From the Beyond Growth archive. Originally aired 25 February 2026.
Matthew Fletcher has called Geelong home for about thirty years. His career has taken in graphic design, youth work, politics and government grants consulting. A little over four years before we spoke, KPMG asked him to open its Geelong office. That office started in his back bedroom, his car and a lot of local cafes. Matthew says the team is now close to thirty people.
He was full of ideas any Geelong business owner can use.
It’s a market problem before it’s a sales problem. Matthew expected the job to be business development. It turned out to be market development. Plenty of people he met had never heard of KPMG, so before he could sell anything he had to help people understand what the firm could do for them.
Reputation, relationships, relevance, in that order. Matthew’s strategy came down to three R’s. Build a reputation people trust. Build relationships, because in Geelong everyone is about one degree of separation apart. Only then make the case that you’re relevant. His advice is simple: you have to be in the room, and you have to have something worthwhile to say.
Growth and risk come together. Matthew sees risk and growth as two sides of the same coin. If you don’t want any risk, you won’t get any growth. In KPMG’s own business survey, access to skilled staff came out as the biggest internal barrier to growth. For Matthew that leads straight to housing, education and transport. Businesses can only hire people who can live and study here.
“Risk and growth are two sides of the same coin. You want growth, you are going to have risk. If you don’t want any risk, you are not going to have growth.”
Matthew Fletcher
People fear the speed of change. Nobody wants to go back to shops closed on Sundays. What worries people, in Matthew’s view, is how fast change arrives and how directly it lands on them.
Exporting can start at Ballarat. Matthew is researching how local businesses can grow beyond the region. Mention “export” and most owners switch off, so he reframes it: a new market might be Ballarat, Bendigo or Melbourne before it’s ever Boston. His bigger point is that a business has to want to grow. A ship sitting still can’t be steered.
Share the credit, own the blame. On leadership, Matthew’s rule for his teams is that they share the credit and he owns the blame. If someone makes a mistake, his first question is whether he gave them the training and tools they needed. In his words, a leader who isn’t helping people be their best is just a manager.
This is one leader’s view, from someone whose job is helping local businesses grow. It’s the kind of perspective that will feed into the Growth Intelligence research on business performance and growth.
Growth Intelligence is Reyan Fernando’s research practice. Reyan is also a Certified EOS Implementer, working with Geelong leadership teams on vision and execution. That experience shapes the questions he asks, but the research and conclusions are his own.