10:15 AM
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Keynote Theatre 130 minsSME travel is changing fast — and smart businesses are using every trip to unlock more value. This keynote reveals the latest travel trends shaping how growing businesses manage travel, reward teams and stretch budgets further. Learn practical ways to turn everyday business travel and purchases into savings, rewards and smarter growth opportunities with Qantas Business Rewards.
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Seminar Theatre 530 mins
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11:00 AM
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Keynote Theatre 130 minsGrowth used to mean growing headcount — more people, more cost, more complexity. That equation is breaking. In this keynote, Stephanie Wells explores how ambitious small and growing businesses are scaling smarter, not bigger: building sharper pipeline, closing deals faster, and driving more revenue with the same team. Drawing on real customer stories, attendees will leave with a practical view of what smart, sustainable growth looks like today.
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Seminar Theatre 230 minsBusinesses today are under constant pressure to evolve. New technology, restructuring, economic uncertainty, rapid growth, and changing customer expectations mean organisations are asking more from th ...
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Seminar Theatre 330 minsMany businesses grow through founder-led sales, where success sits with very few people. This session explores how the principles of sales maturity, long applied by the world's largest organisations, enable trust to be engineered into a defined sales engine. By aligning people capability, sales tools, and go-to-market execution, leaders can create repeatable, reliable sales performance that scales without dependence on the founder.
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Seminar Theatre 430 minsSME's typically rely on efficiency-based methodologies to produce value in highly competitive environments - it makes sense. Yet the greatest opportunity for success lies in maximising your people's performance. SME's that dedicate resources to developing leadership capability, talent pathways, and high-performance culture, retain staff, and get better bottom line results. This seminar will inspire you to invest in people leadership as well as offering tips for making impactful change straight away.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsIs your digital marketing hitting a plateau? With non-stop content at the touch of consumers fingertips, many small businesses find that search and social ads eventually stop delivering the same growth in such a cluttered market. This session explores how to bridge that gap using streaming television. We'll show you how Nine Ad Manager makes premium TV audiences accessible to local brands, breaking down the technical myths and showing you how to get started for just $550.
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Seminar Theatre 630 minsMost business events are well executed yet quickly forgotten. In this practical and thought-provoking session, Stephanie Cassimatis explores why memorability, not logistics, determines the real impact of events. Attendees will learn how experience design influences perception, brand recall, and customer behaviour, along with simple frameworks to improve the effectiveness of their events, launches, and client experiences.
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11:45 AM
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Keynote Theatre 130 minsMost entrepreneurs assume their business will deliver long-term wealth and freedom, but higher income often brings higher pressure. In this keynote, Chris Gray shares how he left a full-time role at Deloitte at 31, built a business he runs in a few hours a day, and created a parallel wealth engine that delivers stability, flexibility and choice without relying solely on the business.
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Seminar Theatre 230 mins
Most founders believe stalling revenue is a sales execution problem. In this session, JD introduces the Commercial Maturity Model, a diagnostic framework that reveals exactly which of five stages your revenue engine is operating at, and why tactics that worked yesterday have stopped working today. You will leave with a clear picture of where you are and one concrete action to move forward.
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Seminar Theatre 330 mins
Your business doesn't need more staff—it needs smarter systems. We'll demystify AI automation and show you exactly how to deploy digital team members that handle the boring stuff while your team focuses on growth. Expect honest talk, real examples, and actionable strategies you can implement immediately.
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Seminar Theatre 430 minsSmall and medium sized businesses can't outspend big brands on advertising, but they can earn attention. In this session, Mercedes Carrin, Head of Marketing at Medianet, unpacks how to win genuine media coverage by pitching journalists a real story, and how to get mentioned and recommended in AI answers. Walk away with a practical guide to building visibility and turning it into real business outcomes.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsMost Australian businesses already get value from AI, in patches. A tool here, an automation there, chosen without reference to how the business runs. It works, but it doesn't cross systems or transform anything. This session covers why patchwork stalls, what an AI-native operating model looks like, and how to sequence a roadmap that puts the right tool on the right job, upskilling your people rather than replacing them.
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Seminar Theatre 630 minsDesigned specifically for SMEs, this practical seminar provides the tips, techniques and shortcuts to develop a concise, fit-for-purpose Business Continuity Plan that is easy to maintain and genuinely useful when disruption strikes. Learn how to meet insurer, regulator and client expectations without creating unnecessary paperwork, while building a plan that makes sound business sense, protects your operations, and helps your team respond confidently and recover quickly.
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12:30 PM
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30 minsThey say that in the next decade we will experience as much change as in the last 100 years. This will take incredible, and intentional leadership to build diverse teams, to create connections and to build purposeful workplaces. As a leading Australian leadership speaker, this keynote unpacks a practical framework for building a resilient, high-performing team citing current trends, recent events and insightful case studies. We'll explore how to lead with empathy, foster psychological safety, and drive accountability. This session provides leaders with the tools to navigate blended workplaces, which will inspire curiosity, and build a positive culture that gives the business a competitive advantage.
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Seminar Theatre 230 minsScaling past 10 employees on hustle alone isn't enough. Discover why strategic HR is your ultimate growth accelerator, not corporate bureaucracy. Natasha Hawker shares practical hiring, performance and compliance frameworks to build high-performing teams, protect your valuation, and multiply productivity. Essential for founders and leaders ready to scale sustainably.
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Seminar Theatre 330 minsCompany leaders have a legal duty to exercise due diligence in safety. But what is due diligence in safety and how do you do it? This seminar will explore practical actions to help you meet your duty. It will help you understand your requirements and take positive actions, it does not constitute legal advice.
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Seminar Theatre 430 mins
This seminar explores how businesses can improve cash flow through effective receivables management and strategic debt collection practices. Attendees will gain practical insights into collection processes, debtor segmentation, performance metrics, compliance, and customer relationship management. The session highlights how structured collection strategies can strengthen liquidity, reduce bad debt exposure, improve forecasting accuracy, and support long-term financial stability and operational performance.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsThe Art and Strategy of Storytelling in Business explores how to simplify your message and tell your story with impact. Learn a practical framework to turn your business journey into an authentic brand narrative, craft messaging that connects, and build a clear, strategic approach to content. Discover how to share your story effectively, develop a distinct brand personality, and create storytelling that supports long-term business growth.
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Seminar Theatre 630 minsMost businesses in crowded markets feel pressure to compete on price—but that’s rarely the real reason they lose deals. This session will show you how to stand out by becoming more problem-led, clearly articulating value, guiding customer decision-making, and creating demand without discounting. You’ll learn practical ways to move beyond price competition and start winning more sales with a structured, repeatable approach.
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01:10 PM
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Keynote Theatre 130 minsDon’t get left behind in Google’s ever-changing landscape. Join Online Marketing Guru's Global CEO, Andrew Raso, for the lowdown on the state of search in 2026, uncovering what’s really driving rankings as we move towards AI powered search results. Backed by real data along with expert insight, this session will show you exactly what’s working right now - and what’s next.
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01:15 PM
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Seminar Theatre 230 minsPayment reconciliation is a hidden but costly challenge for many businesses, with incoming funds often lacking consistent information and requiring manual matching. In this session, Christian Westerlind Wigstrom explains how virtual accounts transform this process by assigning unique payment details to each customer, enabling automatic recognition on arrival. The result is faster cash flow visibility, reduced errors and significantly lower operational overhead.
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Seminar Theatre 330 mins
Most businesses look outside for answers to their brand. In reality, the most authentic, valuable and enduring brands come from within. In this session, Jason and Graeme will challenge common assumptions and introduce five critical questions that drive clarity, alignment and growth. You will leave with practical insights, including a number of immediate actions you can apply to strengthen your brand.
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Seminar Theatre 430 minsThis session explores why people often fail to embrace a founder’s vision and how leaders can close that gap through influence, empathy, and reframing. Lachie reveals how personal bias and differing worldviews shape team engagement and shows leaders how to communicate vision in ways that resonate with diverse mindsets. Attendees will leave equipped to turn resistance into alignment and unlock deeper organisational momentum.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsYou invested in new software to improve how your business runs… but the team still uses spreadsheets, workarounds, or the “old way.” Rings a bell?
In this practical session, Val explains why new tools often fail to change day-to-day operations and what to do instead. Owners & GMs will learn how to introduce technology, automation, and AI without team resistance, so the tools you invest in actually improve how your business runs, get adopted and deliver real operational change. -
Seminar Theatre 630 minsAustralia's tech sector loses women disproportionately, not from ambition, but from culture: 29% of the tech workforce, only 18% of C-suite roles, a persistent pay gap, and leadership that stays roughly 70% male. This session reframes diverse talent pipelines as a leadership problem regardless of industry, not a HR one, and gives leaders practical, everyday actions, in meetings, one-on-ones, and promotion decisions, that shift culture and retention starting now.
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01:50 PM
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Keynote Theatre 130 minsThe next wave of growth won’t come from walled gardens but from the open web. As AI fuels an explosion of new sites and content, the open web is becoming more dynamic, diverse and commercially powerful. This session explores why it matters for innovation, brand safety and competition and how small and medium businesses can unlock new opportunities across retail media, data capture and monetisation in an increasingly agentic, AI-driven ecosystem.
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02:00 PM
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Seminar Theatre 230 minsAcross Australia, 77% of employees report being disengaged at work, creating significant and costly challenges for organisations. In this seminar, Envicto Coaching explores why traditional engagement approaches often fail and what leaders can do differently. Introducing The Engagement Equation, a research-informed framework, attendees will learn what drives sustained employee motivation and how leadership behaviours and workplace environments shape engagement, performance, and culture.
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Seminar Theatre 330 minsMost SMEs assume hiring HR is the solution to their people challenges. In reality, it often adds cost without fixing the underlying issue. This session breaks down why inconsistent management practices, not the absence of HR, create risk, inefficiency and exposure. Attendees will learn how to build structure, improve decision-making and reduce risk without prematurely investing in a full HR function.
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Seminar Theatre 430 mins
Customers are asking AI tools like Chat GPT and Google AI Overviews about your business before they ever reach your website. What those tools say, omit or misunderstand can shape whether that customer ever contacts you. In this session, Hotwire will explain how AI search is changing business discovery, what influences how your company appears, and the practical steps small businesses can take to improve visibility, credibility and trust online.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsWhat red flags should you be looking for when it comes to business dealings? How do you know if your supply chain is in trouble, or equally, if your customers may be on rocky ground? Chris will talk you through some of the key indicators and how to manage these if (and when) you see them in your business.
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Seminar Theatre 630 minsThis seminar reveals the hidden impact of prolonged sitting and inactivity on employee health, morale, and productivity. Drawing on scientific evidence and real workplace insights, Mat Graham shows how small, intentional movement breaks can dramatically improve energy, mental wellbeing, and performance. Attendees will learn why movement is a business advantage, am opportunity to build culture, and simple ways to build healthier, happier, more resilient teams.
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02:30 PM
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Keynote Theatre 130 minsArtificial Intelligence is changing the world fast. Business models are being disrupted, and ‘value’ is being reimagined and redefined. The cognitive work done by people is being augmented and automated, and now robotics with embodied AI is taking the industrial revolution from factories to the field. How do we adapt and win? Attend this session to discover how to differentiate and thrive in business by becoming ‘a little cyborg’.
02:45 PM
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Seminar Theatre 230 mins
The broad-targeting era is here, and Meta’s Andromeda has changed the rules.
With interest-based targeting now dead, your creative is your targeting.
If you aren’t diversifying your hooks, personas, and formats, you’re paying a lazy content tax through sky-high CPMs. Minor tweaks won't save you—major creative evolution will. Join me to learn how to feed the ad algorithm what it actually wants, and drive your sales engine.
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Seminar Theatre 330 mins
Most businesses don't fail because of a bad idea. They stall because the legal basics were never properly set up, and by the time it matters, it's expensive and painful to fix.
This session covers how to set your business up properly from the ground up: the corporate structure and contracts that should be in place early, the workplace and employment essentials your team needs, the property considerations that come with growth, and even succession planning for the future. Delivered in plain, practical terms, so you leave knowing exactly what to build and when.
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Seminar Theatre 430 mins
As businesses grow, the demands placed on their people grow just as quickly. Yet many business owners continue trying to solve growth challenges by hiring more people, when the real opportunity is developing the capability of the people they already have. Discover why recruitment in isolation won't solve growth challenges.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsEvery day, you pay for clicks. What happens next is where the money dies. It lands on a website that's slow, leaks forms, and mistracks every visitor you bought. Most leaders never see the bill. Built on work with performance agencies across paid, SEO, PR and more, and the marketing managers behind them, this session shows you where your budget goes after the click, and how to stop the leak.
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Seminar Theatre 630 mins
Artificial intelligence has made the well-written, compliant bid cheap and abundant. When anyone can produce a polished response, the document stops being where work is won or lost. Eliza Carbines explores what actually creates advantage in this new era, and what it means for how organisations buy, how suppliers compete, and where the next generation of winners will separate from the rest.
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03:10 PM
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Keynote Theatre 130 minsIn this keynote, Marcelo Andrade will explore how employer brand has become a commercial growth lever, not just a hiring tool. Attendees will learn how trust, reputation, and candidate experience shape business outcomes, and how small and growing businesses can build stronger employer brands to attract talent, strengthen culture, and support long-term growth.
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03:30 PM
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Seminar Theatre 230 minsYour team can be your biggest asset - or your biggest headache. Andrew Masi reveals how to build an inspired, empowered and accountable team that gets things done without you having to do it all. Discover practical strategies to improve performance, create ownership, and reduce people headaches - so you can get what every business owner wants more of: more time, a better team and more money.
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Seminar Theatre 330 minsAfter years of hybrid and remote work, many of us feel a little rusty at events. Partying with Purpose is a practical, upbeat guide to networking with intention - enjoying the room while growing real relationships. You'll learn how to set a human goal, open better conversations, respect different comfort levels, use fun as a trust-builder, and follow up like a considerate professional.
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Seminar Theatre 430 minsWellbeing and culture are not soft issues. They shape performance, retention, risk and growth. This seminar explores how small business owners, CEO's and teams can build healthier workplaces, strengthen psychological safety, and respond early to stress, burnout and people challenges. Practical, grounded and commercially relevant, it gives leaders clear ways to support their people while keeping the business running well.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsMy seminar will look at a few key areas that will assist businesses in their day to day operations covering important topics such as contracts in business, debt collection, cyber security and privacy, and business structures.
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Seminar Theatre 630 mins
Every year some businesses pull ahead while others stall – often in the same sector, facing the same conditions. AVA Advisory surveyed more than 1,000 Australian business owners to find out why. Founder and CEO Andrew Quinn reveals what the 2026 data says actually separates the two, and what owners and their accountants can do about it right now.
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04:15 PM
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Seminar Theatre 230 minsStop following the noise. Go against it. Everything that is obvious now will be copied and nullified as a result of this. Learn how to think and act counter intuitively an reap the rewards of being different and seeing any threat as an opportunity.
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Seminar Theatre 230 minsAccess to capital shouldn't be a barrier to growth. Join FC Capital and Finstro as we explore how businesses can match the right funding solution to every stage of their journey: from working capital and expansion through to large-scale structured and institutional finance. Through real-world examples and practical insights, you'll learn how to think strategically about capital and prepare your business for its next phase of growth.
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Seminar Theatre 330 minsFractal Branding: How to help a brand find its identity among others. AI has become a common tool, and prompts have become a common language. The only way not to dissolve is to outrun the algorithms in defining your own essence. Our method extracts the spirit of the brand from its core and turns identity into a working asset.
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Seminar Theatre 530 minsJoin Belinda Scott as she explores the most common insurance pitfalls affecting businesses today. This practical session examines the hidden costs of being underinsured, common gaps in cover, rising insurance challenges and emerging risks, while providing valuable insights to help business owners make informed decisions, protect their assets and strengthen their risk management strategies.
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Seminar Theatre 515 minsMost businesses keep paying to replace customers they already won. Big brands do the opposite: they own the relationship after the first sale and make every customer more valuable over time. This session challenges the obsession with ads and ROAS, and explores a different future where businesses remember their customers, understand intent and turn retention into repeat revenue, referrals and demand.
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Seminar Theatre 630 minsThe per-seat SaaS model is dying. Paying monthly fees for generic dashboards while your team still runs on spreadsheets is a sucker's game. AI has permanently collapsed the cost of custom development, making bespoke software fast, cheap, and accessible. In this session, Craig Brown reveals how to replace shallow SaaS with custom AI-native solutions—and how to wrap them in a safe, scalable "AI harness" to eliminate operational risk.
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