Alan Jones (not that one) and Megan Flamer to host entrepreneur advice show on Disrupt Radio

Exclusive: New media startup, Disrupt Radio, has announced an entrepreneur advice show to its roster. Called The Advisory Board, its hosted by the Director of Innovation for the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, Megan Flamer, and investor extraordinaire Alan Jones. No, not that one.

Founded by Benjamin Roberts, CEO of media consultancy firm Broadcast Intelligence, the digital radio station has a focus on startups and entrepreneurs and is set to launch in mid-2023.

Several shows and radio personalities have already been announced for the station, including Jules Lund and Nazeem Hussain.

Megan Flamer and Alan Jones are the latest to join the network after years of collective experience in the startup and investor spaces.

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Megan and Alan into our orbit,” Disrupt Radio founder Benjamin Roberts, said to SmartCompany.

“Megan, a celebrated entrepreneur with a focus on mindfulness and innovation, combined with Alan’s wealth of experience as a serial startup founder, mentor and investor, creates a powerful dynamic that we believe will resonate with our audience. They’re a perfect match for our mission to democratise access to business knowledge and inspire the next generation of Australian entrepreneurs.”

The Advisory Board has been a long time coming. After knowing each other for years, and routinely spending time on panels and running accelerator programs together — the pair agreed that they’d be able to make a great podcast, especially as they both found that they were asked questions about entrepreneurship, startups, and investing all the time.

“We came up with this idea for the podcast, The Advisory Board, where people could basically agony aunt — they were already asking us all of these questions. We thought it would be a great way to answer them en masse,” Flamer said on a call with SmartCompany.

Jones also found that beyond cash, what startups and founders really needed was help.

“I didn’t set out to become a startup founder coach, but when I began investing in other people’s startups 15 years ago, some of the startups I was interested in needed my advice and support. Coaching great founders became as rewarding as investing and I just leaned into the work I loved,” Jones said in an email to SmartCompany.

A few trial episodes and a pandemic later, they were finally able to make it happen and impart their wisdom via Disrupt Radio.

And while their advice does firmly sit within the entrepreneurship and startup space, they have found their advice does go beyond that.

“Initially we were really just speaking to startup founders as we’ve both been in the startup community for many years. But we’ve found [especially with] the different work that we’ve both been doing in the last couple of years that the remake got a lot broader, Flamer said.

“My expertise is really driven from a whole life perspective — looking at wellbeing, stress, how to manage relationships and communication. And we’ve both worked in the business world, started up organisations, dealt with PNLs, managed the needs and growth of the business, or all the lack thereof.”

While bringing all of these pieces together, the pair realised something else.

“The other thing we really discovered as people have started to listen to episodes is that it’s it’s pretty broad advice for anyone who is looking to change things in their lives,” Flamer said.

“So looking at friction points or something they’re stuck with and how they can tackle that, how can they have conversations with people in their lives.

“A lot of startup life is this microcosm where you’re dealing with things in really high pressurised situations — and that’s a very human thing that people deal with all the time.”

Once the network launches, The Advisory board will be on the airways on weekdays from 12pm to 2pm.