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Thanks for downloading the 21st episode of the Upskill Masterclass. My name's Ralph Tucker. Today we'll take a look back at the first 20 episodes of this podcast series in an episode entitled The Masterclass Masterpieces. It shines the light on some of the most important snippets of information.
I guess it's shared in over seven hours of audio content. In this episode, there's valuable insights from upskilled students and staff, as well as small business owners and successful leaders in the corporate world. I hope you enjoyed this overview of the Upskill Masterclass and it encourages you to download or listen to some of the episodes you may have missed. We'll begin with this inspirational story from upskilled student Adam Edgar, who in episode six talked about the most important aspect of his studies.
This course is Teaches in Time Management, even if it's not a module in the course. I have a full time job, which I work eight or five and then all the extras on top of that that becomes a part of running a store when you do your hours before and your hours after. Things that need to get done, that can't get done during store hours. I have four children, two very little, a toddler and a baby.
This year I've gone from being morbidly obese to losing 32 kilos and changing pretty much every aspect of my health, including my diet and I get up really early every morning to train before work as well. On top of all of that, I take rid of them, I referee rid of them and then I study. I find the time inside of all of that to devote to the study at the hardest part. At the end of the day, even when you get home from work, you don't want to do anything.
You want to find your bum down on the couch and watch Kelly, but you can't do that. You've got to get online and you've got to get that starting. You've got to get the other one to do that. That's the class.
Sports Administrator Bob Turner joined us in episode 19 and spoke passionately about what's needed to get ahead in business. You've got to believe and you've got to believe for the right reasons. When I grew up, there was a famous famous coach in America called John Wooden, who coached UCLA to 12 championships to never be achieved again. He had his paramedic success, like most coaches will have their philosophy written down somehow.
He had his fundamental building blocks that led to the next level and the top goal. The top goal wasn't always winning championships. The top goal was creating good people, good men, good culture, and a winning approach that everybody would follow. Upskilt sales manager Ben Grigal discussed staff motivation in episode 4 as well as the importance of goal setting.
Setting goals and more importantly setting achievable goals is very, very important. If goals are too hard or unachievable, it just becomes unrealistic and it could be really demotivating. What we do here is we've got a lot of data that we go by and a lot of dashboards and reports and things that we use in our current CRM system that we're able to monitor and set realistic goals with our individuals or our sales team. In episode 14, Danielle Tinkler from Honey Jo and Violet shared a very personal story about why she decided to set up her own small business.
I actually experienced post-natal depression and it was recommended to me that I start to get a little bit creative and I've always had a passion for design in some form, whether it was fashion or jewelry. So I decided to try and do something with that and at the time I really wanted a lovely piece of jewelry with my daughter's name on it and date of birth. So I kind of went with that, did a little course and enhanced camping and then the rest was pretty much self-taught. I turned out to be quite good at it, started making a few things for friends and everything went from there.
That led me to start seriously sourcing suppliers and get myself a little collection going. From there I started to build a social media presence and that was on Facebook mainly and then I started with Instagram. Plus I networked furiously with other female business owners that shared my target demographic which is basically the new mummy market. Upskill found a Joel Gage talked about innovation and it's important in episode two.
Innovation to me is improvement is about doing things better or doing things different than what others have done in the past. So not so much inventing but more improving, more finding different applications, more finding different ways that we can improve what we do and then as a result getting in front of the game. Last class. Business coach Terry Billington was a fascinating guest in episode 16 when she chatted about the role of mentors.
I've had multiple mentors along the way and at the moment I do have four mentors that I work with very closely. I have a high level business mentor who really helps me at the highest level of strategy just making sure I'm always a step ahead of the game. I have a marketing mentor. I believe even though that's what I started at university.
I believe that someone who actually doing exceptionally well is the best person to have a mentor for that. So I have a marketing mentor. I have a personal mentor. So every now and again when my mindset goes with that someone is there to support me to keep on track and make sure that I'm at the top of my level to be able to support my clients and the other mentor that I have is a health mentor.
I believe very strongly that in small business if you don't have balance in the car after yourself then that can be a factor for challenges that you've got in your business too. So I mean like I said I've had mentors in a lot of areas but they're the four key ones that I've had for a fair while now and I still work with. In episode 10 upskill trainer Keith Moggford talked about the personality traits needed to set up a small business. Well you need to be flexible to obviously identify what you know that entrepreneurial mindset is if you're obviously self-motivated and you need to recognize obviously the opportunities to go off and when they when they arrive you obviously need to be able to plan ahead and be prepared to put the actual constant effort in it's like young dumb people continuing turning that you know rolling it over and also need to be able to be able to do it if you don't want to know if it's coming out of the bush and swashing the car.
Sean Smith CEO of I said here for Australia and New Zealand tackled the issue of leadership in episode 20. It's about understanding my own strengths and my own weaknesses. It's about understanding the strengths of the weaknesses of the people that are around me. It's about understanding the strengths of weaknesses of my organization and the market that we operate in and then it's about how you put that together and leverage that to get the best result possible for your business.
Well you're a ship too for me it's not about the good times that's the easy test of a leader. The tough test of a leader is in the bad times it's when you face the problems and I think really what makes somebody stand out as a leader in an organization is that when you're continually being part of a solution and not the guy standing there talking about the problem. Upskill's national education and compliance manager and head of IT faculty Michael Williams was along for episode four and he addressed the subject of continuous improvement. Really for us at Upskill continues improvement is not really what we do it's how we do every day we have a continuous improvement activity but everything we do it's not a buzz turn it's not really something that hey yeah we've got to remember to have our continuous improvement meeting it's just the way we go about business.
Sarah Matthews owner of La Cucina Italian restaurant talked about the lessons she's learnt from being a small business owner. Whatever anyone tells you is hard work it's 20 times that but the rewards are great as well and I think probably the biggest thing that we've learnt is that you need to keep business and personal separate in terms of your staff and things like that that's probably the biggest thing that we've learnt that you can't have staff as friends and friends as staff so make sure you surround yourself with the right people the right advisors and make sure you take their advice. Right back in episode one upskill CEO John Lane there's constantly importance of having an operational plan. It's our blueprint it's our design it's our structure it's what we do it's the floor plan of our house it's everything that we've got without it's you can have a bunch of people working in different directions working against each other and at the end of the day we're not pointing at the same direction so it is without a doubt in line with goals etc it's the most important thing we've got.
Pass the class. Superbodullas from publicity for profit shared this tip for anyone looking to set up their own business. Do something that you're really passionate about rather than looking at is it's going to be something that you're going to be a goal of money out of. Do something that you're really passionate about because it does take a lot of effort and time and when it when it's tough you need to have that kind of motivation and inspiration to keep going because there are times when you do look at it and go gosh it's been awful to work so do something that you're really passionate about I think when you are passionate when you're in line with your purpose and your passion then things definitely become easier.
Pass the class. And finally upskilled student ambassador Kevin O'Toole had this message for anyone looking to take up a course with upskilled. You're not alone doing your studies you've got the support network around you but it's up to you to sometimes sort of say put your hand up and say help and they'll come help you that's not a problem. Get involved with the webinars and be interactive join the Facebook groups but also if you're not sure about something post the questions hey I know that you're not doing marketing but you're doing human resources but I'm stuck on this are they talking about is it this reference to because along the lines some of the questions are exactly the same and make it for different subjects but the actual subject line is the same and always keep in mind that there's help everywhere you just need to pull out so if you hit a brick wall and baby you know I give up well don't give up because I've heard from a depression who can do a diploma and pull that extra time and effort in if I can do it anyone else can do it.
There we have it the master class masterpieces with plenty of valuable nuggets of information from a wide range of guests in the first 20 episodes of this podcast series thanks for taking the time out to listen today if you've got any questions or feedback please head to the website upskill.edu.au. Don't forget you can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter you can also leave us a rating or review in iTunes which would be greatly appreciated and if you really enjoyed today's master class masterpieces podcast then tell a friend I'm Ralph Tucker thanks for listening thanks for downloading and we'll catch you next time on the upskill masterclass.