00:05 hi everyone welcome back to the get 00:07 chatty about your local businesses 00:09 series 00:09 and today i have my friend lucas here 00:12 with me how are you 00:14 i’m good good morning to you happy happy 00:16 easter sunday 00:18 yes it’s nice and warm today isn’t it 00:21 yeah it is it’s good 00:22 us us entrepreneurs always going to be 00:24 on the alert so easter sunday is nothing 00:26 for us 00:26 no not at all i got i actually got 00:29 something due 00:30 just before easter so we’ve been the mad 00:32 dash of everything 00:33 and i was visiting um friends and family 00:36 in sydney so we’re just kind of like 00:37 truncated everything was like 00:39 oh 00:43 yeah so well um thank you so much for 00:45 taking part in 00:46 uh in this series and do you mind uh 00:50 letting the audience know a little bit 00:52 about yourself and what you do 00:54 yeah sure so um i’ve been working in 00:57 innovation entrepreneurial space for 00:59 like a number of years now i used to 01:02 i’m just finishing a phd actually so 01:04 phds are part of this story but 01:06 really what i’m interested in is helping 01:08 small businesses to evaluate their 01:10 businesses 01:11 and i used to be pretty interested in 01:14 the technology side of it but now i’m 01:16 sort of looking at solutions for small 01:17 business that are 01:19 technology agnostic or not so novel i 01:22 found that 01:24 lots of benefits can be got to small 01:26 business just from applying existing 01:28 marketing and technology type equipment 01:31 out there software out there 01:33 how did you meet arthur the teddy 01:34 curator we worked at a college together 01:38 and i was business trainer there and you 01:40 were brought in as the marketing manager 01:43 and you brought in a really good spirit 01:44 into the place it was good to see 01:46 somebody come in and really 01:48 you know this is not gonna work 01:51 it’s uh well i mean it’s a it’s a short 01:54 contract and i 01:55 value the experience there and i it’s an 01:57 it’s a big 01:58 eye-opener um but look i mean i’m just 02:00 being 02:01 loud and myself and never shallow 02:06 vanilla out there vanilla’s not going to 02:08 change things up is it 02:10 absolutely from my understanding that 02:12 place was a startup 02:14 uh and many startups that they just feel 02:16 look i mean if you’re being a startup 02:18 um one of the ways to approach it is 02:21 being a disruptor 02:22 and sometimes that you can’t be vanilla 02:27 when you want to be a disruptor i think 02:30 it’s very interesting that because 02:31 2020 a lot of my friends that work in 02:34 sales had 02:35 a really stressful year because they 02:37 want to make sure that they meet the kpi 02:39 but like you said yeah they are um it’s 02:43 it’s more likely they would achieve that 02:45 kpi 02:46 with an established product but then 02:49 that 02:50 means a space for innovation to give 02:53 that 02:53 yes a chance for something new becomes 02:56 something 02:57 i don’t understand entirely how sales 02:59 work i mean it’s too stressful for me 03:01 uh you know i’m just the person who 03:04 taught rubbish on the on the internet to 03:05 promote stuff 03:07 but i i think it’s um it’s a very 03:10 interesting 03:12 gap that there’s all these different 03:13 departments working in silos 03:15 that yeah it’s it’s not very helpful 03:19 and unfortunately these silos exist even 03:22 in the small medium enterprises which is 03:24 it does shouldn’t existing you know it 03:26 does i think it’s just 03:28 um even if there’s a tiny little team it 03:31 can still happen 03:33 and yeah well anyway back to my original 03:35 uh question so you can’t 03:37 answer that you can’t answer that 03:39 already but uh can you tell me a bit 03:41 more about your 03:42 2021 plan 2021 whoa 03:45 okay so at the moment i’m 03:48 i’m actually really really just focused 03:50 on on helping these smes at the moment 03:52 everything else has sort of gone into 03:54 the um 03:55 into the background even though i’m 03:56 having a child that’s also very 03:57 important 03:58 first time yes i i would put my foot 04:01 fully into the water so 04:03 to um do this full time now so 04:06 it’s it’s it’s different because i’m not 04:08 if you look at all the other 04:09 companies out there they’re trying to 04:11 help smes by leveraging the rnd 04:13 and you know gearing or aligning 04:15 themselves with the where that handouts 04:17 are for government but i’ve kind of gone 04:19 well i don’t think that’s working 04:21 and i really think i can create value 04:23 for companies after r d in those 04:25 steps and make them help them make fast 04:28 and effective decisions around that 04:30 i like i like what you just said fast 04:32 and effective decisions 04:34 because we are uh that 04:37 i just think it feels like based on what 04:40 i can see on the on the news that i 04:42 it feels like public resources might not 04:45 be 04:46 fast and effective enough uh 04:49 particularly 04:50 yeah particularly for parts of the 04:51 economy like small to medium businesses 04:54 social enterprise or or people are a 04:56 little bit older 04:57 um actually just wondering how do you 04:59 feel that um 05:01 how they navigate in the current space 05:03 and and 05:04 what new age can help 05:07 yeah yeah that’s it’s well the way we do 05:09 it we we don’t like to talk about our 05:11 platform and technology too much because 05:13 some 05:14 some companies just talk about their 05:15 features and functionality but 05:17 we’re technology enabled to make it 05:19 easier for companies 05:21 so meaning that you come to us with a 05:23 product 05:24 and then we look at how to increase the 05:26 value of that product 05:27 and reduce the costs in your business 05:29 along those points we just talked about 05:31 after r d 05:32 and there’ll be one or two because 05:33 companies know their customers really 05:35 well and their products so it’s not like 05:37 i’m going to tell them 05:38 something they don’t know about their 05:40 own customer but by looking at these 05:42 things like customer 05:43 segment customer application customer 05:46 knowledge and experience in the product 05:48 your marketing 05:49 right over to after sales service 05:51 there’ll be a couple of really high 05:53 value-add things that they hadn’t 05:55 considered 05:56 and then we set up a project around that 05:58 and we look at getting a really 05:59 high measurable return on their 06:01 investment and we 06:03 what we’re trying to try and leverage 06:04 what they’ve already got and that’s the 06:06 capabilities that they have before we 06:08 talk about building and acquiring new 06:10 ones 06:11 that’s the system yeah i think i think 06:13 it’s very important that way because 06:15 work what you got and i think from a 06:18 content market 06:19 market best practice is sometimes there 06:22 are stories or ideas 06:24 and um information within the company or 06:27 organization 06:28 that actually can be really great 06:30 resources to tell the story 06:33 and you know it’s and sometimes these 06:36 stories are what’s different 06:38 from like like what you said like you 06:40 know one of these 06:41 applications that they say all these 06:43 features one two three four five six 06:44 seven 06:45 but if but if you just look at me if you 06:48 just do googling there’s probably at 06:50 least another 10 companies that do the 06:52 same 06:53 so you look at what the unmet customer 06:56 need and have you found the right 06:58 group of customer needs and what we’re 07:01 finding too is that a lot of these 07:03 customers are over 07:04 served and we only most companies only 07:07 focus on underserved customers 07:09 and they use that term in a synonym with 07:12 unmet needs 07:14 but we’ve got overserved customers if 07:16 you think about the next iphone coming 07:17 out i couldn’t care less 07:19 i stay a year behind to save a bit of 07:21 money and i’m a tech 07:23 you know a technology advancer so that’s 07:26 the example of some a market that’s over 07:28 served and right for splitting up and 07:30 disrupting of course i 07:31 lost track of how many versions were 07:33 there oh bit of phones 07:35 like bells and whistles 07:39 sometimes i just want to ask do they 07:40 make calls 07:46 i’ve heard some interesting jokes about 07:48 zoom some people have seriously said 07:50 look i found that zoom works better when 07:52 you minimize the screen and turn off the 07:54 video and people like well isn’t that 07:55 just making a phone call 07:58 you know what i mean like the solution 08:00 and the customer needs stays the same 08:02 the technology will always change 08:04 but the customer need to communicate 08:07 it’s always going to be there 08:09 lucas thank you so much for your time 08:11 for taking part in this 08:12 interview get chatty about your local 08:14 businesses now do you mind telling 08:16 people 08:17 how they can find you linkedin you can 08:19 find me and 08:21 newledge.io which is n-e-w-l-e-d-g-e 08:25 dot io and feel free to 08:28 contact me my email address as well 08:30 lucas l-u-c-a-s 08:32 at new ledge dot io i’m happy to help 08:36 and i think we can create a lot of value 08:38 together so be happy to hear from any 08:40 small businesses with a with a 08:42 product that they want to increase the 08:43 value of and or 08:45 save some money in their business send 08:47 an email send a message see how it all 08:49 goes seriously 08:50 yeah and in that case thank you so much 08:53 for taking part in this 08:54 and good luck with newage and all the 08:57 contact information are underneath this 08:59 video 09:00 and uh yeah so let’s keep on chatting 09:02 about businesses 09:04 thank you 09:10 you
Lucas can be contacted via:
[email protected]
www.newledge.io
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lucasmerlo
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