With 25 years of work experience in both local and global Executive HR roles, Vanessa Giannos is a Human Behavioural Expert, International Master Coach & Trainer and one of Australia’s leading HR/OD experts. Her career is built on diversity, passion and drive. She held different senior HR positions in different industries including: Telecommunications, Technology and Retail companies across U.K. and Australia.
“I love what I do. I love people and growth and business, so being a commercially savvy HR person combines all my passions!”
Vanessa was also a founding executive in Gizmo, Australia’s leading home computer support provider.
As an International Master Coach, she is able to lead others with wisdom and conviction through her strong record in HR, Executive, Business & Professional Coaching and Training & Development.
Through the years, Vanessa developed a result-driven work approach that is built around performance, communication, capability, profitability, knowledge management and team building.
Skills that Vanessa recommends new business owners get acquainted with quickly
- You have got to know finance. I am often amazed that many small businesses don’t understand cashflow and can easily send themselves broke, even with good revenue. Know your numbers, your GP, your EBITDA and cut the deals you need to, to get the right cash flow for your business.
- Leadership goes without saying, but most business owners have never led teams and have no real management experience. Unless you intend to be a one person band, get yourself a HR coach who can bring your leadership/management skills up to speed quickly.
- Know enough about tech and marketing to get by and know when to outsource.
- Free webinars and all that is fine for knowledge, but unless it is your core skillset, just find a true expert (not someone calling themselves and expert) to get the job done. Value your time and expertise!
Three pieces of advice Vanessa wishes she’d been given before she started
- Don’t build a custom website initially. I’ve twice been stung by doing this. Now, I build WP websites and elaborate from there.
- Business is so different to 15 years ago, so much of the lessons are long gone. Now, business owners need to be tech and marketing savvy or at least be knowledgeable enough to know who are competent experts and who are just pretending to be experts.
- When I coach business owners, the big thing most need to manage is their work/life balance. Don’t start unless you can afford to spend some cash on marketing and outsourcing some tasks.
Learn more about Vanessa here.
