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In this high-stakes episode of the WA Leaders podcast, host Charlie Gunningham and Dr Paula Smith sit down with Oliver Wood, founder of PWD, to uncover the raw reality of scaling a digital agency. Oliver began with a backpacker’s "means to an end" in North Beach and grew it into a powerhouse generating $800,000 in monthly revenue. This is more than just a success story. Oliver shares......... …


In recent years, federal budgets have grown progressively leaner on measures affecting personal finances, but this highly anticipated budget is different. Finally, a budget one can get their teeth into. Three of the four tax policies from Labor's controversial 2019 election campaign were revived in this budget – only the abolition of cash refunds for excess franking credits has been left on the shelf. To address intergenerational fairness and housing affordability for working-aged people in the budget, the government has scaled back the CGT discount and limited negative gearing. During the 2025 election campaign, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed not to touch negative gearing and capital gains tax. …


In this episode of the WA Leaders podcast, host Charlie Gunningham interviews the "speaking lady" of Perth, Dr. Paula Smith, to discuss her 40-year career in business and the nuances of influential communication in the booming 2026 Western Australian economy. Dr. Smith, founder of the Global Institute of Training and Presenting, shares why many senior executives struggle with public speaking and offers strategic tips such as the rule of primacy and recency and the importance of using frameworks over "death by PowerPoint". …


n fast paced transactional markets, the finance clause remains one of the most failure prone elements of a deal, and often the source of the costliest disputes. A recent WA District Court decision, Wahhab v BMD Nominees, offers timely and practical guidance for anyone working with finance conditional contracts, including agents, brokers, settlement teams and legal advisers. …


For years, meaningful technology advantage required developers, large budgets, and long implementation cycles. That barrier has dropped.


Today, SMBs can use AI to improve communication, reporting, follow-up, proposal preparation, and internal decision-making without starting a major technology project. But this window will not stay open forever. …


Medium-sized enterprises (MSEs) play an important role in the economy, diffusing technology downstream and connecting large and small firms. But while they contribute significantly to the Australian economy, they are often overlooked. 

Australia’s mid-sized segment represents a smaller share of Australia’s firms and workers than Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) peers. This is sometimes called the ‘missing middle’. …


What attackers already see when they drive past your business.  Cyber Node recently ran a Cyber Exposure Snapshot across 351 WA Leaders member and member-adjacent domains. Nobody was billed, nobody was asked, and nothing was touched, no credentials used, no internal systems accessed. We simply looked at what the public internet already says about each business, the same way an attacker does before any real intrusion.

We’re sharing the results because Australian SMBs are sitting on easily-fixed exposure that they almost certainly don’t know about — and the results are confronting.
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The digital landscape for 2026 is defined by a move away from platform-chasing toward high-utility, structured systems. For Western Australian businesses, success will depend on how effectively they own their data and their visibility. Based on PWD’s 15 years of navigating these shifts, four core pillars will define the market leaders of 2026. …


Global disruption is increasingly influencing how Australian businesses operate. Delays in shipping, changes in supply routes, rising costs, and travel interruptions are no longer isolated events. They are becoming part of normal business conditions. While much of the focus is on operational impact, these conditions are also testing how insurance policies respond. In many cases, the outcome of a claim will depend less on the event itself and more on how the policy is structured. …


When you ask most small to medium enterprises what branding is, the answers tend to centre around logos, colour palettes and websites. While those elements certainly matter, they are only the surface layer. Branding is your reputation. It is the perception people form about you based on every interaction they have with your business. It lives in the way your team communicates, how consistently you deliver, how you handle challenges and the experience clients receive from start to finish. In essence, your brand is the heartbeat of your organisation.  …


Have you ever stopped to consider why it is that so many companies have the same words listed as their values?  Or even why such things as “honesty,” “trust,” and “integrity” are claimed as values, when one would think them basic precepts for doing business and interacting with each other? …


“How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is of course “one bite at a time.” This metaphor provides a surprisingly relevant use case for AI in bidding. With many years as a bidding consultant, and having experimented with our own generative AI bidding platform since mid-2023, I’ve learnt that the most common mistake organisations make is trying to swallow the whole ElephAInt in one attempt. This usually results in indigestion, data spills, or wasted effort. So here’s an alternative menu. …


Offshoring rarely fails because of geography. It fails because of mindset. Most leaders approach it as a margin decision. How do we do this cheaper? That framing almost guarantees a short-term outcome. The real shift happens when the question becomes: what should our local team stop doing so they can focus on higher-value work? Strategy rarely fails on paper. It fails in behaviour. And people issues quietly derail even strong business plans. …


To many in Western Australia, Michael Malone needs no introduction. He is one of a handful of Australians who have set up a tech company and grown it to more than $1 billion in both revenue and valuation. Over 20 years as founder and CEO, he grew Western Australia’s first internet service provider iiNet to be #1 in WA and #3 in the country. …


Born in New Zealand, Sophia (or Sophie) Rossow's parents were dairy farmers. She moved to Perth when she was 3. Graduating from university with an equivalent of an occupational health and safety degree, she worked in OH&S for several years before setting up Spring Safety (although as you will hear, that was not its original name) in 2007. …


John Blake has been in sales his whole working life. Aged 17, he was spotted negotiating a new battery for his car, by surfie legend Barry Young. He was offered a job, and never looked back, eventually setting up his own sales consultancy, which he admits is now a ‘lifestyle business’ …


Congratulations to our Executive Members and Future Leaders on completing your initial Series.
We are excited to continue this journey with you in the Alumni Series and look forward to seeing the amazing things you'll achieve.  …


Born in New Zealand, Richard Kain grew up loving science at school, moving on to medical school. From there he worked all around the land of the long white cloud, and then over to the National Health Service in the UK, before landing in Fremantle, WA in 1993. By 2006, he was up in Karratha, where he set up Complete Corporate Health. …


The question isn’t whether leadership is evolving. It already has. The future of leadership isn’t about choosing between data or intuition—it’s about using both to build stronger teams, drive better performance, and create more engaged workplaces.

 Why the Next Generation of Leaders Must Master Both People AND Data.

Leadership is evolving. Instinct alone is no longer enough. The best leaders of the future will be those who seamlessly blend human insight with behavioural data to drive performance, engagement, and innovation.

The old leadership model: gut-feeling decisions, rigid hierarchies, and one-size-fits-all management is dead. …


Looking for ideas to host your Festive Work party?

Why not try a wine blending experience? Juniper Wines will transform your boardroom into "The Blending Room." In this interactive experience, teams of 4–5 will craft a red wine from three individual batches to create their own unique blend. Once complete, the competition begins. You'll pitch your creation, and your colleagues will judge. Only one team will claim the bragging rights. A lively and engaging experience perfect for office celebrations, fostering connection, creativity, and a festive spirit. …


For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the challenge of growth is rarely a lack of opportunity—it is the constraint of resources. Building capacity in sales, marketing, finance, and administration is essential to scale, yet domestic labour costs make this difficult to achieve quickly. Establishing an offshore hub provides a structural solution: it enables SMEs to expand capability without inflating overheads, unlocking commercial value by freeing capital for growth.

A simple but powerful example involves four key support roles—sales support, digital marketing, accounts administration, and executive assistance. In Australia, employing this combination of staff would typically exceed $300,000 annually in wages and on-costs. Through an offshore hub, the same four roles can be secured for $36,000 each per annum, fully employed and integrated, representing a total investment of around $145,000. This cost differential transforms the economics of scale.

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Originally from Queensland, where his parents were in market gardening, Paul Mulroney moved with his family to Western Australia when he was 14, meeting his future wife Caroline at school.
Playing in a band in the early 1990s, a fellow band member had a customised software development business but suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. With money that had been set aside to buy their first house, Paul and his wife bought over the business and have been running it ever since. …


Set up 8 years ago, Brainbox employs 200 staff in the Philippines working for Brainbox clients. Not your normal outsourcing business, every staff member is embedded into their clients' business, and works for them exclusively. Before establishing this business, Tony worked as a maths teacher, then in IT before consulting, and then as a CEO of a regional council. His top tip for business leaders is to be kind. …


In today’s business landscape, growing a strong personal brand and reputation is more important than ever – even more important than it used to be.


ation is more important than ever – even more important than it used to be. A dramatic example comes from Silicon Valley: former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati recently raised a staggering $2 billion for her six-month-old startup Thinking Machines Lab, at a valuation of $10 billion.  Here’s the kicker:  …


Originally from South Africa, via New Zealand, Tracy tells us about the time she sold lollies from her backpack at school, and discovering her love of art. After degrees in art and graphic design, and jewellery making, she followed these passions - plus a spell as a cabin crew for JetStar - before establishing her own branding and design business during the height of the pandemic in July 2020. …


Straight out of school Michael Watts went to work at Wesfarmers, initially in IT, working his way through to corporate finance, studying IT and finance degrees along the way. …


Cyber threats are no longer just a problem for large tech companies or online retailers. Every business, regardless of size or industry, is now exposed. Yet many business owners still underestimate both the risks they face and the real value of cyber insurance.

Here are six things you may not know about cyber insurance, and why it might be the most important policy in your risk management toolkit. …


Originally from New Zealand, Emma Burdett set up and now runs Perth-based brand and marketing company Huddle Up Creative. Her boundless energy and enthusiasm shines through in our chat.


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Kindness is frequently cited in corporate values statements, yet remains underrepresented in performance metrics and executive dashboards. For business leaders seeking to build sustainable, high-performing organisations, the challenge lies in translating the concept of kindness from rhetoric into empirically measurable practice. This is not a soft initiative; it is a strategic lever—one that, when properly measured, can yield insight into organisational resilience, talent retention, and client satisfaction. …


Congratulations to our Executive Members and Future Leaders on completing your initial Series.
We are excited to continue this journey with you in the Alumni Series and look forward to seeing the amazing things you'll achieve. …


Michael Masterson from Intrinskia has some unique perspectives on what a company is actually worth. You won’t find it on the balance sheet. It has a lot to do with its “intrinsic assets”.

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We explore key takeaways from the political arena that can be applied in business, from crafting a powerful message to leading with conviction. …


The recent U.S. presidential election was a global event, closely followed by millions around the world. Regardless of where one stood politically, it offered countless insights into leadership, resilience, and unity. For business leaders, the election underscored how effectively bridging divides can create a stronger, more unified following—even in the face of differing perspectives. …


Asset finance plays a critical role in business growth by enabling companies to acquire essential equipment, vehicles, or technology.
Purchasing new or even second-hand assets can put a severe dent in your working capital.  Asset Finance will cover these costs and maintain liquidity.

By Chris White | Whiteroom Finance  …


There is no real need to go into lengthy explanations about the definition of a training budget and why we need one, but....

By Dr Paula Smith | WA Leaders Advisory Board …

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