Monday 2 March 2015

How to be an Entrepreneur: The Entrepreneurs' UnConvention

On Saturday we attended the The Entrepreneurs' UnConvention, held by The Entourage, with the keynote speaker being the co-founder and one of Australia's youngest and richest entrepreneurs, Jack Delosa.

It was almost eight hours of listening to some of the greatest successful entrepreneurs share their ups and downs in their journey to success. The room was filled with a thousand of the most aspiring entrepreneurs in the city, ready to embrace the wisdom bestowed upon them from these success stories.

The speakers of the convention, or the un-convention as Jack likes to call it, included speakers such as:

Jack Delosa himself, creator of MBE education and The Entourage; who told us about the concept of alchemy which he elaborates as making something out of nothing, as necessity is the mother of innovation. He also explained the Entrepreneurs' journey in detail from the bottom of the ladder as students, on to start-up, scaling and up to selling or striving.



































Katherine Sampson, founder of the Healthy Habits chain and recently Hello Sam in South Yarra. She talked about the importance of branding and PR. She mentioned the major difference of having just a logo and having a brand; and also said that "Marketing is what you pay for, PR is what you pray for."


































Ruwan Weerasooriya, founder of Rewardle, which is a loyalty app used by more than 4,000 cafes around Australia. We actually recommend the Rewardle app to our own clients all the time so it was a great pleasure to listen to his journey and get to meet him. Weerasooriya is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit where he loves the chase and is not afraid to fail in the process. He's an advocate for hard work and persistence: "It's all about the hustle, every single day."



























Annette Lackovic, known as Australia's leading female sales expert and coach to female entrepreneurs. Annette stressed the importance of emotions when it came to selling your product or services. She was such an enthusiastic and wonderful presenter, she even made us stand up and sing along to a rap song she had prepared for us.































Sean Callanan, founder of Sports Geek shared his story of how his blog became more than just a sports blog. He pursued what he wanted and contacted people even if there was a small chance of them responding. He believes in taking a risk and never taking friendships and connections made for granted.






























Jessica Wilson, founder of the fashion app Stashd. Jessica is such an impressive young entrepreneur who dropped out of uni when she was told she didn't have what it took. She then worked in PR for Australia, New York and Paris fashion weeks before bravely traveling to silicon valley, not knowing much about the tech world, and then creating the successful fashion app, Stashd. When speaking to her after the convention, we were surprised when she mentioned she only had 4 people in her team!


























































Dan Gregory and Kieran Flanagan, from the Impossible Institute. These two were responsible for many launches including the launch of Nandos in the Australian market. They whole-heartedly believe in the power of understanding what the buyers want and need as opposed to assuming what they would.




































It was truly an inspiring day and I'm sure everyone present would agree that if you truly want something, we are blessed enough in this country to be able to achieve it with hard work and dedication, as cliche as that sounds.

More photos on our Facebook page!