Tom Potter

About Tom

Tom grew up in the country and left school at the age of 15 to commence his apprenticeship as a baker. After finishing his apprenticeship, he travelled and lived in Alice Springs, Melbourne and Adelaide and during this period working in technical services with Defiance Milling Company he came across the pizza industry and saw an opportunity.

Eagle Boys

In 1987 Tom opened his first Eagle Boys store in Albury, New South wales, with his partner/mother Barbara and proceeded to open further stores in Wagga and Dubbo in the following year. It was decided soon after that Eagle Boys being the phenomenal success that it was in the country towns would commence franchising.

Australian Young Business Person of the Year

Tom was awarded Australian Young Business Person of the Year by the Australian Financial Review and was awarded a scholarship to attend Harvard Business School to complete a 3-year Owner President Manager program, of which he graduated Class Valedictorian and gave the valedictory speech.

As a Speaker

Tom’s success and straight forward style has seen him become one of Australia’s most sought after speakers. Over the years, he has travelled as a professional public speaker right across Australia, New Zealand and worldwide.

Tom spent a lot of time working on specialist strategic consulting works and continued to ‘keep my hand in’ on the speaking circuit. Most interesting (and disappointing) has been the COLLAPSE AND COMPLETE FAILURE of Eagle Boys. The company he created and built, opening over 250 stores from 1987 to 2007 to become Australia and New Zealand’s largest privately owned pizza company.

Although he had sold the company nine years prior and was not involved as a shareholder or Director he made attempts to speak with the owners and management about the extremely concerning mistakes they were making running the business. However, they chose to ignore him and ultimately lost over 300 million dollars of other people’s money.

This created a whole new speaking topic as in reality there is a great deal to learn from FAILURE.

Retail has had plenty of lessons over the years with the likes of Masters, Dick Smith, Pie Face, Blockbuster, David Lawrence, Allphones, Pumpkin Patch, Howards Storage World, Robins Kitchen, Payless Shoes and Eagle Boy Pizza, and the list goes on….

So, what really happened? Bad business planning, poor management, indecision, market changes, undercapitalisation, poor sales and marketing strategies? Probably some or all of these.

The current focus in my KEYNOTES is “the changing marketplace” and “what to do about it “ ….it’s all about preparing your troops to look into the future and address the changes to be made to ensure you are “part of the future” and not a future casualty. It’s about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable – CHANGE OR DIE.

My presentation still has plenty of humour, true life stories, real examples and most importantly lessons to take away and act upon.

What he can do for you

Tom’s approach in his public speaking is to talk about both his highs and lows over the last 20 years of building the most successful, privately owned pizza company in Australia. He specializes in areas such as retail marketing, guerrilla marketing, change and change management, what customers really want and getting to the core issues, the key to great leadership management and overall Tom will send your people away with 2-3 very solid messages to allow them to help improve your business going forward. He has a straight forward, no nonsense style which enthrals audiences and leaves them wanting more.

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