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Overview
From a very serious corporate career in marketing to creating a business based on fun RedBalloon, this is my journey. In this blog I share what it takes to be an entrepreneur and what I have learned - warts and all. I am also the author of 'I want what she is having' which chronicles the first five years of building of a fast growing business.
Very proud to be awarded National Telstra Business Womens Award for 2008 in the Nokia Innovation Catogory
RedBalloon Team Blog
Where I’m Speaking
My presentations to company events are not listed because those engagements are not open to the public. Contact Kate on +61 2 8755 0034 for more details on speaking.
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- on my way to Keri Keri, via Auckland Auckland, from Sydney Sydney about 1 day ago from web
- is amazed how many people are drinking alcohol at 8am in the morning in the airline lounge about 1 day ago from web
- It is not the storms you meet in life, but the way you set your sails... about 1 day ago from web
- Saw this at the gym this morning 'To make your dreams come true, first thing to do is wake up' about 1 day ago from web
- Doh - got the first call on my new iphone 4 - could not hear a thing... had forgotten to take of the plastic wrap. about 1 day ago from web
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Monthly Archives: November 2008
Three steps to passionate people.
I was at the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year National Awards last night....and now I have a new business idea... bottled energy. If could harness the excitement in the room. The positive energy...makes you believe that you can do anything. The stories of these finalists.... none of them have had an easy ride. But [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned Leave a comment
Psychological Recession
I don't know about you but I'm pretty confused... some days all the news reports are great 'Australia is robust and will weather the storm' other days it is all gloom and doom. The reality is that no one really knows - how deep, how far and for how long. The only thing we know [...]
Posted in Interesting Numbers Leave a comment
Better than Cash…
We've seen the results at RedBalloon - according to our recent Hewitt Employee Engagement score card - the 97% we received is far above the Australian average of 54%. Like any growing business - we don't have cash to splash... it is not cash that has caused this phenomena. We practice what we preach here, [...]
Posted in Interesting Numbers Leave a comment
When your back is against the wall… it’s time to innovate.
As I accepted the NSW Telstra Business Womens award for innovation presented by Nokia- I took to the podium to share where I thought innovation comes from. I shared that GoDo.com.au - the technology that we built to aggregate activity suppliers, which then we deliver via major tourism websites such as Virgin Blue, Webjet, and [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned 6 Comments
Speechless.
It is not often that I am short for words. I love to talk and I rarely (if ever) get nervous or flustered when speaking to large groups. Today lunch time was a whole new experience. I was a finalist in the NSW Telstra Business Womens Awards in two categories, Business Owner and also Innovation. [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned 4 Comments
The Christmas Crunch
I was rushing to a meeting yesterday in the Sydney CBD - and I was waiting at the pedestrian lights to cross the road. Three people in suits and in their mid thirties were having an animated conversation - they had just left the building on our right. Person One said “We should be paid [...]
Posted in Input Please 2 Comments
The ‘let’s go for it’ gene.
The whole concept of Entrepreneurship is interesting. Why does one person risk it all to do something differently - whilst another dreams but never acts, and yet another person could think of nothing worse than running their own show. I have just come back from an Entrepreneur Organization (EO) conference in Singapore. The buzz in [...]
Posted in Lessons Learned 1 Comment
Five Steps to employee engagement in tougher times
I was asked to respond to this question following the Australian HR awards a few weeks ago. I thought I would share my ideas further. "We have a limited budget around rewards and incentives, and want to maximise this as much as we can in order to improve employee engagement. How much do we really [...]

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