Always have a destination in mind, says a Noosa philanthropist who has been honoured for his distinguished service to business, to tertiary education, and philanthropic contributions.
Scott Williams AM has been awarded Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia.
“It’s a pretty humbling experience because I’m one of just 140 people that are getting one this year,“ Mr Williams said.
“It’s a strange sort of feeling actually.“
Mr Williams moved from New South Wales to Noosa more than a decade ago, a decision based on fond childhood memories of school holiday visits in the 1950s and ‘60s.
He’s worn many hats throughout his career, from Mayor, to Deputy Chancellor, and once owned seven regional newspapers, including Noosa Today.
He spent time as chair and director of Noosa Biosphere Reserve Foundation, was the president of Business Mentors Noosa, and was awarded Queensland Higher Education Philanthropist of the Year in 2019.
Of all these achievements, Mr Williams said his two most rewarding roles have been his own education, and using philanthropy to invest in other people’s futures.
“I would divide my most rewarding roles into two types, one is local government,“ he said.
“I started in local government in 1983, so I’ve had something like 30 years in local government. That’s kept me in tune with the economic and social development of communities. So that’s been the education side for me.
“The other one that’s similar to that, is I’ve been on the governing body of two universities and I’ve been Deputy Chancellor at two universities and had about 24 years in that. That’s been educational because they’re large organisations, whereas I’m a small business person.
“I get to learn about the management of a half billion dollar year budget with a thousand staff or more.“
On the feel-good side is his philanthropy.
“I specialised in working with people who have financial limitations in regional Australia,“ he said.
“So these are people who might otherwise drop out or miss out on school or university. I think of my contributions as an investment as a sense because if I can give them a few thousand dollars now, and it gets through university, that’s a lifetime of income they will have at a higher level that they might not have had if they didn’t get through.
“I’ve been doing that for about 20 years and so far I’ve had something like 366 university students and about 1270 school age kids. Through The Smith Family we can get kids back on track at school.“
His current goal is continuing to help small businesses through his website, 12faces.business.
“There’s a volunteer group called Business Mentoring Noosa and they have something like 400 Noosa business that have gone through their program,“ he said.
“I work with that, and as a consequence of that I developed a website that tries to assist small business owners with their decisions.“
Having completed so much throughout his career, when asked what keeps him pushing on, Mr Williams said it’s all about the pull.
“Early on in my life I set myself a destination and a foreseeable future and thought to myself what do I need to do to get there,“ he said.
“There’s three things I’ve learnt, one is to always have a destination and the second is to use the 80/20 principle. 80 per cent of what you do is waste, only 20 per cent of what you do is worthwhile.
“So the second step is to work out the 20 per cent of things that count, to get to your destination.
“Number three is that there’s only one thing you need to concentrate on. In an hourglass, there’s a bottleneck in the middle and no matter what you do, the sand is not going to run through that pinch any faster. The only place you need to focus your time on is the bottleneck.“
Top tips from a Noosa philanthropist:
1. Always have a destination in mind.
2. Only focus on the top 20 things that count.
3. Make sure you focus on the bottleneck first, because nothing else is going to change until you fix the bottleneck.
