Small businesses supported by CommBank Matildas players

It’s not every day you get global sports superstars supporting your business. Enter the CommBank Matildas on Loan competition, which has allowed 50 small businesses around Australia to receive just that. At a time when 70 per cent of small-to-medium local businesses are cutting costs due to economic pressures, CommBank is lending a hand by “loaning out” CommBank Matildas players in support of small business customers.

We spoke with three of the business owners who were chosen, from the director of a zoo in the Grampians to a CEO empowering women in tech. No doubt they’ll be kicking even more goals with the CommBank Matildas on their side.

Halls Gap Zoo

At Victoria’s largest privately-owned zoo, Halls Gap Zoo, Mark and Lisa Treweek care for and breed more than 500 animals, including a two-tonne white rhino visitors can handfeed.

Mark Treweek has a very particular set of skills. He grew up on his father’s sheep farm in Wakool, New South Wales, but has also run an aviation business and worked as an insurance broker, which he playfully refers to as his “suit and tie background”.

So, when Mark’s mum, Yvonne, and stepfather, Greg, asked Mark and his wife, Lisa, to manage Halls Gap Zoo for them, it was a no-brainer. “It just made sense,” says Mark. Handily, Lisa brought a valuable skill set too, having worked in customer service, and now manages the zoo’s 20-plus staff. And their sons, Cooper and William, are living the dream.

But buying the zoo was a baptism of fire for Mark and Lisa, quite literally. The past two summers have seen bushfires in the Grampians reach as close as three kilometres from their boundary, forcing them to temporarily close the zoo and evacuate animals. Meanwhile, raising a veritable Noah’s ark that includes giraffes, cheetahs, red pandas and bison isn’t cheap.

“Our feed bill has doubled since we took over,” says Lisa. “Then there was a wage increase of 3.75 per cent for staff—which is important for people to survive—and a rise in superannuation requirements, too,” adds Mark. “All the costs are going up, but we can’t really increase the zoo admission price because then people wouldn’t show up.” So, the couple reduced advertising and marketing spend by 40 per cent to make up for it. The opportunity to have the CommBank Matildas support the zoo couldn’t have come at a better time.

The exposure, Mark believes, will be invaluable. “I was just talking to someone who’s been coming to Halls Gap regularly for 30 years and didn’t know there was a zoo here. The CommBank Matildas on Loan campaign is going to get our name out there.”

It’s a lifeline Mark appreciates. “CommBank has supported us from day one,” he says. “From our local bank manager to the national boss of lending, they’re fully behind us and just love the zoo.”

She Codes

Kate Kirwin founded She Codes at just 21 to teach women digital tech skills and has impacted 63,000 women in the 10 years since. Her goal this year? To get that number up to 100,000.

You can’t be what you can’t see, especially when it comes to coding, posits Kate Kirwin. “You don’t have to be a guy in a hoodie in a basement to succeed in tech,” she jokes. “People told me for years that if women wanted to be in tech, they would be. I have women coming in droves who want to code but they lack role models. And online software developer forums weren’t particularly beginner- or female-friendly in the past.”

What started as a single workshop for about 80 women in Perth in 2015 has become a robust community that upskills thousands of women annually. And many participants have landed junior software developer roles in a host of industries, from retail to mining to banking. “That first event was run on an absolute shoestring. The night before, someone sent me an email saying, ‘See you in the morning for breakfast.’ I hadn’t planned on breakfast, so I made 85 muffins that night.”

Kate says cooking and coding are not too dissimilar. “I’m very creative. I love craft, baking and sewing. To me, building websites or creating something in tech feels the same. You put together a bunch of ingredients and end up with a product that’s better than the sum of its parts.”

Kate, who was awarded the 2024 WA Young Australian of The Year, manages She Codes mostly by herself. She does, however, have an “army” of 10 contractors delivering programs in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and regional Western Australia. Being a one- woman executive suite has its pitfalls, though.

“In 2021-22, the business grew a little too fast; I was travelling between Sydney and Perth every two weeks. I had to start working more sustainably because, at the end of the day, if the leader doesn’t have any energy, it’s hard to expect followers to have any,” says Kate. The self-confessed “control freak” has learned to accept help and to give her team more agency “and space to run with their own ideas”.

She Codes is largely marketed via word of mouth so Kate hopes the support from the CommBank campaign will inspire more people to give coding a go. Plus, the synergy between the brands is huge. “I like to think that what the team does for women in sport is what we’re doing for women in tech. We’re telling girls that you can be a sports star or a ballerina or a software developer. You can do whatever you want to do.”

Sydney By Kayak

Founder of Sydney By Kayak and mother-of-two Laura Stone overcame postnatal depression and COVID-19’s impact on tourism to grow a thriving small business that promotes sustainability, healthy living and social connection.

In 2010, UK-born Laura Stone started an adventure-focused business that saw her take clients rock climbing, kayaking and bushwalking. She even led a group up Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Eventually, Laura realised that most clients were coming for kayaking tours at sunrise on Sydney Harbour.

So, she trained to become a kayaking instructor, and her business morphed into tourism operator Sydney By Kayak. As any small business owner can attest, when it rains it pours. “It took off in 2017—the same year my son Levi was born,” she recalls. Seeing that Laura was struggling to run the business alone, her husband, Ben, wound up his own business to join her on the water.

Sydney By Kayak was going swimmingly until the pandemic forced the couple to start over. “Our team went back home, largely overseas, and we lost our house, which was gutting,” says Laura, who was also suffering from postnatal depression. The couple decided it was time for a reset. “We had a healthy three- year-old boy and the kayak van so we converted it into a camper and went to Queensland.” When it was safe to come back to Sydney, they slowly reopened, starting with one-on-one kayak sessions.

Sydney By Kayak is once again flourishing—taking out several tours per day, with up to 34 paddlers and seven guides per trip. It’s also helping keep Sydney Harbour clean. By donating $15 from every seat sold on its Clean-Up and Eco tours, in which guides and customers collect rubbish, the business has raised more than $68,000 for conservation projects and won a number of awards.

Laura is thrilled to have the support of the CommBank Matildas as their values, such as teamwork and determination, closely align with her own. “I hope this campaign shows that we are an authentic and credible business. I’m over the moon.”

Four tips for your small business

For many owners, marketing is one of the first line items to go when the cost of doing business keeps rising. Here’s how to promote your brand when scaling back.

• Think social: Create and post engaging content on your socials. Consistent posting and interaction with followers can keep your brand visible without added costs.
• Focus on referrals: Encourage happy customers to refer others by offering discounts or perks. Word-of-mouth marketing can be a cost-effective way to attract new clients and grow your base.
• Network locally: Getting involved in your local community is a great way to meet potential customers. Attend events, partner with nearby businesses or simply show up—it’s affordable and builds trust.
• Repurpose content: Turn blog posts into social snippets or newsletters. Reusing content maximises your efforts and keeps your audience engaged without accruing any extra production costs.

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