Qld’s top entrepreneurs reveal their best business advice

The state’s best business minds share their secrets to get ahead and what they’d do if they had to start again with just a dream.

They’re the Queensland multi-millionaires who have risen to the top of the business world in fashion, food, retail and e-commerce.

But what would they do if they had to start over again?

From Boost Juice founder Janine Allis to investor and “shark” on Channel 10 TV series Shark Tank Maxine Horne, The Courier-Mail asked six of our finest entrepreneurs for their best advice to make it big in business and what they’d do if they had just $10,000 to create something new.

Here’s what they said.

“If I had $10,000 and I had to start a business, probably where I am now, I’d probably start something online,” says Allis.

“I’d probably use that $10,000 in social media to try to get exposure because I think if you can start to create a platform where people follow you, then you can use that platform to sell.”

Boost Juice founder Janine Allis at her home in Noosa.

She says she’s watched one of her sons do just that as an online gamer selling merchandise through his channel, while another son has created a passionate community online with his hugely successful frozen yoghurt brand Yo-Chi.

But her biggest tip for succeeding in any business is: “Be ruthless with who you surround yourself with”.

“I think a lot of people when they grow businesses, they hire someone and they are so busy that they just go, ‘They’re good enough’. I think the only way for you to succeed is to surround yourself with great people. For me I was lucky enough to marry my good person,” she says of her husband Jeff, who she co-founded Boost with, and who is now part of the Yo-Chi team.

Co-founder of multimillion dollar Gold Coast-based supplements business Naked Harvest, Georgie Stevenson, says winning in business is all about understanding your point of difference.

Naked Harvest co-founder Georgie Stevenson at her Gold Coast supplements factory. Picture: Adam Head

“Really decide what makes you different from the other products in the industry, from the other people, whatever you’re doing, and make sure that is known and you lean into that and you keep going back to your why because that is going to be why someone purchases you, someone uses your service,” she says.

The entrepreneur says if she was given $10,000 to start a business tomorrow she would create a luxury pyjama company building on her “obsession” for top-quality sleepwear.

“I’m such a huge believer in you have to have that passion, you have to have that drive because that is what makes results, is that consistency and drive, so if you don’t like it you’re never going to stick to it,” she says.

But the biggest lesson she says to take into any business is that “your community, your consumer is everything”.

“I feel like when you’re listening to them, when you’re getting feedback, when you’re following what they say, you can’t get it wrong,” she says.

Owners of hugely popular Brisbane-based global fashion label Sabo Skirt Thessy Batsinilas and Yiota Kouzoukas agree, and say passion is key.

“People always come to us and are like, ‘can you tell us a business idea?’ and we’re like, ‘you need to think of it and believe in it yourself, that’s why it will be successful’,” Batsinilas says.

The founders of Sabo Skirt, Thessy Batsinilas and Yiota Kouzoukas. Picture: David Kelly

Once you have that idea, Kouzoukas says it’s all about being bold and brave, yet managing risk.

“The most important advice that we always give people and have since the beginning is just planning before you delve into anything, and we always recommend planning for not the worst case scenario but the very bottom line and making your plans based off that,” she says.

If Fone Zone founder Maxine Horne was given just $10,000 to start again, she says she would move into a service-orientated business.

“I would look for a business that didn’t need a lot of capital investment, that was probably service orientated, where I could take a 50 per cent deposit and use that to continue to grow my business,” she says.

“For example, use the 50 per cent to grow more products, to deliver the service, to get more clients.”

Shark Tank investor Maxine Horne in Teneriffe. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Her absolute golden rule in business, however, is: “never take your focus off generating money – cash is king”.

When it comes to making it through the hard times in business, entrepreneur Sarah Timmerman, behind global fashion operation Beginning Boutique, says there’s one thing that’s a must.

“I think a sense of humour definitely helps because if you can’t laugh at yourself or laugh at the situation you’re just never going to get through the situation, so a sense of humour and resilience, 100 per cent,” she says.

Sarah Timmerman - Founder and CEO of Beginning Boutique. Picture: Steve Pohlner

“And just continually having fun, because I think when you get too serious about something you can stifle the life out of it and we’re not doing brain surgery, we’re trying to sell product, we’re trying to sell fashion.”