Shane Ridley is a Young Entrepreneur!

Young enough to still believe that anything is possible, but experienced enough to know how hard you have to work to get “rubber to the road” and achieve real, sustainable results.

As the owner and Managing Director of the OGroup Management (Recruitment and Consultancy), Shane oversees and manages a number of businesses in the Human Resource sector, including CPE Rural – (Agricultural Staffing) and Otrain.

1. Niche Markets – know your market intimately, you can be known as the expert, or go to person/company.
2. Add Value – then you don’t have to compete on price (nor are you viewed as an expense, when times get tough)
3. Build a tribe – if people love you, they’ll talk about and refer you.
   The easiest way to grow a business.

Shane was a terrible employee. His focus was always on how he could do things better and in 2002, he left the fulltime workforce to create OGroup Management.

Unfortunately for Shane, is wasn’t the $1Million idea his business plan had suggested and in 2003 he was forced to returned for a brief stint in the workforce before starting CPE Rural in 2004. Starting in the spare room of his home it quickly grew to be a major force in agricultural staffing throughout Queensland and New South Wales.

Shane believes his success is due to his ability to seek out successful people and getting the right people around him, both as employees, and mentors or advisors. He is an avid follower of the Verne Harnish – Rockefeller Habits principals and describes himself as a “student of business”. He loves reading business books and biographies and says his biggest weakness is that Amazon.com has his credit card details!

Shane strengths and areas of interest are People, Strategy and Data, and using all three to drive operational performance. A firm beleiver in the phrase “if you cant measure it, you cant manage it” Shane likes to set strategy, find measures, execute the plan and review the results.

Previous positions Shanes has held include potato picker, lettuce cutter, car detailer, computer salesman and Human Resource professional. This diverse background and rural upbringing provides Shane with a unique, honest and “street wise” quality to his thinking and beliefs.

Shane is a member of the global Entrepreneurs Organisation and has served two terms on the Brisbane

Chapter board and is currently studying an Entrepreneurs Masters Program at MIT, in Boston, USA.