He sold his company for over $100 million, and he says the day he signed was the first day he knew what he was doing.

If you have ever doubted that you could build something of your own from nothing, this episode is for you.

Today, Belinda Bradford is joined by Milan Debelak.

Milan co-founded Liftronic in 1985 and led it for 37 years, until it became Australia's largest independent, Australian-owned lift and escalator company and he sold it. Today he invests in businesses and mentors their leaders.

His family landed in Australia in 1963 with almost nothing. At 23 he could have taken a camper van around the country. He started a company from scratch instead, with a secretary, a draftsman and a payphone he had to stay near.

From $10,000 and a tin shed to a $100M+ exit took him 37 years.

In this conversation, Milan shares what happened in between: the day he made 14 people redundant, the supervisor who failed catastrophically and what he did next, the close calls when the company might not last another month, and the advice from his father that kept him going. If they kick you out the door, climb back in the window.

By the end, you will hear why he believes you might jump into the wrong hole, but you have to jump.

His one word for how he does business is morally. His answer to what Full Tilt means: "Whatever we tried to do, we ran at it very hard."

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com

Karin Sheppard now leads more than 1,000 IHG hotels across Europe. Her career started with dishes in an Italian restaurant in Denmark, and the move that changed it began with a weekend of crying.

From the restaurant came a year as an au pair in Geneva, IT sales in London and a move to Sydney. There she said yes to a promotion, went home, cried all weekend and quit. She had no plan, no money in the bank and a brother pointing out that there was no rich boyfriend or husband to fall back on. She called it a trust fall. A friend of a friend knew of a job at a hotel company, and on her first day she was pulled into a meeting about the cocktail menu. She called a girlfriend to say she had landed the best job.

That was 25 years ago. Belinda Bradford asks Karin how she got from that first day to running a continent. The part that will sound familiar if you have ever talked yourself out of something: when she was offered a much bigger leadership role, Karin told her bosses not to give it to her. Her HR director's reply: if your boss, your boss's boss and I believe you can do it, maybe just trust us.

What she did with that doubt is worth the listen. Karin switched off the little voice that lists why you can't and turned her attention to every reason she could, then took the top job in IHG's Australian business without ever having run a hotel. She explains how IHG went from 10 brands to 21, how a Kimpton and an InterContinental can sit across the same Paris street and both do well, and why her team meetings open with how are you feeling. She skipped it once. Her team noticed by the coffee break.

Karin is direct about being the only woman at the leadership table, and about Rise, the program she helped build to put more women on the path to general manager. When COVID and the war in Ukraine left her team exhausted, a two-day reset gave them a goal of 1,000 brilliant hotels. They had 750. They hit 1,005. Her first boss told her on day one that the job came down to hot food hot and cold food cold.

If you have ever talked yourself out of a job you wanted, this one is for you.

Her one word for how she leads is wholeheartedly. Her answer to what Full Tilt means: "Go for it, go full speed."

Connect with Karin Sheppard

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Connect with Belinda Bradford and WEGroup Global

Belinda Bradford on LinkedIn

Our website: WEGroup Global

Nominate someone to be our next guest: connect@wegroup-global.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com

“It's the myth of certainty that us humans hang on to. We think tomorrow is promised.”

Danica Bunch is the founder and director of Danica B PR and the author of She Has Breast Cancer. She spent 20 years in government and public affairs before launching her crisis PR agency just as COVID hit. In December 2022, a nurse called to tell her she had metastatic breast cancer and might have as little as two years to live. Days later, a second call corrected the mistake: the cancer was incurable, but treatable.

In this episode, you'll hear how she ran her own diagnosis like a client crisis, how a psychologist taught her the power of words like “treatable,” and how she turned that into a book, a national advocacy voice, and a push that helped change access to immunotherapy for women in Australia.

By the end, you'll understand why she says nothing in life is certain, and why that is the most liberating truth of all.

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com

Amilya Antonetti made her first million before she'd finished high school. Years later, after building and selling company after company and finally having everything, she looked in the mirror and realized she didn't like who was looking back.

She's a behaviorist, advisor, and founder of the Decode Method, credited with more than two billion dollars in client sales for clients including Steve Harvey, Mike Tyson, IBM, and Coldstone Creamery.

Her path there started with her son David, who doctors couldn't diagnose no matter how many times he ended up in the ER. Her grandmother taught her to make soap from scratch on the stove, and in 1995 that recipe became Soapworks, one of the companies that helped pioneer the chemical-free cleaning aisle across the US and Canada. She wrote about it in her book, Why David Hated Tuesdays.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The construction site negotiation that made her a millionaire before she'd graduated high school
• What doctors told her husband about their son, and why she refused to accept it
• How a soap recipe from her grandmother's kitchen became a nationwide, chemical-free cleaning brand
• Why Oprah's team ended up calling Amilya directly after her own staff said no
• The three-minute morning practice she credits with everything that came after
• The self-check she runs before saying yes to any new venture, and why ego rarely survives it
• Why she believes part of an entrepreneur has to die every time they sell a company
• Her read on why technology is exposing bad leadership faster than ever
• What actually keeps her up at night now, and it has nothing to do with money
• Her theory on why everyone is exactly one behavior away from the life they want

Her core belief, after more than thirty years of building and rebuilding: everyone is exactly one behavior away from the life they want.

Subscribe to Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford for a new conversation with founders and leaders every week.

Connect with Amilya Antonetti

Website

LinkedIn

Connect with Belinda Bradford and WEGroup Global

Belinda Bradford on LinkedIn

Our website: WEGroup Global

Nominate someone to be our next guest: connect@wegroup-global.com

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com

She quit the company she had spent her whole career building to go work for its biggest rival, and got publicly slammed for it. Years later, that rival merged with the company she had left, and she ended up running the entire thing.

Michelle Hutton is Global Chief Client and Growth Officer at Burson, one of the world's largest public relations and communications agencies, where her clients include L'Oréal, Coca-Cola, Visa, Emirates, Spotify, and the International Olympic Committee. This year, Burson won its first Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Festival, the top award in the industry, just three years after the agency was formed.

Michelle built her early career at Hill & Knowlton, rising to CEO of the Australian business, before a call from Edelman changed the direction of her career and put her at the center of an industry controversy.

In this episode, Michelle talks about the risk of jumping to a direct competitor, and the advice her father gave her before she'd even finished university. She also opens up about a mistake she says cost her more than one promotion: believing her work would speak for itself. Then there's what AI is doing to public relations, why she thinks earned media now carries more weight than paid advertising, and the speech she gave at Cannes Lions telling her own industry to take its craft back.

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com

Kate Christie is an executive coach, time management specialist, and five-time bestselling author, best known for her international bestseller The Life List, which won Australia's Best General Business Book in 2023. She was a corporate lawyer who walked away from her career after being publicly humiliated at her kids' school for missing “cupcake day,” realizing in that moment she was the only executive on her team without a stay-at-home spouse managing her home life.

In this episode, you'll learn how Kate turned that moment into a time management business that now serves brands like L'Oréal, Westpac, and the Australian government, why she wrote The Life List after her ex-husband died of pancreatic cancer at 54, and how she went from 2,000 to 100,000 Instagram followers documenting the renovation of an abandoned palazzo in Sicily.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How a humiliating “cupcake day” at her kids' kindergarten became the moment she quit her career as a corporate lawyer
• How she built a time management business now trusted by L'Oréal, Westpac, and the Australian government
• Why she wrote The Life List after her ex-husband died of pancreatic cancer at 54, and the difference between a bucket list and a life list
• How she went from 2,000 to 100,000 Instagram followers documenting the renovation of an abandoned palazzo in Sicily
• What she means when she calls this chapter of her life unapologetically selfish

By the end, you'll understand exactly what she means when she calls this chapter of her life unapologetically selfish.

Connect with Kate Christie

Website

LinkedIn

Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com

Tamien Dysart is co-founder of Think3D Solutions and Elevate You, and chair of the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce, the first Black man and second person of color to hold that role in its 119-year history. He was a directionless teenager who became a father at 17, found his way into a career in credit card collections at 21, and spent over 16 years climbing the ranks at Capital One and Wells Fargo before walking away to build something of his own.

In this episode, you'll learn how he took his team's turnover rate from 33% to 6% in 18 months using lessons from John Maxwell's books, the driveway moment on his wife's birthday that convinced him to leave corporate for good, and how his Leaders of Tomorrow program grew from a goal of 500 graduates to over 1,000, including a version now running inside South Dakota's prison system with less than half the state's recidivism rate.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How he took his team's turnover rate from 33% to 6% in 18 months as site director for credit card collections in Sioux Falls
• The “driveway moment” on his wife's birthday in May 2015 that convinced him to leave corporate for good
• Why he tells people the real secret to success is “decide your difficulty”
• How Leaders of Tomorrow grew from a goal of 500 graduates by 2025 to more than 1,000, now accredited through multiple universities
• How the program now runs inside South Dakota's prison system, with graduates recidivating at less than half the state's rate
• The story of the corner of 8th and Phillips in Sioux Falls, the street his father couldn't cross in the 1950s, where the Chamber of Commerce building now stands with Tamien as its chair

Connect with Tamien Dysart

LinkedIn

Website

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com

Susie Arnett spent the first half of her career at MTV, Lifetime Television, and HBO, before walking away at the peak of it, taking a solo kayak trip to Baja, and never going back.

In this episode, Susie sits down with Belinda to talk about what she learned building a media career, then a decade in retreat centers, and now global wellness programming at Six Senses: that the thing people actually want isn't information or a ten-step framework, it's to feel genuinely cared for.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why Susie says emotional hospitality isn't about what you do, it's about how you hold it, and what that looks like inside Six Senses properties
• What burning out at the peak of her TV career, and a solo kayak retreat in Baja, taught her about starting over
• Why she doesn't believe in one-size-fits-all wellness, and why “getting more men through the door” was the wrong question all along
• The piece of parenting advice she still uses today as a framework for prioritizing when everything feels urgent at once
• Why she believes information has gotten cheap, and real human experience is now the rarest thing any brand can offer
• What she's building toward next: helping people age with dignity, not just safety

By the end, you'll understand why Susie thinks the real risk right now isn't AI, it's forgetting what it means to be human.

Mentioned in this episode:

Full Tilt with Belinda Bradford is brought to you by WEGroup Global. We design and run retreats, summits, and offsites for creators, growing businesses, associations, and enterprises. We build on a simple belief: human connection matters more now than ever. The world has never been more connected, and people have never felt more alone. As AI takes over the routine work, judgement, trust, and the ability to lead a room are what's left to compete on. That still only happens in person. That's why we do what we do. We handle the hotels, the venues, the bookings, the logistics, and all the risks, backed by a network of 8,000+ hotels and venues in over 100 countries, trusted vendors and tour partners, and access to VIP tickets and top speakers most people can't get on their own. All you have to do is show up and connect with the people in the room. One team, one plan, from first idea to final day. Learn more about us at wegroup-global.com Connect with us at connect@wegroup-global.com