In-Person Fireside Chat | Kate Gatfield-Jeffries (Moodi)

Join us for a Digital Advisory with Steph Pase, Founder & CEO of Steph Pase Planners, as we unpack what happens behind the scenes when a business starts to scale.

After building Steph Pase Planners from a product launched at home into an established brand, Steph reached a point many founders face: the business was growing, but the systems, structure and team behind it needed to grow too.

Steph made the decision to step back, rebuild and create stronger foundations for the next stage of the business.

We’ll get into:

• Managing rapid growth: what starts to break as sales outgrow your infrastructure.Inventory & cash flow: managing stock, seasonal demand and the cost of getting it wrong.
• Product expansion: when to launch something new versus doubling down on what already sells.
• Operations & fulfilment: going from packing orders at home to building operations that can handle scale.
• Founder-led to scalable brand: building a business and community that can grow without relying on you for everything.

Plus, the expensive mistakes, lessons and decisions Steph would approach differently if she was building again today.

If you're growing a product business and trying to work out what needs to change to reach the next stage, this conversation is for you.

Join us for an afternoon with Lorna Jane Clarkson, founder of Lorna Jane Active, as we go beyond the brand and into the mindset, decisions and resilience behind one of Australia’s most recognised activewear businesses.

Long before athleisure became a movement, Lorna was hand-stitching her first designs and building a business around a vision she deeply believed in. Over three decades later, she has built Lorna Jane Active into an internationally recognised brand and established herself as one of Australia’s most influential female entrepreneurs, helping pioneer a category that would transform the way women dress and live. Her Never Give Up philosophy has remained at the heart of both her leadership and the business she has built.

In an intimate conversation, Lorna will take us beyond the success story to share the pivotal decisions, challenges and lessons that have shaped her journey - and what it really takes to keep backing yourself while building something with longevity.

Date: Thur, 22 Oct

Time: 12pm-3pm

Location: Icebergs Dining Room & Bar

Some of Australia’s most influential female founders will also be joining us for an afternoon of great conversation, new connections and a rare opportunity to learn from one of Australia’s most iconic founders.

Proudly presented in partnership with Omnisend.

Join Joanna Robinson, Chief Customer & Marketing Officer of THE ICONIC, for a digital advisory on building a brand that drives both customer connection and commercial growth.

With more than 25 years across retail, FMCG and ecommerce, Jo has worked with some of the world’s biggest consumer brands and now leads marketing at one of Australia’s most recognised online retailers.

At THE ICONIC, Jo has helped shift the marketing strategy beyond a heavy reliance on performance marketing, putting greater focus back on brand, customer connection and long-term growth.

In this conversation, we’ll unpack what founders can learn from that approach - how to know your customer deeply, build a brand they genuinely connect with and balance the pressure for immediate sales with the work that creates long-term brand value.

Whats in store:

• Building a brand customers choose, remember and return to.
• Balancing brand building with performance marketing and short-term sales.
• Understanding your customer and what drives their decisions.
• Building loyalty, connection and long-term customer value.

Date:  Tuesday, 27 Oct

Time:  9:30am-10:15am

Location:  Online

Come ready to ask questions about your own brand, marketing and growth challenges.

Who The F*ck Are You?

Not your job title. Not your business. Not your Instagram bio. Not the polished version of yourself you think people want to see online. 

Who the f*ck are you? And who the f*ck are you choosing to become? 

Join Dain Walker, Founder of Rivyl and Host of The Agency Podcast, for an intimate and interactive conversation about identity, personal branding and why so many smart, successful people become fucking boring the second they start showing up online. 

Most people think they have a content problem. They tell themselves they don’t have time, don’t know what to post, haven’t figured out their niche or simply don’t want to look like a wanker online. But Dain believes the problem runs deeper: maybe you haven’t actually decided who the f*ck you are. 

His philosophy is simple: stop trying to discover yourself and start designing yourself. Your identity isn’t some hidden thing waiting to be uncovered, and your personal brand isn’t something you eventually “find”. You decide what you believe, what you stand for, what parts of yourself you amplify, what you want to be known for and, ultimately, who you want to become. 

This isn’t a session about algorithms, content pillars or posting three times a week. It’s about the person behind the content. Why interesting people become boring online. Why we sanitise ourselves for strangers. Why we hide the parts of ourselves that actually make us memorable. And why “I don’t know what to post” is often just a more comfortable way of saying, “I don’t know what I want to be known for.” 

Dain will challenge the room to separate who they are from what they do, confront the gap between how they see themselves and how the world sees them, and get brutally clear on the person they want to become. From there, he’ll unpack how to deliberately build a personal brand around your beliefs, experiences, obsessions, contradictions and story, so people don’t just see your content, they f*cking remember you. 

And this one is interactive. Dain will work directly with the room, challenge answers, call bullshit where necessary and force you past the easy labels of “founder”, “entrepreneur”, “creative” and “thought leader”. 

You won’t leave with another list of content ideas. 

You’ll leave knowing who the f*ck you are, what you want to be known for and who you’re choosing to become. 

📅 Thurs, 5 Nov

⏰5:00pm-7:30pm

📍The Library - The Pillars

Attendees are welcome to stick around afterwards for drinks at The Pillars - a chance to keep the conversation going, meet Dain and connect with the other founders in the room.

Join us for an exclusive BOA Panel Event with Yasmina Elmerkaoui, Founder of Merkaou; Tori Gill, Founder of Sun and Daughter; and Tim O’Sullivan, Co-Founder of Bae Juice and Founder of Andie Body.

There are more ways than ever to grow a consumer brand. Ecommerce, retail, paid social, creators, ambassadors, community, new products - the challenge is knowing where to focus, what to invest in and which opportunities are actually worth backing.

In this conversation, we’re bringing together three founders who have taken different approaches to building and scaling consumer brands to unpack the decisions behind the growth.

From retail vs ecommerce and where to put your next dollar, to building a community that converts, using creators and ambassadors, deciding when equity makes sense and knowing when to launch your next product, we’ll get into what’s actually working for consumer brands right now.

We’ll cover:

• Retail vs ecommerce: the opportunities, trade-offs and knowing when retail is the right next move.
• Building a brand people care about: community, founder-led marketing, UGC and turning attention into customers.
• Influencers, ambassadors & equity: what’s worth paying for, when longer-term partnerships make sense and whether giving away equity can accelerate growth.
• Where to put your next dollar: how to prioritise marketing, inventory, retail, team and product when you can’t invest in everything.
• Growing beyond the hero product: when to double down, when to expand and how customer insight can shape what comes next.

Plus, the mistakes, expensive lessons and bets that didn’t pay off along the way.

Date:  Wed, 18 November
Time:  5:00pm – 7:30pm
Location:  Melbourne CBD

This isn’t about the highlight reel. It’s a conversation about making smarter decisions, backing the right opportunities and building a consumer brand that can actually scale.

Special mention to our event partners Omnisend.

Join us for an in-person Fireside Chat with Erin Deering - entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Triangl and Founder & Creative Director of DEERING. 

Erin is behind one of Australia’s most extraordinary modern founder stories. 

In her twenties, she co-founded Triangl and helped turn a simple swimwear idea into a global cult brand. At its peak, Triangl was valued at a reported $200 million, generating around $70 million in annual revenue and appearing everywhere from Instagram feeds to some of the world’s biggest celebrities.  

Erin was also at the forefront of a new era of social media and influencer marketing, using product gifting and Instagram to build global demand before influencer marketing became the industry it is today.  

Then, at the height of that success, she walked away. 

Now Erin is back in fashion with DEERING - this time as a solo founder, armed with the experience of building one of Australia's biggest digital fashion success stories and a very different perspective on what it means to build something great.  

We’ll get into: 

• Building a $200M brand - the decisions that took Triangl from an idea to a global phenomenon.  
• Marketing before “influencer marketing” existed - how Erin helped turn gifting and social media into serious commercial growth.  
• The reality behind rapid success - money, mistakes, ownership and what happens when a business grows faster than you ever imagined.  
• Business + relationships - the lessons from building a global company with your partner.  
• Walking away at the top - why Erin left Triangl and what the experience taught her about success.  
• Round two: DEERING - what an experienced founder does differently when she gets the opportunity to build again. 

Plus, the questions you actually want to ask. 

Whether you're building your first business or already deep in the founder journey, this is a rare opportunity to hear from someone who has experienced the extraordinary highs of rapid global growth, the complicated reality behind it, an exit - and the chance to start again with hindsight on her side.