How Did It All Start?
This one’s a bit of a story, so you might firstly want to find yourself a “cuppa” (or a drink!)
Let’s call it the “Commercialiseit Story” -
(and something that’ll probably take about 20 minutes to read… depending on your reading speed!!)
Imagine this ….
A beautiful spring day, filtered sunshine streaming through the windows onto a large dining room table packed with plates of beautiful mouth watering ‘European’ food and the wonderful aroma of it all.
All thanks to my mum, a wonderful loving cook!
At the age of 11, for me this was a special family lunch.
And at the time I didn’t know it, yet it was to be one that would have a tremendous affect on my life.
It was a fine gathering, with mum and dad and my relatives, some of who had come from other cities, interstate and overseas. (in total there were some 12+ altogether).
Somewhere in the middle of it all, one of my uncles ask me…
“George, what are you going to do when you grow up, what do you want to be?”
Quietly, confidently, and respectfully, the words “An architect!” came out of my mouth.
It was the first time I had ever declared to the world what was in my heart.
There was silence; I remember it felt like an eternity.
Then one of my uncles asked…
“And so George, what does that look like for you, what will it do for you?”
Completely overcome with enthusiasm, I quickly stood up.
“Well uncle, I will be designing great things, working in a wonderfully modern architecturally designed office alongside some great people wearing beautiful crisp white shirts and some really cool jeans!” …….. Yes, I could “see” it, and I believed it!
And yes, it could be “seen” and it was believed…
There was silence again; and this time it felt like the eternities of eternity.
Then someone started to laugh, it was dad, and once again he had one of his crazy (for me at the time one of his dumb) smirks on his face.
One by one they almost all started to laugh..... And laugh.....
Except for one of my aunties, she just looked at me, smiled and quietly nodded.
As you can imagine, initially I was devastated…
And completely astounded, yet, the following words quietly and firmly came out of my mouth “Well, it’s true!”
And so it was over the next few years that this one faithful aunt was, (in her unusual and beautiful quirky way),
THE person that was to initially become one of the best and most encouraging family mentors to me.
Particularly with her approach, dealings and enthusiasm to business; she was such a remarkable and excellent
example of entrepreneurialism for me in these early years of understanding the significance of a key part of my
understanding of what I today know about the commercialising of great ideas...
Because it was of what my wonderfully inspiring auntie not only understood, but also practiced in business…
That there needs to be a strategic and strong focus on creating revenue!
And doing that from the start and using it to fund the future growth.
Then there was “the” School Fete….
In that same year, now at the age of 12, there was a ‘school fete’…
And in this particular year it was the one that I had this “great” idea… One that in my young, naive, enthusiastic and creative mind I truly believed in.
It was my idea for it, and one that I could “see” that it definitely had enormous potential.
With my great idea and remembering my past observations and experience...
I was very positive about its success and most enthusiastically up and away with it!
And with all that, it was also combined together with a healthy level of innocence and a complete level of lack of knowledge about what was going to happen!
The Great Idea
The aim was, amongst a lot of things, to raise some funds for this multicultural State School at this fete. And I had and could “see” this great idea succeeding, and yet, when it was explained to others, it became “George’s crazy idea”…
No-one wanted to support it, or help me with it, or encourage me with it.
And my father thought it was an absolute joke and made sure I knew that he thought so!
Once again, it was a lonely place.
Yet, there was a burning desire to succeed with it. I could “see” it working.
The idea was “simple”, to replicate one of the old-time Fair side-show’s ‘roll the ball’ type activity, one that I had
enjoyed and experienced earlier in life. And so it started, yet the only person to provide some encouragement at the
time was the owner of a local retail outlet (in those days they were called a “Milk-Bar”).
So, on the day there I was, and with lots of creativity, effort and enthusiasm and calling out –
“roll-up, roll-up, roll-up, here’s your chance to win!! “
What a great day!! Had lots of fun, lots of laughs, and raised lots of $’s…
And this success surprised a lot of people, in some ways it was a bit embarrassing for me at the time.
Yet all this it was to be part of the foundation of an absolutely huge level of significant learnings, then…
And also for many years and decades into the future.
Yes, my wonderful entrepreneurial life had started earlier than most, true?
It was from these learnings that I now refer to today as “the-school-of-hard-knocks” and the “university-of-life”…
The learnings that later on were to become applied over and over again; and they were constantly being fine-tuned; and then
continually added to; and I was always applying the learnings.
Yet being the avid learner; this was only the beginning of what today has become decades of learnings via the good times and also the ‘not-so-good-times’. In the middle of it all I learned one of many remarkable and key things –
“Be Resourced and Resourceful”…
That was to also be able to negotiate well by aiming to always have an outcome of –
“Win-Win-Win”
Where the ‘customer’ Wins, the ‘product’ Wins, and ultimately You Win!
And to then, do this next thing, wherever and whenever possible:
“Buy the best brains you can afford at any point in time”…
And especially if you don’t know how to do things and/or when you find yourself in the situation where you think
you’re with no-one that wants to help you, or cannot help you.
As a ‘secondary-school’ and ‘uni’ student, for the next nine years I worked at 26 different jobs…
And even in one case got the sack form one of these jobs..... It was for working too hard!!
At the time I was working on a road-gang job for a local district council!!
During this time, one person I worked for was a successful local entrepreneur in his home town.
To me he was inspirational, as his life was amazing.
He was always going on skiing holidays and overseas trips with his family.
He and his wife drove the latest European cars, Alpha Spider’s and BMW’s.
He seemed to have a really relaxed lifestyle amongst what seemed to be the chaos of his very busy lifestyle and commitments, the highly successful, fast growing business, as well his numerous investments and various real estate projects.
Yet the interesting thing was that he wasn’t at work for a lot of the time either.
And he always came up with really great ideas to make more from the business, greater profits and success with
what seemed less effort. He had other people doing a lot of things for him. And his business interests just seemed to
continue to grow and grow, faster and faster.
Later on in life I understood more about the principle of “Buying the best brains that you can afford at any point in
time” and I found myself applying it more and more.
Near the end of this ‘season’ in my life, university life for me was being a 90%+ surfer and 10% student.
The quest for the big ride was always on.
The strength of the water in a big wave was empowering.
As I rode waves, time after time; and in the beginning sometimes effortlessly and easily, together with lots of ‘wipe-outs’ (some serious); the years of learning, preparation, exercise, training, strengthening - ultimately had me quickly, powerfully paddle out to the best breaks, seamlessly catching the best waves; and be in the right position, at the best take-off points; then letting the board rip through the wave, riding gracefully and effortlessly.
It was so-o, so-o-o good!!
I let the power of the wave do all the work.
Yet all this didn’t happen overnight as I learnt a lot from watching and listening to the guys who were doing it!
University was all about systems- I studied to be a System Analyst….
In what was called “Information Processing” at the time- today it’s IT not IP.
So, one day, some 18 years later, sometime after I met the love of my life, my lifelong partner, best friend, personal
cheer-squad, and wife, Chez; and after an amazing time of pioneering a number new markets and new concepts in a
number of industries, starting and succeeding in a number of diverse businesses and being involved in many start-
ups; seeing them grow from zero customers to over 1000’s in their first years; and helping lots of people with what
we called “Technology Transfers” (or what became the commercialisation of IP – Intellectual Property)….
And this successfully went on for quite a number of years involving many commercial and domestic real estate
developments; wonderful mentoring and consulting to start-ups, scale-ups, corporates; working with Government
agencies, and institutions worldwide; as well as the successful commercialisation of lots of great ideas ....
Yet within it all, an opportunity arrived….
It was time!!
Time to do something radical once again- or was it really so radical?
This time it was in a field that I had little knowledge in, it was in this thing called biotechnology and then to add to the complexity, it also involved robotics. And it was Biotech Robotics and then it lead to Research Laboratory Biotech Robotics!!
What is that? Biotech Research Laboratory Robotics?
I knew very little about it other than there was serious investments being made into the whole biotech space and
that there were some really big problems in this area that needed solutions.
And most important of all, the companies involved had the money to afford the solutions.
Biotech robotics – the creation of hi-tech, high-speed, research laboratory robotics; and at the time it was something
that we had little knowledge on. Yet there was more, we were also called to create and work on Laboratory Robotics
in the leading-edge research of Viticulture and then Proteomics!!
Yet the commitment to go ahead was made. “Let’s go do it!!”
And it was not a normal start up. Or was it?
Because we would “Buy the best brains that you can afford at any point in time”.
And that we did do!
So we took $1,000, and one, just one idea, THE one we thought was a great idea.
The company successfully grew and grew and did this rapidly. Establishing a presence in Australia, USA and a full time office in Hong Kong, yet there were some seriously disruptive and somewhat destructive challenges at around the three year mark.
Yes, things changed and changed rapidly!!
Imagine being left with the following - all in the space of a few weeks:
Talk about a serious challenge!
• You’re the CEO and founder of a high growth company, trying to rapidly innovate and commercialise leading
edge Biotech and various Life Science laboratory robotics.
• Your executive team has either just left or has been sacked from the company.
• Your key remaining people are very nervous and looking to move on.
• Your major and only equity financer (your family trust) has stopped further funding of the company.
• You find that the company’s Balance Sheet has negative net equity of many hundreds thousands of dollars.
• You discover that company time, manpower and resources were diverted into building an ‘ultra-light’ plane.
• You’re mentally/physically exhausted from a 4-6 months ordeal of deception, verbal abuse and life threats.
• You listen to company accountants who say that all’s not so bad; you have all these wonderful “tax losses”.
• And what’s so good is that you will have more losses this coming year!!
• You find that contract liabilities have blown out to millions of $’s with very little hope of salvaging anything.
• You find that some of the company’s key people are leaving, or others indicate that they are about to leave.
• You see no real sales revenue for the very near future.
• You assess that the company’s “burn rate” at the best sits at somewhere between one to four weeks.
• You have two ex-directors determined to “destroy the company and surviving director” at any and all cost.
• You also find out that they are working behind the scenes courting the remaining key team members to
leave the company and go with them to set up a new company.
• Your personal technical experience in laboratory Biotech robotics, electronics, microchips, photonics, micro
technologies, informatics, genomics, proteomics, viticulture and microbiology is limited.
Then there was our famous dinner.
A dinner to be remembered, it was one of those “defining-moments” in life.
A decision was needed- wind-up the Company and move on or, make a go of it. Which was it to be?
Over this great dinner the two of us, both Chez and I, decided and also set the intension to take what had now
become a “Negative-Start-up” company and rebuild it into a world class organisation.
And one that would be renowned for its great innovation and leading edge technological advances and a place that people wanted to come to work in and be known locally, nationally and internationally for the quality and speed of its results.
That night the commitment to go ahead was made. “Let’s go do it!!”
And the result- wow!!
And the company became renowned for the “Innovation, Prototyping and Commercialisation of World Class Automation” as a provider of innovative hi-tech and quality automation for the sample preparation of complex, labour intensive assays or tests in analytical, research and quality assurance laboratories worldwide.
And all this was achieved with its unique systematic process of providing innovative solutions to common laboratory bottlenecks worldwide.
It contributed and significantly enabled the acceleration of scientific research internationally, facilitating exciting new developments that were at the forefront of science.
As well as contain costs, minimize laboratory bench space, all while increasing sample throughput, accuracy and reliability for these labs; doing this by rapidly providing commercially viable, innovative solutions.
These were being completed in months not years and were market driven, technology focused, and most important, easy to use!
Ultimately this unique automation would significantly help free the laboratory technicians and scientists to concentrate on what they do best….. “Achieving extra ordinary results…..at the leading edge of science”.
Ideas were taken from a clean sheet of paper to full CE marked commercialisation into the market place,
initially done in 11months+ and then it got better and better, it was finally being done in 3-4 months!!
(and that was while the industry ‘standard’ at the time was to achieve this in 2-5 years!)
In a few years time, the company was valued (by the ‘bean-counters’) at somewhere between $17.3M-$23.5M.
There were 29 national and state industry awards in 3 years; lots of awards for excellence and high growth.
The Company rapidly created and filled in ‘black-holes” of technology in laboratory Biotech and robotics.
And there was beginning of “virtual” robotics in the World-Wide-Web space.
Excellent ongoing royalties were paid to academic inventors and that together with…
Collaboration with some of the leading minds in the research and development of Proteomics, Life Science,
Biotech, Genomics, Viticulture, Aquiculture, Wool Research, Biotech Robotics, Water Quality, Haematology.
And after that, well it was huge!!
After the biotech robotics there were many years as a ‘Commercialisation Specialist’, contract CCO, entrepreneur,
mentor, educator, speaker; commercial and domestic real estate developments; mentoring and consulting to start-
ups, scale-ups, corporates, Government agencies, and institutions; and that being a number of decades well after
the university years; and after the successful commercialisation of lots of great ideas ....
Then there was a competition, an entrepreneurial competition...
And I was invited to be a judge for this competition. During the first day of judging for me there was this “Light-Bulb” moment; it set off a spark within me that grew to a full-on flame. What was realised in that moment in time was that there was a great need for more people to have the opportunity to “awaken-the-genius-within” them, and then use it for the benefit of themselves and others.
That the knowledge and experience that I had accumulated over the years; it needed to be shared with others.
Understanding that people with a great idea wanted to be shown, and to know, and not only to be an avid learner of the
“How-To” do it all; yet they wanted to know and be encouraged to apply the learning’s to know how to successfully, quickly and easily commercialise their great idea.
And then have them go on to doing it in as rapid a time-frame as possible; giving them the opportunity to make some serious
money from these ideas; and then be able to do it over and over again.
So here we are today…
You together with us on this journey…
And with you wanting to know more about how to…
“turn your great ideas into great income”
The both of us; you with a great desire to succeed at all this....
And us, with a desire to help you on your way to your great successes!
"You know how most people with a great idea never get around to making any really serious money from that “light-bulb” moment? Well, what we do is show you how to make some great revenue by quickly and easily commercialising your great ideas into great income. And then going on to doing it over and over again......”
So, there’s the short-short story version of how we arrived to this point that gives you the background to….
“Light-Bulb-Moments” to “Commercialisation” to “Bankable-Dollars”
By Commercialising the Genius Within You!
Interested to know more on how You can achieve this?
Then contact us, ASAP with this limited offer… (Yes, limited as it may be removed at any time by us!)
Because in doing so You’ll Receive Your “Free” Complimentary 20 minute consult with George, (the
CommercialiseIt® founder) to understand and discover what can be done for You!
So, just click on the ‘Let’s Catch Up’ button below and we’ll be in touch soon!