Oct 20, 2026 · 1 hr 9 min · 13 segments
Dr Mitch Catterall went from surfing in Kiama to a Doctor of Music, to running 36 staff, and losing good people along the way. Now a business partner at Unveil, he shares what he learned the hard way…
Coralie McCarthyHost
Now what you do, as I understand it, is you do a lot in leadership because you've learnt a lot of lessons in leadership and you teach leadership but then you also work with business in varying different ways to help them be better at what they do or support what they need.
thing that we're trying to do is we help small and medium businesses create enduring value so that they can keep growing the business and it's valuable at whatever phase the owners or the leaders are going to exit.
So if I take my family business as the example, by the time Mum and dad had to exit through health conditions, which happens so much.
The business was not valuable enough to sell on because they didn't know how to structure it that way.
We help businesses structure it so that they can exit with value is essentially what it is.
Now, there's a lot of pieces to that, but it comes down to a few key underlying parts of it.
And again, based on my own experience, leading a large team, not being trained in leadership, it's a recipe for disaster.
So Hank, so what is one thing, if you were to go back, that you, like I've got lots of things for me that I look back and I go, I wouldn't have done that again, but I learned a hell of a lot from it.
It was my entire approach to leadership was completely reversed the wrong way,
was I thought, and this seems to be a really common theme when I've talked to other leaders that need help, is that when...
I got recognised as being good at what I did, so I got put into a leadership role to lead a team who also were good at
I thought, it's like, cool, I'm getting elevated up so I can do more of that stuff and the other people can help me do it, which was the complete wrong way because what effective leadership ends up being most of the time is you get elevated up so that you can help those people do what they're doing, not the other way around.
Like you can't just go, oh, I'm the leader now, so now I've got nine people that can help me divide up the tasks and they can do this part and that's going to make my job easier.
No, as a leader, your job is to make their job easier and better and support and lead and guide them so that you can multiply your influence.
Right.
Now what you do, as I understand it, is you do a lot in leadership because you've learnt a lot of lessons in leadership and you teach leadership but then you also work with business in varying different ways to help them be better at what they do or support what they need.
thing that we're trying to do is we help small and medium businesses create enduring value so that they can keep growing the business and it's valuable at whatever phase the owners or the leaders are going to exit.
So if I take my family business as the example, by the time Mum and dad had to exit through health conditions, which happens so much.
The business was not valuable enough to sell on because they didn't know how to structure it that way.
We help businesses structure it so that they can exit with value is essentially what it is.
Now, there's a lot of pieces to that, but it comes down to a few key underlying parts of it.
And again, based on my own experience, leading a large team, not being trained in leadership, it's a recipe for disaster.
So Hank, so what is one thing, if you were to go back, that you, like I've got lots of things for me that I look back and I go, I wouldn't have done that again, but I learned a hell of a lot from it.
It was my entire approach to leadership was completely reversed the wrong way,
was I thought, and this seems to be a really common theme when I've talked to other leaders that need help, is that when...
I got recognised as being good at what I did, so I got put into a leadership role to lead a team who also were good at
I thought, it's like, cool, I'm getting elevated up so I can do more of that stuff and the other people can help me do it, which was the complete wrong way because what effective leadership ends up being most of the time is you get elevated up so that you can help those people do what they're doing, not the other way around.
Like you can't just go, oh, I'm the leader now, so now I've got nine people that can help me divide up the tasks and they can do this part and that's going to make my job easier.
No, as a leader, your job is to make their job easier and better and support and lead and guide them so that you can multiply your influence.
Right.
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