Entrepreneur and SME champion Naomi Simson FAICD shares leadership and business development advice born from experience.
Naomi Simson is the founder of experiential gifts company RedBalloon and co-founder with David Anderson of experience company Big Red Group. She holds board positions with several organisations including Australian Payments Plus, Colonial First State and Weebit Nano, and was a judge on reality TV series Shark Tank Australia. In a recent Boardroom Confidential podcast, she spoke with AICD Content Programming Manager Bennett Mason on the skills that have set her career apart. This is an edited version of their conversation.
When RedBalloon began, it was a disruptor. What opportunities do you see in the marketplace now for disruption?
One reason I was a disruptor was because it was in the very early days of the internet. Secondly, I brought together a lot of small businesses that were not an industry. They had no reputation, no brand, no professional association. It wasn’t a cohort and I did unite people.
The other thing is, while the RedBalloon purpose was changing gifting in Australia forever — less stuff, more stories — the real impact was the impact we’ve had on communities. In 2019, I had lunch with one of my regional suppliers, hot air balloonists in the Hunter Valley — 20 years we’d worked together. He said, “Do you realise, in the beginning, I had one hot air balloon and 900 passengers? This year, I’ve got 19 balloons and 23,000 passengers. Everyone who comes to the Hunter Valley will go to a winery, go to a restaurant and use accommodation. They’re spending at least $1000 in our community.”
Coming out of COVID, we worked with government to explain that people don’t travel because they want to be on an aircraft. They want to go somewhere and do something unique and special. The work we did in advocacy for small business drove this sense of purpose, because we could see the impact we were having on families and their livelihoods.
As a real champion for Australian small business, what’s your outlook on the small business or startup ecosystem?
My father was a small business owner and I know many. They are employers and also customers to big organisations. Without them, our economy is really shaky. It’s never been harder to be in small business than today. I’m more worried than ever before in the sense that the angel investment community is struggling, because nobody wants to invest in pre-revenue. Australia, by nature, is a very conservative ecosystem compared to the US. But startups aside, there has never been a more challenging time for business in Australia.
Whether it’s how to keep a business safe from cyber frauds and scams, or one of many other challenges, people are more scared than they’ve ever been. They don’t know where the bad actors are. Often, they can’t see where their competition is coming from. Is it some algorithm offshore scraping everybody’s websites? How do you keep your business safe?
Thirdly, it’s increasingly difficult to find the right person for the right role — someone who is truly engaged — because SMEs are competing against the globals and the big organisations, which have all sorts of infrastructure and support.
Is there something policy-wise the government could be doing to help small businesses and startups?
Access to credit is really important. We’ve seen a massive rise in private credit. If I’m sending more jet boat customers for an experience, at some point that business owner needs to buy a new jet boat, and they will need access to funds to buy that new jet boat. That drives growth.
In some ways, Canberra and each of the state governments need to understand the onus they are putting on small businesses when it comes to documentation, reporting, governance and regulation. Because that is often what catches us out. It’s not that we don’t care, we just don’t know. If businesses don’t have good relationships with their professional advisers, they might not have been informed about the latest regulation.
The government needs to look at the definition of a small business because they make it too small. For anything up to $50m, you don’t have the resources to do all the things you need to get done for what government regulations demand.
How can boards and senior leaders best oversee a growth phase or transformation for an organisation?
It comes back to mindset. Don’t fear growth. It’s knowing where to apply capital resource assets to get leverage. I’ve seen businesses become less profitable as they have grown. Having the right people in place is important. You want to put project teams together based on the specialist skills required for the job at hand right now — and then set them free.
What excites you about AI and what gives you cause for concern?
We need to be circumspect in anything we’re using in terms of AI. We’re just at the beginning and it scares me. Will it leave that human emotional element behind? We’ve become so connected to these devices that we’re disconnecting [from each other]. It comes back to my sense of purpose of connecting people, which is what we do in RedBalloon and Big Red Group. The beauty of business is the human element, the people you meet and talk to. It’s the camaraderie, the shared sense of purpose. If it’s all about the algorithms and how great we are at writing prompts, I worry we won’t feel — and actually, to feel is to be human.
What other opportunities for innovation do you see within the boardroom?
Historically, many businesses, especially large ones, think they have to do everything on their own. However, there’s real power in partnership, in people working together. We’ve got a lot of customers at RedBalloon. Other Australian businesses do too, but if we work together, what could we create? Promotions, joint marketing, partnerships — there is so much opportunity. In business, we shouldn’t take a siloed approach, but often we do. We think we’re the only ones tackling that problem, but we’re often not.
Boards have a key role in setting the tone on culture, then making sure the right culture is in place. RedBalloon has been praised as a workplace with a healthy culture. What’s your advice on building that engagement and culture?
I’ve watched the workforce change over time, but there are fundamentals that haven’t changed. First of all, there is a leadership challenge, which is making sure we connect the purpose to people’s toil. What does the purpose look like? How does it roll out in a very simple strategy that people understand in plain language? People need to know their role in the organisation. They need to see how their role fits with everybody else. People want to do great work. They want to see the results of their work. Great leadership provides a clearly defined purpose, pillars in a strategy. Knowing how we play the game — the values or beliefs — will help people to align.
What can the board do practically? Is it having the right CEO and management team in place?
You’ve got to have the right people, but as I used to say, you actually have to like people. You have to believe in them — and understand and acknowledge difference. We want diverse ideas. We want challenge. We want curiosity. We want questions. We need to be conscious of how we are “goalling” people, so we’re not only focused on the bottom line, but also giving back to the business and investing capital.
We need to be prepared to work on the further-out horizons. That’s our job as directors and as custodians — to make sure that we have a much longer view.
How do you, as a board member and business leader, balance risk management and oversight responsibilities?
It’s an absolute balancing act, there’s no doubt about that. But we have to come back to the expectations of the shareholders, their aspirations and the stage and maturity of the business in the enterprise. All of the boards I’m on have different levels of maturity in terms of how long they’ve been in business. They’re on different journeys with different aspirations.
I would argue it’s important to have some level of benchmarking of “what does great look like?” or “what are we aspiring to be like?” It will come back to your trust in management, especially around risk reviews, the framework, the risk appetite statement and the risk register — and constantly reviewing that.
Overlay the strategy, see the growth, look at the data. That gives you insight and that’s an opportunity. Make educated bets based on the information you have at hand.
This article first appeared as 'One eye on the horizon' in the December 2025/January 2026 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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