

Created in 2009, 6.2 is an innovation and strategic consultancy based in Sydney in Melbourne. A cloud based enterprise with staff and collaborators in Sydney, Melbourne, New York, London and Berlin, the company does not believe in category specialization. They do believe in really big, really fast, really doable innovation.

6.2 frame big ideas into a strategic vision that can be unleashed across a businesses existing capabilities and bring it to life with exciting, tangible, consumer ready ideas.

They spend most of their time solving complex problems uncovering dormant ideas/ plans and making ideas happen. Director, Ben Rennie believes in a human centered, disciplined approach to helping companies grow. From creating new services, new businesses, new markets, new products to internal ThinkTanks, 6.2 aims to reshape company cultures, shift thinking, shift markets, shift performance and grow.

"we help businesses create internal cultures required to sustain innovation", Ben Rennie.

Website: www.sixpointtwo.net  

Ben Rennie

Ben started his first company at the age of 21 and by the age of 25, Ben was appointment the Managing Director for Boxfresh Asia Pacific working closely with the CEO in London to write the business plan, recruit the management team, and localize the platform for a successful independent business in Australia and the South Pacific.

Having experienced early success, Ben also had early failures however recovered with a start-up in 2005. Responsible for leading the marketing and business development teams, raising venture capital and national and export expansion through joint ventures and acquisitions to 4 nations. In 2006, he led the sale of the business to an overseas organization.

Following, Ben accepted a role as an executive at Luxottica, the worlds largest eyewear group and licensor for Prada, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana and owner of Ray- Ban, Oakley, Sunglass Hut, OPSM and Arnette. Managing the commercial strategy for sales and marketing throughout Asia Pacific. Ben sat on the Senior Management team and worked closely with the CEO’s strategic team of 6 across the Luxottica retail group. As the Asia Pacific representative for the steering committee during the Luxottica acquisition of Oakley, Ben worked with Oakley South Pacific on integrating the newly formed alignment between the groups running the first Oakley/ Luxottica conference for Asia Pacific.

In 2008, Ben spent 12 months in Melbourne working closely with the CEO of an eyewear group as GM establishing the export model setting up distribution partners in New York, London, Japan and Hong Kong along with stabilizing the local business sales and marketing strategies including a detailed rebuild of the Senior Management and Executive teams.

Ben spent from 1995 -2001 as a full time Ski & Snowboard Instructor in Canada, USA and Australia and worked for Good Morning Canada “The Morning Show” as a Snowboard Reporter providing snowboarding tips for the breakfast show in 1999. Ben has been actively involved with the Elan Ski Company for more than a decade.

Ben is currently the Managing Director for 6.2, founder of uncluttered white spaces and the popular IF Talks Series.

Ben is a father of 3, Mia (6), Kai (3) and Pip (new) and surfs and skates socially.

About 6.2

Created in 2009, 6.2 is an innovation and strategic consultancy based in Sydney in Melbourne. A cloud based enterprise with staff and collaborators in Sydney, Melbourne, New York, London and Berlin, the company does not believe in category specialization. They do believe in really big, really fast, really doable innovation.

6.2 frame big ideas into a strategic vision that can be unleashed across a businesses existing capabilities and bring it to life with exciting, tangible, consumer ready ideas.

They spend most of their time solving complex problems uncovering dormant ideas/ plans and making ideas happen. Director, Ben Rennie believes in a human centered, disciplined approach to helping companies grow. From creating new services, new businesses, new markets, new products to internal ThinkTanks, 6.2 aims to reshape company cultures, shift thinking, shift markets, shift performance and grow.

"we help businesses create internal cultures required to sustain innovation", Ben Rennie.

Website: www.sixpointtwo.net  

Peter Switzer

Peter Switzer is one of Australia’s leading business and financial commentators, launching his own business 20 years ago. The Switzer Group has since grown over three successful companies spanning media and publishing, financial services and business coaching.

Peter is an award-winning broadcaster, twice runner up for the Best Current Affairs Commentator award for radio, behind broadcaster Alan Jones. A former lecturer in economics at the University of NSW, Peter is currently:

Want to know what the future holds for your business?

The future revealed: Patrick Dixon

Thinkers50 rank Patrick Dixon as one of the world’s top 20 most influential business thinkers today. He’s the author of Futurewise and Building a Better Business. He’s a successful entrepreneur, independent trend-watcher, media guru and web broadcaster.

And he wants to talk to you about what the future holds for your business.

What will the main issues affecting your success be in the next few years? The economy? Technology? What?

Patrick Dixon knows. He believes you need to take hold of the future before it takes hold of you. And he will be talking soon about how to do just that; and about what the future holds for real estate businesses like yours. You’ll even have the chance to talk to him personally about the issues that particularly affect you.

Is this an opportunity you can afford to miss?

Want to know the secrets of business growth?

The ‘Growth Guy’ tells all: Verne Harnish

He’s universally known as the ‘Growth Guy’. He’s a world-renowned entrepreneurial business and leadership expert. Author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. And Fortune Small Business magazine ranked him one of the world’s “Top 10 Minds in Small Business”.

With global business battling recession and your competitors battling you for every single business opportunity, Verne Harnish is someone you need on your side.

What do you need to do to sustain long-term growth and profitability? How do you stop the competition from doing the same? Verne has the answers, and wants to help you define your market position – and work out where you want to go next.

You’ll then be able to talk one-to-one with him and glean some hard-won nuggets of business wisdom that you can apply to your situation.

Can you really afford not to?

Want to find and keep great staff – and increase productivity?

Making the most of your people: Bradley Brown

He’s a director and CEO of one of Australia’s leading and award-winning real estate companies, The Fletchers Group. He’s a consultant to many top Australian and New Zealand businesses. And Bradley Brown has developed an innovative human resources model – RIRO, Recruitment-Induction-Retention-Outplacement – which addresses the key issues every company faces of finding great staff… and then keeping them.

This is your chance to learn how RIRO works and to ask its creator one-to-one about how it might relate to – and improve – your own business.

Retaining good people is directly linked to doing good business, so don’t miss this chance to listen and talk to one of Australasia’s leading human resource experts.

Want to understand how you can use social media as a highly effective leadership tool?

The 'Digital Strategist' spills all his data: Nic Lucas

As a medical researcher, entrepreneur, publisher, and speaker, Nic Lucas has crossed the boundaries between business, academia, and marketing. Effectively using 'Social Media' before it was called 'Social Media', Nic has a refreshingly straightforward and strategic approach to the use of social technologies in business.

Nic can show you how social media has made it easier than ever before to lead your organisation, develop new networks and nurture existing relationships.

Facebook has over 600 Million users, and LinkedIn now has over 100 Million users. But what does this mean for you on a daily basis? How can you grow your customer or fan base? How can you win more business? How can social media help your brand? How can you retain and recruit staff?

Smart leaders use social media to leverage the exact traits and behaviours that characterise effective leadership. By being focussed on both outcomes and people, smart social media enables leaders like you to powerfully influence, engage and inspire.

And it's not just theory. Nic will show you some practical steps that you can use to implement a social media leadership strategy starting immediately.

Nic Lucas is using social media to develop international businesses. Have you thought about how your organisation can benefit from social media?

Watch Nic here

Fiona Blayney

Fiona Blayney is the Managing Director of the highly successful consultancy, coaching and training business Blayney Potential Plus, specialising in estate agency services in Australia, New Zealand, the U.K and the U.S. Over the past eight years she has developed a reputation for being one of the best business strategy and growth specialists around.

Fiona’s energetic and motivational presence has ensured her popularity at industry events. She regularly performs keynote presentations for many of the leading industry groups both in Australia and abroad including, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) in the U.S and the National Association of Estate Agents, England and Scotland.

She is the author of two books, “Property Management Bootcamp – How to create a Healthy Business” and Property Management Bootcamp – Real Solutions Real Results”, Fiona has developed four top selling Professional Development products, “Communication Concepts” , “Growing Inside Out”, “Fiona Blayney’s Property Management Essentials” and “Ten Top Agents Million Dollar ideas” and she also hosts the DVD programme “REAL”.

Demand for Fiona’s services continues to grow with a natural association to Strategic Human Resource Development and extensive studies in this field, it was a natural progression for Fiona to launch Real Estate Career Developers Australia (RECD).

Due to strong demand from her clients, she recently joined forces with McGrath and the Team at Total Real Estate Training to relaunch the Australasian Residential Property Management Conference.

Fiona and the team at Blayney Potential Plus have a motto: “Believe and Achieve”. They will work with you to turn your business goals into a reality.

Dr Fred Grosse

Dr Fred Grosse could fairly be called one of the “Uncles” of AREC.

In 1995, at a breakfast he hosted in San Francisco for his top USA realtor clients, he paid attention to John McGrath’s comment “how wonderful it’d be to bring a bunch of these amazing people to Australia”. In May 1996, Dr Fred, Bob Wolff and other top ranking realtor colleagues from the USA, joined John at the ANA Hotel in Sydney to “make it happen”.

Since then, life has not been the same for real estate people in Australasia. Dr Fred has continued to work with the top people in the real estate and related industries sharing his wisdom and helping many to achieve their dream of incredible business success and a rich, fulfilling personal life.

Dr Grosse states that most realtors in this part of the world know what they need to do to be outstanding in their profession and create customers for life. He estimates that perhaps 2% actually follow through and “do” what they know, and many of these have/are/will be worked/working with him. His role, as coach and mentor, is to help entrepreneurs to identify the mooring lines holding them back from action and abundance, release them and move on to the top of their profession. He introduced the concept of “dollar-productive behaviour” to this part of the world and has played a major role in lifting the standards and values of the real estate industry in Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

With a doctorate in Clinical Psychology, Dr Grosse has a remarkable ability to not only identify where the issues are, but also to empower individuals to make the habit changes necessary to achieve their goals. Be prepared for a challenge.

Liz Wiseman is the President of The Wiseman Group,
a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley.

At The Wiseman Group, she advises senior executives and leads strategy and leadership forums for executive teams worldwide. Her recent clients include: Apple, Salesforce.com, GAP, Inc., Symantec, SAP and Microsoft.

She has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and is the author of the bestselling book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (Harper Business June 2010) and has published Bringing out the Best in Your People in the May 2010 edition of Harvard Business Review.

A former executive at Oracle Corporation, Liz worked in various executive roles in the Education and HR organizations during her 17 years there. Most recently, she worked as the Vice President of Global Products and Services for Oracle’s $400 million education business, where she led product management, marketing, pricing, eLearning, and internal training globally. Prior to this, she worked as Vice President of Oracle’s Human Resource Development organization, working closely with Oracle’s top management team to build the corporate strategic intent and to develop leadership at all levels of the organization. Liz was the Director of Oracle University, starting and leading Oracle University from a small new-hire training department to a full corporate university with global scope.

She has led significant globalization initiatives and has worked and taught extensively internationally. Liz holds a Bachelors degree in Business Management and a Masters of Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University. Liz lives in Menlo Park, California with her husband and 4 children.

Dean Mackie
MD McGrath Estate Agents – Neutral Bay, Mosman, Northbridge

Meet the MD of one of Australia’s fastest growing offices within the McGrath network. In just 5 short years he’s taken his team from a standing start to grossing over $12 million in fees and in excess of 1200 property managements. He has built an incredible culture of high energy and a productive team based environment gained from his experience in leadership, sales, coaching and management through his previous career in fast-paced multinational businesses including Coca Cola Amatil, Goodman Fielder, Nestlé, Arnott’s and Mars Confectionery.

With plans to 2x the business over the next 3-5 years, Dean is a revolutionary thinker who implements proven and innovative strategies to grow market share, increase business capability, enable excellence and create remarkable client experiences.

Josh Phegan
Speaker. Trainer. Coach

Josh Phegan is the key name thrown around industry circles in the last few years, and with good reason. He is known as Real Estate’s skyrocketing high performance coach.

He is the trainer that real estate industry leaders are engaging to inspire and ignite their agents to absolute clarity, focus and most importantly – potent performance.

Not only is Josh a secret weapon utilised by many agencies, he is a highly sought after keynote speaker and personal agent success coach, collecting rave reviews on his diverse presentations and ongoing coaching engagements.

During his own successful real estate career in a highly competitive market, he was selected as one of Australia’s brightest real estate talents under 30 and represented Victoria at the Australasian Real Estate Championships. Josh’s true passion was finding unique, systematic and dynamic methods to accelerate his own personal performance.

reEngage coaching grew from a small select group of elite agents to a large number of the who’s who in the industry adopting reEngage for their overall professional development strategy, resulting in Josh being invited to speak at national conferences, including events such as the 2010 Australasian Real Estate Conference.

Josh generates explosive results and performance improvements by keeping it simple and scalable. Over 60% of his personal coaching clients generate in excess of $600,000 in gross fees. In 2010 he spoke at over 138 events and conducted over 639 one on one coaching sessions.

Aside from the aggressive schedule that Josh keeps, he still finds time to release a host of professional resources including live events such as ‘List, Sell, Negotiate’, ‘The Real Estate Panel’, and ‘Real Estate Masterclass’, together with audio programs including his Rapid Focus Series 1 & 2, and Leadership series Head Strong.