Julian made us throw out the TAM slide in session one. I was annoyed. The replacement — three named fabricators in Geelong — is what we still use.
Helena Cho · commercial manager
Flagship programme
The Market Entry Mandate
Twelve weeks, one destination, one document a board can argue with. Informational fee from AUD 6,400 for a single-operator seat. No payment is taken on this website.
What you leave with
A bound brief covering the destination you actually intend to enter — not a catalogue of countries. The brief names buyers, a channel choice with a rejected alternative, a price corridor, a cash calendar, and a kill date.
You will not leave with a generic “go-to-market canvas.” Those already exist. The Mandate is critique-heavy: if a claim cannot survive a supplier call, it is struck.
Modules
- 01
Evidence before appetite
Pull demand that is already paying someone, not survey enthusiasm. Students bring invoices, lost bids, and freight quotes from the destination — or they spend week one collecting them.
- 02
The filter, written down
Score two or three candidate geographies against capacity, regulation, and management attention. One geography is chosen; the others are archived with a date to reopen.
- 03
Channel without romance
Direct, agent, distributor, or a hybrid. Each option is costed. Appointing a “well-connected” partner without a scorecard is treated as a failure of the module.
- 04
Corridor pricing
Landed cost, channel take, and a walk-away price. Home-market pride is not a pricing method.
- 05
Ninety days on the ground
A calendar of conversations, samples, and a leading indicator. If the indicator is silent by the kill date, spend stops.
- 06
Board defence
A red-team session. Fellows mark the brief as a hostile director would. You revise once. That version is the submission.
Learning outcomes
By the close you should be able to defend a single destination in a one-hour session, explain why a second destination is parked, and show the cash that the first ninety days consume. You should also be able to say out loud what this programme will not do: it will not obtain licences for you, it will not sit in commercial negotiations, and it will not invent demand that invoices do not support.
Instructor
Julian Hare
Practice principal. Previously ran a components export desk out of Adelaide before moving the work to a teaching studio in Point Souttar. He marks briefs himself; guest lawyers appear only for the regulatory module and are introduced by name in the cohort pack.
Informational fee
Single seat AUD 6,400. Two colleagues from the same firm AUD 11,200. Materials and critique hours are included. Travel to Point Souttar is not. See retainers for adjacent options. Nothing on this page is an offer to take payment online.
Questions we actually get
Can I join if I have not chosen a destination yet?
Yes, but week two will force a choice. If you want to keep six countries “in play,” this is the wrong programme; the filter is the point.
Do you guarantee revenue in the new market?
No. A real limitation: several Mandate alumni entered on schedule and still missed their first-year volume. The programme improves the quality of the bet; it does not underwrite the bet. If you need a guaranteed outcome, do not enrol.
Is the work useful for services firms, not just goods?
Yes, provided you can name a buyer and a delivery constraint. The channel module is rewritten for professional services in those cohorts.
Notes from Mandate seats
The kill date felt theatrical until we hit it and actually stopped a New Zealand spend that was going nowhere. I would have liked more time on employment law; that sits outside the syllabus and you will feel the gap.
Anonymous · food ingredients