THLHS: Where are they now

I grew up on a farm on the Eualdrie Road. I completed my HSC in 1980. Yes ... that long ago. 

During Year 12 in particular, I started to consider what my next steps would be in life. I saw further education as a good option.

Initially I considered going into the defence forces under their graduate training program but finally decided that I wanted to pursue a career in computing. 

I completed a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computing Science at the NSW Institute of Technology (aka University of Technology, Sydney) to become a computer programmer. Working for what is now Price Waterhouse Coopers as part of my studies, I then joined IBM upon graduation.

Having grown up on the farm and being used to being outdoors and up and about all the time, I quickly realised that as much as I loved programming, I wanted to have more diversity in my day so IBM provided me the opportunity to move into sales which really was my first step into business consulting, but with a computing focus. I worked at IBM for seven years.

After IBM, I worked in a number of other companies both large and small selling and/or marketing various computing systems and solutions.

With each one I came to better understand what I wanted in a job and the type of organisation I wanted to work for. 

In 1997, I joined a US-based software company called JDA Software that sold software solutions to large retailers around the world. I worked for JDA for seven years as Business Development Manager for Asia Pacific.

In this role I was able to draw on all my years of programming and sales and business consulting experience and had the privilege of selling to clients in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines as well as travelling to the US on a regular basis.

In 2001, an opportunity arose where I identified that Speedo had ceased to make a particular type of men’s swimwear. With my partner at the time, we decided to make the swimwear and this was the start the clothing brand known as aussieBum.

We sold via our website www.aussiebum.com as the majority of retailers we originally approached were not interested in selling our products. This motivated us to sell to the world instead via the internet. Working for yourself and in your own business can be significantly challenging. Fortunately for us it also came with tremendous rewards for our efforts.

Today aussieBum sells a range of men’s swimwear, underwear and lifestyle products to customers in over 140 countries. I still jointly own the company. What have I learnt from my working career to date. Always put in a 100% otherwise you will never know what you might be able to achieve.

Stick with things. I found that in any job I worked in that it took me around two years to really know the job well as opposed to thinking I knew it. Focus on the results not the work it may take to get the results. If you intend running your own business, don’t spend money you don’t have and learn to improvise. You don’t need to have the best of things on day one. That can come later.

As any farmer would know, you don’t always have either the funds or the right equipment or the right materials to fix something quickly so you learn to improvise with what you do have. Also, run your own race. Be aware of what others are doing but try to avoid comparing your efforts and results to others. Set the bar for yourself; don’t have others set it for you.

If something doesn’t turn out as you had hoped or expected, simply tell yourself “Well that didn’t turn out as I had hoped” and move on and learn from it, but don’t dwell on it. Not everything goes how you think it will. Some things however will surprise you and can go well beyond your own expectations.