What I learned in business (that didn't kill me!) – Details, episodes & analysis

Private-equity veteran Patrick Elliott (Founding Partner, Next Capital; ex-Macquarie PE; former Chair of JB Hi-Fi) joins James H Stewart to unpack career pivots, equity investing and what they teach us about risk, governance, and value creation.

Patrick traces his path from restructuring at Ferrier Hodgson to Private equity investing at Macquarie, then the leap to found Next Capital. We dig into the JB Hi-Fi MBI-to-IPO journey, the lessons from the collapse of Topshop Australia and how to approach turnarounds when the exit options are limited.

Whether you’re a founder, operator, or investor, you’ll get a playbook in patient investing, strategic pivots, and why great businesses are built around great people.

Practical, candid, and loaded with real examples.

Key Takeaways:

• How to know when it’s time to change direction
• The mindset required to transition from advisor to investor
• Lessons from private equity and rethinking growth after crisis

About Patrick Elliott:

Patrick Elliott is Co-Founder of Next Capital and former executive at Macquarie Bank. A graduate of IMD (Switzerland), he has led investments across retail, consumer, and industrial sectors — combining analytical precision with entrepreneurial instinct.

Connect with Patrick:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-elliott-374a3214b

https://nextcapital.com.au

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What I Learned in Business (That Didn’t Kill Me!) — hosted by James H. Stewart, exploring the stories behind resilience, reinvention, and leadership.

Connect with James:

🌐 JamesHStewart.com | LinkedIn

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Di Gillett is a former fashion-design student, turned retailer, turned headhunter, turned podcaster — whose life and career are a study in resilience and reinvention.

Di began her career in fashion and retail with Myer and Country Road, before spending more than 30 years in executive search, working with industry icon Andrew Banks at Talent 2 and later founding her own firm, Agora Partners. Today, she hosts the acclaimed Power of Women Podcast, and with almost 100 episodes, is approaching the top 1% of podcasters globally.

In a deeply honest conversation, Di shares the moments that shaped her — from surviving sudden alopecia to navigating the loss of her sister-in-law, elite cyclist Amy Gillett, whose death inspired a national road-safety movement.

Together, James and Di explore how adversity reshapes ambition, and why confidence and visibility matter more than ever for women in business.

Key Takeaways:

• How to transform adversity into purpose
• Why visibility and connection matter for women in business
• The importance of authenticity in leadership and storytelling

About Di Gillett:

Di Gillett is a business founder, podcast host, and advocate for women’s empowerment. With a background in retail and recruitment — including work with Andrew Banks and Talent2 — Di brings a grounded perspective on leadership, courage, and finding voice through adversity.

Connect with Di:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/di-gillett-power-of-women

https://powerofwomen.com.au/

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — and don’t forget to follow, rate, and share.

What I Learned in Business (That Didn’t Kill Me!) — hosted by James H. Stewart, celebrating real stories of resilience, leadership, and growth.

Connect with James:

🌐 JamesHStewart.com | LinkedIn

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Evan Thornley is an entrepreneur, investor, reformer, and one of Australia’s most original thinkers on business and social change.

Evan’s career has been anything but conventional. He co-founded LookSmart, one of Australia’s first tech companies to list on NASDAQ at the height of the dot-com boom, before riding out its spectacular crash. He later entered Victorian politics, led the global Better Place electric-vehicle venture, helped rescue ABC Learning through the creation of Goodstart Early Learning, and today chairs LongView, a business tackling housing affordability and generational inequality.

James and Evan explore:

• What it was like to ride the rise and fall of the dot-com bubble
• The lessons from taking billion-dollar risks — and losing
• Why Evan left politics to lead change from outside government
• The story behind Goodstart and the ABC Learning rescue
• How LongView is rethinking housing and wealth inequality in Australia
• What Evan's learned about resilience, risk, and purpose across every chapter

This is a conversation about big ideas, bold failures, and rebuilding success with meaning.

Key Takeaways:

• How failure can sharpen strategy and conviction
• Why purpose-driven business models are the future
• What leadership looks like in times of technological and ethical disruption

About Evan Thornley:

Evan Thornley is an Australian tech entrepreneur, investor, and impact leader. He co-founded LookSmart, led Better Place Australia, was a driving force behind the GoodStart consortium that rescued 650 childcare centres from the financial collapse of ABC learning and now heads LongView, a purpose-driven property business focused on long-term wealth and housing reform.

Connect with Evan:

LinkedIn | https://longview.com.au

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — and don’t forget to follow, rate, and share.

What I Learned in Business (That Didn’t Kill Me!) — hosted by James H. Stewart, exploring the real lessons from business, innovation, and resilience.

Connect with James:

🌐 JamesHStewart.com | LinkedIn

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Paul Howes is one of Australia’s most recognisable public figures and a leader whose career has spanned the union movement, politics, and corporate life.

Raised by a single mother in Sydney’s Blue Mountains, Paul became the youngest ever National Secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, rising to national prominence during the Beaconsfield mine disaster. He later became a key player in Labor’s 2010 leadership drama which led to Julia Gillard becoming Australia's first female prime minister— an experience he chronicled in his book Confessions of a Faceless Man.

Today, Paul reflects on the lessons learned from crisis leadership, public scrutiny, and career transformation — from the factory floor to the boardroom. He also discusses his work with Beyond Blue, and his next chapter as CEO of Tenet Advisory & Investments, founded by Luke Sayers.

This is a candid, insightful, and at times surprising conversation about resilience, reinvention, and what leadership looks like under the spotlight.

Key Takeaways:

• How to lead during crises
• Why empathy matters
• The value of reinvention

About Paul Howes:

Paul Howes is the incoming CEO of Tenet Advisory and Investments (from January 2026), former National Secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, National Managing Partner of KPMG's Enterprise and Consulting divisions and a respected voice on business transformation and social reform. He served on the National COVID-19 Advisory Board and the Beyond Blue Board, bringing together business and community leadership.

Connect with Paul:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pahowes/

https://tenetadvisory.com.au/

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What I Learned in Business (That Didn’t Kill Me!) is hosted by James H. Stewart — senior commercial advisor uncovering the real stories behind leadership and resilience.

Connect with James:

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Born out of the ashes of Enron and the collapse of global Big 5 firm Arthur Andersen, Korda Mentha has become a powerhouse advisory firm in Australia/Asia fuelled by winning some of the biggest and most high profile mandates in the country.

In this episode of What I Learned About Business (That Didn’t Kill Me), James H Stewart sits down with Mark Korda, co-founder of KordaMentha to discuss the inside story of founding KordaMentha, the lessons learned through some of Australia’s biggest corporate crises — including Ansett Airlines, Timbercorp, and Arrium, and the difficult cultural journey to transform Australia's most successful sporting club, Collingwood FC.

Key Takeaways:

• How to lead under intense public and financial pressure
• How to balance transparency and authority in difficult times
• Why culture matters to business success

About Mark Korda:

Mark Korda is Co-Founder of KordaMentha and a former President of the Collingwood Football Club. With decades in corporate restructuring, he’s been at the helm of landmark Australian administrations and continues to shape thinking on business recovery and governance.

About Korda Mentha:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/kordamentha/posts/?feedView=all

https://kordamentha.com/home

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — and don’t forget to follow, rate, and share.

What I Learned in Business (That Didn’t Kill Me!) is hosted by James H. Stewart — Senior commercial advisor and founder of JamesHStewart.com.

Connect with James:

🌐 JamesHStewart.com | LinkedIn

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the views of their organisations, affiliates, or of the host. This podcast is for general informational purposes only and should not be taken as business, financial, or professional advice. Listeners should seek their own independent advice before making decisions related to any topics discussed.

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For 40 years I was a corporate undertaker. I buried businesses that failed and helped save those where there was still a pulse.

I was parachuted into some of corporate Australia’s biggest financial crisis, insolvencies and turnaround environments. I have been in Board rooms, Court rooms and on shop floors when all seems lost (and sometimes it was).

Over decades at the coal face of business (often in the most difficult circumstances), I have seen & heard stories that delighted and inspired me, as well as those which serve as a guide of the path not to take.

I also spent years in leadership roles at Ferrier Hodgson and KPMG Australia where I sat on the Board and was the National Consumer and Retail leader.

What I learned about Business (that didn’t kill me!) shares the stories behind some of the world's most interesting business situations, how they unfolded, how my guests dealt with them, and how those experiences changed them and the way they do business.

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What happens when one of the UK’s largest companies collapses—and takes trust in the entire UK audit profession with it?

In this episode, I sit down with Mark Raddan, CEO of Interpath Advisory and former KPMG UK Senior Partner and Board member, to unpack the fallout from the Carillion collapse and how it fundamentally reshaped the UK turnaround and restructuring profession.

Carillion employed more than 40,000 people and delivered critical public infrastructure across the UK. But in 2018, it collapsed under the weight of debt, aggressive accounting, and failing contracts—triggering parliamentary inquiries, regulatory backlash, and record fines for KPMG.

What followed wasn’t just the failure of a company—it was a structural reset of the entire profession in the UK. Regulators moved to address conflicts of interest within the Big Four, ultimately forcing KPMG to sell its restructuring business.

That carve-out became Interpath Advisory—a new, independent firm backed by private equity and now operating as one of the large independent global turnaround and restructuring firms.

Mark was at the centre of that transition.

In this conversation, we cover:

• The Carillion collapse and the consequences that followed.
• The impact on KPMG UK and the wider profession
• Why the Big Four were forced to rethink their business models
• The creation and rapid growth of Interpath Advisory
• How private equity is reshaping the professional services model
• The future of restructuring, advisory, and the impact of AI

This is a rare, insider perspective on how crisis, regulation and capital combined to create an entirely new competitive landscape in global advisory.

This podcast is for information and general discussion purposes only.

The views expressed by guests are their own and do not constitute financial, legal, investment or professional advice. Nothing in this episode should be relied upon as a recommendation or advice to make any business, financial or investment decision. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, the content is based on publicly available information and personal perspectives, which may be incomplete or subject to change. Listeners should seek their own independent professional advice before acting on any matters discussed.

Follow the podcast for more conversations on business, leadership, crisis and recovery.

Connect with me on LinkedIn:

👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-h-stewart-gaicd-83b46a9

or at my website:

👉 https://jameshstewart.com

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What is customer loyalty — really?

Is it points? Discounts? Retention metrics? Or is it something deeper?

In this episode of What I Learned in Business (That Didn’t Kill Me!), I sit down with Adam Posner, founder of The Point of Loyalty, host of the What’s the Point of Loyalty? podcast, and author of For Love or Money™ — one of Australia’s longest-running loyalty research studies, spanning nearly two decades and 18 editions.

But before Adam became a loyalty strategist, his life gave him a very different education. Growing up in Johannesburg during apartheid, living through conscription into national service, surviving a terrorist car bomb explosion, and emigrating to Australia to start again from scratch — Adam’s worldview was shaped long before he ever designed a loyalty program.

From walking the streets delivering scratch-and-save cards into letterboxes, to building a direct marketing agency and ultimately pivoting into customer research and loyalty strategy, Adam has spent nearly 20 years asking a deceptively simple question:

What actually makes customers stay?

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why loyalty is about Behaviour, Belief and Belonging
• The importance of retail response when the customer experience disappoints loyalty
• Why customer loyalty and trust are closely connected
• Why the world needs a “Pandemic of Joy” — and what Adam calls Joyalty
• How AI and agentic technology may redefine brand–customer relationships

This episode is a masterclass in what Adam calls “the finance of feelings” — the commercial power of emotion in a data-driven world.

If you lead a brand, manage customer strategy, sit on a board, or simply care about how businesses build trust — this one is for you.

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the individual guest and host and do not constitute financial, legal, investment, marketing or professional advice.

This podcast is intended for general informational and educational purposes only. Any discussion of brands, loyalty programs, corporate events or data breaches reflects publicly available information and personal opinion at the time of recording. Listeners should conduct their own independent enquiries and seek appropriate professional advice before making any commercial or strategic decisions.

This episode is not a promotional platform and no endorsement of any organisation or product is intended or implied.

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From surviving a devastating car accident in Ukraine to becoming one of Australia’s most influential thinkers in customer loyalty and digital strategy — this is the extraordinary journey of Anna Samkova.

Born outside Kiev and raised in Odessa during the final years of the Soviet era, Anna grew up behind the Iron Curtain. At 20, she survived a serious accident that required multiple surgeries and left doctors unsure whether she would ever have children. Three years later, she migrated to Australia, unable to speak English and holding a degree that wasn’t recognised — only to find herself unexpectedly pregnant and unsure she could carry her baby to term.

What follows is a story of grit, reinvention and unbreakable determination.

Anna learned English while raising her daughter, studying marketing, working her first job at Ozito Tools and running her own health and wellness centre. She went on to design one of Australia’s earliest large-scale loyalty programs at Dodo Internet, before joining American Bank Note to help retailers nationwide shape customer behaviour and loyalty from the ground up.

In 2011 she joined the PAS Group — home to Review, Black Pepper, Yarra Trail, JETS and more — eventually becoming Head of Digital and Loyalty for almost a decade. She later continued in this role with Brand Collective after PAS was acquired out of Voluntary Administration, giving her rare insight into customer loyalty during periods of severe financial distress and organisational change.

Today, as Co-Founder of Albany Advisory, Anna helps boards and CEOs transform customer strategy, behavioural insight and digital capability into sustainable competitive advantage.

In this episode we explore:

• Growing up behind the Iron Curtain and how it shaped her worldview
• Surviving a life-altering accident and rebuilding her life
• Migrating to Australia with no English and no safety net
• Juggling study, work, motherhood and entrepreneurship
• Building loyalty from scratch at Dodo Internet
• A decade driving digital transformation at PAS Group
• What happens to customer loyalty during Voluntary Administration
• The future of loyalty in an AI-driven world
• The difference between customer strategy, behaviour and loyalty

This episode is a masterclass in resilience, customer insight and the psychology of loyalty in a world defined by disruption and digital acceleration.

Disclaimer.

The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the individuals involved and do not represent the views, policies or positions of any companies, boards or organisations referenced. Nothing in this podcast should be taken as financial, strategic, legal or professional advice. Listeners should always seek their own independent advice before making decisions relating to business, investment or governance.

Connect with me.

• Website: https://jameshstewart.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-h-stewart-gaicd-83b46a9

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From escaping civil war in Sri Lanka at just six years old, to building one of the most successful automation start-ups in Australia and New Zealand, Nishan Wijemanne has lived a business journey defined by resilience, reinvention and relentless curiosity.

In this episode, we trace Nishan’s extraordinary path — from his early years in Christchurch, to his foundational training at Dematic, one of the world’s largest logistics automation companies, and then to founding Cohesio Group. Cohesio quickly became a market leader, securing major clients such as The Reject Shop, Kmart and Wesfarmers’ Officeworks, and forging a groundbreaking partnership with Chinese robotics giant Geek+, before being acquired by German technology conglomerate Körber in 2019.

Nishan then teamed up again with long-time collaborator Rizan Mawzoon to launch Shiperoo in 2023 — a next-generation fulfilment and returns platform using robotics, automation and a modern tech stack to give retail brands an Amazon-level customer experience without becoming Amazon themselves. Today, Shiperoo is backed by Australia Post, and supported by industry leaders including John King, Paul Greenberg and Gary Starr.

We unpack the lessons Nishan learned building and selling Cohesio, the turning point that made him realise the returns economy was the next frontier of ecommerce logistics, and his views on the future of AI, automation and robotics in global supply chains.

Whether you’re in retail, ecommerce, logistics, robotics or leadership — or you simply enjoy stories of grit and ambition — this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.

The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the views of the host, James H Stewart, or the production team behind What I Learned in Business (That Didn’t Kill Me!). This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute business, financial, investment or professional advice. Listeners should seek their own independent advice before making decisions based on the content of this episode. All business examples, company references and personal experiences are presented in good faith and are based on publicly available information or the guest’s personal account. No responsibility is taken for any errors, omissions or changes in factual circumstances after the date of recording.

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