A Step-by-Step Guide for Business Founders

Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.

Welcome back. This is episode eight of the Forward Thinking podcast and the final episode of this special edition of the Coast and Commerce podcast recorded live at Forward Fest 2025. I’m your host, Ben Amos from Innovate Media. I’m Craig Josic, co-founder and chair of FWD Fest. Now in this final episode, we’re going to hear from a founder of a business who’s also supported a lot of other businesses in the work that he does over the years. And he’s also written a book, which we’ll share more about in this episode.

Yeah, Peter’s inspiring. know, like when you hear his episode, his story, it’s really fantastic. I first met Ben in Sydney and we sat there looking at the Darling Harbour and really just discussed, you know, the future and how we can support startups. And this book is fantastic. You’ll get a lot out of not just this episode, but hopefully you get a chance to read his book. So let’s get into this story. This inspiring episode and a

wonderful way to wrap up this series. sorry, I was getting caught up in the startup toolkit. Let’s go hear from the author, Peter Deans from Goru. Welcome back to the Forward Thinking podcast recorded live here at Forward Fest 2025. I’m Ben Amos from Innovate Media. And this is a special season of the Coast and Commerce podcast, which is all about finding and telling interesting and engaging stories from businesses doing cool stuff on the Sunshine Coast.

One of those businesses that’s here at FWD Fest and has been here all day talking to people about their startups is Peter Deans from Gourou. Gourou World. Gourou World. Excellent. We get that right. So tell us a little bit about what is Gourou and Gourou World and what do you do here? Yeah, it’s interesting. I guess I started out about six years ago after a very long career in banking and finance. was like three decades.

And I probably, like many people felt I had a startup in me and my sort of day job, guess, is sort of risk and strategy consulting. And I really wanted to just do something and through, it actually my godson, he lives in Melbourne, who’s now 25. We just talked about the fact that a lot of the corporate training materials, guides, they sort of, dare I say it, written by older people and lacking engagement. And I used to get a lot of,

A lot of people coming up to me and saying, I’ve got an idea for a startup, you what do think I should do? And I’d sort of, you know, provide advice and guidance, just whether it’s family, friends, clients, and often kids, know, clients and friends. And I thought I should write this down. So during the course of 2024, I put it all into a book, wrote the book, got it published just before Christmas, launched in Hong Kong at their Entrepreneur Day Startup Festival in December.

And now I’m sort of, you know, go around the country, literally in my spare time, this is my side hustle, just talking about the startup toolkit, the concept of GORU, which is the Japanese word for goal. And our little tagline is, unleash your potential. And it’s just a way of, and I’ve noticed it here actually at Forward Fest with some of the youth programs, you know, the younger generation, they are really excited about starting their own business. Maybe they’ve heard some bad stories from their parents about corporate life. And so yeah, so startup toolkit.

It’s just a way of helping younger people who may not have business advisors start to think about how they can bring an idea and a business to life. And it’s got a bit of the nuts and bolts around cashflow forecasting, sales and marketing, employing staff. So it’s a bit of a, I guess it’s the A to Z of startups. So where are you based on in Australia?

Most of my time in Sydney, my consulting business, I’ve got two guys there based in Brisbane and we’ve got clients in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, WA, a few overseas as well, but mostly the East Coast. So as you’ve been here in FWD fest here on the Sunshine Coast, which is the entrepreneurship and innovation festival for the Sunshine Coast, what’s been your kind of outside of view on our ecosystem here on the Sunshine Coast? Yeah, look, I think

A little bit of the problem is the numbers are game. Australia’s got most of its population, for better or worse, in Sydney and Melbourne. And so that gets a lot of the focus. And Sydney, I guess the communities I’ve worked in over the years, very strong fintech focus. And as a result, think a lot of people, business people in particular, they just don’t really see outside, the two big cities and quite often the three big cities of like, if it’s not happening in Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne, it’s not happening at all.

I think what’s been really impressive and this is the lead up to the festival when I was asked to get involved is that you’ve got a really passionate group of industry leaders who are including some of the council, government, policy makers who are actually wanting to make something happen and what struck me was there is actually something happening here and think FWD Fest is its 10th year now so congratulations everyone who had that vision and CJ was obviously

driving force from day one to actually even have a festival like this is fantastic. It reflects that there’s something happening. And I’ve said to a few people who’ve told I’ve been coming up here, seriously, there’s something actually happening up here on the Sunshine Coast around this startup and innovation. And even here today, it’s not just me sort of selling the book, it’s actually talking to lots of the businesses, hearing what they’re doing. And there’s just fantastic innovation stories here on the Sunshine Coast. Just no one outside the Sunshine Coast knows about it.

Yeah, incredible. So the startup toolkit, a step-by-step guide for founders is the book here. So if you’re watching on video, this is it right here. Before we go further, where can people get a copy of Yeah, so the website, we’ve got www.goroworld.com. You can go there, you can get the book. We’ve bundled up some software tools as well. So a cashflow forecast template, project plan template, a Word document for a business plan, PowerPoint for a pitch deck.

And we’ve also extracted out of the book what we call the Startup Task List, 127 individual activities. You don’t have to do all of them, some are not relevant, but it just gives you something to start with. It’s on all the major bookstores, so Amazon, Apple, Google Books, Rakatan, which is the Canadian, Japanese one. Audio books just been recorded and fingers crossed we’ll be up in a week or two on all the audio platforms. Interestingly, there’s 50 audio platforms for…

listening to books, streaming and so on. So, and the group which actually helped me was Brisbane based Brisbane audio productions. They provided a narrator, did all the editing. So we’ll be up on the audio platforms in a week or two as well. So you can find it anywhere. So goru world, g-o-r-u world.com. So go and check it out. But I do want to ask you, know, in the world of startups, right, I think

There’s no lack of knowledge, right? Or there’s no lack of information. There’s probably a better way of saying it, right? I think for a young person or anyone wanting to start a business, they probably, they can Google search. They can ask Chat GPT, what do I need to do to start a business? But for you, why put it into a book? And also, what are you hoping that someone who picks up this book will get that they won’t be able to get from?

just Googling it or asking chat GPT? Yeah, well, there’s a fair bit of literature out there on chat GPT hallucinating. I haven’t really asked it questions around startup tools. look, I think there is too much information out there. Like people are overwhelmed with information now. And I think is an element of can we just cut to the chase of like, we want a concise guide. There’s no nonsense. It just goes through the steps in a structured manner.

And it answers a lot of the, we’ve got a glossary in it as well. So it’s just like demystify some of the terminology that’s in there. think part of the problem again with, you know, what’s out there on the internet is that it’s skewed towards a little bit of the bigger end of the venture capital sort of world. And everyone used to say, I want to be the next Elon Musk. Of course, the last six months, no one wants to be Elon Musk now other than perhaps be rich. but even that has his downside, I suspect.

So it’s really just a little bit of a curated document and again the tools again cashflow forecast like this is the stuff that no one does tell you is you need to actually plot on a weekly or monthly basis the cash flow you’re going to be getting in and if you’re manufacturing something you have to pay to get the goods manufactured whether they’re in China or locally it takes you know three four months for them to come here and then you have to fund that till you sell your product so

It’s a bit of the basics and this is where I’ve sort of drawn on my background as a financier where, you know, as a financier you wanting to look very closely at working capital, your operating expenditures, the ability for the business to meet its obligations as and when they fall due. And so that was really, it was just to provide, you know, very affordable bundle tools, pitch decks likewise. There’s probably 10,000 pitch decks out there and people can get overwhelmed and some you have to pay for, some are free. And we’re like, we’ve just curated.

I think it’s the 20 odd slides that you wanna have in a pitch deck. Again, you can play around with them. And that’s a big part of it, particularly for people putting their toe in the water with startups is just have a bit of a go at modeling up what your business might look like, have a bit of a project plan, particularly, and I’ve been listening to you here all day on stage. A lot of these businesses take six, nine, 12 months if they’re tech-based to actually…

develop something, pay developers, test, get user acceptance testing and so on. That all costs money. So I’m like, well, just model it in a project plan, put some costings against it. And that is a little bit of an aha moment for some of the aspiring entrepreneurs like, this is going to cost more than what we thought. And that’s reality is like, it actually costs a bit of money to do this stuff. Notwithstanding there’s lots of free tools out there and you can use a lot of the…

freelancing platforms to get some stuff done. Ultimately it still costs money and until you sell something, and we do have the chapter called up and running which is sell, sell, sell, you have to actually get out there, sell, get some cash in. But again, if you don’t have a finance background, you may not be thinking about that. So it’s just trying to try and fill in a few of the gaps for people who may not be that experienced or may have a sort of expertise in one particular area.

Yeah. So I encourage people who are looking at starting up a business or interested in starting up a business to pick up the startup toolkit, grab the book, but, we won’t go through what’s in the book in detail in the minute or so we’ve got left, but I’m interested, Peter, to find out from you, if there was one, one thing, one main piece of advice or one place that you feel that most people get tripped up when they’re starting a business, what would that be? And can we identify that? Yeah, think, look, I think research, the market is one of the

sections in the idea phase of the book. And I put a little phrase in here is like, you know, maybe the world doesn’t need your product or service. So research the market and really work out is there a gap in the market that needs to be filled? There may be others doing it, but there’s some good ideas where ultimately the market’s not big enough. It may not be needed. I mean, it’s like the we talk about the better mousetrap. I mean, the mousetrap still exists today because

sort of works. It’s cheap, does the job. Do you need any high tech solutions to replace the mousetrap? Probably not. So yeah, think research the market, spend a bit of time, you know, talking to industry people, talking to friends. I’d say that’s probably the one piece of advice. Really know who it is that you’re selling to, who you’re trying to help and where your product fits with that market. 100%.

Peter, this has been a short conversation and I’m sure we could go a lot deeper, but people can pick up the book, they can go to goruworld.com and learn more about you. And is there a place where you’d prefer people to connect with you as well? Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. So Peter Deans on LinkedIn, if you just email off the Goruworld website, info at goruworld.com that comes to me and my marketing manager or marketing department is just here off camera.

yeah, I’m more than happy. And that’s part of me, like with my career, I’m sort of at the stage of really wanting to give back to the communities. that’s why I accepted the invitation to come up here and speak and be part of this amazing festival is like, yeah, I just love to see, see people and businesses succeed. Excellent. Peter Deans, Goru Goru world and this, book, The Startup Toolkit, a step-by-step guide for founders, pick it up, get it into you. And, thanks for joining me on the board thinking podcast. Great to be here. Awesome.

And for you guys watching, make sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss any more episodes of the Coast and Commerce podcast or this special season of the Forward Thinking podcast recorded live here at FWD Fest 2025. We’ll see you in the next episode. Bye now. I think one of the cool things from that episode was Peter as an outsider from the Sunshine Coast coming into FWD Fest 2025 and seeing what the Sunshine Coast has to offer and what incredible stuff we’re doing here in innovation or entrepreneurship on the coast and in Queensland and…

Australia and the world. this has been for me anyway being able to speak to these founders over the course of the last eight episodes and hear about the journeys that they’ve had on building their businesses and the incredible stuff that they’re doing has inspired me as a business owner as well and hopefully it has for you too. Yes, Peter articulated to me about hey he’s seen something special happening here you know we are building something unique and we want to encourage you to be part of this.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Ben. We collaborated on this idea and developed this series as part of FWD Fest, but now we’ve gone beyond that. So I just want to say thank you to Ben for Innovate Media from FWD Fest. We are building an innovation powerhouse, the engine room for your business, and we want to hear your story. So lean in, take action, and share with us what’s your story. We want to hear that and hopefully…

you may just be part of FWDFest next year. So leave a comment to this video on YouTube with your own story or go to FWDfest.co. It’s a great place to find out more about FWDFest, the incredible events that are happening across the year, but particularly FWDFest 2026 coming soon. Maybe let’s talk about FWDFest 2026. When’s that happening? It’s happening in May. So the annual event, our flagship event happens in May on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. So wherever you are,

in the world, we encourage you to lean in, attend this event. And I think most importantly, Ben, as we enter this AI age, which is changing everything rapidly, in-person events are more important now than ever. And you’ve heard that through these episodes, how the connections have been made, how…

opportunities have come up because of what we call those collaborative collisions and they only happen when you’re in person. So wherever you are, I encourage you to attend any innovation event, any activity within your community, but also we would love to welcome you to FWD Fest. And thank you for joining us for this special season of the Coast and Commerce podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this season, then I suggest you share it with someone, share your favorite episode with someone who will get value from it.

or hit subscribe because we’ve got more of the Coast and Commerce podcast coming real soon as well right here in this same podcast feed on this same YouTube channel. And CJ, thanks for the opportunity to share the FWD Fest stories in 2025 and I look forward to 2026. Take care and keep moving forward.