We empower the world’s innovators to become Growth Leaders.
A TALENT & GROWTH STRATEGY FIRM GUIDING TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEYS FROM SERIES A TO ASX & FORTUNE 50.
At High Performance People, we are navigators of the intelligence era.
We bring a precision-based approach to your talent and growth strategy, through our domain expertise and an on-demand service ecosystem as unique as your future journey.
Our Perform IQ model leverages data-driven insights to help you hire and develop a high-performing leadership team and workforce – and shape a culture that fosters scalable innovation and expansion.
While our predictive marketing and financial forecasting platform, Forebrite, turns your data into a decision-making powerhouse – to drive revenue growth, capitalise on future trends, and maximise profitability.
Our high ROI, tailor-made services can be dialled up, down or off as your priorities shift:
Executive Search: our Perform IQ model identifies the 14% of leaders who can perform today & transform for tomorrow.
People-as-a-Service: our HR & Talent solutions are designed to accelerate your journey to sustainable & profitable growth.
Growth-as-a-Service: our software & AI-driven data platform continually drives your marketing ROI & financial performance.
Fractional Flying Squad: our team of specialists provide temporary, targeted & high-impact expertise for your critical projects.
Business & Executive Coach: our programs help leaders scale operations, grow profitability & upskill teams to navigate change.
Create what is next,
right now.
We don’t do different, we are.
Our vision is to be the go-to talent & growth strategy partner for ambitious innovators, visionary entrepreneurs and disruptive technology ventures.
Our advantages? A proprietary Perform IQ assessment model that offers unmatched visibility into people performance, and a proprietary software platform in Forebrite, that predictably drives your marketing ROI and financial performance.
Whether you’re looking to build expert teams, deliver HR & operational efficiencies, accelerate revenue growth, scenario-model future growth pathways or cultivate the leadership needed to compete in the intelligence age.
Growth Leadership: encapsulating the mindset, learning agility and skills needed to perform today, and simultaneously transform a business to succeed in the future. Vision, strategic acuity, performance under pressure, adaptability, and the ability to motivate a team are crucial differentiators in innovation and high-growth industries.
Our multi-dimensional assessment and development model shows that only 14% of leaders have what it takes. Global research studies also show Growth Leaders are 2.4x more likely to outperform their peers, and 97% more likely to achieve profitable above-peer growth.
Digital Media, Sport & Entertainment (incl. streaming, gaming & content creation)
eCommerce (incl. online retail, marketplaces & related logistics)
Software & Cloud Computing (incl. SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, VR & AR)
Venture Capital, Private Equity & Portfolio Companies
HealthTech
FinTech
EdTech
Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (incl. application across industries)
Creative Agency & Creator Platforms
Digital-First & Digitally Ambitious Brands
Our people-as-a-service matters.
We believe in doing things better, and in doing better things.
Our PaaS model was born out of global media giants launching ground-breaking streaming services in Australia – where we built-out their leadership and GTM teams, projects we delivered cost-effectively and with award-winning results.
Today our on-demand HR & Talent playbook is an ever-evolving, organic library of best-in-class strategies, operational processes, DE&I policies, emerging technologies and tools needed to compete in the intelligence age.
Our HR & Talent experts can create your first HR function, hire for hyper-growth, deliver world-class coaching programs, embed cutting-edge HR systems, and everything in between.
Delivering precisely what you need, only when you need it.
Major benefits include:
Cost-efficiency: we run HR & Talent health checks to identify pain-points, prioritise objectives & design a roadmap.
High-ROI: we leverage predictive analytics to optimise the entire lifecycle of HR & Talent strategy, maximising value.
Expert teams: we assess every hire’s Performance IQ to structure, integrate & build a diverse, high performing team.
Strategic partner: we bring Australia’s best Fractional expertise to your projects, to deliver business outcomes fast.
Guaranteed results: we know what it’s like to walk in the founder’s shoes & agree measurable deliverables up-front.
Growth-as-a-service: powered by data.
We believe growth is a systematic process, not an aspiration.
That’s why we spent 5+ years building Forebrite, a predictive marketing & financial forecasting platform. It’s designed to optimise your marketing ROI, open-up new growth pathways, and unite CMOs and CFOs around what’s required to drive profitable revenue growth.
Forebrite’s difference? You’re plugged into our software-driven analytics engine and assigned a Growth Co-Pilot: to map every step from lead to close, test and learn fast, and then tie your CAC and CLTV to EBITDA in perpetuity.
With early-stage clients in online retail, marketplaces, healthcare, pet care and membership associations consistently achieving +40% uplift in marketing ROI within 12 months, Forebrite’s success brings its own website: forebrite.com
Imagine, a future where every marketing dollar delivers profitable revenue growth, predictably.
Major benefits include:
Optimised marketing ROI: analysing historical data to predict which channels & campaigns will yield the highest ROIs.
Revenue growth: building a single view of marketing & finance data to reallocate resources in real-time for max. results.
Financial health: providing insight into unit economics & automated three-way forecasting to validate all decisions fast.
Future growth strategy: scenario-planning activities to factor-in seasonality, trends & to forecast future growth options.
Guaranteed results: through statistical-modelling software & strategic programs, we agree targeted outcomes upfront.
Partnerships from Series A to Fortune 50:
Turn vision into reality, ignite your growth engine.
Our mission for mutual success
We are on a mission to be the most valuable talent & growth strategy partner to innovative ventures in Australia, with an eye on regional expansion.
We design solutions in sync with our clients’ objectives – scalable growth, value creation and sustainable profitability – by side-stepping our industry’s status quo and rigorously driving outcomes that guarantee high ROI.
A mindset that not only levels the playing-field for ambitious entrepreneurs, visionaries & founders, but relates to our belief that we’re also here to help non-for-profits and disadvantaged communities achieve their goals too. It’s what our team signs up for.
Our values of daring to disrupt, being courageous to innovation, standing up for diversity & valuing progress over perfection underpin it.
Meet our creators.
James - Founder & Head of Talent
James Burke is the driving force behind High Performance People. After launching executive search firm The Ladder in 2003, James gave it a bold makeover in 2013, rebranding to embrace the firm’s expanding suite of leadership advisory services.
Never one to shy away from innovation, James created Perform IQ alongside notable psychologists – a model that doesn’t only accurately predict a leader’s ability to perform right now, but also assesses their potential to transform businesses for the future. Adoption of Perform IQ has manifested into masterclasses for start-ups, growth ventures, and digitally powered enterprises, equipping HR professionals with a holistic strategy to identify, develop and retain high-potential employees.
Head of the firm’s executive search & recruitment practice, James has subsequently designed a client-centric playbook that sets the industry’s benchmark, with a guarantee that’s overseen the firm’s 100% placement rate across 1,200+ assignments. As the catalyst behind our breakthrough Talent-as-a-Service and Growth-as-a-Service, he’s brought about a powerful synergy that’s proving instrumental to the success of industry entrepreneurs, disruptors, and innovators across the region.
When he’s not building partnerships with pre- and post-IPO companies, James can be found enjoying his passion for sport, music and next renovation project. If there’s a decent wave nearby, you can also find him still trying to surf.
Emma - Partner & Head of Operations
Emma Delory is our not-so-secret weapon and mastermind behind our operational symphony. A research and operations specialist, Emma rewrites the rules of efficiency – orchestrating the infrastructure that fuels our growth, conducting day-to-day workflows, and composing valuable content for our marketing and social media.
An early adopter who is ‘at one’ with emerging technology, Emma has taken the reins of leveraging artificial intelligence at High Performance People, spearheading the integration of tools including ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, and Gamma. Emma’s many talents don’t just end there either – a key cog in our Talent-as-a-Service partnerships – she specialises in identifying, screening and interviewing candidates through Perform IQ for junior to mid-level roles.
Multi-lingual, everything comes easily to Emma. After travelling the world previously as a senior marketer and business consultant, hiring teams across continents and running workshops for hundreds of clients on growth strategy, High Performance People is really just home from home.
When she’s not making the magic happen at work, Emma’s a wannabe yogi, fashionista and devoted dog-lover, with an unnaturally healthy attitude to food. Except for weekends.
Sophie - Partner & Head of People
Sophie Needham embodies the centre of excellence that sits behind our People Practice and defines the firm’s social conscience and cultural ethos. Authentic and results-driven, Sophie is our go-to for cutting-edge HR strategy, organisational design, all things HR operations, learning and development, change management, people & culture and transformation.
Well versed in the complexities of driving change across the technology, digital, media, and business consulting landscape, Sophie’s superpower is turning ambiguity into clear and actionable plans that deliver impact. An accomplished communicator, collaborator and relationship builder, Sophie is a hands-on operator across the full talent lifecycle, excelling at aligning people strategies with business goals and cultivating high performing teams and engagement.
Now playing the roles of mentor, coach and confidante to many of our clients’ CEOs and leadership teams, not only when it’s time to ‘course correct’ but also on challenging issues around diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing, Sophie’s straight forward counsel is widely sought. A champion of the business case for DE&I, Sophie’s ability to weave a powerful solution into a killer HR strategy is helping our clients to attract top talent from around the world.
When she’s not humanising the function of HR, Sophie supports great causes and heads up HPP’s for-purpose mission. You’ll find her on weekends spending quality time with family and friends, enjoying the outdoors, catching a live music act or trying a new dining experience.
Vlad – Partner & Head of Growth
Vlad Mehakovic is the growth strategist every founder, innovator and leadership team needs to have on speed dial. Part technologist, innovator, data analyst and strategic marketer, Vlad is the sum of diverse and impressive in-depth expertise, amassed in leadership roles from Series A to ASX 100.
A visionary, Vlad pioneered the early prototypes of Forebrite’s predictive marketing platform with ventures including Laundromap, Providoor, MoleMap, MedView and Hanrob to find perfect product-market fit. A long-term ally of James, it made sense to join forces and break down the barriers that typically prevent clients’ success – which beyond having a smart team, in his case means helping clients to engineer a winnable growth strategy and to drive profitable revenue.
In truth, Vlad breathes predictive intelligence. Whenever he’s bending statistical software, artificial intelligence or building ML tools, he’s only looking to automate model building, evaluation and deployment so there’s more time to focus on customer behaviour, future trends, and monetisation. Which as a former CMO, CTO and CEO, he has a remarkable capacity to synthesise into a language that’s quickly relatable.
When he’s not talking all things North Star metrics, Vlad is a proud health & fitness fanatic, an adoring husband, and a newly minted father of two. Free time? Let’s just say weekends are now officially booked solid.
Our latest thinking…
Articles
Growth Leadership: New leadership for a new ‘pedal to the metal’ world
Business leaders faced an all-time-high rate of change in 2024, spurred by rapid advancements in generative AI according to Accenture’s new Pulse of Change index, and the pace will accelerate throughout 2025 and beyond.
40 Habits of Growth Leaders
Worst First: Start your day by tackling the most unpleasant task. Getting it out of the way early sets a productive tone for the rest of the day.
Peak Times: Figure out when you're most productive and schedule your important tasks during those times. Save less demanding tasks for your off-peak hours.
Growth Partners : 8 skills, beliefs & behaviours shaping law firm leadership in 2025.
Law firms have always had to adapt to change to remain profitable and relevant to clients, but 2025 looks to be the year in which law firm leadership experiences a transformative shift.
Enough about us, let’s talk about you.
Are you readying your business to thrive in an increasingly digital and interconnected world – or launching something new?
We appreciate hearing from our clients and network. If you would like to contact us to discuss any of our services, ask for career advice or to simply provide confidential feedback on your experience with our business, please send us a message.
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Ways to get in touch
If you're not a forms-kinda-person, simply email us - hello@hppeople.com