Greater Sydney Area
I am a radio broadcaster and a prolific podcaster. I have been presenting the Morning Call for the National Australia Bank every day since 2016 and it now attracts a weekly audience of 50,000+ people in the finance and investment community. I have presented over 5,000 podcasts. I've fronted lively, topical and humorous programs on numerous radio stations, including TalkRADIO, LoveSport, BBC Radio Solent, Radio Tees, Sydney's 2UE, 2NSB/Northside Radio (for 15 years) and Wey Valley Radio. The Why Curve is a weekly topical podcast with me and BBC journo Roger Hearing. The Debunking Economics podcast, hosted with Prof Steve Keen, has gained enough paying subscribers to help Steve become the world's first crowd-funded economist. My CrossTalk podcast was followed avidly for years for those in the telecommunications industry, and was a favourite of former Aussie PM, Malcolm Turnbull. I've also got a wealth of marketing experience and have turned around the sales performance of several major Australian telecommunications companies, including OzEmail, where my marketing expertise saw a company losing customers, with falling revenue, start to grow revenue, with higher ARPU and rising EBITDA. I use this mix of business and media experience to provide sage advice on how to develop your brand through compelling content that will attract, engage and hold listeners. And, if you are a radio content manager, I can provide entertaining, informative programs that will keep people listening longer.
I produce and host audio content for corporations and radio stations, including a daily finance podcast for Australia's National Australia Bank (NAB), which has now passed two million listens. I also present the weekly Debunking Economics podcast with economist Steve Keen. On the radio front, since moving back to the UK I presented Saturday nights on LoveSport Radio, filled-in host for The Early Breakfast weekdays on TalkRADIO and presented the Drivetime show on BBC Radio Solent (clips below)
The Morning Call is a daily finance and economics podcast for the National Australia Bank. It's a short, lively, entertaining summary of overnight markets for the Australian investment community, which also highlights key economic data for the day ahead, with expectations from NAB's team of analysts.
A weekly podcast questioning the assumptions of neo-classical economics, with economist Professor Steve Keen.
Engin is a broadband telephony provider, now wholly owned by the Seven Media Group. I joined shortly after the TV company bought in to the business, eager to ramp up customer numbers. My role: • Develop products, advertising and promotions to meet high acquisition targets. • Maximise direct and indirect sales through online, phone and retail. • Develop initiatives to control customer churn and build loyalty. • Manage all communications, including PR and internal comms. • Develop forecasts and manage costs to maximise EBIT. • Contribute to the strategic direction of the company. • Report to the CEO as a member of the senior exec team and present updates at board meetings. Achievements: • Established a marketing team almost from scratch. • Quickly developed advertising and PR agency agreements. • Developed new products, with unlimited pricing plans that grew ARPU and EBIT. • Established new brand identity, resulting in complete refresh of website, packaging, PoS and advertising. • Introduced free hardware on contracts. • Researched market potential and changed media and messaging strategy accordingly. • In six months I grew subscriber numbers by 71% and doubled revenue (whilst improving gross margin). • Developed strategy to broaden the product range to include broadband, to increase ARPU without significant increase in backend support costs.
For ten years I presented a weekly music/talk programme. For one year I voice-tracked mid-mornings. I was also a board member for a year.
OzEmail was a large internet service provider (600k customers) founded by Sean Howard and Malcolm Turnbull. I joined the company after it had been acquired by Worldcom/MCI, up to the point where OzEmail was sold to iiNet (for $105 million). I made a big difference at OzEmail at a difficult time. Although an iconic brand, the company was slow to embrace broadband. My role: • As a member of the senior management team, turn around the company’s declining customer base and improve EBIT performance. • Build and manage a sales and marketing team of 22 people, driving research, pricing, forecasting, marketing communications, telesales, online and indirect channels. Achievements: • OzEmail went from declining profit to a growth position within my first year. • A simplified pricing structure and new brand approach delivered a fourfold increase in Broadband sales through pricing and campaign initiatives - at our peak we were taking on 9,000 broadband customers a month (more than Optus). • We countered Telstra’s introduction of $29.95 broadband with a ‘no excess charges’ promise that resonated with the market. • Below the line campaigns helped us to migrate many of our dial-up customers to broadband, doubling ARPU. • We were the first large ISP to introduce fixed wireless broadband – Metrowide Wireless – using iBurst technology, requiring new provisioning, reporting and support processes. • By bringing customer support into the marketing team I was able to help slow churn and improve upsells. • Modifications to the sign-up process and less reliance on indirect channels reduced costs without compromising sales. • I was involved in the sale of OzEmail to iiNet in February 2006.
At Telstra I was charged with revamping the website to become a channel to market rather than a general consumer portal. The site had suffered from lack of accountability and no clear strategy, resulting in a mixed technological and UI execution. My role: Initially working as a team of one I developed the strategy, built new processes, restructured job roles and launched a new site. It required extensive liaison with all parts of the Corporation to achieve complex goals. Achievements: • Developed the channel strategy and sold it to stakeholders across the corporation. • Built new templates and content architecture that significantly improved useability (for example, 38 header items were reduced to just seven). • Increased traffic to key product sales and support areas of the site. • Improved useability of behind log-in areas of the site, including billing, telstra.com email and ordering. • Established a business-focused process for content deployment, giving priority to executions that would deliver the best RoI. • Brought together disparate teams to offer a one-stop shop for the business, involving channel managers, producers and developers. • Significantly rationalised the infrastructure, saving millions per year by reducing servers and platforms and returning the content management system to an upgradeable form. • Developed a strategy to create an xml based single content source for all Telstra websites and channels.