Sep 13, 2020
In this episode, I interview Patrice Brown, the Founder, and CEO of CQG Consulting, a professional consultancy that delivers practical, creative, and cost-effective environmental and development solutions throughout regional Australia and South East Asia. She is a corporate environmental advisor with over 30 years’ experience in industrial and environmental management.
Aged 42 in 2003, Patrice left a long-standing engineering career to start an environmental consulting firm. Starting as the one full-time employee for the first five years, they peaked at 40 in 2011, then after a downturn in the Australian coal industry dropped to 12, and now have 32 full-time employees across five locations. She founded the business with only $20,000 of her own capital and the rest has been from cash flow. Patrice felt they had succeeded when about 18 months ago, they bid out large competitors with over 10,000 staff for many projects.
She believes that small business owners should always act quickly and that the hardest thing about growing a small business is having that confidence to just do it, and being prepared to make mistakes. She says that the advice she would give herself on day one is, “Don’t sweat the small stuff, embrace mistakes, just have a go, and trust yourself. If you’ve been looking for some guidance on how to start a business or grow the one you already have, then you won’t wanna miss this episode. Enjoy!
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Music from https://filmmusic.io
"Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC
BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/