A Founder's Blog

Book Naomi Simson for International Women's Day 2026. Award-winning entrepreneur and inclusion champion delivers an inspiring, witty keynote on equity, diversity, and unlocking potential.

A forgettable gift sends a forgettable message. A thoughtful, personal, and memorable gift sends a message of deep appreciation that will resonate long after the Christmas decorations have been packed away.

I've learned this lesson the hard way. I've lived through the exhilarating, and sometimes painful, G-force of RedBalloon's growth. I've sat in the Shark Tank and seen the patterns, the predictable traps that snare founders as they try to scale. And I have distilled these hard-won lessons into a clear, actionable framework.

Today, I want to take you on a journey to completely redefine your approach to employee awards. We are going to move beyond the bonus cheque and the branded trophy. I will show you why experiences are the ultimate reward,.

When I started RedBalloon, it would have been easy to be "customer-focused." Customers wanted gift vouchers, so we sold gift vouchers. But to be obsessed, we had to go deeper. We had to understand the emotional job the customer was hiring us to do.

As an artist, I am drawn to the endless challenge and beauty of our unique Australian coastal art scene. From the rugged, windswept cliffs of the Great Ocean Road to the pristine, turquoise waters of the north, our coastline is a story of dramatic contrasts.

My journey as an Australian artist has been my way of understanding this process. When I stand before a canvas to paint the bush, I am not just capturing a scene. I am trying to translate the very soul of resilience, to understand its texture, its colours, and its quiet, unshakeable strength.

The word "fintech" (a portmanteau of financial technology) can sound intimidating. It conjures up images of complex algorithms, blockchain, and high-frequency trading. But I want you to forget all that. At its heart, the fintech revolution is not about technology for technology's sake. It is about one simple, powerful thing: using technology to solve real, frustrating, and expensive problems for businesses and their customers.

Mental Health Month, held here in Australia every October, is so much more than just another awareness campaign. It is a critical, national call to action. It is a permission slip for us, as leaders, to stop, to take a breath, and to have a brutally honest conversation—first with ourselves, and then with our teams. It is a strategic imperative to reassess our most important balance sheet: our own wellbeing.

After more than two decades of building RedBalloon, a business whose very existence depends on the happiness of its customers, I have learned a profound and sometimes painful lesson: your customer feedback, in its entirety—the good, the bad, and the brilliant—is the single most valuable asset you will ever own.

To being the professional business keynote speaker on the stage entrusted with that investment—I have developed a rigorous framework for making this critical decision. I have seen, up close, what separates a forgettable speech from a truly transformative business intervention.

In the world of startups, we celebrate the "overnight success." But that's a dangerous myth. Every business that looks like an overnight success has a long, hidden story of hard yakka, quiet moments of doubt, and slow, incremental progress.

I'll never forget the day my son, then just a young boy, looked up at me with wide, serious eyes and asked, "Mum, what's the meaning of life?"

In that moment, none of the "important" work I was doing felt important at all. It felt hollow. I was so busy doing business that I was missing out on being human. I was so focused on building a life for my family that I was forgetting to live my life with them.

The most game-changing small business life lesson I've ever learned is that creativity is not a product of hustle. It's a direct outcome of your wellbeing.

People ask me what it was like. I can tell you about the gnawing hunger that becomes a constant companion. I can describe the bone-deep cold that seeps into you at night, a damp chill that no fire can fully vanquish.

Have you ever noticed that your best ideas rarely come when you're staring intensely at your computer screen? They pop into your head in the shower, on a long drive, or just as you're drifting off to sleep. There's a scientific reason for that.

It’s the unwritten degree in resilience. The masterclass in managing your own mind. The PhD in not just surviving the pressure, but thriving within it.It's the ongoing, gruelling, and profoundly important study of small business wellbeing.

We love to talk about business strategy, marketing funnels, and profit margins. But none of that matters if the most critical asset in your business—YOU—is running on empty. This is your guide to reframing small business wellbeing not as a luxury, but as your most powerful competitive advantage.

I will show you why a simple Corporate Gift Voucher from RedBalloon is not an "easy way out," but is, in fact, the most strategic, personal, and impactful gift you can give.

Famous Keynote Speakers: Naomi Simson, Mark Bouris, Tiffany Bova, Holly Ransom, Deborah Hutton, Ash Barty. A great speaker is a master storyteller. They don't just present data; they wrap that data in the context of real, human experience.

Professional employee awards are not just about rewarding past performance; they are about broadcasting a powerful message to your entire organisation about what you value for the future.

Hiring motivational speakers in Australia is not an easy decision. Hiring a great keynote speaker is not about filling a slot on your agenda. It is not about entertainment. It is one of the most powerful strategic investments you can make in your people, your culture, and your business's future.

Queenstown is not just a holiday destination; it is a pilgrimage for the soul of an entrepreneur. It is a place that challenges you, inspires you, and ultimately, recharges you in a way that a week lying on a beach never could.

I want to take you on a journey to redefine CSR. We will explore its true meaning, uncover its tangible, hard-nosed business benefits, and lay out a practical framework for building a business that is not just profitable, but powerful.

I want to give you my definitive, practical guide for any new manager, or any leader who is responsible for developing them. We are going to go beyond the management theory and into the real, human skills that make a great leader.

I have lived this paradox. I have felt the exhilarating G-force of RedBalloon's growth and the gut-wrenching moments when our systems broke under the strain. I have sat in the Shark Tank and watched founders with fast-growing businesses who were on the verge of collapsing under the weight of their own success.

Angel Investors in Australia: This is the single most important truth. I have seen hundreds of pitches. I can tell you that I have never once invested in a brilliant idea attached to a mediocre founder. But I have, on multiple occasions, invested in a brilliant founder with a mediocre idea.

Every month, the team sends a deep-dive into the feedback for RedBalloon to all directors and executives.. It’s a non-negotiable ritual.

After listening to hundreds upon hundreds of pitches, both in the Tank and in boardrooms across my entire career, you begin to see the patterns.

Burnout is not a necessary ingredient for success. It is the very thing that will prevent you from ever achieving it in a sustainable, meaningful way.

Before you can build great partnerships, you must fundamentally change the way you see your market. The traditional business mindset is one of a battlefield. It’s a zero-sum game of competitors and customers, of winning and losing, of taking market share from someone else.

It’s one thing to be the "experience lady," and another thing entirely to be the one strapping into the pilot’s seat. A little trepidation set in. But I’ve always believed that the best things in life are waiting just on the other side of our comfort zone.

In my four decades in business, I have had to have this conversation more times than I care to remember. And I can tell you, it never gets easy. It shouldn't. The moment it becomes easy is the moment you have lost a piece of your humanity as a leader. To hold someone's livelihood in your hands is a heavy and sacred responsibility.

The idea of "AI mental health" can sound cold, clinical, and even a little dystopian. But I want you to reframe that. I believe that AI is emerging as one of the most powerful, accessible, and destigmatising tools we have to begin the crucial work of tending to our own mental wellbeing.

Braze Keynote: Satisfied customers leave. It’s a harsh truth. They might be happy with the transaction, but they have no real loyalty.

This is the startup capital conundrum. It is the great chasm that separates a brilliant dream from a thriving business. And the question of how to bridge that chasm is one of the most consequential, and most anxiety-inducing, that an entrepreneur will ever ask.

What was the real ROI of this day? On paper, it was a "day off," a cost in the time-is-money ledger of a founder. But the true return is so much deeper, and so much more valuable.

This is my founder's playbook: 20 powerful team building activities, categorized by the specific business outcome they help you achieve. This is not about forced fun; it is about strategic investment, your people.

Winning in the Age of AI Overviews: The headlines are dramatic. The whispers in marketing meetings are anxious. "SEO is dead!" "Google is going to keep all the traffic for itself!" "Why bother creating content if an AI is just going to summarise it?"

This line of thinking has been at the forefront of my mind for years, but it was recently supercharged by a book I simply could not put down. It’s called the Longevity Guidebook, and it’s written by a man I deeply admire, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis.

Employee Recognition Programs in Australia... In the end, your employee recognition program is so much more than a "nice-to-have" HR initiative. It is the circulatory system of your company culture.

How To Start a Podcast? Before you even think about a microphone or a name for your show, you must answer two fundamental, non-negotiable questions.

How do you cross that chasm? How do you take that spark and nurture it into a roaring fire? In short, how do you turn a business idea into reality?

I believe that for many of us, the common understanding of resilience is fundamentally flawed. We often picture it as a kind of brute force, an unfeeling toughness, like a granite boulder being pounded relentlessly by the ocean waves.

What does it really mean to be a "business with purpose"? It has become a buzzword, often slapped onto a marketing campaign like a fresh coat of paint. But true purpose is not paint. It is the very architecture of your business. It is the load-bearing walls, the foundation, and the North Star in your sky.

Your personal brand is not what you say you are. It is the sum total of what you do. It is the consistent, lived-in, and hard-earned reality of your reputation.

Business Valuation: There is a number that every single entrepreneur, at some point in their journey, will become obsessed with. It’s a number that can define a negotiation, shape a legacy, and transform a lifetime of work into tangible financial freedom.

The term "transformational leadership" can sound academic and lofty, but it is the most practical, powerful, and necessary style of leadership for our rapidly changing world. It is the ability to not just manage a team, but to mobilise a community around a shared purpose, inspiring them to achieve more than they ever thought possible.

Motivational Speakers: The world is full of people who are brilliant orators and captivating performers. They have slick presentations, perfect comedic timing, and heart-wrenching stories that are polished to a mirror shine.

I want you to think about the last truly tough week you had in your business. You know the one. The week where a big client was late to pay, a key employee was off sick, a shipment was delayed, and you were staring at your computer screen at 10 pm, running on caffeine and pure grit, wondering if you were completely mad for ever starting this journey.

I have lived in that state of perpetual pushing for years. It's a place of high adrenaline and even higher anxiety. A few years ago, I found myself standing on a dark beach at Mon Repos, near Bundaberg, and had an experience that completely rewired my understanding of effort, patience, and success.

This is one of the most profound small business life lessons any founder can learn. It’s the slow dawning that there is a vast, life-altering difference between a full day and a fulfilled life. Our businesses give us the most incredible platform to make a difference, but only if we lift our heads from the endless to-do list and consciously decide what our contribution will be.

This is a story that repeats itself in thousands of towns and communities across our nation. The story of small business leadership that is often unseen, uncelebrated, but is the absolute bedrock of our national character and economy.

This is a call to action for every small business leader who feels the tension between the old way and the new. It's time to throw out the outdated rulebook and embrace a style of leadership that doesn't just navigate change but uses it as a catalyst for unprecedented growth and loyalty.

I am here to tell you that this approach is a trap. It will cap your growth, burn out your team, and exhaust you in the process. True leadership, the kind that builds iconic small businesses, is not about authority. It’s about influence.

In today's hyper-competitive landscape, the idea of the lone wolf entrepreneur is a romantic but outdated notion. The truth is, we are stronger together.

When you think about ‘where should I start?’ consider what is the one bottleneck in your business that if you solved it – life would become easier.

Even the best plans fall flat without clear ownership, tools, and follow-through—here’s how we solve for that

There’s a moment in the journey of every successful small business that I absolutely live for. It’s the point where the frantic energy of survival gives way to the focused ambition of growth.

Learn how to choose and implement systems that serve growth—without slowing your team down

What are you doing today to create growth for your business?

Are entrepreneurs born or created?