When Belinda English was 19, and working in a menial job in a credit union, one act of courage changed her life. Bel, the 269th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, wanted to work in the home loans assessment department. So Bel's mum told her to march into the CEO's [...]
Anne Neilan, the 268th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, uses numbers to tell stories. Anne is an expert marketer with 15 years’ experience in data analytics. She crunches data from Google Analytics, social media, email marketing, customer databases and other sources to help businesses better understand their customers. That [...]
Chance encounters can change your life, provided you remain open to meeting new people and having new experiences. Jessica Robertson, the 267th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, is living proof. On Jess’s first day at her first real job, she met a woman who asked if Jess wanted to [...]
James Christodoulou, the 266th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, is an indomitable businessman and devoted family man. "Everything I have done and will do is for my kids," James told me as he described his colourful business journey to me. James launched his first business at just 18 years [...]
Christine Day is one of those rare individuals who have strong technical, people, sales and marketing skills. Christine, the 265th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, got a strong technical foundation at university, where she studied business, majoring in both information processing and systems analysis. So when she began her [...]
Kym Dalton, the 264th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, is a giant of the mortgage world. Back in 1989, Kym founded Australian Mortgage Securities, which pioneered securitisation in Australasia and wound up becoming the region's biggest non-bank lender. Five years ago, he co-founded Australian Mortgage Marketplace, a digital neobank [...]
Pulkit Agrawal, the 263rd person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, learned a vital business lesson the hard way. Pulkit's former business, an SEO agency, was booming, with 10 staff and high profits. But it had one big vulnerability – all its revenue came from just one customer. So when that [...]
Cory Watson, the 262nd person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, told me a story that reveals a lot about her personality. Not long after finishing school in her native Adelaide, Cory got a bar job in the Sydney CBD, where she made a fortune in tips. Her secret was to [...]
Anne-Marie Elias, the 261st person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, describes herself as a disruptor. Annie feels a sense of burning injustice that issues like homelessness, Aboriginal disadvantage and support for vulnerable women are getting worse, despite attracting bucketloads of funding over decades. Annie has worked as a government policy [...]
Craig Keary, the 260th person I've met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, was on the last flight out of Beijing in early 2020, back to his home in Tokyo, just before the country shut its border. It was a sign the world had changed forever. At the time, Craig was a frequent [...]
