Meet MBA Alumnus, Vince Sherry

Pictured: Vince Sherry, Owner & Founder of VS Strategies

Vince Sherry graduated with his Master of Business Administration ( MBA ) in 2020. We, the MBA Team sat down with Vince to talk about his business VS Strategies, the recent launch of his latest social enterprise project - Angry Bull Trails, his biggest challenge as an entrepreneur, MBA Journey, and everything in between.

Tell us about VS Strategies, what is you mission and what inspired you to create your own business?

In 2016, I was in a gradual process of transitioning to a retirement. Having a quieter life on our small farm in the Northern Rivers of NSW. But a few business orientated volunteering roles such as Chamber of Commerce and Board positions at a couple of NFPs kept me in touch and I saw an opportunity for a consultancy where I could share my practical experiences as well as the knowledge acquired doing the MBA. It just organically grew from there.

Tenterfield’s Angry Bull Trails social enterprise project has just received funding of $4million and is ready to launch, tell us about this fantastic initiative, how did this come about and what was your involvement?

This was really a team effort, and I am thrilled that the project is now getting funding after 4 years of advocating its benefits to anyone who would listen. It is such a worthwhile and valuable social enterprise that will improve employment prospects for young people that for many reasons miss out on opportunities, At the same time it will improve the economic prospects for the small rural shire of Tenterfield in NSW. The project genesis was an assignment in one of the MBA courses, Innovation for Impact, so I guess my role in the development of the project was building upon that idea, using a mission orientated approach and a Theory of Change to solve a problem, that is boosting rural economic prosperity, and creating decent jobs for young people.

What's the biggest challenge as an entrepreneur you've had to overcome in your career or life journey?

Getting Angry Bull Trails to this stage was a challenge and I contemplated giving up on more than one occasion as we had many knockbacks. My gratitude goes to others on the team that kept the dream alive, and they can take a lot of the credit for it finally getting the funding to start.

In your opinion, how can inspiring entrepreneurs set themselves up for success?

I can only say that you need a good filter, use your intuition, and trust those people who inspire you by the good things they are doing and the impact they are having. That may not be the traditional definition of an entrepreneur, but they are the ones that achieve worthwhile outcomes. You must get used to the reality that not everyone will share your enthusiasm for an idea and that you may need to rethink, compromise, and adopt changes to get started. Never giving up does not mean don’t be flexible.

As a current Griffith University PhD Candidate, what influenced / inspired you to complete a PhD? What is your topic?

My family’s journey as city to country migrants and living in small rural places has continually made me think about the experiences of others who had done the same, what where the experiences, was it easy for them, did they achieve their dreams, did they stay and thrive? This has been building from when I started my MBA, most of the courses I looked at how it could be contextualised in how it impacted a small rural place like where I was living. When I did the Grad Dip of Research in Business, I did a pilot study on Tenterfield and realised there were gaps in the knowledge of how people experience these counter urbanisation events especially in very small rural places. My PhD will expand this research into a comparative analysis of three places to explore those experiences.

Do you have any tips or advice to share with current MBA students or your former self?

Keep learning, don’t stop, the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know. It is sometimes hard, stressful and time consuming, but if you can get to enjoy the process, not just doing it for the degree at the end you will get more out of it. Be actively involved in the course work, you will not only get better results, but you will meet some great people along the way.

What is your favourite Griffith MBA memory?

Finding out I was better at economics and finance than I thought. I was so surprised because to be frank those areas were not of great interest to me. No one was more surprised than me when I realised how interesting the courses were, a big shout out to the teaching teams for this.

What surprised you most about your MBA journey?

I loved how the MBA is wrapped around sustainability, innovation, creativity, and impact. That’s the future for business and in all seriousness, the planet. Our future professionals will need to be equipped with skills in these vitally important areas.

What inspired you to become a seasonal tutor / teaching member at Griffith University?

The courses run by the Centre for Systems Innovation are terrific and the assistance they provided me whilst developing the Angry Bull Trails projects kept me in touch with Prof Ingrid Burkett and her team. There is such a great chemistry in that group that when they asked if I would be interested in doing a bit of tutoring whilst doing the PhD, there was no hesitancy from me in saying yes.

If you have a question for our MBA Alumnus, Vince Sherry, we encourage you to connect on LinkedIn