Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Ben Tripodi invests in measuring what matters

Starting point is 00:00:00 Execution is 99% of it. The idea is 1%. And most of the time, the idea changes as you go through. And so it's all about the execution. And so we make it really easy for decision makers to make decisions. So we maybe take a million different lines of data, but we'll show, Doug, two out of your athletes are unhealthy or four of your athletes out of 50 are ready to race in this race.

Starting point is 00:00:28 and so there's so much data behind that but yeah we're showing one widget one card which gives him basically a green or red light and so he doesn't have to look at all the data he doesn't have to analyze it himself we just say yep here's a dashboard we built a platform that collected all of that data analyze that data and basically fed him very key insight it's overwhelming all the data we collect right now and actually it's not about how much we have so much data actually that the value is in interpreting data or giving someone the ability to interpret data very easily and very quickly. And so we make it really easy for decision makers to make decisions. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all

Starting point is 00:01:09 walks of life to uncover their secret know-how and where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests every minute every day we're investing our time our skills our energy and our money in something some of us are investing consciously some unconsciously sometimes for good sometimes for bad sometimes for no impact get invested will help you to start living by design not by default i'm going to help you to make it happen not let it happen you'll hear the top tips on how you can to live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now.

Starting point is 00:01:54 Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening, and now, let's get invested. Hi Freedom Fighters. Are you achieving peak performance and sustainable success in any and all areas of your life? How do you know? How are you achieving it? How do you transform your dreams into reality? And what separates the dreamers from the doers and the deliverers? how do you link you or your organization's long-term individual and collective vision

Starting point is 00:02:46 to what everyone is actually doing on a day-to-day basis how do you know that the choices and actions that you're taking today are the best ones to achieve your lifestyle dreams or your organization's success? And how are you measuring and tracking your progress? Is there a simple way to ensure that you're making the right things happen and not getting distracted on new shiny things that look exciting but aren't moving the needle most in relation to your ultimate goals? Well today we help you answer these questions and the answers are actually simpler than you think But simple doesn't mean easy. Like anything worthwhile in life, it needs relentless collective commitment over time.

Starting point is 00:03:39 Now in recent episodes we've been discussing peak performance and sustainable success. Episode 180 with Paul Ruse unpacked his approach from his book Here It Is that enabled him to take the bedraggled and betrodden Sydney Swans from the bottom of the barrel to win their first premiership in 72 years in just three seasons. And he did this as a coach using a very simple system that connects and commits everyone to that achievement

Starting point is 00:04:14 of what I like to call big, hairy-ass goals. And earlier episodes have focused on establishing audacious moonshot visions that inspire and galvanise desperate individuals and teams to achieve great things. But how can we really do and achieve big things at our individual, team, business, organisational, community and even country level? And this is important because I believe that the future of our great planet is at a critical moment. Why do I say this? Because many of our leaders, big institutions and governments are failing us in our greatest time of need. Our individual and collective responses to the global pandemic are clear

Starting point is 00:05:04 evidence of our reactive, piecemeal and disheveled, divided approach, built on the back of selfish and self-serving interests that lack a clear unified vision, lacks collective commitment and lacks personal and group accountability. So how do we turn this around? How do we correct these wrongs and choose the right course? Well, in my continued search for the essence of sustainable success that's achievable at every level, I've been focusing on those tribes and collectives

Starting point is 00:05:38 that continuously achieve bigger and better things. What do the likes of Google, Intel, the Gates Foundation, Disney, Dropbox, LinkedIn, Slack, Spotify and many current successful companies and organisations do that separates them from the pack and allows them to go from strength to strength while most and many organisations and governments continue to struggle. Now we've all got ideas and dreams

Starting point is 00:06:10 but how many of us actually make them happen and continue to make them happen regardless of size, scale, situation or circumstance? The answer? Are you ready for it? It's establishing meaningful objectives and measurable results. Whoopie-doo. Now that sounds simple and boring when I say it like that.

Starting point is 00:06:37 But what does this really mean? And how can you apply an approach without complexity that allows you to set meaningful goals and objectives that are easily measured and monitored that ensure that what you're doing day to day is contributing in the most impactful way to your big rocks. Now I'm not talking here about the old conventional organizational goal setting and performance management systems that tend to be complex, retrospective, infrequent, backward looking, top-down, hierarchical and highly administrative

Starting point is 00:07:11 and ultimately not very effective. They get bogged down and lost in their implementation and end up being meaningless and time-consuming at best and end up being focused on the wrong things and measure the wrong things at worst, creating unwanted consequences like internal competitiveness and division and limited progress towards or achievement of

Starting point is 00:07:39 what really matters. What I'm talking about is the simple OKR framework, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. This is best captured in John Dewar's book, Measure What Matters, that details an approach that is at the heart of the continued achievements of all the enduringly successful organisations that I spoke about earlier. today we're going to share with you what really makes a difference that's what's crucial how and why they set meaningful and audacious goals the right goals for the right reasons so let's dive into the mind of John Doerr and his very appropriate surname pretty much sums it up he's a doer not just a dreamer so what are these things called

Starting point is 00:08:35 OKRs and how does it work? To help you get clarity on a simple but effective way to achieve any worthwhile goal, I'm going to draw directly on Doerr's work from his book, some summaries and reviews produced by the productivity team and Nick Kettner, along with Doerr's discussion with Donald Sull, as well as Doerr's TED Talk. Now, John Doerr gleaned his inspiration for the creation of OKRs and Measure What Matters from the time he spent at Intel under the leadership of Andy Grove, who's been called the greatest manager of his or any other era. Andy once said to Doer,

Starting point is 00:09:16 John, it almost doesn't matter what you know. Execution is what matters the most. It's all about excellent execution and measuring the right things. and so Andy invented a system called objectives and key results or OKRs where he confirmed that the two key phrases of management by objective systems are the objectives and the key results and they match the two purposes the objective is the direction the key results have to be measured But at the end, you can look and without any argument, you can say, did I do that or didn't I do that? Yes, no, simple.

Starting point is 00:10:08 Objectives and key results or OKRs are a simple goal setting system and they work for organisations, they work for teams and they even work for you as an individual. the objectives are the what you want to have accomplished the key results are how you're going to get that done objectives key results what and how but here's the truth many of us are setting goals wrong and unfortunately most of us are not setting goals at all and then there's those organizations that set objectives and meet them they ship their sales they hit their revenue targets they make their numbers but they lack a sense of purpose to inspire their teams so how do you get these goals the right way first you've got to answer the question why why because truly transformational teams align their ambitions to their passion and

Starting point is 00:11:15 of their purpose. And they develop a clear and compelling sense of why, as captured by Simon Sinek in his famous book, Start With Why. And if you haven't read that yet, then make sure you do. Now to illustrate the importance of your why, let's share Don Doerr's example of a remarkable entrepreneur that he worked with, and her name's Ginny Kim. Ginny runs a company called Noona. Noona's a healthcare data company, and when Noona was founded, they used data to serve the health needs of a lot of workers at large companies. And then, two years into the company's life, the federal government issued a proposal to build the first ever cloud database for Medicaid, which is a program that serves 70 million

Starting point is 00:12:03 Americans. It serves their poor, their children, and their people with disabilities. now Nuna at the time was just 15 people and this massive database had to be built in a year and Nuna already had a whole set of commitments that they had to honor and quite frankly they weren't going to make much money on the project this was one of those bet your company moments and Ginny seized it. She jumped at the opportunity. She didn't flinch.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Why? Well, it's a personal why. Ginny's younger brother, Kimong, has autism and when he was just seven, he had his first grand mal seizure at Disneyland. He fell to the ground and he stopped breathing. Ginny's parents are Korean immigrants. They came to the country with limited resources, speaking little English,

Starting point is 00:13:05 so it was up to Ginny to enrol her family in Medicaid. She was just nine years old. That moment defined her mission, and that mission became her company. And that company bid on, won, and delivered on that contract. And in explaining Ginny's why, she said that Medicaid saved her family from bankruptcy, and today it provides for Kim Ong's health and for millions of others. Noona was Ginny's love letter to Medicaid.

Starting point is 00:13:39 Every row of data is a life whose story deserves to be told with dignity. And Ginny's story tells us that a compelling sense of why can be the launch pad for our objectives. Remember, objectives are what we want to have accomplished and objectives are significant. They're action-orientated, they're inspiring and they're a kind of vaccine against fuzzy, vague and unaccountable thinking.

Starting point is 00:14:08 But OKRs just don't work for companies. They can help anyone and any organisation make massive impacts. Like the rock star Bono from U2, who John Doerr uses as a great example. now you'd think a rock star would be fairly unlikely to use objectives and key results but for years bono has used okrs to wage a global war against poverty poverty and disease and his one foundation has focused on two really awesome audacious objectives the first is debt relief for the poorest countries in the world and the second is universal access to anti-HIV drugs. Now, why are these good objectives? Well, let's go back to our OKR

Starting point is 00:14:58 checklist. Are they significant? Yep. Concrete? Yep. Action-orientated? Hell yeah. Inspirational? Well, this is what Bono actually says about OKRs in his own musical words. And no, I'm not going to attempt the bad Irish accent. So you're passionate. How passionate? What actions does your passion lead you to do? If the heart doesn't find a perfect rhyme with the head, then your passion means nothing. The OKR framework cultivates the madness, the chemistry contained inside it. It gives us an environment for risk, for trust, where failing is not a fireable offense. And when you have that sort of structure and environment and the right people, magic is around the corner. Now, how good is that? OKRs cultivate the madness

Starting point is 00:15:57 and magic is right around the corner. That's awesome. So with Ginny's example, we've covered the whys, and with bono, the what's of goal setting. Now let's turn our attention to the hows. Remember, the hows are the key results. That's how we meet our objectives. And good results are specific and time-bound. They're aggressive, but realistic. They're measurable, and they're verifiable those are good key results now way back in 1999 John Doerr introduced OKRs to Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right when they were both just 24 years old and just starting out in their garage and every quarter of every year since then

Starting point is 00:16:55 every Googler has written down their objectives and their key results. They've graded them and they've published them for everyone to see and importantly they're not used for bonuses or for promotions. They're used for a higher purpose and that's to get collective commitment

Starting point is 00:17:15 to truly stretch goals. As an example in 2008 A Googler, Sundar Pinchai, took on an objective to build the best internet browser. He was very thoughtful about how he chose his key results. How do you measure the best browser? It could be ad clicks or engagement, but no. He said numbers of users.

Starting point is 00:17:44 Because users are going to decide if Chrome was going to be a great browser or not. So he had this one three-year-long objective, build the best browser. And then every year, he stuck to the same key results, numbers of users, but he upped the ante. In the first year, his goal was 20 million users, and he missed it. He got less than 10 million. In the second year, he raised the bar to 50 million, and he got to 37 million users. Somewhat better.

Starting point is 00:18:20 But in the third year, he upped the ante once more to $100 million. He launched an aggressive marketing campaign, broader distribution, improved the technology, and kaboom. He got 111 million users. And Sundar went on to become CEO of Google and Alphabet. Now, here's why I like this story. Not so much for the happy ending, but it shows someone carefully choosing the right objective

Starting point is 00:18:50 and then sticking to it year after year after year. And remember that Doerr taught OKRs to Google when it was just a 30-person company. And now Google's 80,000-plus employees continue to use the system to achieve bigger and better things. And everyday start-ups like MyFitnessPal and Zoom so that they wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for Doar's OKR goal-setting system. In fact, Google's co-founder Larry Page is on record as saying that as much as he hates process,

Starting point is 00:19:30 good ideas with great execution are how you make magic. And that's where OKRs come in. And the magic of OKRs is created by three main ingredients. So let me break down further how these three ingredients come together to create the OKR goal-setting system that you can use to bring your biggest ideas to life. Ingredient number one is an audacious objective. Now as James Cameron, the director of the highest grossing films of all time, Avatar and Titanic says, if you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you'll still fail well above everyone else's successes. So the first step of the OKR system is to set an objective with the same spirit that JFK set the objective of going to the moon in the 1960s,

Starting point is 00:20:25 that we discussed previously in another episode. You'll remember that JFK didn't pick the audacious objective of going to the moon because it was easy He picked it because it was hard He picked it because that objective was served to unify, galvanise, organise and measure the very best of the American people To set a moonshot-like objective that's going to inspire you and force you to expand your skills start by being idealistic, not realistic

Starting point is 00:20:58 Ask yourself questions like If I were free from constraints and had unlimited resources What change would I want to make in the world? Or if I had a unique opportunity to be the best in the world at one thing What would that be? When you come up with your ideal objective Scale it back until it's one step short of being impossible You want your goal to be big but believable

Starting point is 00:21:26 For example, when the Gates Foundation started, they had an objective of eradicating malaria by 2015. But they soon realised that that was an impossible goal that actually demotivated the team. So they adjusted their objective to eradicate malaria by 2040. The goal was still big, but now it was believable. Now it inspired the team. So the first step you need to take in developing an OKR is creating a big, audacious objective that captures your imagination and compels you to grow.

Starting point is 00:22:10 Now, OKR ingredient number two revolves around the quality and quantity of key results. John Doerr says objectives are the stuff of inspiration and far horizons, while key results are more earthbound and metric driven. Your key results are the three to five things that you can improve that would indicate that you're getting closer to your objective. Key results are focused on things like customer satisfaction scores and any other thing that would indicate progress that you can measure.

Starting point is 00:22:46 Now you may remember from episode 180 that Paul Ruse's objective was to win the Sydney Swans' first premiership in 72 years, a goal that seemed absolutely laughable at the time. And to achieve this, he analysed and defined the measurable key result areas that had the biggest impact on their success. These were clean ball handling of the ground balls and effective tackling.

Starting point is 00:23:14 These were the two closely guarded stats that guided their success for years to come, given their massive impact on winning games. Here's another example from Measure What Matters of weak, average and strong key results. Let's say that you and your race car team had the objective of winning the Grand Prix. Weak key results would be increased lap speed

Starting point is 00:23:41 and reduced pit stop time. Average key results would be increased average speed by 2% and reduce average pit stop time by one second. Now these key results are better because they're specific and measurable, but strong key results would be increased average lap speed by 2%, reduce average pit stop time by one second, reduce pit stop errors by 50%, and practice pit stops one hour every day.

Starting point is 00:24:13 These key results aren't just specific and measurable, they also contain a mix of quality and quality key results to make sure the team isn't cutting corners to reach your objective. Think of key results as the gauges on the dashboard of your car that monitor how you're going on your journey to your objective destination. These gauges provide specific values that you can monitor and inform you if you're going to get to your destination on time. For your car to get you to the destination

Starting point is 00:24:46 You want to increase your speed while monitoring your revs per minute and your oil temperature to make sure your motor won't break down while pursuing your objective. In this light, OKR ingredient number three is traffic light colour coding of regular OKR check-ins. Circling back to Bono's One Foundation, that has actually helped deliver nearly $50 billion in funding for health initiatives across Africa. His organisation has been able to significantly reduce corruption across Africa and channel money from African oil reserves to fight extreme poverty. And in the book, Bono says that the OKR, Traffic Light Colour Coding System,

Starting point is 00:25:32 has absolutely transformed the One Foundation's board meetings. They've sharpened their strategy, their execution and their results. and they've made the one foundation a more effective weapon in the fight against extreme poverty. The OKR traffic light colour coding system works a bit like this. On a regular basis, perhaps each week or month or quarter, you look at your key results and you label each one either green, yellow or red. Green means that you're 70 to 100% on target and you should simply keep doing what you're doing. Yellow means you're between 30% to 70% on target and you need to develop a correction or recovery plan. And a red key result means you're only 0% to 30% on target and you need

Starting point is 00:26:25 to either develop a major recovery plan or replace that key result altogether. Let's take one of my current objectives of increasing the reach and message of the Get Invested podcast to over 1 million time poor hardworking professionals. To achieve this, one of my key results is to increase the number of new subscribers on my new Bushy Martin YouTube channel and increase them to a thousand in the next three months. Yeah, there's only about 24 at the moment and I've got to say you could do me a massive favor to help make this happen by jumping on youtube right now and subscribing to bushy martin where you can find every episode of get invested along with my regular bush bites and all things property and finance now let's say that in a month

Starting point is 00:27:15 i've only increased my youtube subscribers by a hundred so i'm only 10 of the way there which is a code red clearly i'd need to adjust my strategy and create a recovery plan that could involve making new types of videos or collaborating with other youtube creators and leveraging into their audiences and john doerr says there's no need to hold stubbornly to an outdated projection just strike it off your list and move on because our goals are servants to our purpose not the other way around but here's the surprising thing about the traffic light color coding system if your key results are always green and you're approaching 100% complete

Starting point is 00:27:59 then you've done something wrong at Intel Doors says that if a department so much as approached 100% it was presumed to be setting its sights way too low and there'd be hell to pay so if you're feeling and finding that it's easy to get all of your key results into the green zone adjust their difficulty so you get a mix of green and yellow

Starting point is 00:28:23 By using this colour coding system, you're held accountable for both setting challenging goals and making progress on those goals. So if you want to accomplish something significant, something that matters, turn your goal into an audacious objective that actually inspires you. Then find a mix of three to five quality and quantity key results that you can actually measure. then periodically apply traffic light colours to those key results to continuously challenge and hold yourself accountable and make them public so everyone that's important to you is also aware of them. Now as an example, one of my current personal OKRs

Starting point is 00:29:08 revolves around my love for music, piano and singing. Music is the greatest emotional engager and unifier that I know. Its vibration and energy brings your heart and head together and has the power to inspire, motivate and move mountains like nothing else that I know. Music can create and shift moods by the way it makes you feel. Music heals, transforms and helps us to imagine a better, brighter world. To experience and enjoy the full spectrum of our emotions from joy through to sorrow, music has the power to make me cry and laugh.

Starting point is 00:29:45 to connect to life's experience in a much more emotional way that brings richness and soul to the everyday and creates and anchors lasting memories. When I hear a piece of music, it takes me straight back to where I was and what I was doing when I first heard it. What about you? So my why is to move you with music.

Starting point is 00:30:12 In this light, my music what objective is to create, perform and record a solo show that I'm calling Reflections by the 20th of December 2022, which at the moment is a bit over a year away. And my three how key results to make this happen are 1. Finalise the song and piano instrumental list of 12 performance pieces by Friday the 17th of September.

Starting point is 00:30:44 secondly to learn a new song or instrumental to performance level every three weeks and thirdly to perform a song or instrumental live on facebook every month starting from wednesday the 29th of september and now that i've stated them publicly it's up to you to keep me accountable and that's it that's how simple OKRs can help you move the needle on your unfulfilled dreams now the great book measure what matters also shows you how to utilize OKRs to improve the focus the alignment and the accountability of yourself and your organization so that you can achieve bigger and better things now now that we understand how OKRs work and how to define and track progress Let's dive into the four superpowers of OKRs, and they are focus, align, track, and stretch.

Starting point is 00:31:45 The real benefit of OKRs is in how they unlock opportunities for collaboration and transparency throughout your organisation. OKR superpower number one is focus and commitment to priorities. The simple structure of OKRs really empowers leaders to be able to clearly define actionable goals. So rather than setting lofty, vague or unattainable or unactionable goals, the OKR framework ensures you not only have to define the objective, but exactly how that objective is going to be achieved. OKR focus and commitment to priorities means that high-performance organisations are able to home in on work that's important and are equally clear on what doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:32:35 OKRs empower leaders to make hard choices and decisions. They're a precision communication tool for departments, teams and individual contributors. By dispelling confusion, OKRs give us the focus needed to win. So superpower number one is all about focus and getting very clear on the handful of objectives that are critical for you and your organisation. okr superpower number two is to align and connect for teamwork and this is where some of the real potential of okrs really starts to become clear because there are a number of cloud-based okr tools out there that really unlock transparency and collaboration within organizations

Starting point is 00:33:20 some of them are inspire week done heart space and engagedly now at a glance with these okr tools you can see all of the okrs within an all within an organization and every individual team member has their own list of okrs showing the handful of things that they're focused on completing so even the most junior member of an organization can log on and see what everybody on the in the organization is actually working on and everybody's using this common protocol so you can see what the ceo is focused on you can see the top line objectives and key results for the time period be it by week quarter by annual or annual and you can align what it is that you're working on as an individual or as a team leader or manager within the organization with the mutually agreed

Starting point is 00:34:20 top level objectives. They unlock the ability for individual teams and managers to select their own objectives and key results that are going to help move the organization forward. And of course, because it's transparent and everybody can see what everybody's working on, there's naturally built in accountability. So this is a very powerful system for not only keeping everybody aligned, but for allowing everybody to figure out how to help move the organisation forward. In this way, OKR superpower number two allows you to align and connect for teamwork, as the OKR transparency means that everyone's goals from the CEO down are openly shared. Individuals link their objectives to the company's game plan, identify cross-dependencies and coordinate with other teams

Starting point is 00:35:10 By connecting each and every contributor to the organisation's success, top-down alignment brings meaning to work And by deepening people's sense of ownership, bottom-up OKRs foster engagement and innovation OKR superpower number three is to track for accountability and building on what I just mentioned OKRs are highly trackable because not only have you defined an objective but you've defined very measurable key results. Using the traffic light color-coded tracking measures that I've already described team members regularly meet to report on the scoring and the progress of their OKRs so that at a glance everybody in the company can see where teams might be falling behind, where they might be struggling, what's on track and when

Starting point is 00:36:06 there are opportunities to help. You can jump in because not only as a potential team member can you see that another team is struggling but you can see that maybe your own project has a dependency there and you can jump in and help or if you have the relevant experience and expertise even it has nothing to do with what you're working on if you see it's falling behind you can jump in and help. So this is a very powerful system for not only managing accountability, but allowing team members to jump in and help each other when they recognise that something's falling behind. So OKR superpower number three means that tracking for accountability,

Starting point is 00:36:47 OKRs are driven by relevant and meaningful data, which means measuring the right things rather than just measuring what can be measured. In this way, OKRs are animated by periodic check-ins, objective grading and continuous reassessment, all in a spirit of no-judgment accountability. An endangered key result triggers action to get it back on track, or to revise or replace it if it's warranted. Now the final OKR superpower number four is to stretch for amazing. and the idea here is that it can be tempting when you're defining your OKRs to set your goals low because you want all of your OKRs to be on track and you want to make sure that you achieve

Starting point is 00:37:38 everything and you don't want other people in the organisation to see that your goals are consistently falling behind. So because of this temptation part of the culture beyond OKRs is to stretch for some more challenging goals within your framework or what it is that you as a team member are attempting to achieve. And so for example, Google defines their OKRs under one of two categories, either committed goals or aspirational goals, also known as stretch goals. So every single OKR is defined as either being committed or aspirational. Now committed goals are things that are tied to key critical aspects of the business. These specific OKRs are expected to be completed in full.

Starting point is 00:38:26 You're expected to get 100% completion. And they should be marked green at the end of the reporting period, whether it be a quarter or whatever the agreed period of time is. But aspirational goals are very different. While you certainly want to set things that are achievable and have the potential to be completed, there can be as high as a 40% failure rate on aspirational KPRs and so there's a lot more leeway and flexibility here and teams are actually encouraged to push for these kinds of stretch

Starting point is 00:38:56 goals to avoid teams being subtly incentivized to set very achievable goals. So you want to separate the two and have your committed goals and your more aspirational goals so that teams are given an opportunity to chase things that might not be so achievable but help to move the organisation forward. So when aspirational goals like this are chosen wisely, individuals are encouraged to take risks without fear of failure and the payoff can be massive. So OKR Superpower 4, to stretch for amazing, means that OKRs motivate us to excel by doing more than we thought possible. By testing our limits and affording the freedom to fail, they release our most creative, ambitious selves. Now the failings of old, outdated and ineffective

Starting point is 00:39:48 annual performance reviews have sparked a robust OKR alternative for continuous performance management. In response, John Doerr's book also introduces OKR's younger siblings, what he calls CFRs which stands for conversation feedback and recognition and they show how OKRs and CFRs can team up to lift leaders contributors and organizations to a whole new level and finally OKRs are also a supportive tool in easing and expediting culture change and creating an open transparent culture defined by personal and collective accountability. So OKRs make it easy for everyone in your organisation to look up, to look down and to look sideways, to see if you're aligned, to see if what you're working on is ultimately

Starting point is 00:40:47 moving the organisation forward. And so, as the book describes, the accountability, transparency and actionable structure of OKRs is what makes this such an incredibly powerful system. You can see exactly what others are working on. They can see what you're working on. You can reduce redundancy. You can jump in when somebody needs help and their objective is falling behind. And everybody can help keep each other accountable.

Starting point is 00:41:19 As you can hear, OKRs are a very simple protocol and framework framework for defining what it is that you want to achieve and how you're going to go about achieving it. They link your dreams of tomorrow with your choices and actions today. But as good as OKRs can be, their success lies in two very key things. Firstly, the quality of the objective as we've already discussed but as importantly what you measure and this is where the real challenge comes in as we've discussed in previous episodes of get invested adopting a purely logical rational engineering style approach to measurement can dumb down the effectiveness of key results to what you can easily measure instead of what really needs to be measured

Starting point is 00:42:12 But the assumption of linear measures can also lead to limited linear results. Operating in our dynamic, radically uncertain and constantly changing environment, where we're now continuously drowned in a deluge of data and noise, can be complex, confusing, and making it very difficult and extremely time-consuming to synthesise the gold from the dross and to join dots that we can't see but are actually very important to our insights and our understanding. We need to be measuring and interpreting the right thing

Starting point is 00:42:50 at the right time in the right way by synthesising the plethora of data points that technology now makes available in a quick, easy and effective way that collates and considers multidimensional measures and doesn't paralyse us in overwhelm. So the critical challenge for the success of OKRs is in deciding what and how to measure critical key results, what combination of data is required in order to define relevant

Starting point is 00:43:19 measures, and how we measure them. And how do we do this? Well, this is where today's guest, Ben Tripodi, comes in. Ben is the CEO and founder of the hugely and rapidly successful Lumen Group and Hope Startups, where HOAP, which is H-O-A-P, stands for Human Optimisation and Performance. Working closely alongside global professional sporting teams, as well as large private corporations, Ben's Lumen Sports and HOAP, personal wellness teams, specialise in utilising big data and machine learning to revolutionise the way professional sporting teams monitor elite athletes,

Starting point is 00:44:03 as well as corporations monitor all team members dynamically and instantly to inform and improve wellness, health, performance, leadership and decision making. Lumen Sports Arc is a sophisticated data visualisation tool that replaces old and outdated athlete management systems. Lumen Sports collaborates with professional sporting teams to give every decision-maker the tools to interpret masses of complex team data. For a young start-up business, Lumen boasts a healthy client list that includes world tour cycling teams, AFL teams, Olympic programs

Starting point is 00:44:46 and elite US National Collegiate Athletic Associations or NCAA Division I football teams. In a similar but broader-based corporate fashion, hope or hoap leverages big data and machine learning to provide effective physical mental and emotional performance tools for you and your corporations of today to ensure that you become your best selves tomorrow as software designed for the modern workforce hope is pioneering performance well-being for teams and organizations of all sizes and hope is the first tool to quantify well-being for leaders and to educate everyone to be their best selves.

Starting point is 00:45:32 The Lumen Group's elite support and organisational tools allow you to measure the right things rather than just what you can measure, so that all of the dynamic data points can be combined quickly and easily to help you make better and faster decisions and benchmark your key results on the way to achieving your goals and objectives. So in our great conversation today, Ben unpacks human performance and data visualization tools. We discuss how to achieve peak performance and the importance of measurement. He opens your ears to the challenges and risks of startups and what they entail. Ben reveals his relationship with money and how he embraced investing at a very young age.

Starting point is 00:46:13 He paints a picture of his lifestyle vision and how he's investing to make it happen. he opens up and how he consistently able to overcome any fear of rejection to approach anyone regardless of their power or position in order to garner their support and he shares how covid totally disrupted his looming business and how he was able to pivot very quickly to leverage his sophisticated big data insight tools from elite sport to the world of corporate business where hope emerged to continue his considerable startup success and everything that ben and his lumen group does revolves around and supports peak performance and goal achievement by feeding into your okrs or objectives and key results by measuring what matters and giving you

Starting point is 00:47:03 the ability to to do this quickly and easily to find out more about lumen sports or hope and how they can help you and your organisation achieve superior results, check them out at www.luminsports.com, that's L-U-M-I-N, sports.com, or HOAP, that's W-W-W dot H-O-A-P dot com. Now, as John Doerr of Measure What Matters concludes, countless individuals use objectives and key results to grow more disciplined in their thinking, clearer in communication and more purposeful in their action. OKRs create acute focus, open sharing, exacting measurement and a license to shoot for the moon.

Starting point is 00:47:54 Where OKRs take root, merit trumps seniority. Leaders and managers become more valuable coaches, mentors and architects. Actions and data speak much louder than words. In sum, objectives and key results are a potent, proven force for operating excellence. They've worked to help take Google to the stratosphere and beyond over the last 20 years. So why not for you and your organisation? Now, Doerr thinks of OKRs as transparent vessels that are made from the what's and the how's of your ambitions. What really matters is the why that you pour into those vessels. That's why we do our work.

Starting point is 00:48:46 And let's be clear, OKRs are not a silver bullet. They're not going to be a substitute for strong culture or for strong leadership. But when those fundamentals are in place, they can take you to the mountaintop. So before we get into today's great conversation with Ben Tripodi on measuring what matters and what makes a difference, I want you to think about your life for a moment. Do you have the right metrics? Take time to write down your dreams, your vision and your values

Starting point is 00:49:17 and cascade them down to your objectives and your key results. And do it today. It'll transform your life. And if you'd like some feedback on your vision and your OKRs, feel free to email them to me at bushey at knowhowproperty.com.au and if you want to apply the OKR approach to investing in order to achieve and fund your ideal lifestyle goals join me to complete your freedom flight test and ready able and willing raw report test that will help you to quantify where you're at where you want to be what's the

Starting point is 00:49:53 gap and what's your ability and best way of bridging it it provides you with a gps and a roadmap to ensure that what you're doing today is moving you towards your ideal lifestyle. To book your ticket or to find out more, just jump on knowhowproperty.com.au forward slash freedom fighters, or just click the link in the show notes. Now, if we think of the world changing goals of an Intel, of a Nuna, of a Bono, and of Google, they're all remarkable. Intel's anywhere and everywhere computing. Nuna's affordable high quality health care for everyone. Bono ending global poverty and Google's access to all the world's information. They're all game-changing goals that are being achieved and powered by OKRs

Starting point is 00:50:46 by measuring what matters. Now get inspired to start and achieve your unfulfilled goals and dreams by following the example of Ben Tripodi. Hi Freedom Fighters. Now in our current constant connected and COVID challenged and radically changing interdependent global world that we're all living in, achieving and sustaining peak performance in any endeavour

Starting point is 00:51:15 across the key pillars of what I call self-health and wealth, is increasingly reliant on collecting and interpreting relevant data and information. But with the explosion in technology in recent times, we've shifted rapidly from no information to drowning in data. So how can we make sense of it all and draw quick, valuable insights from the masses of disparate and complex info without getting buried forever in endless analysis paralysis? Today we're going to find out by having a chat with leading performance technologist, Ben Tripodi. So welcome and let's get invested, Ben. Thanks, Bushy. Appreciate it, mate.

Starting point is 00:51:53 Ben, really looking forward to having a chat, mate. You're very well known in the startup world in Adelaide for doing some fantastic things, but there's going to be listeners from around the globe tuning in here that won't have heard your story. So just to kick things off mate can you give us a rundown on who you are what you do and most importantly why you do what you do i like that last bit that's good i don't know if i can get asked that um so yeah my i'm the ceo of the lumen group um which is essentially two brands uh lumen sports and a new brand called hope um so the lumen group hope and lumen sports exist to provide effective physical and mental performance tools for humans of today

Starting point is 00:52:41 so that they can be their best selves tomorrow. And so what that is, it's where a human performance company that is always striving to give people the tools, whether you're a professional athlete, an amateur athlete, an everyday person, a mum or dad, a business leader, building the tools so that everyone can improve to be their best selves. And we now work across professional and amateur sport armed forces uh and corporate as well so work with such a variety of people um uh and who use

Starting point is 00:53:14 our who use our software as well yeah and why yeah why we do it yes that's the interesting bit it's the and it's the cliche bit for me you know it's it's uh look i like to think i'm making a positive difference in the world but uh in reality it's it's it's um i love uh i love what i do i I love taking on really audacious things. I love human performance. I like to think that there's so much untapped potential in people. And, you know, when we see that in athletes, I get to see them kind of achieve their absolute success.

Starting point is 00:53:48 And because I've seen that firsthand, I feel like everyday people can really learn something from them as well. So I think I probably love, in terms of being in a business, I think I love being in control of building a vehicle that can create value for shareholders, for customers, for employees and I think that's, for me, what I was kind of born to do and I don't think I could do anything else really. Yeah, interesting and I'm going to dive into that

Starting point is 00:54:17 because there aren't a lot of people that are happy to jump off the cliff like you have and repeatedly do that, generally without a parachute. So I'd love to delve into that a minute But to start off on that, can we sort of circle back to as far back as you would like to start really and talk us through what you've invested your time, your energy and your money in on your journey so far, what have been the highs and the lows, what have you learned from all of that and how did that get you to where you are today? Yeah, well, it's a lot in terms of, you know, I'm still pretty young.

Starting point is 00:54:57 uh it's only 28 um but i i think sometimes i'm going on 80 um i did notice and i'll go back to the start but i did notice in probably the last few years was almost like an exponential change in in everything that in my thinking my life and i guess maturity and and i see that in a lot of people as well kind of you know 23 i kind of see you know when you're 16 you're kind of figuring out 16 to 18 you figured out what you want to do 18 to 21 yeah you know try new things doing what everyone tells you to do go on the uni so you do that and then from about 21 to 25 you go through this ultimate period of anxiety and and frustration because you're kind of doing things that someone's told you to do you want to do other things and it's a real period of finding yourself and i feel

Starting point is 00:55:47 like yeah 25 onwards you kind of a few things have gone right and you kind of double down and i've I've actually seen that across a lot of people in my network who go through it, probably mainly males who really struggle in those early 20s. And I think that's actually just goes – I think it's just a – it kind of sums up probably my period of time as well, which I'll dive into. So I was a junior triathlete who wanted to be a professional triathlete. Just an awesome place to start, mate. I'd love to know why your attraction even into the world of being a triathlete

Starting point is 00:56:28 because, again, that would be very daunting for a lot of people, mate. And while you know it intimately, there'll be a lot of people that sort of have some idea. Talk to us about, because I know how grueling a triathlete, athlon is, Talk to us about what that means and why you were so hell-bent on becoming a world champion in that. It's really interesting. I guess my family is probably more of a swimming family,

Starting point is 00:57:01 so I was always kind of involved in swimming. I did lots of different sports when I was at school, but probably when I was about 16, I just became obsessed with Ironman Hawaii. and for those of those listeners who don't know what triathlon is it's a swim bike and a run and it's kind of broken up into a couple of different types of racing you have ironman racing which is your big kind of um you know three and a half k swim 180k bike ride and a marathon run so big big stuff then you kind of have uh anything in between to then a sprint distance which is uh you know 750 swim 20k bike ride and a 5k run so still an effort but that's

Starting point is 00:57:39 what they call a sprint distance and they generally last for an hour or less whereas your ironmans are probably you know eight hours or longer so um yeah i was just hawaii ironman is probably the most famous triathlon uh in the world um and that is just uh you know they used to play on the channel nine wide world of sports and it was it was uh it was just really fascinating i just i was really obsessed with just seeing people kind of really push themselves and and um i don't know what it was i just i was drawn to endurance sports and i started riding my bike a bit more when i was swimming and started running a bit more and then before you know it i went all in and uh you know bought the bike bought the gear it's not so cheap sport and um and just yeah and just i joined a

Starting point is 00:58:25 club and started to love it more and more and more um and i probably did that for a significant period of time but when i first started it wasn't like i was doing ironmans um i did a couple of longer distance stuff when I was probably 18 um but it was actually the the shorter faster stuff that I loved at that stage and I loved the racing I loved competing I loved the training I loved the the I loved the discipline of the training um and it was always interesting because you'd always tell people how much training you do and I wasn't a professional so they always thought that was weird that I was training you 30 hours a week but um and I guess it was but I was at uni so I wasn't really doing much else but he was for me it was it was it's just what i did and um i actually

Starting point is 00:59:11 really enjoyed the process and then the more i enjoyed the process the less i really cared about racing and just it then became a part of my life and and so as i uh my goal was to become a professional um but then probably i was about 21 uh as i was getting better and better and kind of needed to take that next step into the pro ranks i i knew it wasn't for me um why why what take me to the if you can to the point when you had that realization that my goal of becoming professional probably isn't going to happen what what was it that brought to that conclusion and and and how did you feel at that time i can pinpoint the exact moment um i was yeah i reckon i was yeah probably 21 and he was uh been training up so i was a part of this kind of professional team

Starting point is 01:00:04 and uh this big event in queensland on the sunshine coast uh called the the malula bar triathlon and that was probably the biggest race on our calendar and it's basically if you got top four i think you got you automatically got a pro license um and then if you got top 10 i think you could apply based on your time um and so that was the goal and so we're all going in to basically get get the pro license and start start our pro careers um and uh and we're kind of probably the last year where we kind of either had to do it or he didn't and so lots of training went behind it i was putting the best shape of my life and um i was racing and halfway through the race i just thought i don't i don't really want to do this anymore and it was that exact moment i remember

Starting point is 01:00:48 i was so it was a 40k bike ride and uh we're out on the highway and it was pretty hot and i was drinking some of my water um and it was at that moment i just thought you know what this is this is this is not what i want to do and it wasn't like a give up because this is too hard it was actually like a really nice moment i was actually like i don't i don't even feel bad i just i'm going to enjoy this race and i'm going to finish it but um yeah this would be my last race and uh i got to the end of it but i ended up having a bad race but it was um i got to the end of it i wasn't disappointed and i knew that was the moment when it was probably time time to pull up stumps and had a huge time commitment and i always had a huge interest in business and and

Starting point is 01:01:28 that's really where i wanted to go um and okay and just to give some background at that time i'd actually started my first business which was um importing carbon carbon fiber cycling wheels and i was selling them and promoting them and so i was actually was always involved with my sport and there's probably a year into that when that's when i was like nah i do want to get more into that and and uh i always train hard and i'll always be involved in the sport but yeah it was that moment i i knew i wasn't going to do it and finish the race and had a beer and uh that was pretty much it i think i sold my bike after that you love it so uh you mentioned that uh when you're in the heat of that you're at uni and what were you doing at uni and and again that you get a lot

Starting point is 01:02:12 a lot of why questions for me today uh what were you doing and why were you doing it yeah so So university, I went to school, which was very academic, which was great. And obviously, there's this huge promotion to go to university, and it was kind of just that thing that you did. In hindsight, I don't think I should have gone to university. It didn't really bring much for me, but I was a pretty studious person. Like, I wasn't dumb. Yeah, why do you say that, mate?

Starting point is 01:02:40 I'm really interested in that, because you're right. There's almost an unwritten expectation. for a lot of Aussies that, you know, if you do well in high school, then you're going to go to uni. It's like that's sort of the normal passage. It's the same pathway I took to do architecture and exactly the same. It was just – I didn't think about it. I was going to uni.

Starting point is 01:03:05 It's a matter of what I was going to do at uni. There was no question about whether I should be going to uni or not. Talk to me about that because I've had this conversation with my son. And I said, there's no point going to uni unless you're really clear on why you're going and where it's going to get you to. If you're just going to go along because that's the thing to do, then don't waste your time. Well, it's really interesting. It's probably some of the thing, right?

Starting point is 01:03:25 It's just what you did. And again, I went to a school which was a very good school. And it's quite interesting because a lot of people's parents all owned businesses. And so they were all reasonably well off. But it wasn't because they went to uni. It was because they created businesses. But they all told their kids to go to uni. And so I used to find that quite interesting and weird.

Starting point is 01:03:45 But, yeah, it's just kind of the thing you did. I actually graduated from school with a really high T.E.R. or A.T.R. And, again, it was a natural thing. I enjoyed health. I was doing triathlon at the time, so I thought, no, I need it. It was all around about – everything I wanted to do was about me being a better triathlete. So, you know, it was about health. It was about, okay, well, you know, do I become a doctor?

Starting point is 01:04:09 Do I – it's funny. Actually, I wanted to become a paramedic, which wasn't going to help my triathlon, but it was to do in health and um and then i was like maybe i want to do like uh nuclear medicine which is a radiography and it was kind of all about i wanted to make money so i was kind of looking at the things that made the most amount of money and and uh but also involved in health and uh and then i realized paramedics there's only one employer so i struck that off the list and realized that were you going to be a slave to the door for working for someone else your whole life so then I was like okay well I could build a medical practice if I if I did something

Starting point is 01:04:44 else um and then I was I kind of swapped I entered a few degrees got accepted then I kind of denied it last minute and I ended up settling on a health science degree which uh as a nutritionist so I majored in nutrition in a health science degree and that was I guess a bit of a cop-out in a way because um I didn't like I could have gone into multiple other degrees but it was just a sign that i didn't really know what i wanted to do and so i just kind of settled on a pretty vague and generic degree which in hindsight like this is what i mean like there's just probably no point in going if that's what if that's you know i think there was a sign clear sign there that actually university wasn't for me and i could have i should have taken a gap year a couple years

Starting point is 01:05:26 off and then i may have founded what i wanted to do and gone back at that stage um but in saying that university for me was the best thing for me in other ways um i went to flinders university where I went part-time at uni as well because, again, I wasn't really in a rush to finish because I didn't really want to be a nutritionist, and I was still racing at the time. But then Flinders University launched a program called the New Venture Institute, which was a pretty savvy thing for a university where you could actually do electives in business,

Starting point is 01:05:59 but you could basically run your own business inside those electives and get credits for it, and they would kind of help you, and that was actually amazing for me. I did that and I got exposed to a bunch of mentors, got exposed to a bunch of different business people and business leaders who were associated with the uni but weren't students or anything like that and they were actually separate from the uni.

Starting point is 01:06:21 And actually, that was the best thing I got out of the university. So in hindsight, it was good for me to do it but my advice to others is, you know, if you want to be a doctor, go to university. If you want to be a business leader, So that's probably, you'd be better off spending that money on, I'm still paying off my HECS debt, so you'd probably be better off spending that money on starting a business.

Starting point is 01:06:44 Yeah, yeah, that's a very good call, very good call. Okay, so you were doing the degree and the sort of New Venture Institute probably really opened your eyes to the opportunity to start building your business, given that, were you already dabbling in the, You talked about the carbon cycle wheels that you were selling. Did that happen before that or did that come out of that equation? Yeah, I kind of see my life in three different worlds.

Starting point is 01:07:13 Like I was always doing some sort of sport to a pretty high level. Triathlon was most of that. And at the same time, I was kind of doing all these things in parallel. So my triathlon career was going in one direction. My university's degree was going in one direction. And then I always kind of had a degree of something to do with business. or something to do with my own way of either creating new products or creating businesses.

Starting point is 01:07:37 So I probably started from when I was 16. I had a compression garment business. So it's all in sport. That kind of fizzled out. In fact, it's still going now, actually, but I'm out of that. And then I kind of moved on to carbon fiber wheels, importing them, and then I moved on to actually trying to build them and engineer them in Ablade.

Starting point is 01:07:58 They were actually an amazing design, and that was what I did when I was at NVI. So it was kind of my triathlon career kind of finished when I hit NVI. My university degree was kind of ending when I went to NVI. And my business, I guess, endeavors had kind of been redefined into this more of this local engineering design of wheels when I hit NVI as well. So it was kind of the culmination of – I probably spent –

Starting point is 01:08:25 that was probably what happened when I was about 23 and 22, 23. and it was kind of anything before then was I was trying lots of different things across three different kind of channels and they all kind of came together at that kind of junction. And, yeah, the big thing was a company called Finch Composites, which was my business where we were trying to redesign carbon fibre cycling wheels to perform better in crosswinds. So that was a huge issue for World Tour cyclists and Tour de France champions

Starting point is 01:08:56 as well as triathletes where the market, the industries were creating wheels that go very fast in a straight line, but you get one crosswind and they almost blow you off your bike. Of course. Yeah, so we were trying to create a wheel that would go fast in the front direction, but if you got hit by a crosswind, that would be super stable. That would be a challenging exercise to come up with something that would work well. Where did that end up?

Starting point is 01:09:24 yeah so really interesting i learned a lot looking back it was you know so clear i knew i could have taken it but then it was i just didn't know how to raise capital i didn't know how to have a strategy i didn't i just didn't really know everyone told me what to do and i but i just i couldn't see it and uh it was really interesting looking back in hindsight because i was really confused at that stage because i i just i kept falling back on the idea well i don't have any money so how am i going to do it and and looking back now i just feel like that's such a stupid thing to say because you can get money from anywhere but at the time i just didn't know how i hadn't seen it before i didn't have the confidence to do it and it was going to cost

Starting point is 01:10:05 probably like i don't know like a couple hundred thousand right which now it doesn't seem that much because i've raised way more than that from this business i'm in now but at the state it just i just couldn't fathom it and um so kind of we got some really good designs and they worked or on our our CFD so computational fluid dynamics software that we're using it was all all the numbers were looking good we just we just never got them made we went and got some prototypes done and just cost too much money and we kind of just shut up shop which is quite disappointing um but it probably went to show that I wasn't super passionate about it I think I wanted it to work but I wasn't willing to you know walk on fire to make it work and I think that's the difference now with my business

Starting point is 01:10:46 we're going a bit further about now is that I would do that whereas I think you really have to want to do it and um yeah probably probably goes to show that didn't and so that was kind of but I learned a lot I learned I built a huge network during that time I got to meet lots of people who are involved in my life now and involved in my business endeavors now and they were all it was just this junction of my life where everything up to that point kind of It was the first step to my professional career. Okay. Let's talk about that transition then because you obviously got to a point

Starting point is 01:11:21 where you sort of pretty much hit a wall with the carbon wheels exercise. Yeah. So you decided, look, I'm just not going to – that's it, I'm done, I can't get the money. What did you do then? Where did that lead you to? Yeah, so I was hoping to take up a few different jobs. I just thought, okay, well, I'm just going to get a job now.

Starting point is 01:11:41 and um i kind of just would i just i did probably three different jobs but they're all in different things like i went to work for one startup in in health tech which was which was kind of cool um did probably did that for six months to a year i probably not probably only six months uh and just kind of saw a pretty young founder he had a bit of money he raised and he was doing some cool stuff in health and i was just kind of helping out there i thought that's kind of cool and then kind of left that, that kind of fizzled out and then I went and worked for a creative agency which was really eye-opening for me.

Starting point is 01:12:15 I was probably only there for a year but I learnt a lot about software and about, I guess, marketing and I learnt to work hard. I was a really good environment for young people to really kind of work hard. It was a pretty high-pressure environment. Yeah. But at the same time, I was just still super active

Starting point is 01:12:33 in the startup community and I was still just kind of just seen without still start keeping my relationships with all my mentors i was working with and and i'd still i had a few connections in cycling just from my own sporting endeavors and i just kind of kept staying in touch with them and had a few um well tour cycling teams who i'd meet up with when the tour down under was on in adelaide and um yeah i just started to to build up more connections with them used to go for more bike rides with them and then it got to the point where um yeah i had this idea where i wanted to create this this data visualization tool for professional sporting teams and i just had a lot of mates in the network who were sports

Starting point is 01:13:12 scientists and i kept saying this one thing about you know there's just all these clunky systems out there and we just need a better way to analyze and view this data and for about two or three years basically from finch composites from that time on when i was just kind of doing other jobs that kind of that same problem kept coming up and um and uh yeah it was you know in the creative agency we were kind of in more of that fan engagement space sporting teams kept on saying no like that's a well and good batch here we this i don't know if you guys can do this and we couldn't um and then i i kind of left that business and i didn't really have anything to do and and i went and spoke to some of the just kind of went out to my networks and then uh a guy called doug

Starting point is 01:13:54 rider who's the team owner of uh was team dimension data at the time which is a world tour professional cycling team and he basically said hey uh if uh if you want to start building some of that tech for us just just let me know um and i was like sure but you know don't have any money he's like oh no worries we can sort that out and uh he he um got his major sponsor dimension data to to help fund uh basically some some upfront orders and and pay for some work to be done and um brought a team together and uh launched launched lumen sports and i was three and a half years ago so well let's jump right on that because uh that in itself uh for someone pretty much to come along with an open checkbook is what i'm hearing and say we believe on you believe in

Starting point is 01:14:42 you uh ben just get it done for us uh that doesn't happen very easily or very often mate so i'd love for you to share what what was it because you sort of seeded in amongst what you've been talking about already is clearly you're a very good relationship builder and a very good relationship maintainer which which is you know in my own belief you know most of us it doesn't matter what you're manufacturing what business or what service you're in we're all in the relationship business so if you can't get the relationships right then it's not likely to go very far But I'd love for you to talk through how that came about and how it sounds almost casual the way you described it,

Starting point is 01:15:23 that Doug said, yeah, we'll just get you to do it for us, mate. Talk us through what gave him that confidence to say, Ben, you're the man, just get this done for us, mate. Yeah, so super interesting. So when I was working at the creative agency, we're trying to start this kind of sports business and more of the sports marketing side. And so I was getting more involved in the sports industry,

Starting point is 01:15:49 but kind of on my own bat, at the Tour Down Under time, I just always made an effort outside of my work to just meet as many people as possible. It was probably two years before this time, before that moment happened, I emailed all the World Tour owners. I just found all their email addresses online. I just kept trying. So there's, I don't know, 18 teams.

Starting point is 01:16:11 So I reached out to 18 team owners, and the only person that got back to me was Doug. And he said, hey, Ben, you're sure? Like, I'm going to be down there. Let's go for a bike ride. And I actually pitched him the idea. I was like, hey, like, I've got this idea for kind of this athlete well-being stuff and this data visualization tools.

Starting point is 01:16:31 What do you think? He's like, yeah, that sounds good. And so we went for a bike ride, and his major sponsors were there. It's funny enough, they're actually some of my closest mates now. And we all went for a bike ride. And I was super fit then because I was still racing. So I was – I wasn't – we went for a pretty big bike ride. And I think they were probably impressed by that as well.

Starting point is 01:16:53 It was like, oh, okay, this guy actually rides as well. And so – and this is actually – there's probably a little key nugget in this in that one of the best things I've ever done is – and it helps that the industry I work in is in sport, endurance sports. But I was able to have conversations with, you know, in air quotes, important people because when you go on long bike rides you build a tremendous relationship when you're suffering you're hurting you're five hours in you go through a lot on one bike ride and there's not a lot of other people around who can ride with you so you get this uninterrupted

Starting point is 01:17:28 attention from the people you want to talk to and then you get to the end of the bike ride and everyone is you know you talk about the moments of times you know you went up this big hill and it was really hard and you build this camaraderie that is so unique and so hard to do that you can't manufacture that in any other domain really unless you've gone through something together yeah and um i found that was probably the best bike ride i ever went on because you know three of three of the most important people in my business career were all on that bike ride and i met them all that stage and um so yeah we kind of put some rapport there which i wouldn't have been able to build anywhere else and i just i want to uh really jump because i think you've

Starting point is 01:18:09 raised a really good point there that you're you're in the trenches together basically and and in rarefied atmosphere because there aren't too many people that would be able to perform at the levels that you were performing at that point in time so the the level of respect and mutual respect uh that that that camaraderie that you you've talked about and that we are we are some of the chosen few who are who are doing this would definitely build a level of uh engagement and connection that would be far and above anything that you would uh and it's physical as well so that there's something about the physicality of that rather than just sitting across a boardroom table and having a chat that would have really got you all in the at a level

Starting point is 01:18:55 where they're saying this guy's good uh he understands what you're doing he he can do it himself now we're ready to have a chat to him and i think that and look and doug rider was the type a guy who was just um i don't know how to describe me he's just a go-getter and he always gives someone an opportunity and i think you know if i have to give a pat on my back to myself is that i saw the opportunity i kind of went for it and nothing was too hard and there was no it was super unorthodox and i think that's the thing is that because i'd never gone i just have never understood these professional or business ways of doing things right it's just kind of like everyone's just people and so i kind of just thought like why wouldn't you go for a bike ride with someone

Starting point is 01:19:36 and just kind of talk business. But I think that was just a stage where he just got to know me, I got to know him, and it was just, he was just one of those people who had humongous corporate networks and connections. And he saw me as someone who was probably young and would actually get some stuff done if he kind of helped. And he probably thought, okay, well, I don't have to, I just have to give this guy a chance and it's not costing me anything

Starting point is 01:20:04 thinking, I like him, and if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. So it kind of wasn't any skin off his back. And he probably saw it as a way to, you know, get the team involved in some innovative things and that sort of thing. So I think he just liked being around people who were trying to have a crack because that's kind of what he did as well. Yeah, I was going to say, his background was similar, was it?

Starting point is 01:20:27 I'm guessing he had a similar pathway and, therefore, and clearly a pretty good reader of character to say, right, I read the right things in Ben. I'm confident that if we get behind him, he's going to produce a fruit. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. So, well, Doug's a way more accomplished person than I ever will be, but he was an Olympian. He was – he's a salesperson.

Starting point is 01:20:53 He can sell anything as well and just a tremendous business network as well and just a guy who does whatever it takes to achieve his goal. And so his team is an incredible world tour team in that they race for charity. So it's Doug's team. So they're called Team Quebec and Nextash at the moment. But Quebec is a bike charity foundation out of Africa where they donate bikes to these poorer communities because the bikes are a way for those communities to live their life

Starting point is 01:21:24 and transport is a big issue for them. And so when they have bikes given to them, It opens up the entire world. They can get to schools and universities easier. They can buy food and basically the wealth of their family increases when they have access to transport and free bikes. And so that's his mission. He's just done whatever it takes and he's had some hard times

Starting point is 01:21:46 where the team's gone almost bust, but it always seems to just come back and make it happen. But yeah, over probably three years, I just stayed in touch with them. And we did do a bit of work with them in the company I was with some small projects here and there so he did get to see the way i worked as well in a professional setting um and then i was always talking to him as mates as well to catch up every year and i got to know his his other networks as well and that's so the culmination of when i was like hey doug i'm actually looking i'm looking for some things to do for him was probably like okay well cool

Starting point is 01:22:19 let's uh let's do let's do everything we've we've we've ever spoken about so so why didn't why a question that would bring to mind like yes why didn't he employ you versus say okay we'll set up your own business and we'll we'll buy the produce super interesting right and this is uh i've thought about this quite a bit in that there was lots of people who i kind of went to for jobs at that stage i was like okay i'm i'm looking i know what i want to do now i want to be involved in sports technology and that's why i left the other business for like no i need it like i want to actually I want to do something now and I want to do something where I can build a career in and um and so I was going around to a whole bunch of connections a whole bunch of networks

Starting point is 01:23:01 and I kind of was asking for jobs and no one hired me and um it was kind of odd because I didn't really have any skill set and this is a really interesting thing in that I can understand why no one hired me because I just don't really I'm not really a specialist in anything and um you know people are you could be a salesperson I don't I don't want to be a sark I don't think I'm a salesperson I kind of think I'm just a I just like to start things and I like to put value in and um but everyone I went to they all there's probably two key people um a guy called Scott Gibson and Doug Ryder so they're on that kind of team side and another guy called James Begley who um is now my business partner and I went to both of them because they were both in the sports world

Starting point is 01:23:41 I said look like can I work for you and they're like no no no I don't think I don't think you you know you don't want a job and uh so i went to doug they probably knew you better than you knew you by the sounds of things man i think so i think they just thought hey all you have to do is take a bloody risk and you'll be all right like i think they they i was pretty risk adverse at that stage and pretty conservative and why just why were you risk averse well i think i naturally am and this is the interesting thing because i'm certainly not now i i feel risk and I feel fear, absolutely, but I don't worry about that stuff as much anymore. Was that from your upbringing?

Starting point is 01:24:17 I mean, you're a good Italian in Adelaide. I know a lot of hardworking Italians who, you know, they do very well on the sweat of their back. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you say that, right, because I think the whole reason I think the way I think is because of my family and that my whole life was, you know, at the dinner table, we always spoke about business.

Starting point is 01:24:39 My dad was self-employed and he'd had a bunch of different things. He'd traveled the world with businesses and he's done a bunch of things. My mom was always pretty conservative. She was a nurse, always believed in education and university. And that was the one rule in our household is, you know, because we all got dad's kind of business mindset in that we all wanted to take risks and do things. But, you know, it was good because mom actually then said,

Starting point is 01:25:05 well, you can go do that. Just make sure that you go to uni first. That was kind of the general acceptance in the household. I was the youngest of four kids. And that was, okay, we can take as many risks as we want, but we just have to get our degree first. And I think that was a good move. It was just probably mum's little backup plan for all of us

Starting point is 01:25:24 because she knew how scary and uncertain being in business is, and I think she probably just thought, okay, well, as long as my kids can fall back on something, then they can take the risks. Growing up, it was interesting. Like my grandfather was here to have a thumping business in real estate and my whole family is basically in real estate. But I didn't want to be involved in real estate.

Starting point is 01:25:49 But just at dinner tables from a very young age, I remember taking my investment book. I used to write all my notes about it. This was when I was eight and I'd be looking at it. I'd be tracking stock prices and gold. I was obsessed with gold then. And I'd take it to the family dinners and they would just – I remember just – they would rip into me.

Starting point is 01:26:06 I was like eight years old and my grandfather was like, no, you haven't thought about this. You haven't thought about that. My uncle would get into me. My dad was always really nice to me. But what I liked about it was that they just didn't treat me like a kid. They were like, well, no, that's not going to work because of X, Y, Z. But look at this. And it was just kind of an environment where you got to just – you got to learn.

Starting point is 01:26:27 I learned a lot from a very young age just about business and how it works because no one treated me like a kid. They just treated me like, whoa. Well, mate, I don't know of any eight-year-olds that walk around with an investment book, mate. What inspired you to even do that at that age, mate? Was it, I'm going to make money, I just want to make money, and gee whiz, the stock market looks like it's the go, I'm going to start tracking that?

Starting point is 01:26:55 I mean, at eight years of age, an investment book's generally the last thing I would see most eight-year-olds put some energy into. Yeah, and it wasn't even like a – look, I still didn't really understand. I actually didn't understand it at all. I just knew I just kind of could – I could kind of put some dots together. I thought, okay, this is like – and I could – I was getting pocket money. I was probably getting like, I don't know, $10 a month or something. And I think because I saw – and Dad would always keep me exposed to it.

Starting point is 01:27:25 And I think he probably said, oh, look, Telstra stocks are like $1. And I probably thought, well, I've got $10. I can buy 10 Tosha stocks and I think I probably did that at first whereas you know a house was $500,000 so I was like well I can't I can't buy that with my pocket money so I think it probably started like that it was like oh well oh I can I can buy that and um and I've just always loved business and I don't it's got nothing to do with the money because I really don't care that much about money it's just about I just love I love business I love creating things I love just you know simple profit and loss you know just i love those formers i love thinking about okay well

Starting point is 01:28:06 you know to be able to get that off the ground it's going to cost me xyz if i do that then if you take a margin oh cool actually that business might be worth something and um but i think the gold is what got me because i used to be able to see i used to track the gold prices it was a simple thing for me to do because one was one asset and it'd either go up or down every day and so i think for me i was like oh i could go buy some and because i had enough money to buy because I think at that stage it was like $200 an ounce. And I think I'd saved up a lot of money. This was probably more when I was about 10.

Starting point is 01:28:36 I'd saved up enough money and I thought, and this is a really interesting moment in my life as well, I think I could see that I could purchase that and I think that was the connection. It was like, oh, cool, well, that's something I can purchase. And as I saw the price go up and down, I'd be like, oh, if I had that, my money would be going up and down too. But I remember I went to mum and dad and then I was like,

Starting point is 01:28:57 I think I'm going to buy gold. And I was super supportive. they never lent me the money and I remember I remember this looking back on this I just remember thinking oh my dad

Starting point is 01:29:05 can you just give me the money no if you want to do it you go put your pocket money into it and I remember I never did it because I was too scared to

Starting point is 01:29:13 because I didn't want to lose my money and I thought that was a really important lesson because if they had given me the money I never would have learned that actually

Starting point is 01:29:20 you do have to take a risk to make some money and I just remember this day that they just refused to give me the money and I remember I was brought up exactly the same way

Starting point is 01:29:32 and I'm exactly the same way with my son he doesn't do it anymore but he used to come to me and say dad I want this dad I want that and I said no you can have it just as soon as you say I have enough money to buy I remember this fact in that because then over the months probably a year went and the gold price skyrocketed

Starting point is 01:29:48 and I remember just being really disappointed and dad being like well you know you had that opportunity and you can still do it now and I just kept missing it But I would see it grow and I'd be like, oh, I just want to get back in. But I just still wouldn't do it. Love it, mate. Something you touched on in the conversation there is your grandfather

Starting point is 01:30:05 and quite a few of the family were heavily involved in property. And you were very quick to say there's no way I was going to do that. Talk to me about that. Because I was the same. My father was in real estate and I vowed and declared I would never follow his footsteps yet. I've done a full circle and ended up back there and it's been very good to us. But what were your feelings on that?

Starting point is 01:30:29 Interesting. It's really – and I'll probably be doing the same. I'm probably coming – as I get older, I realize the value of property in a way. But I just didn't get excited by it. I just thought it was super boring. And I just thought it being – yeah, I just didn't – probably again because I was too young. I didn't really ever think about owning a house. and I don't know

Starting point is 01:30:54 it was just different whereas I felt like business was a bit more exciting it's a very it's a real life it's you know it's live it changes every day

Starting point is 01:31:01 there's challenges and I just probably there's more and so when I saw the stock market I saw it as investing in lots of different businesses

Starting point is 01:31:08 I didn't see it as like putting my money into getting it wasn't an investment it was more I'm buying a piece of that business and I almost felt a little bit of ownership of it

Starting point is 01:31:15 and whereas when I bought property I was like well I can't ever go to the house because I'm going to make money from it someone else is going to live there So I can't really tinker with it.

Starting point is 01:31:25 And also, I'd never had an income. And this is probably my one tie-up with property is I've never been one to want a wage or want an income. And I think for me, I always found, okay, as I got older and started to realize how to buy property, I thought, well, you need to have an income to be able to buy property because the bank won't lend you the money. And I just never wanted to be tied down by an income. And so for me, that was probably the thing. It was like, well, I'm never going to be able to buy property because I'm never going to have an income because I'm going to make my money in other ways

Starting point is 01:31:57 and it's going to be sporadic and I'm going to go probably more down the capital gains route. So that was probably why I never really bought into it. It makes sense. I mean, property is boring. I say to people, successful investment is the most boring thing you're ever going to do. There's nothing exciting about it because you do your due diligence, you select the asset that you're going to put your money into

Starting point is 01:32:21 and if it's good enough, you're not going to be selling it anytime soon. So it's like watching paint dry or grass grow, mate. And if it is exciting, then you're probably not making any money. So what I love about what you're saying is because the excitement of building a business, that will eventually fund value and income

Starting point is 01:32:43 that you can then park in property and then you continue to build your business while your wealth is looking after itself. Well, you hit an L on the head for me, so then I've come full circle for the last couple of years. So I got married and my wife, well, we actually, I've been with my partner from a very young age and that's a huge, I think, huge wealth builder in a way.

Starting point is 01:33:03 Now, we've had two incomes since we were very young and so we're probably able to do things quicker than most as well. But, you know, she had a massive goal to buy a house and that was a big dream for her. And, you know, again, I didn't really have any, but I thought, sure, I could happily have a house to live in. And now that I have one, I like tinkering and that sort of thing, which you can't do in a rental.

Starting point is 01:33:24 But for me, we ended up, we did buy a house, and we probably did buy it pretty early on. And then that was kind of then, like, okay, we've got our house now. We're in property. Now I'm going to do the fun stuff. And it was kind of, you know, and I think from that stage, and I started the business the week of buying a house. So that was another reason why I probably had a bit of fear.

Starting point is 01:33:47 But now that I've had an income and I pay myself an income and now that I have more of a stable income, I do actually start to get more involved. Okay, well, maybe I could invest in that property. But I've actually got a pretty strict plan around stock portfolio and ETFs and just doing a long-term, every month, put a bit of money in. And you're right, that's just boring, but it just works and get the compound interest and look, I'll probably do something similar with property

Starting point is 01:34:16 in the future as well because it's the same sort of model but I get my excitement from my business now and if I didn't have my business and I had a day job that I didn't love, I don't think I'd be doing that because I'd want to be doing something I can get my excitement from. Yeah, I love it. Now, I've gone off on a massive tangent sort of coming back to where we were, the business side with Doug. So talk to us about how that evolved. So he's given you the opportunity. My read of what you're saying is he said, okay, I like your idea. You set up a business

Starting point is 01:34:52 to do that and we'll be your first customer, which is effectively going to fund you for a period. Talk us through what that looked like and where it led to from there. Pretty much exactly right. So I think it was two and under, I went by a karate and I said, hey, Doug, yeah, I'm keen to do this. And basically, he said, well, if you go, well, then one of his networks, Scott, who's now one of the investors in our business, who's been a huge mentor to me, he was one of the backers of Doug's team. And I met him as well.

Starting point is 01:35:30 And he said, look, if you can give me a business plan in the next 24 hours, I'll consider it. Love it. So I remember I was down at my parents' holiday house and I was just working on this business plan the whole weekend and I sent it to them and I went very detailed and I still didn't know because I knew enough about business to create a business plan and some basic financials.

Starting point is 01:35:50 Which is probably what Scott was trying to understand, whether you really understood the financials to give him confidence to open the checkbook, mate. Yeah, and looking back at the financials, I was so wrong, but I think you're probably right. It was more like, okay, he knows enough, to be able to put it together. And so I learned that.

Starting point is 01:36:08 Then he goes, oh, cool, yeah, let's do it. And so he funded it for the team. Basically said, yeah, the team will be the first client, but we'll pay you up front. And that was the biggest thing. So he's like, look, even if you don't deliver it for another six months, like we understand you have to build the product, but I'm going to pay you now so you can have some startup capital,

Starting point is 01:36:26 you can go hire some people. And I had a mate who I was working with at the time, Brian, who's CTO, CTO and he was my co-founder so yeah basically with that I went to Ryan and said hey mate let's do it uh he joined as my co-founder and and um I still had a bit of doubt then though and this is this is another pivotal point is so Scott had signed on Doug had signed on they said yep got some money for you I had Ryan who was keen to jump in and be our technical co-founder so we had everything we needed and I remember going to to my mate James Begley who probably a lot of people but he's who's now a co-founder of my business as well but i had a coffee with him and he was

Starting point is 01:37:04 i went i went to him for a job before as well and this is this is kind of the coffee i said look i've got this opportunity this is the go but i'm just not sure yeah and i had just bought a house the week before i was like i just i don't know i don't think i'm sure ready for the risk and i was 23 just about to turn 24 at that time and bags who had gone through a lot of business His heartache had just, you know, just the most, you know, just put so much in his business, invested a lot of money and time and energy, and he just went, mate, you're an idiot. You literally have a paying client.

Starting point is 01:37:40 Mate, he'd be looking at you, shaking his head, I reckon, going, what are you even talking to me for? I would kill for the opportunity that's just been put on your table. Am I right? He's like, you have a technical founder who is amazing. You have money. he's like what do you need and i was like i don't know i just you know and he's like all right well i'll come in as well i'll back you i'll help you and that's kind of all i needed and and uh you

Starting point is 01:38:07 know and i you know i wanted him in the business too so i kind of said well how about you come in he's like no if it means that you're going to start it yes i'll join you and so kind of three of us kind of did did it and got it done and and it's kind of all i needed was with someone to almost just be like it's going to be okay and um and uh and the rest is history from then and we it just has kind of gone from there and um you know it's only been three and a half years it feels like a lot longer but i think during that time probably a year and a half after that it's probably clear defining point in in the business career where i thought uh it all kind of made sense to me like everything the whole world kind of made sense in that okay actually there's

Starting point is 01:38:51 the whole scared of money like i just don't see money as that anymore and and if you know or i needed to be able to see it work for me i needed to see a risk pay off for me to almost see the light and um that was so if begs wasn't now i'd probably still be trying to find a job working somewhere else well let's while you're talking about money let's talk about your relationship with money because it's a thing, again, it's a mindset thing that can make or break most people. It sounds like the pennies drop for you over time and you don't see there's such a mountain to overcome anymore.

Starting point is 01:39:32 What was your mindset on money and what is it now as a result of what you've been through? Yeah. so I've got a really I don't know how to describe it but my relationship with money is that I just don't even really care for it I just don't have any feelings towards it um I and and it's not like I grew up in a poor household like you know I grew up in a really good household where we had my we never went without and I don't want people thinking I came from a poor like it wasn't a oh you know we'll you know really tired with money and so I always thought money was everything it wasn't like that at all I just I don't know I just always was probably pretty conservative

Starting point is 01:40:09 with money i never really wanted to spend too much but i also never was never willing to invest it or risk it i'd kind of just earn it and keep it and i also wanted to do lots of things and i so i never really i wanted to ride my bike i wanted to do this and i kept trying to do these other businesses and so i just thought i don't want to take income because as soon as i take an income then i have to work for someone else and so i think i kind of just felt like well if i don't spend money i have to earn money and um and then obviously as i grew up and realized i have to pay the bills it became and my wife now is was probably the first one that told me to get a job and i think that was when i was probably like okay i needed i need to find something to be able to

Starting point is 01:40:51 make enough money to earn an income but i don't want the income to be my my uh i don't want it to be my source of wealth yeah because i just saw it i was like well i can only earn a maximum i I don't even know what, I don't know, say like $100,000 I always thought would be the maximum amount of money I could ever make a year. And I thought, well, that's, but what if I want to make a million dollars a year? Like it's just, I couldn't do it because I don't, there's not enough hours in the day. And I remember when I was at uni, I was sitting on a hill after class

Starting point is 01:41:25 and I was kind of just chilling out, having a coffee by myself. And I wrote down all the things I wanted in my life. and it's still pretty true now like I think I wanted a house nice house I wanted like a holiday house and I wanted some cars it was all materialistic things and it's very interesting the way like as you grow up you think differently but I remembered coming up with a number and I needed $636,000 a year was the income I needed to make to get everything I wanted and that was based on you how I could leverage that to get different loans and whatnot and I wrote that on a whiteboard i was like okay that's my target and and i remember trying to achieve that and it just

Starting point is 01:42:04 didn't make sense for me to have an income guys thought i could never earn that much money through an income and so then that's kind of the realization for me i was like all right well money if i'm tired to be able to earn that money i can't have a job and so then how else am i going to make money well it's going to have to come from business going to come from investments and and so I think it was just that's kind of when I don't know how to really describe this but I think it was that was when I kind of transitioned away from going okay well you know I need to kind of shake that almost scared to lose money feeling and kind of go all in on how do I make money how do I about actually make more money to be able to do these things and just not have to worry about

Starting point is 01:42:47 earning a yearly income and um but it wasn't probably until my thoughts on money now is that it is it is just a scorecard it doesn't mean anything um i have you know money is just a an ability for you to do things in your life and and half the time people want to be millionaires but they can be they can live a millionaire lifestyle off of 30 grand a year yeah um i've one of my very good mate of mine is is i admire him so much because he's paramedic he works part time and a good amount of money but like yeah part-time wage right and he's just lives so cheaply but he works four days on and has like 12 days off yeah and he's retired and i remember i went surfing with him and i remember this guy came up to him and there's a whole like oh mate

Starting point is 01:43:37 you're too young to be you know why aren't you working and trying to you know build your money And he's like, mate, I'm retired. And he was 26. He's like, I'm retired. I'm doing right now what everyone is working 50 years of their life to do. He's like, I've got a set. I live the perfect life. And you can't argue with that.

Starting point is 01:43:54 And I just, I see him and I just go, that is awesome because he's figured it out. Yeah, lovely. And so that's where I thought, okay, well, he doesn't need to be, he doesn't need to have millions in his bank account to be able to live that life. He's already living that life. And so that's when I thought, well, it's actually got nothing to do with the money. You don't need a million dollars to do that. It's just about what you want to do and how you do it.

Starting point is 01:44:18 So my relationship with money is I love it. I think it's great. I think it can be a source of positivity. It can be a source of bad things. But I think it's just a scorecard and allows you to do things. But for me, I just love making it. And it's got nothing to do with actually using the money. It's just I love business and unfortunately – well, unfortunately or unfortunately is the scorecard of business is money.

Starting point is 01:44:43 It's also the fuel that allows you to build and add value. That's the currency. That's actually a very good point in that raising capital for me is such a – it makes sense now to me. Whereas when I was probably younger, I didn't understand it. But if we're trying to build a business worth X, then if I'm raising X amount of money, but i'm going to use that and almost be the factory to make that become more money is that is a very simple formula and um and so then i don't get scared about very big numbers because like oh yeah it's going to cost me two million dollars but i'm going to turn that to 15 million

Starting point is 01:45:17 dollars yeah and it's just a simple formula but when you're younger you see a million dollars that's so much money but when you kind of see it black and white of like oh yeah well that's just it's just yeah yeah one plus two equals three kind of thing and and then yeah you start seeing money is as building you know you need it to build more value and by building value you're helping more people and it doesn't really become about the numbers at all yeah love it love it so just for the uh listeners benefit uh because my understanding is that lumen and hope are doing very well just just put some color around that because with some of the organizations and the elite sporting teams, groups, and whatnot that you're now working with.

Starting point is 01:46:00 Can you just put some shape around, you know, since that initial seed funding from Doug and Co, where is the business at now and what are you doing with who, where? Yeah. So, yeah, so Lumen Sports and Sports World is, you know, so I guess we're a tech startup. I guess we're probably just shrugging that startup-esque kind of phase in that we're starting to become what I'd say more of a solid business.

Starting point is 01:46:30 But as a tech company, we've relied on, I guess, raising capital to grow fast. And I think that's a big thing in tech companies and software companies is that although they're highly profitable business models, you kind of have to grow very fast to build some market share and that costs money. And so it's acceptable to, I guess, lose money for probably a period of time, probably around five years, at which stage you then want to have some market share and then start to grow kind of on your own bat. And so as a company, and software moves very fast, so you also have to continuously change it up and innovate.

Starting point is 01:47:08 And it's a very fast-paced environment. So Lumis Sports is all about interpreting complex athlete and team data for decision makers. So, you know, the Dougs of the world, he had probably 30 athletes with probably 30 different data points being collected on each athlete on any given day, training session or race day. He wanted to know who his best riders were, who was his fittest riders, who he sends to races, where they're located around the world, so then who's the quickest person to get to that race. And we built a platform that collected all of that data, analyzed that data, and basically fed him very key insights because I think you mentioned in the opening is that it's overwhelming all the data we collect right now. And actually, it's not about how much we have so much data. It's actually the value is in interpreting data or giving someone the ability to interpret data very easily and very quickly. Yep.

Starting point is 01:47:59 That was kind of the key we've done in sport. and so we make it really easy for decision makers to make decisions. Without knowing the ins and outs of it, Ben, and a little bit that you've mentioned during your discussion, it's a visual dashboard is basically what you're talking about so someone can look at it and go, right, and this is where it's at and because they can pick that very quickly, they can go, this is what we need to do.

Starting point is 01:48:25 Am I reading that right? Absolutely, yeah. So we, you know, maybe take a million different lines of data, but we'll show, Doug, you know, two out of your athletes are unhealthy or four of your athletes out of 50 are ready to race in this race. And so there's so much data behind that. But, yeah, we'll show him one widget, one card, which gives him basically a green or red light.

Starting point is 01:48:50 And so he doesn't have to look at all the data. He doesn't have to analyze it himself. We just say, yep, here's the dashboard. Go for these riders, not go for these riders. And so, yeah, that's kind of our sports side of our platform. And then last year during COVID, COVID was pretty rough with us as well. And, you know, we lost a lot of clients. Obviously, the sporting team shut down.

Starting point is 01:49:12 We were halfway through a capital raise and had a few investors pull out. And it was horrible, actually. It must have been very confronting, mate, because you're probably almost on the crest of a wave, I'm guessing. The money coming in, you've got investors committed. you're ready to pull the trigger and put the foot on the accelerator and bang, COVID hits. Pretty much, yep. And then so we weren't able to close our capital raise

Starting point is 01:49:35 because we hadn't reached the minimum. And I didn't have a lot of money left and a lot of our investors were fantastic. You know, they're like, yep, cool, we're in. Just, you know, start using the money in a way and kind of, you know, figure it out. And we extended the raise for another six months. But at the same time, and this is the thing in hindsight, right,

Starting point is 01:49:53 is everything happens for a reason. And I do believe that because we had one of our major sponsors actually coming back. It was basically from Doug's team. One of the sponsors from Doug's team came to us and said, look, we've seen the work you've done with the team for athletes. Is there any way we could start tracking our employee well-being during COVID when everyone's working from home? And we're kind of like, yeah, I reckon we could. And we were desperate for any opportunity at that stage. So we kind of went, yeah, all right, we'll see what we can turn around in a few weeks.

Starting point is 01:50:24 and that's kind of the start of what was lumen well-being at that stage um and it was based on our sports platform we rolled out to probably 10 to 15 companies signed up as our early adopters paid us for it uh it was a shit product it didn't really work like it did but it just it didn't suit the market it was very sports heavy but the but the the solution and the problem was there and people were paying for the solution and we just knew that it needed to you know we need to repurpose and purpose to build a platform for corporates. And we'll be onto something. And so we did that.

Starting point is 01:50:58 We raised money on the back of that. Then went basically into stealth mode, building that out for nine months. And we only launched Hope in March this year. And Hope is basically a software platform that quantifies well-being for decision makers of teams and organizations and essentially makes leaders great leaders.

Starting point is 01:51:18 So we have essentially this smart ecosystem where not only are we looking after the employee's well-being and showing that to teams so they can improve different departments and understand what's going on, why some teams are more stressed than others, why, you know, you try to catch things before they become big issues because obviously presenteeism and absenteeism in the workplace costs a lot of money and not only is it the right thing to do, but then how do we make those leaders actually be great leaders

Starting point is 01:51:45 by feeding them the data at the exact time so they can make a decision and actually do good in the workplace. So an athlete may be trending low for a particular well-being metric. We have this smart ecosystem that alerts leaders to say, hey, we think you should have a conversation with this person. Here's how you should do it and almost give them the skill set and make it as easy for them as possible because all they have to do is go, hey, Jack, how are you going?

Starting point is 01:52:10 Is everything all right? And then that then creates a conversation that all these issues come out of it and then they can make actual change. Yeah, I love this. I love this. Can you give me an example? So an example of some of the data measures or the data indicators. Talk me through what some of those might be and then what that tells the leader

Starting point is 01:52:33 and then what conversation they have. Can you sort of put a little example, paint that out for us? Yeah. So we have – so there's two components to the platform. There's the employee app, which we call the talent app. So we call our employees talent. And that is basically a tool which we've actually developed through all of our knowledge and experience in professional sport.

Starting point is 01:52:54 And so that's all around that. One thing we've learned is that the world's highest performing teams have the most well individuals in their teams. They have individuals who have high well-being. They are very self-aware. They know when they need to have rests. They know when they can push hard. And they also know they're also resilient.

Starting point is 01:53:12 And so we learned that pretty early on. And so we're building all these tools based on some research, some evidence-based research from a guy called Professor Michael Kelman, and so around well-being states. And we transferred that into HOPE, so we thought, okay, we need to build a tool for individual talent to be able to become more self-aware and understand the importance of self-awareness. And so the HOPE mobile app is all around building self-awareness. We also need to inspire people to take care of their own well-being. and everything we do is performance well-being it's not well-being you know to be happier or to be more joyful it's actually to perform better in your everyday life not just as an employee but in every aspect of your life and so we have a slightly different start step so the mobile app

Starting point is 01:53:57 teaches individuals to become more self-aware it then delivers inspirational content through high performers athletes politicians in a very engaging way so they have some journey series which talks about their own well-being journey and how they deal with high-pressure situations. And the idea is that's meant to bring these high performers off the pedestal and say, oh, they're actually like me too. They still get anxious before a race. They still get anxious before they go on stage.

Starting point is 01:54:22 They deal with this. They've got wife and kids. And then we have the expert series, which is experts in our well-being states of emotional well-being, mental well-being, physical well-being, sleep well-being, and then more of a culture and leadership and workplace well-being. and they are a bit more long-form content where it's very engaging, high-quality content

Starting point is 01:54:42 and they basically teach practical advice around those well-being states and how to improve them. We then have the leadership side of it is we're collecting a lot of that data and then we're basically just feeding it into some dashboards where it's almost a traffic light system where a leader can log on and see instantly which departments are trending low,

Starting point is 01:55:03 which individuals are trending higher low as well and so then they can have a conversation with those individuals when that happens. And then we also have the alert. So you could be, you know, as a leader, you could be on your way on the train into work and you'll get pinged saying, you know, John is trending low in his mental well-being today,

Starting point is 01:55:27 meaning he's stressed. Best you have a conversation first thing this morning. And here's, you know, instead of going and saying, hey, I saw your score's low, it's more of a, hey here's a here's a sentence to start the conversation hey john how are you how's everything going and then um you know from that point hopefully a conversation starts it's all about giving them the tools to have those conversations dynamic it's very dynamic rather than the three month review when you sit down and have the sort of cursory chat uh you you're basically reading

Starting point is 01:55:58 the pulse of the individual and then collectively the organization uh on the spot which is that's That's right, and we also learned that the best leaders already do that. And so basically all we're doing is creating a smart ecosystem that mimics the best leaders in the world and the best leaders who get the best team performances, and we're trying to bring that into every team. And that's exactly what we're trying to do, give them the same as our sports platform,

Starting point is 01:56:25 make sure they're interpreting the data the best they can so they can then make a decision and be the best leader they can be. That's brilliant, mate. Let's talk about peak performance for a minute. So how do you define peak performance, Ben? Yeah, I don't know how I define it. I know how I define it for myself, I guess. Yeah, let's start there.

Starting point is 01:56:49 I learned pretty early on that I need to be active and I need to exercise every single day to perform at my best. So that's something that I just know I need to do. the days that i don't i don't exercise are the days that i just don't have a good day yeah and and i'm pretty ruthless on this when a lot of people say oh it's you know when you have kids and when you get a family you know it's very selfish to go run but i thought well no it's actually the opposite in that yeah um for me that's how i'm a better person when i do that and i'm very self-aware that i need to do that every morning and if i don't do that i just don't

Starting point is 01:57:27 perform in any aspect of my life so i'm a grumpy bastard if i don't that's and and i've got it's got to the point where my good wife ben says you need to go and do some exercise and that's that's that's code for saying you're a grumpy bastard yeah but it's so true right and then this is one thing that i and i because i've done it from a young age as well it's it's where i feel most comfortable it's where i build my confidence from you know it makes me happier but it's also where I also build business networks out of that too, and all my best friends are people I exercise with. And so it's got every aspect of my well-being.

Starting point is 01:58:01 It's got my social well-being. It's got my physical well-being. It's got my mental well-being. I sleep better. It just has every aspect of my well-being in one thing, and that is exercise and generally followed by a coffee afterwards, so you get all that stuff. You've got it all covered there, mate.

Starting point is 01:58:20 I love it. so that's absolutely key for me um and then um i do that's probably just the foundation of any day and then once you once once you've done that um you can then tackle any issue that comes your way i also you know play around with my diet a bit um i go through a different different way but i kind of settled on something now a little bit more where i just eat less than i used to and i think as i got older i've realized i don't have to eat as much and and generally that makes me feel a bit sharp i don't feel sluggish and i feel like diet's a pretty key part of feeling good yeah um and then i just one thing i always do is i always you know i don't wear a suit or anything i'm just pretty

Starting point is 01:58:59 casually but even when during the work from home i always will shower again for everyone does but it's it's more i always take pride and i guess just uh getting dressed and i remember even when i work from home i still go get dressed and for me that's the key like cool i'm crossing the line i'm now working yeah um and then once i'm working i'm at work with i i'm very very clear cut with um i'm at home and i'm relaxing and when i'm on and i'm performing it doesn't always mean that i'm i stay focused but i i just uh i've just never really understood uh or not understood but just for me i i do need to have very clear cut lines with with when i work and when i don't work or when I'm required to perform and not perform, and I protect that.

Starting point is 01:59:44 And then I get lots of sleep, and I make sure before I go to bed, I do a stretch for probably half an hour, a bit of like a yoga slash meditation. It's a bit of a hybrid, but for me, that's my winding down. And then I read before I go to bed, and I have the best sleep ever. And then I wake up and do it all over again. For me, that's my foundation. How many hours a night do you sleep, mate? Yeah, interesting, actually.

Starting point is 02:00:11 Probably, still probably not much. I probably only get six and a half hours, which is probably more than a lot of parents out there, but I don't have kids or anything. But for me, that's probably what I need. I probably feel better on seven and a half to eight. That's probably what I actually need, but I can still perform pretty well on six and a half.

Starting point is 02:00:29 But I nap a lot. Even at the office, I go in and have a 15-minute nap, and that's kind of all I need. So do I. Well, I do a couple of 20-minute meditations beginning and end of the day that just sort of calms the space. But I'm very partial to it, particularly the sort of mid-afternoon exercise. I'll just grab a 10- or 15-minute nap, and then I'm back on it, and away we go.

Starting point is 02:00:53 How great is it? I think people will just have coffee and try to push through, but it's 15 minutes out of your day or 20 minutes out of your day, and you're just so much more productive. So good. It's so good, mate. and some people sort of dig me about it, but it's like, well, don't knock it until you try it.

Starting point is 02:01:12 We've got this sort of blinkers on about how you have to go hard, you have to go all day, so you're right. People pump themselves up with caffeine and every other damn thing. I think that's a key point you made there, right? Like peak performance for me is about output, and it's all about the output. And so I don't care if you have to work 20 hours a day to get that output or you could be working two hours a day of actual work

Starting point is 02:01:40 and still get the same output. It's all about the output. And so if you're having a rest for 20 minutes, some people might say that's lazy, but you'll output more than they potentially will because they're trying to power through for eight, nine hours. Totally agree, mate. 100% agree.

Starting point is 02:01:56 Mate, quick question. This probably sounds a bit odd. And why Hope? I mean, I can guess why Hope because it gives you hope. But the H-O-A-P, how did you come up with that tag? Yeah, yeah. So it's probably the one time I actually got a proper agency involved to name it. But they were really good.

Starting point is 02:02:14 So it actually stands for Human Optimization and Performance. And so, yeah, it means that. That's what we do. We are all about optimizing human performance. And also the Hope brand is a little bit nicer and, yeah, Hopefully, it brings a bit of hope. Yeah, it's good. It's good playing words.

Starting point is 02:02:31 I love it because it does, it gives you hope about the future because you're able to monitor and know where you're at and therefore what you need to be doing to keep yourself on track. Yeah, it's awesome. Mate, an area that I'd love to dig into a little bit as we sort of bring it to a close is the whole startup challenge because, I mean, if listeners that have tuned in today and have had no exposure to the startup world,

Starting point is 02:02:56 they go, well, how easy is that? if we can if ben can do it he puts it out there and someone throws some money at him where he goes you and i know that that is not the case and that that there's a a multitude of startups that don't get anywhere uh i'd love you to talk through a couple of key aspects of that for me if you don't mind and and you sort of touched on some of this that the the startup capital funding equation i mean you've done it a number of times now can you talk us through what your approach has been to that and and and how you've managed to actually get in a position where uh investors are comfortable committing pretty sizable sums of money at what you're looking to build yeah i think it's you

Starting point is 02:03:39 know so many different aspects of all this and i often find myself defending myself to people who probably don't really understand the startup space and that you know every single business in the world was once a startup and so it's not a new thing you know yeah apple was a startup Google is a startup, but even the local hardware store is a startup. And so I think people see startups as being these big, risky ventures, but every single business is a startup. And so I think the difference is what people define as a startup now is probably more technology and probably fast growth.

Starting point is 02:04:13 And so they see it as being this – so the startup world is all about – or the reason why people invest in startups is the return on investment and it can be quite high in that you can – and generally, they're business models that are very profitable. And I think a lot of people don't understand this because they always see that a lot of tech companies lose money. But the actual business model behind it is incredibly profitable. They choose to lose money deliberately to gain market share,

Starting point is 02:04:41 which I'll jump into in a moment on how that kind of works. Pardon me. But that is kind of the nuts and bolts of it, is that they're these vehicles that can generate wealth very quickly when done right. And so that's why investors want to be involved in it because they can put some money in and then within five years' time they can have a significant increase in their investment

Starting point is 02:05:05 just due to how fast these move. But they take a lot of money to do. And so they're kind of black and white. Some have self-funded and there's been some pretty good examples of people who've self-funded and bootstrapped a billion-dollar business, which is awesome to see. But the majority of them are a core group of key founders who are technical. You have a combination of technical founders and market insiders generally.

Starting point is 02:05:33 So investors want to see a good, strong technical team. And they also want to see a team that really understands the market and the problem that they're trying to solve. And that's kind of what they're investing in. And I think we mentioned this before, the podcast, in that execution is 99% of it. The idea is 1%. And so most of the time, the idea changes as you go through.

Starting point is 02:05:54 And so it's all about the execution. So they're investing in teams. Generally, the investors who invest understand that any business, no matter how big, it's been started by people. And it all is just about people working together. And if people have the attributes, so all the things that they look for, generally hard work, resilient, kind of all in. you barely find a startup founder who's not all in

Starting point is 02:06:19 or you'll be able to see it very quickly when they're not. So generally, it's kind of these passion projects of people's life's work behind them. And so as an investor, why wouldn't you jump in? Generally, investors, there's multiple different types of investors, but the individual investors are generally ex-business people themselves. And so they kind of almost, they've probably made a bit of money in their own environment

Starting point is 02:06:44 and they kind of understood how much fun it was and they probably, they kind of see it as a, you know, it's almost back to the starting point for them. It's having their kids again, exactly, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, and they also understand it. They just understand how much value can be created

Starting point is 02:07:00 in a quick period of time. So to kind of quickly give a rundown on how, I guess, technology starts working, you know, we're not defined by a one-year P&L and, you know, they're still instruments that we use to determine our growth and if we're moving in the right direction. But I think a lot of people get trapped into this notion of, well, you have to be profitable in three years because that's just what all small businesses do, right?

Starting point is 02:07:22 And I was having a discussion with someone else. I said, well, whoever said that your financial records had to be in a 12-month, why can't it be 10 years? You know, why can't it – instead of a year, you work in a decade. And that's kind of what technology companies do. They know they need market share, so they choose to raise a significant amount of capital. because if they can get to $100 million in REV and then they want to be profitable then, well, they can spit out $40 million a year in profit.

Starting point is 02:07:49 Whereas if they're profitable at $1 million in REV, well, they're only going to grow a very small amount and the amount of money they're actually going to be spitting out is very small. And so it's actually if you spend a lot of money to get to a very sizable size, then you can flick the switch to profitability and then it's a lot of profit and very valuable.

Starting point is 02:08:10 And so investors know that they're in it for that kind of probably that decade. It's more of a 10-year path, but if it works, this extraordinary amount of wealth you can provide. And you can also go global very quickly and help a lot of people very quickly and your products can be used by all regions very quickly, which is something that is traditionally being limited to a lot of businesses. Yeah, very well said. One of the key skills that I hear from our mutual friend, Andrew Montessi,

Starting point is 02:08:43 that you bring to the table is that you're one of those guys that's just not scared to hit anyone up. Talk to us about that and the courage and conviction you have in terms of just not being scared to ask anyone anything. yeah i think it's it's a like i'm no hero in terms of like i still get scared i still feel like oh you know be a bit embarrassing if if they if they were angry by me reaching out but then i just you kind of always come back to is like well i don't like in a way like i'm not defined by what they think of me and if it just means that like what's the worst i can have when

Starting point is 02:09:18 they say no then it was i'm in the same position i was in before i even thought about sending it so So for me, it's just I've never understood why people wouldn't. It is scary. Like cold calling people is really scary, but you do it a couple of times. And if you can take rejection, then it doesn't really matter. And I think that's the thing. You have to have thick skin. But then you quickly realize that just what's the worst that can happen?

Starting point is 02:09:42 Someone just goes, oh. Actually, the worst that happens is those people, the people you want to take notice of, you go, shit, that took balls for that person to do that. Okay. They're now on my radar. They may not do work with you or get what you want at that moment, but you're on their radar.

Starting point is 02:09:57 Exactly. And the right people will think exactly that. If he's got the courage to do that, then that's a bit of an indicator of other things for the right people. No, I love that, mate. Mate, we've only really scratched the surface today, so I'm going to park the conversation to come back to you at a later point to dig in a little bit deeper.

Starting point is 02:10:16 and I think given the growth that the Lumen group and Hope are enjoying it would be good to track your trajectory by teching in again given the massive moves that you're making in that space

Starting point is 02:10:33 but what I'd love to do mate is shift into what I affectionately refer to as the ambush series which are the typical podcast fast five and the first of those mate It is, what's your favorite quote and why? My favorite quote and why is probably a couple of things.

Starting point is 02:10:55 I'm always very, yeah, I couldn't come up with one. But for me, it's probably, I have so many different quotes and all the guys around here and girls would pay me out about half the quotes that I make up and try to stick in the ground. But it's probably, happiness is only real when shared with others. That's probably a big one. that um and that was actually by i forgot his name some of the candles there's a really interesting story of he was kind of disheartened with the world and thought he would go to alaska on his

Starting point is 02:11:23 own and uh he'd be happy there and and then he'd end up dying from food poisoning and realize that actually no happiness is is actually only real when you share it with others and i thought that's pretty powerful very powerful and then the other one was life is what happens when you're busy making other plans which is a John Lennon one which is so true we're always in our head about strategy planning strategy planning but actually life is the stuff that actually happens when you're doing that it's it's the it's the uh it's the boring dinner meals when you're prepping dinner it's the uh you know train rides into work it's it's all of that and that's it's actually so beautiful in its own its own way and uh yeah it's pretty pretty magical spot on it's certainly you

Starting point is 02:12:03 enjoy the enjoy the moment you might be planning for the future but you've got to be enjoying the moment otherwise what are you what are you doing it for i love that mate you've probably heard from what you've said already you're an avid reader so what would be the top book that you'd recommend we have a read of and why yeah i've got a lot um but the number one book that i can stands out by far is called shoe dog um which is the founder of nike yeah we make you make every every employee that starts here um gets a brand new coffee shoe dog on their desk on their first day yeah and uh But, yeah, I just think it just perfectly describes the startup journey and everything about it, you know, the personal struggles,

Starting point is 02:12:46 the business struggles, how unorthodox it is and just how uncertain it is and how it's not linear, which I think is fantastic. Yeah, it's a great read, actually. I love that book. This one's a little bit left field, Ben, but most Aussies believe that they pay way too much tax. What's the top legal thing that you've done to minimize the tax that you pay?

Starting point is 02:13:08 Yes, this is an interesting one. And maybe this is – maybe I've never probably really had a problem with paying tax because I probably never earn enough. But it's probably because, you know, I do – I don't – yeah, it's an interesting one because I hold my investments for a long period of time. And so I almost delay my tax. I haven't really had a sizable taxable event because I haven't had any capital gains or exits yet.

Starting point is 02:13:37 So a lot of my wealth is tied up in things that are building more and more wealth and I think I try to reduce my income as much as possible because that's the thing that you get taxed the most on is your personal income. And so if I can reduce that as much as possible and actually generate wealth through other means, that's probably the way that I do it. I'm almost just delaying my tax rather than reducing it. Well, and you're building wealth at the same time and you're allowing, rather than hand over the cash to the tax office, you're allowing it to exponentially grow and effectively reinvesting it by leaving it there.

Starting point is 02:14:15 So, can I ask, where are you building that wealth? Yeah, so obviously my business in the Lumen Group is my shares in that. I'm an employee of this business but also a shareholder. So I'm in control of building the value of my shares and that, and that's probably my biggest wealth. If that goes well, that will be where most of my wealth comes from. But at the same time, I do pay myself an income and I do distribute portions of that into ETFs mainly,

Starting point is 02:14:44 so electronically traded funds, which I do on the stock market. And that's just, like you said, just a boring old every month, put a bit of money in into a low-cost ETF index fund which just tracks the average market returns of 6% to 11%. And in 30 years' time, I'll start using that. But the reason I did that and not in my super fund is because, and I may be wrong with this, and it's certainly not financial advice,

Starting point is 02:15:13 but I feel like I can leverage off of that. So it's still there. I don't ever have to take it out, but I can. Exactly, you can. Yeah, absolutely, you can. And no, great thoughts and a great plan because what I love about the index fund side of things, very similar to the property if it's set up the right way, is it's pretty much set and forget. You just get out of the road and let it do its thing while you focus on building your business.

Starting point is 02:15:39 So that's awesome. While we're on the investment subject, what's the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've received today? Yeah, it's an interesting one. Like, the worst piece of investment advice for me is probably haven't really had it. It's probably because I probably don't listen to people who, you know, the worst advice probably comes from people who don't really get it and I probably don't really take their thoughts seriously anyway.

Starting point is 02:16:09 And then the ones that I do take seriously, I'd probably have a really strong discussion with them about it and get to a point. So I wouldn't say I really had too much worse. Probably, yeah, I don't know. I don't really have many people tell me investment advice. What about the best? The best is, yeah, it's probably, and this is a little bit left of field,

Starting point is 02:16:29 but it was when James Begley told me to stop being an idiot and go in and start my own business. I think that was something, don't take the easy option of getting income. Actually, take the risk and start your own business because that is single-handedly has changed my life. And single-handedly being my ability to generate the most amount of wealth that I would ever be able to create anywhere else. And again, I haven't got anything yet from it,

Starting point is 02:16:57 and it's still a long way to go, but that is the ability to generate your own wealth in your own businesses just far exceeds anything you can do without that vehicle. Totally agree. Yeah, 100%. Final one on the fast five. What's a personal habit that you believe contributes most to your success today? Yeah, for me, it's the exercise.

Starting point is 02:17:19 It's every aspect of my life improves when I have structured training and exercise in my life, and I like to think I still try to train like a pro athlete in a way, and for me that's so vital to everything I do in my life. Yeah. Given your sort of past interest and exposure in the triathlons, is that the work that you're still doing? What's your structured training look like now?

Starting point is 02:17:50 What are you doing? Yeah, so I mainly just run now, and I still try to set myself goals. I do one ultra marathon every year, and then I try to do some smaller, kind of shorter runs. I like to do the park run every Saturday, which for me is just such a cool thing. It's a 5K community event, and you get a group of guys out there who like to race. It's all fun and games, but, you know, it's just I love that.

Starting point is 02:18:14 I love competing and racing still. so mainly just running now and I surf a little bit but it's mainly running surfing's been a new thing for me which has been cool to learn

Starting point is 02:18:22 learn a new skill and learn a new hobby but running and it's just doing my usual one speed set probably two speed sets one long distance set

Starting point is 02:18:30 and some easy runs in between and all my best mates run so I get to hang out with them and we get to do some old sessions we used to do

Starting point is 02:18:37 back in the heyday and it's good fun love it love it mate final question then if I gave you a microphone that spoke to every

Starting point is 02:18:45 single one of the 7.7 billion odd people that are alive in the world and gave you a minute to talk, what would you say? This is a really interesting one. Look, I think for me it's – actually, yeah, for me this is the thing that occurred in my life which has completely changed the way I think about everything is that every single thing that is being built in this world has been built by people. and when you realize that there's no experts, no one was an expert, they were just a person who became an expert,

Starting point is 02:19:19 who had been able to do things and people have backed them and when you realize that every little, every business, a table, a computer, everything has been built by people and when it kind of clicks, it's hard to understand it but when it clicks and you kind of realize that people are backing you to do things, it becomes very clear that everything is possible. You realise that everyone has their own fears and anxieties and joys

Starting point is 02:19:45 and you just realise how obtainable everything is in the world. And so that would probably be the number one, is that everything in this world is built by people. And I think a lot of people think that they can't do something because it's been built by someone who's smarter and stronger and better than they are, have more access to money than they do. But at the end of the day, everyone is just people And so everyone has the same opportunity to achieve greatness.

Starting point is 02:20:11 And, yeah, that's probably it. And you're saying that very well. And as you mentioned earlier in the conversation, it's just not being scared to have a crack. That's what it boils down to because it doesn't have to be the best idea or the newest idea or the greatest innovation either. But if you've got the persistence and the passion to see it through, it's that passion that other people will see that they'll get behind you and help you make it happen

Starting point is 02:20:41 well there's probably something on that just as well and that you know and i was just uh a 60 second uh billboard but uh you know if i had two minutes i'd probably then you know tell everyone your goals and ambitions because everyone's too busy with their own stuff to care about stealing anything that you've said um but it's most the time is actually if you talk about your ambitions you talk about your goals firstly it keeps you accountable but it actually you know people want to help and and they actually will go oh that's kind of cool oh yeah i'll help you for that and then you get this galvanization of momentum behind you because people are supporting you then more people support you and then yeah when you tell everyone everything you

Starting point is 02:21:18 want to achieve it's uh you're opening yourself up to for people to help you achieve that love it mate it's absolutely true and how many people keep things to themselves because they're fearful that They'll either be laughed at, scorned, or someone will think it's stupid rather than just put it out there. And by putting it out there, you attract the people who believe what you believe. And once you've got that tribe together, then you can move mountains. There's no question about it. Mate, really love the chat.

Starting point is 02:21:49 You've got a lot of energy and a lot to contribute. I'm looking forward to getting you back on to, as I say, track the trajectory and the success that you'll continue to have with the Lumen Group and Hope and really appreciate you spending time on GetInvested today. Thanks, mate. Really appreciate it.

Starting point is 02:22:06 And thanks so much for the opportunity to talk because I can talk. You do it very well, mate. It's worth listening to. So I appreciate your time. Thanks, Ben. Thanks, Matt. Cheers.

Starting point is 02:22:18 Get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes. Just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast.

Starting point is 02:22:43 So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.

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