Past Players In Business | Brad Moran

Brad Moran quickly made an impression on the AFL with a Rising Star nod in his debut match with North Melbourne. But he has had a much, much bigger impact in business.

Frustrated by injuries after moving to Adelaide, Moran retired from football in 2011 at the age of 24. By then he had spent more than a year preparing for his post-footy life.

Moran had an idea brewing for a mobile app called NoQ that helped users pre-order and skip the queue in cafes and other stores. He also had a plan to tap into financial high-flyers with a keen interest in football to learn more about building a business.

“I used the Crows network and spent the better part of the year going around to the board members and getting time with all the club sponsors,” Moran told AFLConnect.

“I was able to get in front of a great audience, sit there and talk for an hour about football, and then throw business in for the last half an hour.”

“There were probably 60 or 70 meetings, all of which people said ‘no’ (to investing in the start-up). But you start to break them down, and then you get one big fish that says, ‘I like what you're doing, I'll back it’.”

Moran still carries the battle scars from his first venture after raising the funds to get it off the ground, pivoting multiple times to keep it afloat, and eventually being pushed out of the business he founded.

He returned to Brisbane looking for another career refresh but soon discovered that he was overqualified, underqualified or simply the wrong fit for corporate roles.

“Australians don't have the same mentality as Silicon Valley where they love a good failure,” Moran said. “Not because you failed, but because it means you’ve now got seven years of start-up experience.”

GOALKICKER

Moran’s 21 AFL games included a match-winning four goals in his first season with the Crows in 2008, but he concedes that he found life as a footballer to be “very repetitive”.

“I was very goal-orientated,” Moran added. “When I went to the Crows, I had a couple of good seasons. But then, after my injuries, it was too much of a mountain to climb.

“For me, it was about personal goals. There just wasn't enough of a carrot at the end to come back and get to full fitness again.”

While he found it difficult to keep rising again in football, Moran soon had the motivation to launch a second start-up in 2017.

CitrusAd picked up on retailers selling their premium shelf space in shops and carried it over to their online stores.

“It was all about making money from online shopping using advertising,” Moran said.

“Retailers were still struggling to build websites let alone dynamic search engines that monetise every search term. We effectively did what Google Ads does for search.”

The business came close to collapse as the Covid-19 pandemic hit, but after Moran and his team secured additional investment and landed a series of transformative deals, it was suddenly a serious player.

Woolworths, Coles, the Iconic, big-name retailers like Tesco and international businesses like Unilever signed up, though in a classic twist the overnight success story took closer to four years to take off and ultimately be sold for $205 million in 2021.

“I often give talks about how hard the start-up world is and just how burnt out you are at the end of it,” Moran said.

COACHES’ CALL

Moran now supports and mentors start-up founders, sharing his own experiences of failing and succeeding.

“Good investors know that you invest in the jockey, not the horse, and that has never changed,” Moran said.

The 38-year-old also draws from his time playing in the AFL and how the game and mentorship have changed since he was drafted in 2004.

Moran is still based in Queensland and watches the Lions closely. He is particularly impressed with the way coach Chris Fagan leads his charges.

“He's very much about understanding what his players' motivations are. There is no ‘rah rah’, the line coaches do that,” Moran said.

“When the coach gives their speech at the start of the game, it should just be reaffirming why you do what you do. That's one thing I definitely took from football into business, the focus on the why.

“Because that's the thing that will get you out of bed in year two and three when things get really hard.”

SIX POINTERS

Biggest achievement: Succeeding as a father while continuing to hold an immense amount of pressure in business, hiding the stress from my kids while trying to be there for them.

Biggest regret: I wish I'd worried less about my career. I never went out drinking, I never enjoyed myself, I always felt guilty about eating something that I shouldn't. You could say that's professionalism, but it became an obsession and never let me play with freedom.

Biggest break in business: When I used my AFL network to get the knowledge and backing to get my first business off the ground. But the most serendipitous moment was when I got fired from my first business. It gave me a reason to start another business which went on to be quite successful.

Business superpower: Soft skills, so keeping calm under immense pressure and communicating well, and the ability to suppress one's emotions for the benefit of others.

Admired leader: I'm definitely going to give that credit to Andy Collins. He had some old school ways but was one of few guys coaching in that 2000s period that knew how to get the best out of his players.

Personal philosophy: Life's full of problems, always look in the mirror first.