What I Learnt from Fred Schebesta,

 I recently had a chat with one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs, Fred Schebesta on my podcast Flamingo Sundays. I was fortunate to get some really interesting insights into what it takes to build a $100 million plus business and how to become the kind of person you need to be to get there.

If you don’t know who Fred Schebesta is, you might be familiar with his company Finder. It’s Australia’s largest comparison site and has become the go-to location for finding the best deals on everything from credit cards, insurance, mobile phones and any number of different things you can purchase.

Fred grew up in Sydney and didn’t come from an entrepreneurial family. In fact, both of his parents were doctors who would have much preferred to see their son carry on in the family tradition. Fred had other ideas.

Fred was very fortunate when he was at university. He was studying computer science at a time when the internet was only just getting started. Fred knew he loved technology and this new world that was poised to change everything.

So he did like most entrepreneurs do and dropped out of school to found his own business. He started what would go on to become a digital marketing business that also built websites. While that type of business is relatively normal today, back in 2000, it was groundbreaking.

Over the course of seven years, he built up the business and worked with many large clients. In the process, he taught himself to be an expert marketer in the digital space and eventually when the workload because too much he knew it was time to move on to bigger things.

At the time, he had been experimenting with different ideas for a stand-alone site that he could operate as a business and he just so happened to like the concept of a site that compared credit cards. With his knowledge of marketing, he was up and running and within months had signed up some of Australia’s biggest banks as clients.

What I liked about the way Fred operates is that he knew what he wanted to do and he went out there and did it. He also made it all happen himself without any help. He does mention that if he had his time again he might not do things the same way. But given he is very goal-oriented, this is how he forced himself to take the risks he needed to and get things done. I feel that I operate in the same sort of way. I set goals and then work backwards to find out how I am going to achieve them.

After building Finder into what was now a hundred million dollar play company and taking it worldwide, he also realised that his life as he knew it had changed dramatically. He wasn’t the same uni dropout that he was when he started.

He’d built a business, but he had also been through a lot of rough times including a 2.5-year divorce. Throughout the journey, Fred acknowledged that he hadn’t built up his emotional capacity to the same level as his business and he knew this was something that he had to change.

He hired an emotional coach and he realised that he had a lot of work to do. On the first day they met, his new coach called Fred, ‘emotionally obese’, with a lot of work that would need to be done. Typical of Fred, he put in the work and has changed the person he is now for the better thanks to many hours of personal development and self-reflection.

This is also something that I personally work very hard on. I have coaches and mentors for different areas of my life and understand that if I am to get where I want to go in business, I need to work on becoming that type of person emotionally.

After building the business, Fred has now stepped back and handed over the day to day operations to his business partner. He’s now heavily involved in the crypto space and is diving into this new sector that he believes is on the cusp of changing the financial services sector. Much like the internet changed everything back in the late 90s.

His story is one that all young entrepreneurs and business people should pay close attention to. It’s far more than a business story. It’s very much one of personal growth and working towards your goals and not settling until you get there.