#24: How business networks build resilience

Along with running his own management consulting business, Lawrence has held several General Manager/Practice Director positions in medium-sized professional services firms, along with senior roles in two major executive search firms.

A 27-year career with Westpac Banking Corporation saw him working in such diverse locations as the UK and Europe, the Middle East, Papua New Guinea, and Australia during which time he was mostly involved in business development and sales roles in international trade, retail and business banking.

Apart from his work with BusinessBM, his current focus is on providing support to Small Business Owners suffering mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.

Lawrence and I connected when I was reaching out to business chambers across NSW to see if they wanted to participate in a grant submission. I met with Lawrence’s peer at BusinessBM Mark and told him of our concept. Mark politely said thanks but no thanks.  He then said while I have you let me tell you what we do need in the Blue Mountains. I was then invited to meet with Mark, Lawrence and Mike who told me of their vision to create a regional business community network.

I was inspired and appreciated both the opportunity and the challenges. Given I can’t resist the opportunity to develop a solution that meets a business community need, I grouped the C2C team and we developed a different grant submission in collaboration with BusinessBM. We ended up submitting two in the end and I’m really excited to share that we won both.

Lawrence, great to have you talking with me today.

1. So, can I start with what is BusinessBM? And why did you, Mike and Mark commit to establishing it?

Lawrence Atkinson 
Thanks, Renae, great to be here this morning. And thank you for that question. BusinessBM is a new revitalised business networking organisation. It’s a company, it’s sort of evolved out of the old original business chamber that we felt wasn’t achieving what we’d always set out to do, and was a little bit old and stale. And we wanted to be something fresh, vibrant and relevant to 2021 and beyond. So, we’ve been working very hard to develop this. And through the development of it, bring all of the local chambers across the Blue Mountains, LGA together into one entity, following the lead that was set by the state chamber in terms of their local chamber’s agreement mark, to which they’re sort of rolling out. But we’ve taken a giant leap forward on that, thinking that it was a great time to do this. And largely following the meeting that I had in Canberra in January last year with the Small Business Recovery Forum that the Prime Minister instigated.

Renae Hanvin 
So since I’ve connected with you, Mark, and Mike, it’s been so exciting to hear all the background effort and the expertise and the insights in terms of setting up BusinessBM, because it is a progressive approach to business community networks. And obviously, there has been a lot of support and intended support. And the direction it’s heading is so exciting. And for me, as someone who’s really committed to that social capital and people building resilience, the business community is such an important part of communities. And I’m really, really excited from a C2C perspective that we’ll be able to share some of the journeys with you and the leadership that’s been set up. Now, you just mentioned that you were the Blue Mountains representative at the Prime Minister’s conference after the 2019/2020 Australian bushfires when the voices for small businesses were flown to Canberra for a forum.

2. So, can you tell us about how you got asked and what did you say when you were there?

Lawrence Atkinson
It was interesting. We got very short notice that the Prime Minister in basically what was a first, and quite grateful for that, decided to call a Small Business Bushfire Recovery Forum and getting representatives in from all over the country. Not only were we able to attend Canberra, but there was also a telephone call so people were able to listen in. And at that time or a couple of days before, we’d had a meeting of the combined chambers in Katoomba, combined chambers for the mountains in Katoomba, and we came up with several issues that we thought would be useful to raise. And it just so happened that I was available to go down to Canberra. I don’t think they picked me for any particular reason other than the fact that I was at a bit of a loose end anyway. So, I ended up going down here, but it was quite fortuitous that I did because I was able to meet with Minister Michaelia Cash and I had a few words with her which have led to things that I’m doing now. She was delightful, very keen to hear what we were doing and the messages that we had. And, as a result of that initial meeting, just before the conference started, once the obligatory introductions had been done, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and Michaelia herself, turned to me to open the forum as a representative of the other chambers and other people that were there. So the sorts of issues that we talked about or that I took on behalf of the Blue Mountains businesses were the issues around clarification from Fair Work Australia in terms of what was a real standout and what the procedures were because that was a bit foggy. Thoughts around introducing a trainee-levy to the larger companies of Australia to perhaps conduct their training and meetings in fire-affected areas, so that we could get some income from those bigger businesses without just asking for a handout. Also, tax breaks to encourage big businesses to be de-centralised so they don’t all have to be located in the CBD. As happened with COVID, that decentralisation thing. Then also, thoughts around establishing a Business Centre in Katoomba, at least for 12 months, to assist struggling businesses, so they didn’t have to go down to Penrith or into Parramatta or anywhere else, we could have a central place in the Blue Mountains where that assistance could be provided from. And then consideration of a payroll tax and landlord rent relief to assist small business owners and SME tenants, which sort of has come to fruition anyway but, these were the sorts of messages that we were talking specifically. And ultimately were echoed by many of the other representatives in the chamber. So, we had hit the nail on the head from the outset and that was supported by the other attendees.

Renae Hanvin 
So, I have to say, is to give yourself credit, because obviously, it was quite a strategic and right move to send you along with your list of change drivers, which, in the pre-COVID days, and I don’t know if we can even remember what those days were, but were needed then and the COVID pandemic has exacerbated some of them, so that they are happening now organically.

Lawrence Atkinson 
Well yeah, that’s right. And the other thing was that two weeks later, I was back in Canberra, attending the BizRebuild conference that was hosted and run by the Australian Business Council. And that was chaired by Sir Peter Cosgrove. And that was really interesting and good too. It’s nice that the top 125 companies of Australia were there willing to support small companies. In doing all of this and all of the work that we were looking at doing, it’s all sort of been overtaken by COVID. It was a great start and a great preparation for what became an even bigger disaster.

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah. The BizRebuild initiatives have been so wonderful. Giving the vouchers out on the ground to the business owners, I’ve often praised that strategic approach that they’ve had to help businesses.  I’ve often mentioned that businesses, in particular small businesses, have been the forgotten stakeholders, and it’s the bushfires and COVID that are really showcasing that they are absolutely fundamental.

Lawrence Atkinson 
That’s right. And part of the strategic objective of BusinessBM overriding everything is a desire for us to be able to develop better businesses, the people that we’re hoping to have as members and there are five and a half thousand across the Blue Mountains. Our overriding objective is to help them become better businesses in all aspects and resilience and disaster is a very important one, but it’s not the only one. But in terms of what we’re talking about now, right up the top of the list.

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah. 100% I agree. And I think keeping business in business is great for the business owner. It’s great for their employees. It’s great for their customers, suppliers. And it’s great for the community because if you don’t have those businesses in business, then those goods and services are not readily available in the communities as well.

3. So if we go back to the bushfires, what were the major impacts of small businesses immediately, during and after?

Lawrence Atkinson 
Well, in terms of the Blue Mountains, a lot of businesses just had to close down. And we’ve seen this with COVID, the business owners feed their families from the income they receive from the businesses that they offer, the products and services that they provide. So, if you’re not, if your doors are closed, there’s no opportunity to create an income. So, you’ve got to live on your savings. And if your savings are not particularly bright, then there’s a worry, some people don’t have that, some people have got overdrafts, business loans, and all of a sudden, they’re expected to be making those repayments when there’s no income coming in. So, I went straight from Canberra on that day I can remember very well I drove back from Canberra from that meeting into a meeting in Leura, where there are about 200 businesses represented. And, what are we going to do? How are we going to handle this? What is the council offering? What are the Federal and State government people doing, and nobody really had an answer at that stage other than to find out what we can do if we can get some support if we can get help happening quicker. Delays in grants and things like that, which always happen because nobody’s expecting it. It’s just something that’s not planned for, which is again, is right on your desk as it were, in terms of having that planning available. I can recall, while I was up there, I visited a business out at Bilpin. And Michaelia Cash was actually on the other side of the road visiting a business there, I didn’t know that till later. But the business owner was too busy to do any applications for grants because she was just trying to keep the business alive, the apple orchard out the back had all been smoke affected, and her skill set was not in filling in forms for grants. And that’s the other thing- business owners are in business because they’re good at what they do. But, they’re not necessarily good at the other things that are needed to be done in business. And that gets back to what we’re trying to do with BusinessBM is to provide those skill sets and open people’s eyes as to what they need to do. But then if they’re making products that you’ve got to put aside an hour or two, to fill in what can be a complicated form just to get some money, it’s not an easy process. So, help around doing that. Or even for us to be able to provide somebody or some people that were able to do the form filling because we’re familiar with it.

Renae Hanvin 
Lawrence, the grant side of it, and the filling forms, I know there’s definitely work happening at State levels in particular around that because when you’ve been dealing with a traumatic situation, you’re watching your business crumble overnight. You’re in the apple orchard trying to do what you can in the path that you love and filling in the forms is sometimes, not even possible from the mental aspects.

Lawrence Atkinson 
Absolutely.

Renae Hanvin 
So, we’ve won a couple of grants, which I mentioned in the introduction, which we are so excited to be delivering and appreciate the New South Wales and Federal government grant programs that have funded these. So, the first one we won is under the BCRRF program, and we’re running a two-year project to build connections and resilience in all businesses across the Blue Mountains.

4. Why is this project important for the region?

Lawrence Atkinson 
I’ve got to say we are a unique region. We’re not unique in a lot of senses but, we are basically across an 80-kilometre ridgeline of the mountains in almost a straight line, so it could take you an hour to get from one end to the other. What we are really wanting to do is build connectivity and collaboration across all aspects of our communities. That means local government, it means business, and it means community in general. But a lot of businesses are there. They provide support to the community in a lot of ways, they provide employment, but it’s often the businesses, schools and other community groups which go to them for sponsorship. They support the rural fire brigade and other things like that. So, in terms of the Blue Mountains, what we are looking to do, and why this program is so important for us, is that we’re looking at it as a bottle of glue if you like. A bottle of glue that we can use to bring everybody together that we can use to start feeling as one community rather than several communities dotted across the ridgeline. So that’s really, really important in building that community. Providing a community sense of resilience or a global sense of resilience for that community, rather than just individual local communities that see themselves you know, one end of the mountain can see itself separate from the other, But we want to bring them all together. It’s that old saying of “United we stand, divided we fall.” We’re all about unification.

Renae Hanvin 
You’re in a beautiful part of Australia –  the Blue Mountains, I mean, it’s isolating in many ways. Just being a small business owner or micro business owner, but then to be scattered in separate communities. There’s so much value and strength in building connections. So, whether it is a place-based connection, an industry type connection, or a business size connection, interested in innovation, enabling and facilitating ways that various business owners and operators can really connect and support and grow and help to build sustainability and resilience. I mean, that’s why we’re really excited to be participating in this first project.

Renae Hanvin 
Now I often talk about Professor Daniel Aldrich and his work on disaster resilience from a social capital perspective, because I like to say businesses in communities are assets, particularly when it comes to bridging social ties, which is one of his three social ties, categories.

5. So, what value do you see businesses offer when it comes to community resilience and building community connections?

Lawrence Atkinson 
Businesses provide employment, they provide variety, they provide diversification and all the different things that they do. It’s that diversity, that wonderful opportunity to see different things that a business community can bring to a community. And in bringing them together, having different skill sets that each of those businesses provides whatever it is that they can do, bringing them together in a way that not only builds the community connection that uses those skill sets to develop the resilience because I might have a skill set that Mark doesn’t have. Mark has a skill set that Mike doesn’t have. But the three of us together, we’ve got a combined skill set that we can use that is much, much stronger than us in isolation. So you apply that sort of concept across the business community and use that to develop a sense of resilience to whatever disaster. We’re talking about bushfires that have been topical, we’ve got COVID, but on the opposite side of the coin – snow and ice can also affect us. Particularly with one road in, one road out. There’s a lot of other things that can affect the community.

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah, 100%. I’ve seen some of the snow out west of the Blue Mountains. And wow, it’s pretty amazing. It’s a bit like being in Eastern Europe.
There are all types of disasters and hazards to impact but let’s just say what’s happening now. So, you’re in a COVID lockdown in New South Wales. The Blue Mountains businesses have had the bushfires, and then they’ve had no fire damage but also no tourists. And now COVID, again there are no tourists.

6. So how have the Blue Mountains businesses responded?

Lawrence Atkinson 
Look, they’re responding as best they can. I think they’re all looking at ways of what can we do now, not an awful lot. When we’re in lockdown, the tourists aren’t coming. So, some businesses that are reliant on not only our domestic tourists but international tourists, are suffering. They’ve had to close down. They’ve got mouths to feed, they are like family up there because of that area. So, they’re hurting and there’s an awful, awful lot of pain. But having said that, they’re also very resilient in their own way. So, they’re looking forward. Asking what next? What do we do? What can we do in terms of building resilience? What do we do when the mountains are open again when the COVID restrictions are listed and we start to get people back? What are some of the things that we can be doing in preparation for that? So, taking a look forward. And maybe, this is the first time people have taken a look forward and that’s a good thing. We, as Australians haven’t done it before because we’ve always sort of thought ‘she’ll be right mate.’ But the reality is she won’t be right. Not unless you plan for it. And we have to be planning for it. And one of the great things that are coming, without actually knowing the details, is an International Airport down the bottom of the mountains with 60,000 jobs there. A lot of those jobs will be filled by people in the mountains, a lot of the trades will be used from the mountains to build it. Not only that, we then hear that they’re setting up a Hollywood type environment up there where our creatives are going ‘Yippee wahoo’ wow, look at this. There’s a whole new development of creative opportunities for our creatives in the mountains. And they don’t have to travel that far if they’ve got to go down the hill. But, why would they need to do that given that we’ve all learned to communicate via the internet now? The creatives are right there, they’re at the doorstep of a brand-new area. Netflix, I hear is about to bring out a new production studio to Australia. You’ve got Russell Crowe doing his thing up at Coffs Harbour. In Penrith, there is a whole new development going in there to be the Australian version of Hollywood. So, they’re all forward-looking things. So, the business community in the Blue Mountains should be responding by looking forward and planning for the great opportunities that are coming. Yes, we’re hurting at the moment with COVID. But let’s look at what we can be doing in the future to recover and at the same time, make sure that the next time we have a disaster, we’re better prepared for it.

Renae Hanvin 
Albert Einstein has the quote – “Out of every difficulty comes opportunity”. It’s so needed to have that positive spin about reimagining. I was presenting at the Blue Mountains Tourism Forum a few days ago and I was listening to Tourism Australia and Destination New South Wales and their focus was on really supporting the tourism sector. Because in theory, come early next year, we will be able to travel again. We will be able to revisit, and everyone’s priorities might not be to international travel quite yet, but absolutely within Australia. It’s having that real positivity, looking forward and planning for what’s next. It’s time to do it.

Lawrence Atkinson 
Yeah, you’re so right. I mean, I’m in discussions with a group of business people in the UK and Asia once a month. I get together on zoom for an hour’s conference, and we talk about what’s going on around the place. And if you have a look at what’s happening in the UK now with the way they’ve taken on the vaccinations – they have opened up a pretty big experiment and yes, they’re getting thousands of cases every day and yes, people are getting hospitalised. But fewer people are dying because of the virus. But economically they’re getting back to normal. People are allowed to go out, the businesses are opening, my colleagues are looking at travelling into Europe. Part of the question that I’m keen to ask is, why aren’t we doing this in Australia? I know the vaccination rollouts have been slow but, if you look at what’s happening in the UK, then that experience can be replicated here. And so, businesses should be gearing up for that eventuality.

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah. 100%. And now as we go through the processes, and there are lots of lockdowns happening at the moment, but the light has to be at the end of the tunnel. If we can survive the next few weeks, or dare I say a couple of months, but then really get ready for that opportunity in that reimagined approach that’s coming.
Now, I’ve mentioned that we have won two grants. The other grant that we’ve been successful in winning with BusinessBM is the BLER (Bushfire Local Economic Recovery Fund) grant. I’m really, really excited about this one too because we’re piloting an initiative to set up a new economic stream in the Blue Mountains and establish a centre of excellence. We don’t know exactly what it is, because a whole part of it is working with the businesses to understand what the capabilities and what the appetite is, but setting up experts from a place-based location in a particular industry to then help educate and build resilience locally, regionally, nationally, and hopefully internationally.

7. So, what are you most looking forward to as we’ve been beginning to activate that kind of grant?

Lawrence Atkinson 
Look, I’m looking forward to that because I think it provides a great opportunity and if I go back to where we started, this journey over a year ago.  A lot of it sort of started in a conversation I had with Steven Cartwright, who was the CEO of Business New South Wales or the State Chamber of Commerce. As we were exiting the Prime Minister’s Small Business Recovery Forum in Canberra on that day, going back to that day, I walked out of Parliament House with Stephen and we were having a bit of a chat on the way to our respective cars. And I asked if he’d mind if I got back in touch with him, because a few things I wanted to talk about in relation to our chamber at the time, and he was gracious. But he also told me about his view for the state chamber and where that was going. He talked about how chambers around the world were being viewed as places where old men got together in their pinstripe suits to enjoy a cigar and a glass of port. But in terms of the work that he had done, and the forum that was held at Harvard, in terms of what the new business chamber would and should look like, that’s the model that we followed with BusinessBM.  Now, Business New South Wales, through the membership and Business Australia, you’ve got to offer free membership. And for that free membership, there is a value exchange and access to whatever it wants. And his words to me were, ‘you’ve got to make membership irresistible’. And when they open this up, they were looking for 250,000 members nationally by financial year-end 2025. 80,000 of those in New South Wales. From the day they opened in March 2020, they had 8000 new members in the first nine weeks. 4000 of those in New South Wales and 4000 from other states. So, I provide that bit of background because that’s what I’m looking to replicate through BusinessBM and through the use of this grant where we can use a place-based opportunity economic stream, building resilience. Getting people aware of the connection that is needed to be able to do this and using the strategies that were promulgated by the state chamber way back when. We’ve just adopted them a little bit and, in our conversations with Stephen at the time, as a result of where we had got to, they were going to use us, the Blue Mountains, as the guinea pig for rolling this whole thing out. Things derailed a little bit at the state chamber level, not at our level because we’re still going ahead with it. And, we’ve pushed on and past what I believe the state chamber were doing. So, we were in that fresh, vibrant, relevant space. We desire to increase the level of diversity across the board. We want more younger people to get involved. We don’t use the word chamber anymore, because it’s associated with old people. And so, we’re a business networking entity. We have a board, we’re seeking to grow, we’re seeking to bring all the chambers together, and we’re seeking to develop this new economic stream for the benefit of all the mountains across the Blue Mountains LGA. It’s not just for us. There is nothing in it for us, we’re all volunteers. But ultimately, our desire is for the businesses in the Blue Mountains to be extremely well run and to be the envy of others. And, to know that they are doing everything in their power to be well run businesses with plans to be resilient in the face of disasters.

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah, that sits exactly with our focus at C2C of building resilient businesses and helping communities thrive and leading collaborations. I’m so grateful that Mark took my call that day and even though he said we are not interested – we actually then pivoted and put in a separate submission. I’ve got lots of other communities around New South Wales hearing about what we’re doing and waiting to see what happens. I think what is being built in the Blue Mountains will, without doubt, be a best practice structure, and very relevant for other regions.

Lawrence Atkinson 
That’s what we’re aiming for. Another one of our overriding guiding principles is that we want to be an example of a well-run business. So even though one of our goals is to have our members as well-run businesses, we want to set the example. And when they look at us say, ‘yeah, that’s a well-run business, we need to replicate that model’.

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah, definitely. I mean you learn from peers, and then we can seed that across.

Lawrence Atkinson 
I don’t know what should be done differently, other than maybe just done. And that is for businesses to have a plan B, or even just the community generally to have a plan B. That is to be prepared. I spent several years up in Papua New Guinea basically running the retail bank, the retail part of Westpac anyway, with 800 staff and 15 branches across the country. I was challenged every day with different types of disasters. From personal disasters where people were hurt or killed to tidal waves, earthquakes to one-on-one gunfire – we’d have a lot more than we would like. So, we were always having to look at ‘how do we do that?’ So, the answer is just to the old scout’s motto; “be prepared”. Have some preparation for what you’re going to do in the event that XYZ. I’m working in the mental health space at the moment and a lot of the issues that I’m dealing with is the talk around the intolerance of uncertainty. There is an awful lot of uncertainty around at the moment. The way we deal with intolerance of uncertainty is by preparing for those things or becoming more skilled at what the issues might be. So that again is getting a plan B in place. You wouldn’t, for example, go out for a  drive in your car if you knew that you had a flat tire, you’d have the spare tire. That’s a plan B. Having spare in your business. What are you doing in your business, or your community, that if something happens you can continue to run? That might mean having an efficient internet service from your home as well as your workplace, rather than just your workplace. I’ve seen that happen; people have great internet service for work because that’s work. But, in the event you have to work from home, there’s no internet service. So, they are then hamstrung because they can’t provide the same sort of facility that we’re providing from their office.

Renae Hanvin 
Yeah, I love those. So just do things and have a plan B. Absolutely. A plan B is exactly what we talk about every day. And it’s a lot of those simple things like having two computers or two laptops, because if one doesn’t work, then you’ve got a backup. So, it’s just those little simple things.

Lawrence Atkinson 
It’s like, and maybe I’m a little bit over the top, but not only do I have cloud storage backing up all my data, but I’ve also got two hard drives.

Renae Hanvin 
Oh, I do too! You’re not the only one. People think I’ve lost the plot, but you just never know.

Lawrence Atkinson 
Absolutely right. And I guess, that’s born out of experience also. There are so many businesses who don’t actually have a disaster recovery plan or a business continuity plan thinking ‘oh that won’t happen to me’. But the reality is, you don’t know that it won’t. Yeah, you can’t make that assumption. And if you do, then there’s a danger. I call it self-insuring. Can you afford the premium to self-insure, which is a loss of your business?

Renae Hanvin 
Correct. And we always say ‘disasters don’t discriminate’. So absolutely, they hit where it’s going to hit. Lawrence, thank you so much. So today, I’ve been talking to Lawrence Atkinson from BusinessBM, and we’ve been talking about how business networks build resilience. Thanks so much for joining me, Lawrence.

Lawrence Atkinson 
Thank you, Renee. Thank you.