Cameron Wearing – ADI

Speakers: Cameron Wearing, Director of Research and Development, ADI

Please introduce yourself and your company

Cameron Wearing: My name is Cameron Wearing and I’m from the Australian Driving Institute.

What training and services do ADI provide and to whom?

Cameron Wearing: Our training is generally driver training. This has morphed over time into doing other types of driving related work, including buggies, side by sides, quad bikes. But the vast majority of our work is in sedans and four wheel drives. So the work that we’re doing is also based on prevention. Generally we do a bit of a health check on a fleet. The client that will get the biggest returns is going to be a large fleet with high exposure and self insured.

How does this impact companies you work with? What’s the potential of not upskilling?

Cameron Wearing: We have a couple of positive impacts. One of them, which isn’t really realized too early in the piece is more around the operational side, something as simple as tyre wear or even fuel use and when you’re running a fleet of 2.5 thousand vehicles, the cents really add up to dollars.

Why did you engage Russell Colbourne from The CFO Centre?

Cameron Wearing: We didn’t set out to engage Russell, We set out to engage The CFO Centre. We saw that as a weakness. Russell was deemed as a good fit into our business and there couldn’t have been a better choice. Russell fits in extremely well. He’s a an amiable bloke just to chat with. But his intelligence and his experience has just been wonderful to ride that wave. I highly enjoy working with Russell. I enjoy the intellectual stimulus, and I’m really enjoying the next stages where we intend to take our business.

What imapct has Russell had on ADI?

Cameron Wearing: We saw that there was a real weakness in our own understanding. My wife and I are both co directors. We have very separate roles within the business and we do a pretty good job of separating home from work and respecting that there is a hierarchy. Tania who is actually the general manager, I suppose in some degrees I’m more of the visionary, but the reason that we needed to talk to someone like Russell was because we lacked, I suppose the intellect and the tertiary experience to develop a business into a larger scale business. We had done okay up to the point of 30 staff, but we’re now going beyond that and the planning is completely different and I suppose we lack the confidence and Russell has provided not only clear and precise strategy, he’s also taking the sting out of some of the decision making and the fear of what we’re trying to achieve. So he’s a wonderful hand to have on our shoulder and guiding us through the network of growth.