In 18 years of working with people with disabilities, Ariel Gonzalez witnessed the paucity of health and lifestyle choices available to them and decided to do something about it. After qualifying as a fitness professional in 2007, he started his Liverpool-based business Motivate You Fitness & Personal Training. Starting as an operation offering bootcamp and one-on-one fitness programs, Ariel branched into a program specifically catering for people with disabilities. The business now offers specialised disabled nutrition, weight loss and group exercise programs, as well as courses for adults aged over 50 and for youth groups. Motivate You is winning corporate contracts as a result of its community work. The business recently initiated cross-marketing alliances with a sporting goods shop, a chiropractor and a beautician.

"Assisting many people to lose up to 30kg and change their whole lifestyle is among our milestone achievements.” — Ariel Gonzalez, Director.

Jen Dalitz’s vision is to see women equally represented with men in leadership roles in workplaces and communities. During a career in Fortune 500 finance and consulting businesses, Jen led teams of 200 people, ran $50 million projects and managed the administration of $9 billion in superannuation funds. Her experience gave her an understanding that it can be lonely and frustrating being a woman in a leadership role. Jen established sphinxx in 2007 as a network providing support and services to assist businesswomen in managing their work and life priorities. The Mosman business launched its ‘Take the Lead’ group mentoring program in 2008 and its quarterly ‘Ascend’ leadership development days in 2009. Sponsorship has allowed Ascend to extend from Sydney and Melbourne to Adelaide and Brisbane in 2010 and one thousand women are expected to participate. Sphinxx also offers consulting services to assist employers in attracting and retaining female talent.

"A key lesson I have learned is the importance of forming alliance partners – advancing women in business requires participation and commitment from all parties.” — Jen Dalitz, SheEO.

Sydney Commercial Kitchens has an online showroom displaying hundreds of products including bain maries, convection ovens, chest freezers and cash registers. Neil Willis established the home-based business in 1998 after 20 years in the hospitality industry, with experience as owner of a restaurant and three catering companies. Neil took the plunge in 2000 to make it a web-based business, supplementing its start-up income by designing kitchens. Sydney Commercial Kitchens has since grown to become a premier online supplier of catering equipment to the Australian hospitality industry. Operating from new premises in Cromer, the business continues to pioneer new search engine optimisation strategies to maximise its exposure for customers.

“I have written two eBooks, one about how to succeed in restaurants and cafes and the other on strategies to make your website more effective.” — Neil Willis, Managing Director.

Valerie Khoo left a life as an accountant in a global firm to follow a passion for writing. She became an author of five published books and a columnist in daily newspapers. In 2005, Valerie founded the Sydney Writers’ Centre in Milsons Point. She modelled it on the ideal learning environment that she wishes she’d had when developing her writing career and trying to get published. The centre offers more than 30 courses, presented by successful authors and journalists, in magazine and travel writing as well as fiction, children’s books, book publishing, business and online writing. Student numbers have risen from 60 to 2400 a year.

Online courses attract students from many countries, including the US, Japan, Afghanistan and United Arab Emirates. The centre has also been contracted by multi-national corporations to develop writing programs for their employees.

“We are passionate about education and persistent in finding ways to help those who live behind a technological firewall.” — Valerie Khoo, Director.

How much money do I need to retire on and when can I access my superannuation? These are among the most common questions Penrith financial planners Tactical Solutions receives from clients every day. The business was established in 1997 to offer strategic consulting but within five years had morphed into a financial planning practice providing individuals, families and businesses with specialist advice in retirement, superannuation, investment and insurance packages. An authorised representative of AMP Financial Planning, Tactical Solutions stresses that its success is driven not just by understanding the client’s goals and providing a solution but also by implementing the solution with the client. The business is actively involved in the Penrith community and offers quarterly public seminars on financial issues. In 2006, Tactical Solutions principal Bernard Fehon founded the CEO Sleepout which raised $621,000 last year for homeless people.

"We implement individual solutions for our clients, partnering with only the best accountants, solicitors and mortgage professionals.” — Jacqui Tinsley, Practice Manager.

On the slopes of the extinct volcano Mount Canobolas overlooking the town of Orange lies Borrodell vineyard, a highly-diversified tourism business. Purchased by the Gartrell family 43 years ago, the farmland and surrounding bush has been regenerated, erosion addressed, and one of the highest vineyards in Australia has replaced the apple orchard as the property’s primary business. Borry Gartrell and wife Gaye Stuart-Nairne’s decision to pursue a wine tourism business is adding to the Central West city’s reputation as a rapidly developing wine and food destination. The boutique Borrodell winery established Sisters Rock Restaurant in 2004 and later a cellar door/function centre. Environmentally friendly cottages have also been built among the vines and apple trees. Borrodell also produces an annual crop of Black Perigord truffles, 200 varieties of heritage apples and plums, exports cherries from over 6000 trees and is starting to produce apple cider.

“Always take care of your people, including yourself and the land and be brave enough to back your own decisions.” — Gaye Stuart-Nairne, Director.

In 2007, at just 23 years of age, Nathan Dale launched a commercial property service company with two employees. Today the Intact Group has a diverse trade services team of 17 full-time staff including three apprentices. It has onsite tradespeople in 11 commercial buildings and has managed national urban and rural projects. The company has overcome any misgivings about the relative youth of its management team by exceeding expectations with its own quality assurance guarantee winning it new contracts. In its first year, the Intact Group carried out a national site safety project for the Commonwealth Bank and has developed the partnership further. It also won maintenance contracts for facility management industry leaders such as CB Richard Ellis and Colliers International. This year, Intact Group’s profits are expected to almost double for the second consecutive year.

"A belief that the employees are the organisation’s greatest asset is demonstrated through transparency on all internal and external matters at the core of Intact Group’s values.” — Nathan Dale, Managing Director.

In the competitive recruitment sector, one Sydney company has carved out a niche as a specialist supplier of technical personnel to industries where safety is a core competency. Kinetic Recruitment was founded in 2001 as Kinetic Defence Services and the two-person operation won early government endorsement via the Defence Materiel Organisation for its understanding of the industry’s needs. Kinetic Recruitment has broadened its services to finding the right recruits for contract and permanent positions in the aerospace, aviation and rail industries as well as software engineering and ICT. It provides clients with access to a database of more than 50,000 skilled candidates and uniquely acts as a conduit between safety critical industries for candidates and clients alike. In 2007, Kinetic Recruitment launched salary surveys in the defence, rail and ICT sectors positioning themselves as market leaders and innovators.

“A key lesson is to develop and empower your team and structure your business to reduce key person dependence.” — Raj Kutty, Owner.

Port Macquarie’s Observatory Resort Hotel offers luxury suites overlooking the ocean and lays claim to being the NSW North Coast’s most awarded apartment hotel. In 2009, the hotel won the Australian Service Excellence Award for Small Business. Among many other tourism awards, it was chosen as the 2008 Operator of the Year by the Hotel, Motel and Accommodation Association of Australia. Chris and Trish Denny and Margaret Chant opened The Observatory in 2004 after previously operating successful tourism businesses in Brisbane and Byron Bay. The 4.5 star hotel achieved 22 per cent turnover growth over the past three years and a 7 per cent increase in repeat and referral business. The Observatory’s reputation for service, the introduction of dynamic pricing and the launch of their innovative Green Future Program are all contributing to their success. In 2007, the hotel became the first Australian tourism business to achieve accreditation to International Management Standard.

“We display the intimacy, passion and attention to detail of a family-owned business and the exemplary business procedures normally reserved for larger organisations.” — Chris Denny, Managing Director.

Ann Elisha was just 25 with a passion for education when she borrowed money to start a business in the vocational education industry in 1996. Today she is a Careers Advisor and Owner Operator of the Australian Careers Business College (ACBC) which prepares school leavers for their future careers and assists mature-age and unemployed individuals to redirect their careers or re-enter the workforce. The business has grown to offer nationally recognised Diploma and Advanced Diploma courses in eight areas – Tourism, Marketing, Paralegal studies, Business Administration, Childcare, Accounting, IT and Computing – at three campuses located in Liverpool, Parramatta and Wollongong. Upon successful completion the accelerated business courses provide automatic entry with credit into university or graduation to enter the workforce after one year. ACBC’s enrolment has grown from 47 to 600 students and the business employs more than 63 staff. One of Sydney’s leading business college’s, ACBC also offers job placement assistance.

“ACBC provides an innovative one-day-a-week work experience program for students to gain valuable time in their chosen fields.” — Nicole Hulm, Administration Manager.

Doltone House Group is a venue and catering company with two jewels in Sydney’s CBD foreshore – one on the heritage waterfront Jones Bay Wharf at Pyrmont Point and a newer facility in nearby Darling Island Wharf. Founded by the late Biaggio Signorelli, the family-owned and operated company purchased its first venue in Sylvania Waters in 1995 and entered the CBD market five years later. The business hosts events for ten to 1000 guests, and employs more than 140 staff. Its Darling Island Wharf venue represented an investment of more than $11 million in a customised environmentally-friendly design. The venue positions Doltone House as one of the larger players in the event space in NSW. The company purchased Deepwater Motor Boat Club at Milperra in 2008 and is undertaking development applications ahead of trading in 2012.

“The loss of our founder in 2008 made the reality of continuing his legacy and vision even more motivating to his successors, his children.” — Paul Signorelli, Nina Milazzo and Anna Cesarano - Directors.

George Holman was forever chasing payments, losing membership sales and suffering irregular cash flow at his Sydney gymnasium. A trip to the US in 1996 to study their experienced fitness industry provided the answer – direct debits. After a hugely successful trial which increased his fitness club’s membership base from 200 to 4000 in one year, George decided to start a direct debit business called Ezypay to provide an easier payment plan for members. It was the first business outside a bank to provide direct debit services to other Australian businesses and the first to provide SMS follow-ups for failed payments. The Chatswood business gives clients the tools to create an online software system to collect, manage and recover customer payments. Ezypay has 31 staff and this year launched its direct debit gateway (DDG) product, enabling customers to securely initiate a transaction from their bank account or credit card directly from clients’ websites.

“With a collection rate of more than 99 per cent, Ezypay supports businesses in the regulation of cash flow and the reduction of bad debts.” — Celeste Kirby-Brown, Sales and Marketing Director.

Late in 2005, a brainstorming session to create the ultimate hotel reservation website led three Ultimo business partners to design HotelsCombined.com. Their innovative website aggregates room prices from online travel agents and hotel chains into a streamlined database of 230,000 properties from 195 countries via a single search engine. While other travel meta-search engines handle flight prices and availability, HotelsCombined.com sends user requests for hotel rooms to more than 30 other search engines and thousands of hotel websites to compile its listing. The 24-language site is a free service for customers to use. Today, some 6.5 million visitors a month use the site to compare hotel deals before clicking further to make a reservation.

“We strive to give our clients what they are looking for when they come to HotelsCombined.com – a simple, easy to use interface, allowing them to quickly find the best hotel deal.” — Yury Glikin, Director of Business Development.

The dramatic take-up of personal media on mobile devices opened a world of opportunities for TigerSpike to deliver a broad range of digital services. Initially working in 2003 with java games and ringtones, the four founders of the Surry Hills personal media company built a successful business by offering innovative products to build customer relationships. Using their award-winning mobile platform Phoenix, TigerSpike works with global brands to deliver their campaigns in Australia, the UK and the US. Successes include developing an iPhone application for Time Out magazine’s event and nightlife content in London, partnering with BigPond on its mobile shopping service, and creating digital communication solutions for the University of Western Sydney. Recent projects flowing from TigerSpike’s in house Innovation Lab include augmented reality and location based services. TigerSpike's global experience combined with research and development from its in house Innovation Lab ensures their solutions are creative and cutting edge.

"TigerSpike has grown extensively over the past 7 years, through a variety of market conditions and technological change. We work hard at maintaining our position as a market leader through constant innovation and hiring the very best in the digital industry." — Alex Burke, Managing Director.

Internet broadcasting technology from digital media pioneer Viocorp International took Sydney’s World Youth Day celebrations to a global audience by webcast. Canberra’s Australia 2020 Summit and last year’s National Broadband Summit are among other high-profile events broadcast online using the Pyrmont company’s innovative systems. The company counts many blue chip companies and government departments among its large client roster. Viocorp products function as individual or integrated video solutions, either incorporated into its own platform Viostream or stand-alone on the clients’ own infrastructure. Since Viocorp’s launch in 2002, it has also released Viomedia and Vioad, flexible solutions for publishing and distributing digital media across a diverse range of devices. Since 2008, the company has grown its turnover by 350 per cent, its staff to 58 and raised its international profile, culminating this year in a contract with Accenture for Malaysia’s largest internet broadcasting project. Viocorp’s thought leadership in Australia is promoted by live webinars with its clients and other online viewers.

“Viocorp’s people are actively engaged in evangelising rich digital media opportunities to prospects and clients alike.” — Ron McCulloch, Executive Chairman.

Australian BioRefining (ABR) learnt a lesson from its first project when an overseas manufacturer targeted the niche market it had identified for its production of gluconic acid from sugar - their profit margin was too small to support a local manufacturing facility. Now, the Evans Head company aims to identify innovations that are most viable for commercial application at an early stage of development, removing much of the market risk. Formed in 2004, ABR identifies chemical process opportunities to create clean technologies which add value to by-product streams and improve the economics of waste recycling. It is developing a technology for treating acid process streams containing heavy metals, and a process to recycle metal finishing industry waste. ABR’s objective is to be an internationally recognised process technology development company – while engaging other companies to take the potentially-scalable applications to mass production.

“We are applied technologists – we identify problems and develop chemical process solutions” — Adam Blunn, Managing Director.

Moving to Manly Beach and buying their son Chris a surfboard led to Trevor and Nicolle Drake creating a product with international potential. The Drakes have run Wood Appeal, a successful custom joinery and design company, for 25 years but it’s SOLID Racks surf and sport storage systems that they started in 2007 that is the talk of the beaches and beyond. Trevor and Nicolle designed and manufactured their first set of racks to protect their son’s five surfboards; the second was for world professional surfing tour veteran Rob Bain. They have developed their 40+ products to also be fabricated from a waterproof polymer material, ensuring they are solid and built to last. SOLID Racks’ website, which boasts testimonials from world champions Tom Carroll and Layne Beachley, has driven international interest in its product range.

“Our objective is to become an iconic globally-recognised Australian surf brand and exporter of quality surf and sport storage systems.” — Nicolle Drake, Director.

As the mobile phone messaging industry evolved in the 1990s, North Sydney software development company Soprano Design was in the vanguard of developing infrastructure that routes and delivers SMS and MMS messages. Soprano developed a string of innovative business applications that meet the mobile messaging needs of an entire enterprise. It partners with leading IT&T vendors IBM, eServGlobal and mobile data leader Acision to co-distribute services to mobile network operators. A measure of their success was a 2009 invitation for Soprano CEO Dr Richard Favero to address the GSMA mobile world congress in Barcelona on the future of messaging. Established in 1994, Soprano grew significantly in recent years, winning contracts for mobile messaging services with Telstra, one Middle Eastern and two northern European operators. Soprano was a partner in industry-leading solutions in Australia including the first wireless application protocol in banking, first credit card transaction via SMS and first person-to-person mobile payment via SMS and interactive voice response.

"Soprano automates complex and time-consuming business processes, improves staff efficiency and reduces business-operating costs by reducing the “human latency” that causes business communication and process problems." — Richard Favero, CEO.

Since its inception in 2002, internet broadcasting solutions provider Viocorp has publicly advocated the economic opportunities that can be realised from the digital economy by Australian business. In 2010 it used its own technology to launch a series of online broadcasts exploring sectors being transformed by digital media technology - the future of television, sports broadcasting and entertainment. At this year’s Australian Interactive Media Industry Association awards, Viocorp won “Best Enterprise” for its product Viocast, an easy-to-use webcasting platform designed for broadcasting live or on-demand video and audio content with synchronised Powerpoint slides over the internet. Founded by Ron McCulloch and Ian Gardiner, the Pyrmont-based Viocorp has produced a range of Software-as-a-Service solutions in the past five years. Viocorp’s enterprise-class digital publishing solutions are behind the streaming of major sporting and artistic events and technology conferences.

“Building our reputation as an innovating company is in Viocorp’s DNA – we continually push the boundaries of product performance and capability.” — Ron McCulloch, Executive Chairman.

With barely $300 in capital, Robert and Melinda Chewying founded a lawn and garden care service in 1994. This evolved into a model for assisting marginalised workers into mainstream employment. ChewYings Lawn & Horticulture (CLH) gives opportunities to social security recipients in NSW’s Shoalhaven region to work in a non-government funded, commercial environment. Robert’s bipolar condition made even reading and writing a challenge but he was determined to improve through perseverance and education. CLH offers a choice for those locked into the social welfare spiral to succeed and its employees have gained horticulture and chemical users’ certificates. One of its garden care managers joined in 2003 after being unemployed for seven years since high school. CLH now employs between three and five people at any time and offers reliable service and a social benefit that most competitors cannot match.

"Success to me is not only profits or turnover; we designed the business around strategies of moving welfare recipients out of the welfare trap.” — Robert Chewyings, Partner.

Broken Hill CBD business The Dental Centre provides education and oral health screening in pre-schools and nursing homes - areas which miss out on public health funding. The Dental Centre was established in 1984 when the lure of home brought practice principal Dr Greg Cocks and practice manager Lesley Cocks back to Broken Hill. Their long-running outreach program to educate carers, patients, teachers and students in local institutions was expanded by establishing a charity in 2005 to extend visits to remote rural communities and orphanages in Bali. The Dental Centre, with 10 staff, regularly hosts tertiary healthcare students from Sydney and Adelaide and the experience it offers has led graduates to consider rural options when starting their careers. The business developed an accreditation program for hygienists in order to retain trained professional staff and is also collaborating with the local Aboriginal Health Service in an oral health initiative.

“The various outreach programs bring a new energy into our workplace.” — Dr Greg Cocks, Practice Principal.