Ask Us Anything: Lessons from Leaders

The leaders of a hospitality juggernaut, a cult sustainable lifestyle brand and a global cat litter sensation gave us an inside look at what it really takes to build, break, rebuild and scale a business.

From the founder who has up to 40 monthly one-on-ones across her company to the CEO who brought a flailing business back from revenue decline to growth, the Growth Summit Melbourne’s Ask Us Anything LIVE panel brought the insights, lessons and warnings founders needed to hear.

In partnership with SmartCompany and Startup Daily, the Optus sponsored no-holds-barred live panel discussion put three renowned brand builders – all alumni of our Smart50 awards – in the hot seat to answer audience questions about scaling their businesses.

The lineup included Kim Teo, CEO of hospitality tech company me&u, which was initially formed in 2018 before merging with competitor Mr Yum in 2023. Alongside Teo was Qinghua Siluo (also known as Harry Siluo), founder and CEO of Michu Pet Supplies, the viral pet retailer recently named Australia’s fastest-growing business at the 2025 Smart50 Awards.

Rebecca Williams, CEO of eco-friendly retailer Seed & Sprout, rounded out the trio, having steered the Byron Bay-based brand to the Smart50’s 23rd spot, with annual revenue of more than $10 million.

Here are some of the most impactful lessons they’ve learned about people, partners, customers – and themselves.

When Williams joined Seed & Sprout as CEO in 2022, she immediately had to navigate the “double whammy” of uncertainty posed by the Northern Rivers floods and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Williams, it was the moment she felt the most ‘stuck in the weeds’ – but it was through responding to adversity that she found her strength.

“The most important thing is a word that we’ve heard a lot today, and that’s resilience. You need to be able to believe in yourself and your ability,” she advised founders.

Seed & Sprout has certainly weathered the storm: they achieved 600% year-on-year growth for their first three years before facing a steep decline.

By going ‘back to basics’ under Williams’ helm, and with a renewed focus on product development, the company has regained a flourishing YOY sales growth of 232% and was recently named number 23 of SmartCompany’s Smart50.

The right fit can transform your business

“I always say that your people are the most rewarding part of your business, but they’re also the most difficult part of your business,” said Williams.

“Nearly all problems are people problems,” agreed me&u co-founder Kim Teo. “Especially in software when we don’t have hardware, we’re not manufacturing anything. It’s people making the software, right?”

The solution to many of these people problems lies in the hiring process. In 2025, me&u made three new hires across different levels of seniority that “transformed everything”, Teo recalled.

“Hiring is actually the most important aspect of the people side because so often you find that bringing in someone amazing transforms the sentiment of that team, transforms their confidence, it transforms how they feel they learn,” Teo shared.

And how to avoid hiring someone who might be high-performing on the outside, but having a negative impact inside the business?

“I’m not sure that you can prevent it from happening,” said Williams. “But I think my learning and my experience, and I certainly speak for the previous CEO and for [founder] Sophie Kovic in the early days of the business was, if someone’s not the right fit and it is having a negative impact on culture, call it, remove it.”

Choosing the right people to work with extends to international manufacturing partners. When asked how to ensure your partners align with your values, Siluo from Michu Pet Supplies listed some green flags, including checking if they adhere to international legal compliance standards and seeking out audit reports.

He cautioned though that first impressions may be deceiving – and you may need to monitor quality and conditions on an ongoing basis.

“You look at them, you feel that they are very honest people. They are doing very well. They have a big factory now,” he said. “[Then] after a few months, you find your product quality may go down because they want to save costs. So they choose some alternative ingredients to reduce their costs”.

“So, I think it’s better to go to travel or visit their factory three or four times a year and ask them to send you samples every two or three months.”

When Williams joined Seed & Sprout, she made it a priority to have “a ‘speed date’ with every single employee from the very top to the bottom” of the company to ascertain the key pain points, sentiments and long-term goals among the existing workforce. This approach allowed her to hit the ground running and immediately address concerns as the newly appointed CEO.

Teo, who has navigated the ups and downs of integrating two workforces into one company, has a similar managerial approach. The me&u co-founder revealed that she conducts 30 to 40 monthly one-on-ones with people from different positions across the 200-employee organisation that spans Australia, the UK and USA.

“Skip-levelling is how I find I get the most out of knowing what people are really feeling and what’s going really well and what they’re struggling with, rather than kind of waiting for the information to flow through many, many layers of the organisation,” she explained.

Building a brand doesn’t mean sticking with the same idea for years… and years. Siluo said the biggest business cliche that he wants to debunk is the idea that you can stick with something for many years, hope for the best and it will eventually become a success.

Not so. If you’re stuck on your product, you’re only producing something “the founders want, not the customer.”

He urged businesses to regularly reassess the needs of the customer, and the market.

“If you sell a chair, you’re not just putting a chair on eBay or Amazon… What’s the selling point of your chair, or is there a market demand for a functional chair in this market? Is there an opportunity for customers to make a repeat purchase?”

Female energy is a competitive advantage

One audience member asked the female leaders if they have ever felt they needed to emulate qualities of traditionally masculine leadership styles like “over-confidence and speaking with a loud voice”.

Reflecting on her experience from working almost 20 years in the male-dominated automotive industry, Williams contrasted where she was at then, versus where she is at now.

“I was on exec teams where I was quite often the only female and quite often considerably younger than people as well. So I kind of had two things in my head going against me,” she shared.

“For me personally, I think sometimes you have to adapt to the room that you’re in. So if you are with a board and there is a particular masculine energy, sometimes that’s a good thing. I think adaptive leadership regardless of gender is probably quite important to understand the room.

“But now coming from a very, very masculine male-dominated era of my life, I now lead a team of 95% females. Many of them are mums and we work incredibly flexibly.”

Williams concluded that, now in her Seed & Sprout era, she has found that “there is a certain element of competitive advantage leaning into that female energy”.

“We certainly have changed the way that we work. We work exceptionally flexibly, which I think is great, but also sad that that it is unusual in this day and age,” Williams said.

“But it’s a competitive advantage for us because we select fabulous talent that don’t fit somewhere else. And for me, I’m all about that because if I can change the world and be the change that I couldn’t see in corporate, that’s amazing for me.”