Melbourne Launch Event: Building Better Business

Stronger: work it, make it, so it, makes us, harder, better, faster, stronger, now that, that don’t kill me, can only make me stronger.

Kanye knows it, Dolly knows it, even Kenny Rogers knows it. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, but how do we keep going when the going gets tough? How do we meet the challenge of business in today’s climate? How do you make the right decisions, building ethical businesses that have impact, all while managing to muster staying power when you’ve been knocked down, and down again.

This inspiring start-up and scale-up business event is the very first event for Launchpad in Australia. After launching in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Bali – the powerful network of Launchpad is coming to Australia to support ethical, impact startups – and you are invited.

If you are looking for an evening of 100% pure connected goodness with epic humans building impact startups and scale-ups, do not miss this event. Tickets are very limited!

Hosted by Australian Co-Founders Odette Barry (Founder of Hack Your Own PR) and Chris Edwards (Founder of Honeycombers) this event includes a cocktail, canapes and a powerful panel discussion with trailblazers Jane Marx, Suzanne Hoyne and Cherie Clonan.

About the panellists

Jane Marx

Jane is an experienced social entrepreneur and business innovator. She is passionate about creating meaningful employment opportunities for marginalised young women to grow the skills, self-confidence, and financial independence they need to fulfil their dreams. Jane is the Founder and CEO of social enterprise, The Beautiful Bunch, and is an advocate for using the power of business to create a more inclusive and sustainable economy for people and the planet.

Suzanne Hoyne

Suzanne has had years of experience in product-based businesses – from fashion, homewares, sporting goods, bedding, underwear, manufacturing, retail and wholesaling both in Australia and Internationally. A decade ago Suzanne left the corporate world and bought a small bakery business in Byron Bay. That business is now turning over millions of dollars, her workload halved, and she lives a life that lights her up.

Suzanne is on a mission to empower entrepreneurs to build and grow a successful business, focusing on profit first – so you too can enjoy the lifestyle that comes with a profitable business. She knows how you need to master everything as a small business, and the challenges are unique, emotional at times and the financial stress is real.

Cherie Clonan

Cherie’s the Founding Director and CEO of The Digital Picnic, a powerful builder of growing strong communities. Her approach to social media is authenticity. This strategy defines her business, clients and influences her followers. Her business celebrates and sticks to her values she’s deeply passionate about: courage, integrity, commitment, collaboration and accountability.

She prioritises people over profit and commits to innovation which lights up her core. It keeps her brand what it’s known as. The rainbow unicorn dipped in glitter in the sea of social management companies.

In doing all of this, Cherie has built a multi-million dollar company with empathy-led leadership at the heart and soul of everything it does, and a company that has gone on to be described by all as “the nicest place on the internet”.

About the hosts

Odette Barry

Odette Barry is a storyteller who loves nothing more than helping businesses share their stories through traditional media. She is a publicist, PR mentor and founder of Odette & Co – a micro PR agency based out of Byron Bay.

Her career spans marketing and communications for Westpac, the Australian Physiotherapy Association, TAFE NSW and Women’s Fitness magazine – so she’s worked all sides of the communications domain.

Since establishing the consultancy arm of Odette & Co, she has worked with small and enterprise businesses across Australia and New Zealand spanning the technology, design, education, beauty, wellness, health and fashion sectors (to name just a few). This diverse portfolio of experience means she has a broad range of experience to support just about any communications challenge.

Odette is committed to helping her clients secure genuine and valuable coverage, and she does that with an intimate knowledge of the media landscape and trusted relationships with media outlets.

Odette is a headline-winning PR mentor, who designed and teaches the popular Hack Your Own PR program, an intimate program designed for small business owners because she knows that every business has a story to tell.

And if you’re looking to upskill and learn a little about the media industry and how to score your own headlines, look no further than Odette’s podcast where she interviews some of Australia’s best journalists, producers, editors and hosts about the commonly misunderstood publicity gig.

Chris Edwards

Chris is a serial entrepreneur having started her first business in 2008 at 28 years of age — a lifestyle media platform: Honeycombers. It is now the go-to lifestyle resource for locals, expats and tourists alike across Singapore, Hong Kong and Bali. She has also created a parenting platform called HoneyKids Asia. Collectively, there are over 1 million unique readers of Honeycombers content across South East Asia every month.

Chris started coaching entrepreneurs, and from this experience she saw the need for a community for conscious entrepreneurs, so she created Launchpad in 2022. Launchpad is an entrepreneurial community, designed to help small businesses thrive through community, peer mentoring and coaching. Launchpad today has over 450 members from across 6 countries.

Chris now runs 4 companies across 4 countries and hosts a weekly podcast called Good Business where she interviews impact-led founders. Chris spends her time split between Singapore, Hong Kong, Bali and Byron Bay, Australia, where she lives with her husband and three kids.