We’re a specialist employee ownership practice. We design and run the share, incentive and benefit plans that turn employees into genuine partners in the businesses they help build.
Plans designed & launched
Offices across regional Victoria
Custom-built, never templated
Working alongside SME owners, we watched the same story play out again and again: a great business, built on a handful of key people — and the constant, low-grade fear of losing them. Pay rises bought a little time. They never bought loyalty.
So we built a practice dedicated to the one thing that actually changes the equation: giving employees a genuine stake in the outcome. Not off-the-shelf schemes — real, fit-for-purpose plans.
When people own a piece of where they work, everything shifts. They make better decisions, they stay longer, and they talk about the business like it’s theirs — because it is. That’s not a perk. It’s a fundamentally better way to run a company.
We do this work because we’ve seen what it does — for owners who get their evenings back, and for teams who finally feel like partners rather than staff.
Australia faces an enormous wave of business owners approaching retirement with no clear succession plan. Employee ownership is one of the most powerful — and underused — answers to that problem.
Our goal is simple: to make well-structured employee ownership the default option for SMEs that want to reward their people and transition on their own terms.
Advisors, structurers and communicators who’ve spent their careers helping businesses align their people.
The Financial & Structural Architect: Trent Hadfield is a business strategist and Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of experience across public accounting, corporate finance, and management consulting. As founder and Principal of 19eighty Advisory, he works alongside business owners to break through the Growth Knot — the invisible ceiling that stalls businesses when complexity outpaces the systems and leadership required to sustain it.
Trent’s perspective is shaped by growing up in family business, early career experience at large Melbourne Accounting Firm through its integration with ASX-listed Perpetual Limited, and nearly a decade as Director at a boutique firm; giving him a rare combination of corporate rigour and genuine owner-operator empathy. He is an active business operator himself, and outside of consulting, serves as an Event Director in competitive Triathlon, bringing the same project management and execution discipline to the start line as he does to the boardroom.
The Clinical & Operational Engine: Chris brings over 25 years of firsthand experience as an optometrist and healthcare practice owner. He successfully scaled a multi-site practice alongside four partners, growing the enterprise to over $6 million in turnover and managing a team of 40 staff. Having lived the entire lifecycle of a practice—from patient care to multi-site partner governance—Chris specialises in structural leadership alignment, strategic roadmaps, and clinical operational efficiency. As a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and Board Chair of FamilyCare, he is deeply committed to ensuring regional businesses and healthcare practices thrive sustainably.
A no-obligation conversation is the best place to start. We’ll tell you honestly whether a plan is right for you.
