Judge Sessions with Synergy Group, AOK Creative and i4 Connect

Welcome to the Pause Awards show, where we invite past winners and future judges to talk about their journeys, inspiration and lessons learned in their professional careers and beyond.

In this episode, George Hedon, Founder of Pause Awards, speaks with Jason Perelson (Creative Director, Synergy Group), Antonia Grimard (Founder, AOK Creative) and Taylor Tran (Facilitator, i4 Connect). They discussed key skills in business, their idea of success, industry expectations and more.

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Rallying them together for our first round of judges interviews, we delved deeper into understanding what they consider to be the most important skill in business. Their responses (rather unified) were centred around people skills.

I think you need a mix of different perspectives and skills. You need a visionary and an implementer. Someone who can see the market, and someone who can get to that market.

Antonia Grimard, Founder, AOK Creative

People skills, empathy, and self thought. You might be very good at people skills. And if you don’t have all the answers, that’s also okay. It’s about knowing where to find the right people, and the skill of being able to work with others.

Jason Perelson, Creative Director, Synergy Group

To be able to ask good questions and to be able to ask for help. And also to be able to listen, and the ability to learn from what you listen to. It’s simple – Ask. Listen. And learn.

Taylor Tran, Facilitator, i4 Connect

Chatting about what success meant to our judges, their responses included a mix of both personal and business focussed success.

For me, success is every project where the client achieves their goal. If I deliver what they need and it actually gets them.

Antonia Grimard, Founder, AOK Creative

Success is having that balance between personal and work life to keep going. Working to live rather than living to work.

Taylor Tran, Facilitator, i4 Connect

For me, success is feeling irrelevant. You feel relevant after having helped someone, but feeling irrelevant would push me forward. It would be a great experience and a crisis that I’m probably going to have to write a book about.

Jason Perelson, Creative Director, Synergy Group

We then asked for what business advice they heard or would offer someone:

If you want to have a structure for success, build a business like you would sell it.

Antonia Grimard, Founder, AOK Creative

For me, reaching out and asking for help is a huge one. And focusing on the problem that you are working on as opposed to the solution.

Taylor Tran, Facilitator, i4 Connect

I remember being told once that you should ‘eat the elephant bit by bit. It’s a really nice way of thinking about all these insurmountable problems that we often face, these big goals and objectives that we see in business.

Jason Perelson, Creative Director, Synergy Group

Delving into some foresight of the industries they work in, the trio said:

It’s interesting to see, Australia is seeking to be a leader in emerging technologies, like quantum computers, advancing manufacturing, digital tech and energy tech. There’s some great opportunities there.

Taylor Tran, Facilitator, i4 Connect

In the creative marketing communications side of things, there’s almost a trend of returning to basics — a homogeneity of techniques. Settling back to good communication and being creative. I think we are moving to a point where we will be less and less focused on the method and more about the message.

Jason Perelson, Creative Director, Synergy Group

There’s a sense right now of everyone niching down. Instead of having just range, really drilling down on one thing. But niching down isn’t necessarily a measure of success. For some people, you could be successful by being a generalist. But for me, I guess it’s less niching in terms of industries, and more in terms of personality and networks.

Antonia Grimard, Founder, AOK Creative

We also spoke of some personal aspects to their business lives, such as what they’d like doing more and less of in the future (and trust us, they had some brilliant answers.)

To listen to that plus an amazing quick fire round of questions, don’t forget to check out in the full conversation below.