Mark Chiarella Bellrock Broking

Speaker: Marc Chiarella, Managing Director, Bellrock Broking (NSW) Pty Ltd

Marc Chiarella: I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to Julian Crawford for helping me and a very young business and young team navigate our way through some very rough waters.

Marc Chiarella: we had a few major issues to deal with At the time we engaged Julian. there was a shock exit of one of the founding directors of the company and a significant shareholder. Our business was pretty rocked by the exit and the manner in which the exit happened. at the time also, the business as a startup we were working under the guise of a branch office with common shareholders out of out of Queensland. And they generally held the rights to the brand and the rights to our licence. So we really sought some autonomy. And the other thing we had to deal with was the business being heavily reliant upon a couple of people who were working across multiple facets of the business.

Marc Chiarella: There are so many benefits to our business from retaining Julian, but really, the key one is just getting everyone on the same page, particularly at board level, and, the shareholders to believe in a clear strategy that was in the best interests of the company. The impartiality that Julian brings really helps identify what the key factors of succeeding, are and putting everyone on that same page to help motivate them to achieve those objectives. I think realistically, the specific benefit, or the success stories is, our foundations lie in a sort of big brother company which was far greater than us and been around a lot longer than us, and in about a quarter of the time we’ve now surpassed them in staff size, revenue and sophistication. And a lot of that is from Julian’s input.

Marc Chiarella: the major benefit for me personally. Is just that I feel organised, and I feel like the priorities of the business are in order and we’re doing the right things. We have a strategy moving forward and, you know, the shareholders and the directors are all working and singing on the same page. And that’s really important. As we move to try and set a culture again for an emerging business that’s starting to mature. I think the other major point is locking in some key people around me to assist moving the business forward and in particular the CFO that Julian Hand picked himself. And as part of his mandate, he promised me that he would make himself redundant by putting successful people around me to assist with the company’s objective. So I think ultimately it’s that confidence in being organised and having direction that has really helped me personally.

Marc Chiarella: had I been asked prior to Julian’s engagement. What was next for me in the business. Personally, I would have struggled with an answer. concisely, now it is focusing on technology and resources with a set criteria on when to move into particular markets and what it is we need to look for and how it is. We would make the transition into those markets. It’s unifying branch offices together and working on culture and people and growing to that next size and again, without Julian’s direction, that would not have been possible. It would have been growth for growth’s sake, with no realistic measures in place to achieve that growth. So thank you very much, Julian.