A scientist’s approach to marketing
Paul’s PhD at Monash University focused on converting brown coal into oil. The research training stayed with him. He treats marketing the way a scientist treats an experiment: form a hypothesis, test it, measure the result and act on the evidence rather than opinion. That habit shapes how he audits websites, structures Google Ads accounts and reads analytics.
Corporate marketing and technology
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Paul was Marketing Manager at Lendlease for its outsourced payroll service. It served businesses with fewer than 100 employees and was then the largest payroll outsourcing service in Australia.
He then became IT Director at the Australian Society of CPAs (now CPA Australia). His role was member-facing: technology advice, education and support for accountants in one of the country’s largest membership organisations. Both roles taught him something he still applies every day. Business owners need technology explained in business terms, and technical people need the business explained to them.
Building and marketing Onyx Finance
In 2002 Paul co-founded Onyx Finance with his two brothers-in-law. It began as a national non-bank mortgage manager. After the Global Financial Crisis it became a mortgage broking business focused on property investors and small business owners.
Over the next decade the group added NRAS affordable-housing property sales, a conveyancing legal practice and a financial planning practice; Paul completed diplomas in Financial Services and Financial Planning along the way. Onyx was also one of the early lenders to self-managed super funds investing in property. At its peak, the business wrote $14 million in mortgages in a single month.
Paul led the marketing, and wrote loans too. Until the GFC that meant print and magazine advertising. From 2009 he moved the business to digital: SEO, Google Ads and Facebook advertising. Onyx ranked highly in Google for NRAS investment property searches, and in 2009 it sold an investment property in outback Western Australia through a Facebook ad campaign.
Founding Web Intelligenz
That digital work convinced Paul that marketing was where his real interest lay. He exited Onyx and founded Web Intelligenz in 2012, starting on his own: building WordPress websites and running SEO and Google Ads for clients. His daughter Myfanwy joined about a year later and helped grow the business.
Today Web Intelligenz is a Camberwell-based agency with a team of developers, designers, digital marketers and writers. It is a Google Partner, Meta partner and Semrush agency partner. Clients range from sole traders to listed companies, including Kingspan, Chr Hansen and member organisations such as Massage & Myotherapy Australia, the Carpet Institute of Australia and the Australian Human Resources Institute. For the last two, the agency built and maintains their online certification systems.
What Paul works on today
Paul no longer builds websites himself. His work is part strategy, part hands-on:
- Digital marketing strategy and strategic analysis with business owners
- SEO, from technical audits to content strategy
- Google Ads strategy and campaign management
- AI visibility: how businesses show up in ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity
- Content development, blog writing and video editing
He has also mentored tourism operators in digital marketing across three regional tourism boards: Destination Phillip Island, Tourism East and the Mornington Peninsula Regional Tourism Board. Over the years he has spoken at business networking events across Melbourne.
Qualifications
Outside work
Paul’s life outside the business centres on family: four children and nine grandchildren. Family business runs deep for him. He co-founded Onyx with his brothers-in-law, three of his four children worked in that business, and Myfanwy helped build Web Intelligenz. It gives him an insider’s understanding of how family-run businesses work, across generations.
