Damian Blumenkranc's Remarkable Journey: From Online Entrepreneurship to Business Transformation

In a recent episode of the EO Business podcast, Linh Podetti sat down with Damian Blumenkranc, a prominent member of EO Melbourne, to delve into the captivating story of Sunset Sleepers' acquisition and its subsequent transformation under Damian's visionary leadership since March 2021. Join us on a compelling journey as we explore the triumphs, challenges, and insights that have defined Damian's entrepreneurial career.

Damian Blumenkranc, a dedicated father of two - Tali and Max, embarked on his entrepreneurial journey at the young age of 14, where he launched Argentina's first online shop using BBS. In 2003, he migrated to Australia and has since demonstrated unparalleled versatility by founding over five successful businesses spanning IT, Beauty, Video Production, and Technology. Damian's strategic prowess is evident through the sale of four ventures, showcasing his ability to not only build but also profitably exit businesses.

At the heart of Damian's entrepreneurial spirit is his latest triumph – the remarkable overhaul of Sunset Sleepers, a venture acquired in March 2021. Linh Podetti skillfully uncovers the inside-out transformation of Sunset Sleepers, revealing how Damian's leadership doubled its size in turnover, people, and space in just over two years. Gain valuable insights into the challenges faced when entering the manufacturing industry, as Damian's diverse expertise, ranging from IT to beauty, shapes a visual journey of business acquisition.

But Damian Blumenkranc's contributions extend beyond his businesses. As a respected figure in the entrepreneurial community, he serves as a mentor to aspiring business leaders and holds a pivotal role on the investment board of an emerging markets VC fund. His past presidency of EO Melbourne and current position as a Regional Council Director exemplify his ongoing commitment to shaping the entrepreneurial landscape.

Currently at the helm as CEO of a manufacturing business in the construction industry, Damian Blumenkranc continues to embody a commitment to innovation and growth. His story is not just a testament to success but also a source of inspiration for those navigating the complex world of entrepreneurship.

Listen to the EO Business podcast episode featuring Damian Blumenkranc to gain unparalleled insights into the mind of a seasoned entrepreneur who has not only conquered diverse industries but has also left an indelible mark on the entrepreneurial landscape.

- Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/ep-121-mastering-business-acquisition-insider-tips/id1440350419?i=1000637747023

- Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/41z3f42GVWMowczXj1v6Lq

- YouTube - https://youtu.be/98AqZ_mdQJ8?si=xFO88v8XUfl8GAwz

President's Update - December 2022

From the President

WHAT MAKES EO MELBOURNE SO SPECIAL TO ME?

As I reflected on what makes us EOers unique, I considered what makes us glue together so well, and why we consistently and significantly outperform the average Melbourne business person.

In my opinion, the answer lies in a positive growth mindset:

Following two years of disruption, we began 2022 with a lot to look forward to, a year of recovery, and a return to "normalcy". Then reality set in.

Inflation climbed, interest rates rose, a war broke out in Europe, logistics were disrupted to an extreme, an energy crisis hit, and the "big resignation" took place. Every entrepreneur had ample reason to complain, take the victim’s place and even throw the towel, In fact, many had.

But I saw the complete opposite from EO Melbourne members. As others lamented, EOers looked for opportunities, shared ideas and solutions, and worked together as a team to devise innovative ways to make the most of the situation. Collectively, we adapted to our NEW PARADIGM and learned from each other.

We are a tribe of positive thinkers, creative minds, and supportive human beings, with an incredible growth mindset and business ethics. This is why I love our chapter, MY TRIBE.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a well-deserved break, as well as a great start to the new year!

VIVA EO Melbourne!

Warmest regards, 

Managing the daily influx of emails – is it possible?

Going through the daily messages is one of the constant concerns of busy entrepreneurs and business owners. Jeni Clift, Director/General Manager of DWM Solutions and a Professional EOS Implementer admitted that she needs help when it comes to managing and organising the daily influx of emails she receives.

“Unfortunately, I use my inbox as a repository of emails. I am open to seeing how others do this as it is not an effective method,”

But not all is lost, here are a few tips we put together from some of our EO members that may help you get ahead of the game.

Schedule reading your emails

According to Arosh Fernando, Founder and Director of WooHah Productions, “The biggest time killer in our world right now is email, especially when you’re getting cc’d in everything and the inbox is filling up fast if you don’t check it. Fellow EO Member Dean Cherny had a great idea which I adopted – checking emails at given times of the day. So I do this at 10 am and 2 pm, for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on whatever your business needs are at the moment. This helps me manage time around and, as a CEO, get to tick off the real objectives like my long term goals to grow the business. As I have learnt in EO many times over, it’s not about what we start doing but it’s what we STOP doing that is important to enable us to focus our time and energy on the big goals.”

Scheduling reading and responding to your emails is a brilliant idea that can be a big help, as long as it suits your work schedule and lifestyle as well as the requirements of your business. You can calendar going through your messages at certain times of the day and make sure you have the discipline to carry it through.

File and have separate inboxes

Another helpful tip is to file your messages in folders so that it’s easier for you to check them. You might need to allocate some time to do the preliminary work, such as creating folders and segregating messages, so that the succeeding ones that arrive in your inbox get filtered easily.  

Anthony Lam, Managing Director of Punchy Digital Media, shared, “I have separate inboxes and tackle each one at separate times. I have one for clients, prospects, and teams. I try to set a timer and tackle each inbox one at a time.”

On the other hand, Appscore Co-Founder & Managing Director Alex Louey tries to undertake the challenge of sorting through his emails through their levels of priority. “My inbox is a disaster, and I wish I could tell you that it is well-sorted and filed. The only ones that I focus on that are a must-do are customer-related ones. They get top priority and my full attention. The rest get attended to in terms of the priority of my task list that I run throughout the day or week. I can’t respond to everyone that tries to contact me so I don’t,” he professed.

Work on “zero” emails

Having “0 emails on inbox” is one of the policies that Damian Blumenkranc, co-Founder of Creativa, Attento and Just Click Videos and CEO of Sunset Sleepers, personally follows. “I use a very simple decision tree to tackle them as they come:

1 - Can I respond to this quickly on the fly? If yes, then I just respond to it and archive it;

2 - If no: Is this something I will read/look into on spare time? Then I move it to my ‘read later’ folder that I can read on the train or when I finish work;

3 - Is this something I need to work on for more than a few minutes to respond to it? I set a time on the calendar to work on it and even copy the link of the email or the content of the email as a reference, then I can archive it as I will be working on it when the time comes;

4 - For those emails that we want to keep as a reference for something but really have no need to reply, I move them to an 'important info’ folder and those that I want to use as a reminder to follow up later I also put on the calendar or I snooze them for later.”

Automate it

In this era when technology has created so many breakthroughs in fast-tracking everything we do, one can get a little help by automating their emails. It is one of the things that Nathan Chan, CEO & Publisher of Foundr Magazine, does to lessen the workload brought about by daily emails. “I have automation rules,” he declared. “Also, “I view my inbox as everyone else's to-do list and treat that accordingly.”

Depending on the email software or platform you use, various email automation tools can make things easier for you, sometimes sending automated replies, based on the rules you create. You can consult with an IT professional or explore how you can make this work for you and your business.

Hire an assistant

But apart from automating his emails, Nathan also gets a little help from his staff. “I have an incredible EA (executive assistant),” he added. If the tasks are too many and going through your daily emails can often become a burden to you, don’t hesitate to delegate to your team or have someone help you with it so that you can attend more on other important matters.

If you’ve been in this situation before – getting overwhelmed with the number of emails you receive and you’ve surpassed it, share with us how you have overcome it as it may also be helpful to those who are currently stuck in this predicament.

The path of entrepreneurship through acquisition

Not all entrepreneurs start their journey from a garage; some entrepreneurs decide to jumpstart the process and follow the entrepreneurship by acquisition path.

This is not a made-up term. As a matter of fact, top-level universities and business schools like the Harvard Business School, Columbia University, The University of Chicago, and Duke University, among many others, offer Entrepreneurship by Acquisition in their main MBA curricula.

The truth is that you don’t really need to have a brilliant new idea or a unique opportunity to become an entrepreneur. Some people prefer to look for an existing business that already has the available resources and assets and then scale it or do a pivot or bring the company to a better position than from where it was before. Acquisition entrepreneurship is a good option for those who want to put their advanced entrepreneurial skills into good use from the get-go because they can spend more time on implementation and putting things into motion rather than be stuck on conceptualisation, trial-and-error, and ascertaining the business environment.

Is it the right path for you?

This was the route that Mobile Skips Owner and Managing Director Jacob Spencer took, who acquired the business from the original owners. He said, “Whether choosing to start a business from scratch or acquiring an established business, both have their relative pros and cons, usually quite different from the other. In my case, I chose acquisition, as the option best suited my strengths and weaknesses.”

“Before making this decision, I spent quite some time identifying and listing clearly what I needed (and wanted) in a business to acquire—with fundamentals like valuation and profit a given. I then spent the lion share of my time on the non-financial attributes that would complement my experience and skills. The first challenge then presented itself: a very limited amount of acquirable businesses that fit my detailed list of requirements…there were none. So, the first lesson was prioritising the list so that the right compromises could be made,” Jacob continued.

While buying a company may seem less risky than creating a start-up from zero and then building it, there are still varied difficulties to face for those who choose this path. One of these challenges is looking for the right business that corresponds to the needs, wants, capacity and capability of the entrepreneur.

To successfully acquire a business, would-be business owners must be able to:

1.)    Do a proper search for the right business to acquire

This is a crucial phase in acquiring a business. According to Damian Blumenkranc, who has founded and sold businesses before like Creativa Videos and now taking the entrepreneurship by acquisition path, recently acquiring Sunset, a concrete precast factory in Melbourne, “The first challenge, and it is not a small one, is to find a business you are comfortable with to buy and run and close a deal.” It has to be done properly, checking into the background of prospective companies you want to buy, their profitability, and other factors qualitative that are important to you.

2.)    Review or come up with a good proposal and negotiate

When you have done proper research and preliminary due diligence, you can then prepare an offer and negotiate all the terms of the deal. It is critical to try to get the whole picture of where the company currently stands and what is important for the current owner for this transaction.

Another important factor in acquiring a business is having the capital needed to invest in the company. Here are a few options when it comes to financing the business:

• Direct investment – you put your own resources to invest as capital to acquire the assets or ownership of an enterprise. This is usually done without an intermediary or broker.

• Loans from banks – you apply for a business acquisition loan which you can use to acquire an existing company, buy a franchise or buy out your business partner.

• Search funds – if you have limited resources for capital, you can look for other investors to pool funds into acquiring and financing a business.

3.)    Take the reins and lead the transition of the company

The success of the acquisition does not end with the signing of the agreement. As Damian stated, “That is just the beginning. I would say the second big challenge of buying a running small business is that the business won't wait for you to adapt, learn and take over. You, as a foreign entity, need to catch up quickly and find your place in the new business. It is like jumping in the cockpit of a commercial plane in mid-flight and taking over the controls without causing too much turbulence.”

Once the deal is done and the sale is closed, immerse yourself in the company, engage with your internal and external stakeholders and review your plans and the changes needed to implement. You may need to reassure your new employees and customers, present a plan and work towards adapting your team, systems and processes.

Lessons learned

Damian shared the lessons he learned in every stage of the process. “For the search stage, I would say, you must have real clarity of the parameters of the business you are looking for (i.e., industry, size, markets, financials, structure, capital requirement, etc). For the deal stage, be as clear and specific in the letter of offer as you can regarding the deal – from what type of contract you will expect to use to even specific guarantees you will expect to have. If you have investors, keep in constant communication with them, and set clear expectations of the type of shareholders agreement you will want to sign. Finally, for the handover stage, make a good 90-day plan, grab every key aspect of the business, such as people, cash, occupational health & safety, marketing, sales, and manufacturing, and set a weekly plan for 15 days to 90 days with all the things you want to do for each area of interest. This will help you manage the workflow, prioritise and ensure that you don't drop the ball on something critical to the business.”

He added, “To be able to launch and build a brand that existed before, the first thing for me is to understand the history and heritage of the brand, do nothing until we totally get it and understand the market and consumers well. Once we feel comfortable that we understand and get the brand, it is time to plan the strategy for the next few years.”

The rewards of entrepreneurship through acquisition

Despite the challenges, struggles and difficulties, the whole experience and the results can be rewarding. “One of the significant rewards is that instead of having to start from scratch, you can immediately grow the business and make it more profitable, experiments and small changes can be meaningful from day one compared to a startup where you need to build momentum first. With a running business, you might be able to make small adjustments and get significant rewards quicker,” Damian pointed out.

Similarly, Jacob also finds his journey of entrepreneurship through acquisition satisfying. “The benefit of the acquisition is that much of the hard work proving out the product or service model had been achieved. But much like buying a house vs building one from scratch, some things needed remodelling, renovating and even rebuilding. When I bought Mobile Skips, much of what we could see and review was in great shape, but some elements needed to be rebuilt to enable our skip bin hire to be scaled. I realised these unforeseen things seem to be more normal than not and having available capital to deal with them (and expecting some issues) meant we dealt with them quickly, getting us back on track and growing the business with limited disruption. Having enough capital and resilience to ride the bumps in the early stages ensured we weren’t snagged down early on.”

“My most enjoyable part of the acquisition was having an established group of customers we could learn from and quickly improve our skip hire offer. This meant we were able to do some great research early on and update the service offering, making it even better and getting instant feedback from our customer base. This helped drive more sales quickly and also built loyalty with our customer group by listening and reacting to their feedback. Happy and loyal customers are a huge part of the acquisition valuation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my journey with Mobile Skips since the acquisition almost 5 years ago. I hope these small experience shares somehow contribute to your journey as well,” Jacob shared.

Share with us your experience on entrepreneurship through acquisition, if you have any, or drop a question in the comments section below if you are contemplating acquiring a business.

The importance of mentorship in the entrepreneurial journey

The entrepreneurial path can be quite daunting for those who are contemplating to take it. But even when you’re already in the journey, there are times when the ride can be tough and you seem to be lost midway due to the pressures coming from various directions. Having a guide, someone that has been through this before, to point the way can help ease the anxiety of not knowing what lies ahead and can even be instrumental in accelerating things. This is where mentors come beneficial to one’s entrepreneurial journey.

Entrepreneurs Damian Blumenkranc, Co-Founder of Creativa, Attento, and Just Click Videos, among others, and Benjamin Trinh, Founder and Managing Director of Life Ready Health Group share that having mentors have helped them in the success of their endeavours. Apart from being on the receiving end as mentees, both have also become mentors to other entrepreneurs, helping others in their businesses as well.

“I have experience at both ends, been a mentee and a mentor many times, and planning to continue getting mentors and helping others.”

-          Damian Blumenkranc, Co-Founder of Just Click Videos

From his experience being a mentee and later on as a mentor, Damian recognises the value of mentors in one’s entrepreneurial journey. “Having mentors has been critical to my success in business. It can take years to go through the experiences and the mistakes you need to make to know what to do best in each situation. As entrepreneurs, we face new challenges daily and having someone that can guide you through those hard or strategic challenges based on their success & failure experiences can mean a life-changing difference,” he stated.

Yet, to be able to give back by guiding others has become a fulfilling experience for Damian as well, providing him with a different perspective and understanding as a business owner. “As a mentor, it is extremely rewarding to not only see your mentees’ businesses flourish, double and triple, but also to know that all those hard-earned experiences are useful beyond your realm and gives you the energy to tackle any new challenges to come, hopefully with the help of a mentor to guide you through it as well.” 

Choosing a good mentor to guide you may not be easy. But there’s no need to look too far, according to Damian. “For those that haven't had a mentor before, I think the best mentors are not necessarily those that are 100 steps ahead of you (they are great for contacts and inspiration), but those that are just 2-3 steps or maybe 3-5 years ahead of you because they will not only be able to relate better to your situation but also have fresher memories similar to what you are facing and a contemporary approach to solving your current hurdles.”

“Ensuring people have access to mentorship ensures they learn and grow within your organisation.”

-          Ben Trinh, Founder & Managing Director of Life Ready Health Group

Ben has experienced the benefits of having a mentor in shaping his growth as an entrepreneur. “When I joined EO at 23 years old, my business had barely scraped over the $1 million and Accelerator hadn't existed. Thankfully, some mentors helped guide and shape my business into what it is today,” he said.

Acknowledging the value of mentors to startup owners like him, he later went on to guide other entrepreneurs who are in the same situation he once had. As a result, Ben shared, “I participated in the EO mentorship program as a mentor for 2 years. Apart from that, I also sit on numerous advisory boards and provide help to other founders.”

Moreover, he found that mentorship done internally is also significant when running a business because it develops the people within that organisation. “Succession planning is critical in any business. Without it, businesses get stuck with young people leaving for other opportunities elsewhere. Ensuring people have access to mentorship allows them to learn and grow within your organisation. It also ensures you are replicating the strong aspects of your key people for each of your managers. In our corporate culture, we must ask, ‘who will replace you?’ This culture, combined with forum-style governance, has allowed us to scale from 3 people to now over 400 across 3 states,” he shared.

EO Melbourne Mentorship Program

EO Melbourne Mentorship Chair Dr James L Murray revealed how the chapter is working on this program to help entrepreneurs learn from others who have the experience to guide them in their journey. “This year, we have gone above and beyond to recruit some amazing Mentors from outside the chapter. Some are absolute rock stars in the Melbourne entrepreneurial community. There are also many YPO members and lots who have exited multiple times successfully.”

According to James, “Mentorship ranks as the #2 member experience after their forum. The program ranks higher than learning events, retreats and universities. For a small-time investment of only 20 hours for the year, they may meet and get to know someone who can change their life and their business forever. Also, training in how to be both a Mentor and a Mentee will serve them in all aspects of their life.”

If you are interested to know more about this program, visit our Mentorship page for more details.

The creator and problem-solver in Damian Blumenkranc

How do you solve a problem like Damian Blumenkranc? The CEO of Creativa Videos loves solving problems and enjoys creating new concepts. Having a solution mind comes naturally to him.

Since the age of 15 years old, he has built various businesses, from IT to several other industries, which he grew and then eventually sold. So, why did he retain a creative business out of all the ventures he has put up? “I'm a creator. I always need to do new things,” he simply quips.

Damian’s entrepreneurial journey started early on. In his teens, he has already put up a business venture that could be considered as a genuine business. That was in 1993 when he launched the first online shop in Argentina, selling computer parts to computer nets through an application called BBS, or bulletin board system, something that was prevalent before the explosion of the internet.

“That was probably my first really serious venture as an entrepreneur. From then on, I have always been looking for opportunities; building small businesses, running them and selling them,” he reminisces.

Although he has formal training on business, having a double degree on business and information technology (IT), he believes that his family background has a lot to do with his savvy when it comes to entrepreneurship. “I think most my acumen comes from the family. My father, being an entrepreneur, was always sharing, always getting us involved in the business, letting us know what happened, and letting us participate. He would tell us about the wins and the losses, as well as the problems and the good things that happened, and so on. And I learned. I learned that way,” recounts Damian.

Those learnings were the tools he brought with him when he came to Australia to study. As a student, his visa didn’t allow him to be employed by corporations, but he needed to survive. The only way for him to earn money in order to support himself was to create a business. “When I came to Australia, I started my own business and IT support which I ran for seven years during that time. I also started a pilates importing business, the first voice over IP integrator in Melbourne, and then later, a hair removal business as well. In time, we grew them, including a couple of online shops. We grew them, we made them profitable, and we sold them one by one,” he narrates. Damian now oversees Creativa Videos, which he co-founded with Miguel Donnenfeld, also his partner in his other businesses.

For someone who had the confidence to build a business at an early age, it was expected that he would survive in a foreign country. Which he eventually did, but it wasn’t an easy one, given that he had to plant those businesses in a land unknown to him. “Imagine parachuting into a new place where you know no one, where you have no connections.  It is a place where everyone knows everyone because it's a smaller city than what you are used to.  It's not your language, it's not your origin, it’s not the same culture as yours. So, it's always been a challenge – trying to network, trying to understand. What I did, I read a lot of books, like everything, because everything was new from tax legislation to mannerisms to language to pricing to negotiation methods. Everything was different,” he notes, describing those early days of starting his first venture in Australia.

The challenges didn’t stop there. The unusual business terrain of an unfamiliar soil was not the only stumbling block Damian had to confront as he went on building his own enterprises. Whilst nothing might have scared a 15-year old boy because he had nothing to lose for taking risks, it was no longer the same as Damian matured in age and experience. He recognised his vulnerability as he found further in his entrepreneurial journey that revenue and cash flow, which are significant components in sustaining a venture, always worried him. Since he bootstrapped all his businesses, which were typically self-funded, finances for capital were never in abundance. For him, generating not enough revenue is equivalent to failure, and that scared him.

Navigating through an unknown landscape with limited resources, it was inevitable for Damian to commit some gaffes along the way. One particular miscalculation he did was hiring the wrong people. “We were hiring too fast and firing too slow,” he interjects. Nonetheless, he has coped and managed to correct that mistake as he needed to, especially that his company is people-intensive; thus, having the right persons in the team is crucial to the success of their projects. Otherwise, they just have to make that important decision of letting go of the wrong people when things don’t work out fine. “When it happens, we have conversations with them. If we don't believe it is going to work, then we end it.”

Others may think that being a business owner gives one all the power and freedom in the world. “But that's not particularly true,” he corrects. Damian explains that being a business leader, there are a lot of responsibilities to attend to, whether to the staff or to clients or to partners. “The result is generally attached to what you do. Because you're attached to the business, you cannot do whatever you want. When it comes to the freedom as a business owner, you still have a lot of concerns that you have to work around with. You're also the one who sets examples and creates a culture because whatever you are doing, you can expect people to follow it as well. So, if you don't want them to do (something) that is not good for the business, then you shouldn't do it either.”

What others don’t see are the impediments a business owner has to deal with in order to keep the business going and make it grow. Some of these drawbacks that Damian has encountered he enumerates, “A big deal didn't come through, an investor said no, a letter of offer got rejected, staff that has not been committed as we like to… There were always setbacks. But I can't recall any massive disappointments.”

That’s because he chooses not to dwell on the undesirable things. His actions are guided by his business philosophies and work ethics of doing the right things, doing what he says he’s going to do, and honouring his mistakes by admitting when he makes one. “I always try to do the right thing. I find win-win scenarios for everyone and I make an effort to understand everyone else's point of view. Then, I come up with a solution that is great for everyone,” the creative problem-solver explains. “Sometimes, even if they take advantage of you. It's not worth it, it's not for me. It is better to focus on the future and not on the past,” he asserts.

The setbacks, the disappointments, and the challenges. They are obstacles along Damian’s path. Yet, he doesn’t allow these hindrances to put extra weight on his shoulder. He prefers to look at what’s ahead of him and focuses on it. He shares this piece of wisdom that aspiring entrepreneurs can apply in their respective experiences, “You must have a very clear vision of where are you going because that guides everyone else on the journey.”

Not only that. While having a goal is vital at the very beginning of everyone’s entrepreneurial track, it takes more than that to be able to carry on with the entrepreneurial voyage. “Start by listening. That's the one thing everyone should do. Start listening to clients, to markets and to people; that's how you can align yourself with them to understand them,” Damian advises.

As he went along, he picked more lessons that equipped him to be a better entrepreneur. These lessons also enabled him to evaluate his actions and mistakes and see where he could still improve on. If he could do things all over again, Damian thoughtfully thinks, “I will only consider businesses with a high leverage on my time. Businesses that can be propelled without having to take much of my time.”

Time is something that Damian puts a premium on and he ensures he manages his time efficiently. “Well, I have a very strict, very specific way of managing my calendar. It’s a method that I use that I created for myself, where I'm constantly reassigning priorities and putting absolutely everything I need to do in that calendar with the right times so that nothing slips and nothing falls through the cracks. That is important on an ongoing basis.”

There are a lot of other things he sees in himself that he admits he can still work on. One example is motivating a team. When asked how he manages his people, "With difficulty," he jokes. “That's still something I need to master, I guess. I'm still learning.” And another skill he needs to hone is celebrating his wins. “That's the thing, I don't. That's one of the things I have to learn more,” he laughs.

One particular element he came across that was most helpful to his professional and personal development as a startup founder was a support group. This he found in the form of EO Melbourne. “Last year I joined EO. Over the years, a lot of people have suggested that I join, so I made the call and last year I did. Through EO, I have picked a lot of knowledge, a lot of nuggets, and some really good fun as well. It’s mostly about inspiration to me. Going to these events, you get that one little thing that inspires you, that re-ignites you; that 1% you can change and make everything better.”

With all the businesses he has put up all those years, Damian has probably done so much that has changed the business landscape and made things a whole lot better. “We built one of the biggest production companies in Australia, in an industry that is extremely customized, extremely competitive, where most production companies failed in a short period of time. This is in an industry where I knew nothing about. So if I managed to build from scratch and run and create a brand – a recognised and successful brand – in a profitable way from day one, it is a massive success in itself,” he discloses.

So, how do you become an entrepreneur like Damian Blumenkranc? “Find something that you are most passionate about because it makes a lot of things easier. It's a cliché, but it's very real,” he imparts. And nothing more can drive Damian to even bigger successes than what he is most passionate about – solving problems. Now, Damian rushes on to something that needs his attention. This problem-solver is always on the move, and he is fueled by his desire to create new things and fix broken ones.

More of Damian Blumenkranc in his LinkedIn profile. Read about Creativa at http://www.creativa.com.au.