Built Global From Day Zero: How Christine Kulatunga Built Leverage Mentoring for Small Business

Give us your 15 second intro and what you’re working on

I’m Christine. I’ve spent more than twenty years in customer and people experience, and I’ve just launched Leverage Mentoring. It’s a platform designed for small and mid-sized businesses to help them develop and support their people by connecting them with mentors and providing the structure that makes it effective and long lasting.

In early validation research 94% rated as highly valuable and one person said mentoring ‘changed the direction of my life’. Overall, mentees reported that a huge lift in confidence as the key outcome, and also good progress towards their next career milestones.

Are you avoiding AI, somewhat into AI or all in on AI?

I’m all in and dappling in Claude Fable to help polish the platform, currently setting up Cowork and next up on my agenda is setting up OpenClaw and Hermes (working together). I built the entire Leverage Mentoring platform with AI tools while working full time, payments and all, with no coding background.

However! I’m a firm believer in writing all socials posts myself (or at least heavily edited) because I truly can’t stand the ‘AI Slop Central’ that LinkedIn has become. Authenticity and the human voice really standout now and I always comment on those posts and appreciate the effort. It builds a lot of trust when the human voice and the imperfection shines through. On the flip side, I have lost trust in so many brands and thought leaders when their content is heavily AI generated.

What’s the hardest part for startups that want to go beyond their own borders?

In most cases it’s important to ensure the business has traction and is viable and has good business practices embedded in the structure before taking on the challenges of expansion into a new market and country. The foundations should be strong and ample runway and cashflow would give the business the best chance of success – along with loads of research and support from advisors, experts or mentors who have a proven track record of the same move.

I could imagine that whilst the technology can be built from day ‘zero’ to be scalable and globally compliant, the trap in ging beyond borders could be assuming that the product would get the same traction in a very different market. There are so many considerations such as culture, competition, market conditions, laws and government policy, language and societal trends etc. Having a strong knowledge of the market won’t necessarily enable a smooth transition, even if there’s someone on the ground. Leaning on experts who have experience in starting and growing a certain type of business (eg Saas, physical product) in that economic environment is critical.

For Leverage – The platform runs on Stripe’s global payment rails, timezone-aware scheduling, cloud infrastructure. Nothing structural stops a booking from Tokyo or Toronto tomorrow. So my plan is: built global from day zero, GTM locally first. Prove it in Australia, iterate and strengthen, then using established channels, move into similar markets first eg NZ, UK, Canada, Singapore before attempting further.

Where can people usually find you?

I’m usually either working in my full time job as CX Manager, at the dog park, in my cave (office) or hanging with the fam bam.
I always build in time to socialise and meet people because it energises me and brings me joy.

Otherwise LinkedIn is the best spot: linkedin.com/in/christine-kulatunga or catch me at hello@leveragementoring.com.au.

What’s one thing people find surprising about you?

I’m a bit of a dare devil, I love a challenge and am generally comfortable with discomfort (except for those ice baths – yikes).

How can you help others in the community and what do you need help with currently?

How I can help: anything in leadership, customer experience and strategy, people experience, and I’ve done a fair chunk of UX and journey mapping through digital transformation projects. I’m happy to share what I know.

I’m currently looking for expert mentors and coaches who would like to feature on Leverage Mentoring which may help to generate leads for their business as well as paid bookings. Perfect for anyone in fractional work, nearing retirement, for women in leadership or with subject matter expertise. Wisdom and experience are the asset.

What I need: Introductions to business owners and leaders with teams of up to 25 people who who’d try the platform (first 3 months on me).
Also, I’m keen to meet expert mentors and coaches who would like to join the network.

If given an opportunity to talk about the ‘why’ I built Leverage Mentoring…

Four in ten employing businesses in Australia with 2-20 employees make it past year 3.
Insolvencies just hit a record high of 34% in one year.

The cost of losing one valued team member costs the business up to twice their annual salary – recruitment costs, training and upskilling, lost productivity, impact to team.
That cost can mean devastating outcomes for smaller businesses.

I know this because in earlier years, I lost my business for this reason. I still have the scars, but also the learnings.

Mentoring has been proven to be one of the best levers of staff retention, research shows an average 50% increase with mentoring programs, productivity by up to 30%, profitability up to 25% and 9/10 employees report being happier at work when being mentored.

So why don’t smaller businesses run mentoring programs to get the same benefits as corporates have?

Because they’re expensive, heavy and usually take an L&D department to run. All of these things are not accessible for smaller businesses.

Until now…

Leverage was built for SMBs to develop teams and build capability and maturity so the business has the best chance to survive and grow, but without the overhead, the resource and effort of running a heavy mentoring program.
Losing one team member costs 1000x more than an annual subscription to Leverage ($189 or $19.95 per month). One of these is a choice which will drive performance which will reflect on the bottom line.