Vittoria Food & Beverage – Les Schirato turning Australians into Italian coffee lovers at home
You could say Les Schirato had a key advantage in his early business journey… he married the boss’s daughter! The western Sydney born and bred son of Italian and Maltese migrants, Les started work at Vittoria Coffee before he’d even left school, loved it, and was asked back into the business while waiting for his HSC results. Les did indeed marry Luisa Cantarella, but he’d already earned his business stripes in the eyes of her father Orazio Cantarella, who’d started Vittoria in 1947 with his brother, importing Italian foods like cheese, pasta and mineral water. Les also had a successful stint outside the family business, having climbed executive ranks at Fiat. But since those early days, once Les and Luisa Schirato gained control of Vittoria, with other family members and more recently their son and daughter, they’ve built Vittoria into one of the largest and most successful family owned and run food and coffee groups in Australia. Along the way they turned Australia into a nation of coffee snobs and espresso lovers.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Group Homes Australia – Tamar Krebs disrupting and reinvigorating dementia and aged care living
Sydney-based Tamar Krebs started as a Registered Nurse, but her decades of experience as a senior manager operating Retirement Villages, Nursing Homes and Dementia Units, led this visionary thinker to believe we needed to deliver much better care for our aged and demented loved ones; that the existing model of 100 people living under the one roof, in an institution, is not giving people who need assistance the best outcomes. Tamar decided the entire sector needed upending – to go from the merely task-focused Transactional, to Transformational care that allows older and demented people to live in a small household, a home of roughly 6- 10 residents, with a staff to client ratio of 1 “homemaker” to 3 or 4 residents, and where everyone is involved in running the household, just as had happened in disability care. But back in 2011 this maverick was not well-received. Tamar knocked on 62 potential investors’ doors, mostly pitching to nay-sayers who dismissed her idea of people with dementia living in a small assisted household on a regular suburban street. But she persevered and won over a couple of high net worth individuals, who understood her vision, and backed her with seed money to buy her first house. How she started with $5000 in her pocket just 13 years ago and grew her empire to now 22 homes all over Sydney, with 350 employees is an inspiring startup story, with lots of bumps and self-doubt along the way. Take a listen to Tamar Krebs, a true thinker out of the box.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Sant and Abel – how Sophie Lovejoy creates and manufactures luxury leisurewear, now selling on several continents
Adelaide-born and raised Sophie Lovejoy jumped from being a well-paid TV producer into the precarious, fickle world of fashion, when she started out creating and then manufacturing cute boxer shorts to sell in her mum’s homewares store in Norwood, Adelaide. Fast forward a few years and Sophie took the plunge to move herself and her business to Los Angeles. Along the way she had transformed her brand Sant and Abel, into a luxury sleepwear and leisurewear fashion range that caught the eye of celebrities like the Kardashians and TV host Jimmy Fallon, who gave her brand the tick of approval by wearing her PJs, thereby helping catapult Sant and Abel to brand awareness and sales stardom in the biggest, juiciest clothing market in the world, the USA. Hope you enjoy Sophie Lovejoy’s inspiring entrepreneurial story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Invisible Technologies – Benjamin Plummer quietly powering the AI revolution
Sydney-raised and educated Benjamin Plummer transformed himself from a business adviser and analyst into a startup entrepreneur and a guru in Artificial Intelligence. Ben’s San Francisco-based company Invisible Technologies is quietly powering the AI revolution in the epicentre of AI development, the west coast of the United States. Now, Ben did not start Invisible Technologies, but as CEO he built it big and it is transforming how companies are built and run, by helping them utilise cutting-edge AI technology coupled with the very best human know-how. In a nutshell, Ben and his team have been training the AI used by the world’s leading generative AI providers such as Chat GPT, Google and Microsoft. He also helped build a commercial spin off company alongside the inventor of IBM’s Watson. Along the way Ben worked closely with US billionaire and hedge fund investing guru Ray Dalio at Bridgewater Associates. In this episode, Ben shares invaluable insights, experiences and lessons learned about his journey, and the rapidly-changing landscape of AI. Enjoy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Welcome to 2025
New episodes coming soon.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Candid interviews with successful Self-starters. On Build It. They'll Come, you'll hear from some amazing Australian entrepreneurs who bet big to build great businesses. Journalist Helen Dalley interviews business innovators and visionaries on how they turned their lightbulb idea into a viable, sustainable enterprise.
This podcast is about the human face behind taking a simple idea and turning it into a business or movement. It's the beating heart behind what it takes to build an empire, from concept to execution, and how they actually achieve it. Fuelled by blind faith and hard slog, how they transform their dream idea into concrete reality.
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