The co-founders of Marketing Entourage, Sam and Phil, will lead you on your journey
Sam Hurley
Co-founder, Marketing Entourage
(Global career, expert in scaling business and customer experience)
Sam is really passionate about helping good people do even better. She truly cares about making a positive difference in the world and believes business can be a force for good. She loves what she does, and a big part of that is helping other like-minded, purpose-driven individuals and businesses grow and succeed.
With 20 years as a senior executive in sales, marketing and customer experience (In the UK, Europe, New York, Singapore and Melbourne) with well-known brands like Lonely Planet and The Press Association as well a startups. Sam has managed acquisitions and mergers, digital transformations lead innovative teams to move as quickly as the world around them does.
Starting out in a design agency, heavily influenced her approach to developing a human-centered mindset, and she has championed design thinking ever since.
Having worked in startups and then co-founding Marketing Entourage with Phil Ore in 2015, Sam knows startup life like the back of her hand. In the last 2 years alone she has helped over 500 startups to be the best they can be.
Sam has always loved teaching and helping other people, which lead her to, in part, to complete a Masters of Teaching - believing that good business helped educate their customers. She then started teaching purpose driven individuals and businesses everything she knows because she genuinely wants to see good businesses take over the world. Sam has now been teaching for the past 5 years, including over 22 classes at General Assembly.
Fun things to know about Sam: She has a shameless love for cool sneakers and is a huge Trello advocate. When she was a kid, her inventor father got her to dismantle a toaster because she asked how it worked! Sam fell in love with Australia during a school project and has always wanted to make a home here. In 2007 she convinced her company to open an Australia branch, and the rest is history! Sam is now settled into Melbourne life, is married and has a super cute 1-year old daughter.
Phil Ore
Co-founder, Marketing Entourage
(Established Entrepreneur, Pitch Mentor, Dad of 6)
Like Sam, Phil is super passionate and authentic. Phil’s passion for entrepreneurship, marketing and brand is infectious. It’s the first thing you’ll probably notice when you meet him or see him talk.
A big reason that Sam and Phil joined forces was the shared driver - that they genuinely want to help good startups to make it amongst the bigger, corporate types who don’t care so much about having a positive impact.
A classic entrepreneur, Phil left school at 16 to be a telecommunications apprentice. He jumped from strength to strength and ended up at Nokia where he worked for 17 years. Like Sam, Phil always wanted to live in Australia and made it happen when he became Nokia’s Head of Marketing and Corporate Affairs for Australia & NZ.
In 2014, Phil started his own consultancy. Around that time he met fellow entrepreneur, Warwick Peel and they realised how lonely starting a business can be - that it’s especially hard when you don’t have networks because a big part of it is ‘who you know’. This lead them to found Entrepreneurs & Co later that year. They’ve now had over 80 speakers in their 5 years of monthly events - including Simon Griffiths (co-founder Who Gives a Crap) to Jo Burston (Founder & CEO of Inspiring Rare Birds and Job Capital).
With so many diverse roles spanning his 33-year career so far, Phil knows the ins-and-outs of corporate and startup worlds. Today he puts it all to good use in his businesses and has also been a Pitch Mentor for Startup Victoria over the last 2 years. He cares about teaching people how to do things right in business and marketing, and to have fun in what they do.
Fun things to know about Phil: Phil grew up in Birmingham, England. He was destined for the industry in some way through his love of brand - even as a kid he loved watching ads and intently critiquing them. Phil is a long-time supporter of West Bromwich Albion Football team which has taught him how to be emotionally resilient and deal with disappointment... On a potentially unrelated note, Phil's therapeutic outlet is taking his kids to the zoo on the weekend.