WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS, ANSWER

“Moving from a Big 4 firm to a locally owned and operated business had more than its fair share of risk. But with that has come enormous opportunity…”

Author: Greg Peel

Sunday marks three years since PVW Partners entered the North Queensland market, following an acquisition of the PwC Townsville firm.

At the time, Carl, Andrew and I were incredibly optimistic about the future but to be honest, it really was a leap of faith. We were lucky to have had valued support from our financiers and advisors too. Moving from a Big 4 firm to a locally owned and operated business had more than its fair share of risk; but with that has come enormous opportunity. 

We are now masters of our own destiny, with the ability to make decisions about our future without relying on any non-local party. Being truly local and being able to support our local community a lot more has been incredibly rewarding on both a personal and professional front.

The feedback from clients has been overwhelmingly positive. They’ve always respected the way we go about our business but the fact we are truly locally owned now, they feel there’s more of a sense of comradeship that we’re in the trenches the way that they are. There’s a lot more sharing of experiences and it’s been a wonderful thing.

You can definitely feel the difference of the family aspect and we’re very conscious of the responsibility we have to keep this firm successful because a lot of people depend on us for a multitude of reasons.

Have there been challenges? Absolutely. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

The challenges though are the usual business challenges. We’re all seasoned business people and we went in eyes wide open- we knew what to expect and we’ve been able to manage those challenges very well because of the team we have here. It’s the same way in which we help our clients to manage and overcome their challenges.

It’s a conversation I love to have with locals looking to start or grow their business. It’s too easy for negatives to overwhelm the conversation about business opportunities and the economy in general.

I wholeheartedly believe if an opportunity is properly scoped out and considered and the risks and opportunities are properly weighed up, then there’s never been a better time to go into business. Interest rates are low and regional Queensland is a great part of the world to have a crack.

As a firm, we’ve grown because we’ve taken on the challenge to grow. Making the decision to want to grow has to be an active, positive step. It hasn’t been accidental growth. We could easily have stayed the same size and have stayed comfortable in many ways. But to give our community, our clients and our staff more opportunities, it was important that we got out of our comfort zone and reached our larger potential.

We now have five Partners, with Sonia Chalk and Colin Ryan joining us in the leadership team, 40 staff, a new office in Innisfail and a new business arm in Captive Communications.

There is of course always more to do and more fun to be had and we’re looking forward to making an announcement soon around our new area of growth.

The past three years have gone very quickly because it has been a lot of fun. With all of the challenges that come into business and life generally in regional Australia, it’s important to be getting enjoyment out of it and I think we have. We’ve all looked back at the last three years and thought aren’t we glad we did that! What is the next 3, 5, 10 years going to bring?

[ENDS]