Tony skinner 00:03
Hi, and welcome to the podcast channel for podcastmybusiness.com.au. And now on video for contentmade easy.com.au. And we’ve got some great guests with us today. Really, really good here and Melbourne Cup. We’ve got a couple of people with nice Irish names, who just happen to have Irish names. So there we go. We’ve got Declan Clausen , and who’s the Deputy Lord, Mayor of the City of Newcastle, Hello Tony, how you doing? And we’ve got Siobhan Curran from University of Newcastle, I’ll let you introduce yourself.
Siobhan 00:39
Yeah, hi, I’m Siobhan Curran, Assistant Director for I2N & Innovation at the University of Newcastle. That essentially means I help look after new ventures and entrepreneurship at the uni.
Tony skinner 00:50
I had no way I was going to do that.
Declan 00:54
A lot of good words in that in that in that title.
Tony skinner 00:56
There is fantastic words. And we’re we’re catching up because a couple of things is that I am in the co-lab space at the ACU in North Sydney, thats North sydney and Strathfield campus. And when I heard about this, I thought what a great idea. And you while I was just having a chat before I a year ago started my third business in eight years. 
Siobhan 01:22
Congratulations.
Tony skinner 01:23
Thank you. Yeah, I don’t know does that make me an entrepreneur?
Declan 01:27
I think. Absolutely. It also depends, I think on what you learn across each of those separate business are startups and then what you want to translate it across and what you’ve decided to ditch?
Tony skinner 01:40
Well, the number one rule I tell everybody, and mentor people in the collab space is don’t spend money unless you have to.
01:51
That’s great advice. One of my favorite areas of entrepreneurship development, or people would come to us with ideas is go away now and speak to a bunch of people who you think might use whatever it is you’re developing, and gather some insights and do market research to figure out whether or not it’s something that’s worth pursuing.
Siobhan 02:10
Because there’s nothing worse than seeing people spending not so much time but money on developing products and services that ultimately people at the end of the day, don’t really want. You know, there’s some important lessons you can learn in doing that. But certainly, if you can save yourself money as part of that discovery, that all you know, all the better to you.
Tony skinner 02:30
Yeah, so Declan what do you think makes somebody an entrepreneur?
Declan 02:38
I think we were landed with a curly question right up upfront, clearly somebody that has an innovative idea, or has looked at the translation of an idea from one field to another, I think would make somebody an entrepreneur, clearly supported by a whole network of other people that are able to see the vision and help support and innovate and create something new. So I think, probably Siobhan, undoubtedly, has got a perfect academic definition or a practical definition to pull from as well. But from my perspective, somebody with an idea that they want to translate that into a new field,
Tony skinner 03:16
I’m sure Siobhan has the absolutely perfect explanation.
Siobhan 03:21
Well, I’m not sure perfect, but my interpretation. And so mine would be people who are able to turn an idea into impact and that impact has to really be about value creation. So if the product, the solution, whatever it is that the entrepreneur has developed, that creates so much value that a person is actually willing to not just use it, but pay for it is really, really important. Because if it’s not being used, it’s not innovative, right.
Siobhan 03:52
And so someone who can, who can also take the risk, to turn that idea into impact and not you know, lots of people have ideas, and lots of people can implement those ideas. But it’s the scale to which they’re really dedicated to actually putting that new product or service into the market. And being willing to get sort of punched down a lot to make it happen. But also to get to the point where they realize when they have to stop as well. So you know, an appetite for risk aversion, sorry, an appetite for risk, rather. And then also knowing how far to go and when to sort of stop, take stock, and pivot or change or stop what they’re doing and start something different. That’s my definition of an entrepreneur.
Declan 04:40
That was a much, much better answer than the one that I gave. And it’s the reason you’re the innovation manager of the Union. Not me. That was terrific.
Siobhan 04:46
I don’t know Declan. I feel like it’s someone who, you know, I’m not sure you count yourself as someone who’s an entrepreneur, but you’re certainly entrepreneurial.
Declan 04:55
And I definitely wouldn’t describe myself as an entrepreneur. But thanks. I’d like to, particularly in a public policy space can have some innovative ideas from time to time. But I don’t think I have the same skill set. And I’ve got a lot of admiration for those that are prepared to take the risk exactly as you identified to put themselves out there to try something new when when the the odds might be stacked against against them.
Declan 05:17
Because I’ve got an idea that others hopefully can value could benefit from and can generate value to society to society. That’s it’s really exciting, very admirable, admirable.
Tony skinner 05:28
Yeah, and I think the key word there is actually definitely risk. Yeah, because it is a risk, it is a difficult thing to do. For me, my journey as I got bumped off from an ad agency, I was very lucky, I was able to take most of my clients with me. So I had a perfect start. And most of my clients still me all these years later, but you just can’t sit still and stay still in any space. So I think anybody in business, even in government, I mean, a lot of new things that government comes up with would be regarded as entrepreneurial if it was in private enterprise.
Siobhan 06:09
Well, I think this landing pad is a classic example of that, right? The city of New Castle has actually been really innovative and entrepreneurial, and they’re thinking about this as an economic development opportunity. And so typically, a lot of councils and governments will look at trying to lure the one big, you know, multinational corporate to set up their headquarters or an office within a within a regional location like Newcastle and city of Newcastle have really flipped that on its head and say, you know, what, how about if we look at how we might be able to support tech enabled entrepreneurs, who, you know, when they do succeed, can scale and employ lots of people in a relatively short amount of time and be those job creators. Let’s look at how we might be able to attract, you know, those kinds of companies at their early stages to a place like Newcastle. And I think that’s, that’s a really great example of government being innovative. 
Declan 07:02
Yeah, no, I think so too, and connecting the topics together as well. It’s also helping people that are prepared to take a risk like moving cities is risky, particularly to a second tier city like Newcastle, it’s not one of the capitals in the people often that we are attracting have had really great careers in metropolitan Sydney or Melbourne, they’re looking for a different quality of life looking around at something new might not have been to Newcastle before, it is a pretty decent risk to move to a location like this having not necessarily had had those experiences not being aware of the level of support.
Declan 07:37
And so it’s something very practical we can do to try and help de risk it is is having a partnership like the landing pad with the University of Newcastle and the amazing facilities that it brings just to make it that little bit easier for somebody thinking of relocating to a regional city to take advantage of the better quality of life that a city like Newcastle is able to bring?
Tony skinner 07:57
Yeah, well, that’s a key a good point is what is it that why would I want to move from Sydney to Newcastle?
Declan 08:08
I’ve got a an answer to that one. Just very briefly informed by data too. So actually just going through Siobhans opening comments about when you’ve got an innovator and entrepreneur with innovative ideas, what it is that you the market research that you do, how you try and understand the clientele. We know that Newcastle is a growing city through COVID. In particular, it was a trend that was accelerated Newcastle was one of the top five local government area beneficiaries from across the entire country, which saw people relocating from metropolitan areas, particularly Sydney in Melbourne, looking at regional centers an alternative place to step up to set up and we were able to collect a whole lot of data and both qualitative and quantitative from those people that were looking to move to really unpack and understand what were the drivers of, of people seeking to relocate.
Declan 08:58
The the most significant reason, the primary reason was people were trying to achieve a better quality of life. And then underneath that there were four key influencers that people were looking to relocate to somewhere like Newcastle, as a result of the arts and culture that we provide the sense of community, the lifestyle and the city infrastructure. And so then bringing all of those things together.
Declan 09:21
The landing pad provides a very practical mechanism by which we’re able to provide the good for the infrastructure connected with an amazing building. We’re very lucky that the landing pads like headed out of the Q building located right in the heart of the Newcastle CBD, the University of Newcastle in a city campus here in Newcastle, a brand new just opened in a month ago six star building that really brings that quality of work life but also brings together all of those other external benefits that really map very neatly to the style of expectations that we’re seeing in the data in terms of the the decisions people are making when they’re looking at relocating to somewhere like Newcastle Yeah, 
Siobhan 10:00
I can speak from personal experience as someone who has moved from Sydney to Newcastle 12 years ago that, you know, one of the reasons why we wanted to relocate was housing affordability, we, we love the beach, and we wanted to be close to the beach.
But if we wanted to stay in Sydney, we just seem to get further and further away from it. And the commute time. So I would take public transport, and it would be one hour each way from where I lived in suburban Sydney to Alexandria. And I was like, Is this is this live it like what my life is going to be like, especially with young children having married a Novocastrian.
And it was a somewhat easier transition to a leap of faith to move to Newcastle because I was sort of familiar with the layout when you Newcastle initiative was up and running at that point, which supported creative entrepreneurs to access space for them to be able to operate from and that really interested me, but otherwise, I had no networks up here. And my background was marketing.
Siobhan 10:53
So the idea of getting a marketing job was problematic, I wasn’t sure if I’d get something and had a landing pad been available to me as I started out freelancing. When I first moved here, I think being able to be connected in straightaway, like plugged into essentially a concierge service that can point you in the right direction of all of the meetup events, the networking opportunities, the business chamber events, all of those kinds of things, it just eases that transition into a new location so much easier.
Siobhan 11:26
And, you know, while the COVID and hybrid work opportunities or being able to work 100% remotely, has been really, really, you know, opened up the doors, I think, to people to consider moving to regional locations like Newcastle. And that’s been demonstrated by those figures that Declan just outlined, yes, working from home is fantastic.
We all like being able to be in our pajamas while we take zoom calls or put a load of washing on during during lunch break. But ultimately, at the end of the day, were connected humans that need to be able to be in person with each other. And that’s what the landing hub hub ultimately, sorry, the landing pad ultimately is able to provide is that face to face interactive connection into humans and people that are going through the same journey you are, particularly if you’re starting a new business.
Tony skinner 12:17
And it’s interesting, one of the things I like about the one, the co-lab that I’m in is, you’ve hit on the right point that you get to meet other people. Because it’s really easy. I’ve worked from home for a very long time. And I always knew everyday you got to get out and do something. Otherwise, it just closes in on you. I think most people are starting to realize that now a couple of years later, they’re going yeah, it was fun working from home. But now, that hybrid model is really good for your mental health as well. I think this is a great mental health issue.
Declan 12:50
What do you think of how isolating particularly given this is targeted at people that are relocating cities, how isolating that would be without the network and the work, the work environment that you would otherwise have a place like this really does help with those immediate connections? And I can certainly say that the value that that provides to helping people ensure that there’s a good social connection, not just at work, but also in personal lives as well.
Siobhan 13:14
How hard is it to make friends as adults? thing to do, especially if you don’t have children, right? I mean, children always provide opportunity, their friends for soccer, you know, or sports or at the p&l or whatever. But if you don’t have kids, it’s just generally speaking as adults, we’re all really busy people. So making friends is really hard. And so that’s another added benefit, I guess, of having a space like the landing pad is it provides that, you know, you’re able to build out your networks, not just professionally, but also personally.
Tony skinner 13:43
So that takes us what a great segue to the facilities available at the landing pad.
Siobhan 13:51
Yeah, well, I can I can maybe speak to this. So we, you know, we spent a lot of time developing and designing the insides of this building, by looking at a lot of co working spaces and incubator and accelerator spaces, not just within Australia, but internationally to sort of learn from their mistakes, you know, one of the first questions we’d ask them is, what would you do differently, and that’s really helped inform the design about of this building. 
Siobhan 14:15
And so, as Declan mentioned, it’s regional New South Wales first six star green star rated building. Sustainability is a really key driver of what we do at the University of Newcastle and we’ve kind of set the bar now quite high in terms of all the buildings we’re going to be developing from now with regards to those green credentials. And what we’ve kind of nice side to that is all of our HUD members love being part of a building that kind of wears its sustainability credentials by even just looking at the building you can see that it’s sustainable. And you know, we get a lot of people who are new to the building co working from the space who will actually do like zoom tours of, you know, whoever it is they’re meeting with online somewhere else. Have the building to be able to show them what it looks like.
Siobhan 15:02
So it’s a cross laminated timber construction. It’s got smart glass called SAGE glass on the outside. So it tints as the sun hits it for thermal control, we’ve got PVS, on the roof, reticulated rainwater, and just a beautiful decorated space in terms of its services as well. And so that includes things like on the top floor, we have the landing pad or proper, which is open plan co working, but we also have offices available as well for up to three people. And that swipe access only into that level for our hub members and our landing pad participants. In that space. We have meeting rooms that are all zoom enabled. We have a kitchen area with POD coffee, which we recycle. And then we have some open plants that have breakout spaces as well.
Siobhan 15:48
We also have a full time staff member that’s available on that floor as well to answer any questions anyone has and how they get connected in. And then we on the lower levels, we have event space where we have hosted a lot of our networking events and workshops and seminars around entrepreneurship, things like financial modeling intellectual property, we have pitch nights every week, sorry, every month, rather, we’d like them to be every week, every month. You go, yeah. And then we most importantly, have a fabulous Cafe operator on the ground floor in ducks espresso, we know how important coffee is for entrepreneurs. And I can tell you, it’s fantastic coffee. And then we also have what we call the innovation concierge on the ground floor.
Siobhan 16:31
So one of our I2N reps is always on the ground floor to help assist people point them in the right directions of where they need to go throughout the building. And there’s also a makerspace on the ground floor as well. So all of our landing pad participants and program, incubator hub members get access to the MakerSpace. So if they’re developing our products, and they want to prototype, they can do that from the ground floor as well. So that’s just some of the features within the building.
Tony skinner 16:53
Right. Okay, so what sort of industries? Do you think it would attract more than others? I know, Newcastle is well known for mining, of course. And we’re moving into a green future with that and whatever. So what do you think Declan, what would the sort of industries that you think will be perfect?
Declan 17:14
Yeah, we’ve been really agnostic as to the industries that are able to take advantage of this landing pad offer.
Declan 17:20
And so I should just mention that the current offer is a three month complimentary access to the landing pad as part of a relocation to Newcastle and that’s open to entrepreneurs and professionals alike, that are seeking to relocate and looking for somewhere to work from the city, we’ve had really great success with a really, I have to say a really, really wide, wide variety of different fields.
Declan 17:44
Obviously, taking advantage of skill set in the energy sector has been a particular focus. And there’s a number of businesses working out of the lending part at the moment that are working in the cutting edge of clean tech in particular, we’ve got a growing technology, field and community here in Newcastle as well and a number of very active businesses in that space. Financial Services and healthcare also play a role. We’ve got NIB, a really large listed healthcare provider, private health insurer, here and based out of the city of Newcastle and a number of startups that are providing services into them.
Declan 18:22
We’re fortunate to have a couple of fairly major financial institutions in members credit unions that are located in Newcastle that also taking advantage of the opportunity that’s created through through these local networks. So diversity, absolutely I don’t, we’re not being we’re being completely agnostic in terms of the the type of entrepreneurs that we’re creating more than any where we’re encouraging to come to Newcastle and really demonstrating the acidity of the scale of Newcastle has enough opportunity to cover off on a wide variety of different skill sets.
Tony skinner 18:58
Cool, okay. So Siobhan is this space tied into the university with the students is their mentor ship and what have you in there as well?
Siobhan 19:10
Yeah, so I guess one of the benefits of the the landing pad in the space that we have is that we’re not only industry agnostic, but you don’t have to be affiliated with the university to co work from the space. Clearly, that’s the case for the landing pad participants. But certainly the vast majority of people that choose to actually work from the hub or participate within our pre accelerator accelerator and mentoring programs typically aren’t affiliated with the university but they want access to students for work integrated learning or internships, which often turn into their first hires.
Siobhan 19:43
It’s a great way to be able to source talent at the University in particular disciplines or skill sets. And I guess the other added benefit of that too is if you are working on a technically challenging solution, access to researchers and PhD students To be able to help you understand or understand problems that you might be encountering and getting that technology to market is also another opportunity. So we have a very pretty good understanding of the universities are typically very complex places to navigate. But the all of the I2N staff have very good connections into all of the colleges and schools, not just from an academic perspective for students, but also from a researcher perspective as well.
Siobhan 20:24
And then yes, we also run a mentoring program as well called Venture mentor service. And that’s also available to our landing pad, program participants as well. It’s a beautiful program, it incorporates up to 40 volunteer mentors, many of them come from industry within the local community, but many of them have also worked internationally or interstate, and they’re coming back and being able to share their expertise. So that’s another really great way to build out your network and get some business advice and support at the same time.
Tony skinner 20:57
I’m gonna move to Newcastle. I’ve got something.
Siobhan 21:03
Beaches and the wineries. Yeah, yeah,
Tony skinner 21:07
I think Gina would kill me if you knew I went somewhere else. Okay, so just thinking about, there’s a new thing, that’s probably not so new, but you know, is a new term new type of entrepreneur, and as someone who works, but has a side gig, a side hustle, as they call it, i cant rememebr what that new term is, it’ll pop up again. So would that suit people like that as well?
Declan 21:36
Well, I think absolutely. It’s something if you’ve got an innovative idea, and we know that lots of people start working at home or in the garage, you know, those classic stories and are looking to scale to the next level, their landing pad is the ideal place. In order to do that next piece of the scale,
Declan 21:55
I might just do a quick promotion of another program offered through the city of Newcastle in this space is a side hustle bootcamp, which is helping people who are still, for example, in full time employment somewhere else, but have a really good idea that they want to, they want to try and commercialize it, and then look at how it might progress towards a startup to come into the programs that you want, has just been talking about, that we’re absolutely catering. And we’re really promoting and welcoming people with ideas that are at that stage to come and think about Newcastle as a place for players to explore them further, and know that there’s great wraparound support as their ideas continue to grow.
Tony skinner 22:37
Cool. All right. So I think we do we start off with the money side of things, I just want to say to everybody, look, don’t spend the money I actually launched on my second business was internet based, and I didn’t even have a website. So those people go out and they spend money on the business cards and this and whatever, and a website and whatever, you know, get people giving you money, then spend money. That’s really, really important thing.
Declan 23:08
Yeah, I mean, that’s the sound advice.
Siobhan 23:10
Yeah. I mean, we kind of talk about, you know, an exchange between people who might want to use your product and people. And your end, the product itself can take different forms. And so and I think it depends on the stage at which your startups at to so for example, if you’re very early stage, and you’re still developing the actual product itself, you know, just being able to do very small, smart tests with people who you think are gonna want to purchase this and be your first adopters to just even get their name down on a mailing list. I mean, that is see, right. So any evidence of traction in interest in your, in your product, doesn’t necessarily at the in the first instance, always have to be money either. But certainly, that’s where you want to be headed to for sure.
Tony skinner 24:02
Yeah. And something I like to tell people is, especially in these sorts of spaces, is set up a board. So get people who have that level expertise in marketing and what have you, and ask them, get them together in a semi formal process and go okay, well, I want to do this, I want to do that. What do you think? And then get there, like quite permission to get there quicker or faster feedback.
Declan 24:31
Yeah, surrounding yourself with with people that have either potential end users or have been through the process before it’s really valuable. And one of the additional benefits that comes from kind of like having yourself in some where, like the landing pad where you’ve got access to people that might have gone through some of those experiences, learn some of the hard lessons themselves before I think that taking onboard as much of that advice as possible is only going to lead to better outcomes.
Tony skinner 24:55
Cool. All right. Anything else you’d like to add?
Declan 24:59
for anyone looking to take advantage of the landing pad, the easiest way to do that is to have a look at the city of Newcastle’s website or if you just Google landing pad Newcastle, it’ll come straight up. There’s a whole lot of case study examples of people that have made the move to Newcastle, a summary of everything that Siobhan talked about in terms of what the landing pad has to offer, and also information on how to apply in order to take advantage of the three month complimentary membership for a real there’s a great hub on that on that website with lots of information for people thinking about potentially moving to Newcastle for the very first time and hoping to find someone new to set up their businesses.
Tony skinner 25:35
Cool. All right. Well, thanks very much, guys. So that’s with the city of Newcastle and Newcastle University. Yeah. And then if you’re working from home, and you’re stuck in mortgages and everything else, yeah, maybe the perfect time. Just go for the weekend. I’m sure some Siobhan will be able to make you a coffee with those pods.
Siobhan 26:04
Yeah,maybe get a nice freshly brewed barista coffee on the ground floor.
Tony skinner 26:09
Yeah. Even better. All right. Thanks, guys.
Declan 26:13
We might see you there sometime soon, Tony.
Tony skinner 26:15
Absolutely.
Siobhan 26:16
Thanks, Tony.