Relentless Customer Leader Podcast

Dr Chris L. Brown (00:02.05)
Fantastic. Well, great. Welcome everyone. And I'm here with David Kenny and really excited to have this conversation with David. David is someone that has had an incredible career of great leadership and working in all sorts of different businesses, in the accounting profession, in a lot of startups and advising startups for a long period of time. And I think a

place to start is to really go back to the real early days for you in terms of your own sort of business journey. Where did the spark to become involved in business come from? Can you think about the sort of early memories of where you were inspired to get involved in business in some way? I think it goes back a long time to my first job where I used to get in, it sounds terrible, I used to get into a van

with this guy and a number of other kids. Now these days you think, what the hell? But we were going around the streets and we'd go knocking door to door at night time. So who answers the door at night anyway? And we'd be selling orange juice on a subscription business. So it was almost like my first B2B or B2C actually, subscription business. And we had to get someone to sell, to buy an entire 52 weeks of delivery of orange juice.

Big sell. Big sell. It's a big commitment. for whatever reason, I excelled at doing that. And I would always, my numbers were exceptional. I'd do this while I was at school, but it was my first job. And then I got flown down to Melbourne to train people on essentially how to sell. And then, you know, been taken over to Fiji. And I also found that I was very good at negotiating the step in

at the stalls, the open areas that people were selling products. And my stepfather at the time was horrified that I'd be negotiating with these people. But I always found just having a conversation and keeping it light and fun and that sort of thing was stuff I really enjoyed. and then somehow or another I ended up in accounting, but yeah. But I found my way out. You really started, I mean, as a young person, as an entrepreneur, right?

Dr Chris L. Brown (02:22.699)
you sort of engaged in that activity as a young person. And then, how did you then transition from doing that and then thinking about getting into accounting? Well, my stepfather at the time who worked for Bond Corporation, and my mom's not married to him anymore, but great influence. And he said, chartered a council and her at the earth. I had no idea what that meant. But he said, look, if you look around every board, every major

corporation is run by accountants or a lawyer or something like that, so you should be one of those. But I like science. But he said, no, that. So I joined this very entrepreneurial accounting firm and I thought, no, I've made a terrible mistake here because everyone's adding up numbers and I thought, this isn't me. But then I saw this guy who was, everyone was running through the corridor when he'd get out of the lift to catch up with him. And he'd be then on the phone.

screaming at clients, I'm thinking, can someone scream at their clients? He must be very good. So I see him going to the lift and I run to the lift and get in the lift and say, what are you doing today? And he told me, I'm buying a company son. I go, wow, which one? He said, I can't tell you. I'm going, but if I were you. And I thought, he's very entrepreneurial and he was strategic and things like that. So I quickly thought, I can't quit.

week one, there must be something here and I need to find out what it is that makes these exceptional advisors good at what they do and why they're indispensable as opposed to historians of the information. And so I discovered that and then I also worked with, in corporate, in the firm, we set up a corporate division. Me and one of my other partners.

and he was exceptional at the detail, exceptional, exceptional partner. But I found myself, I really enjoyed the transaction side and working out how to position a company to sell it. And so through that process, we ended up selling, being experts of selling hundreds of companies. And then the natural bet was then when you sold companies, you'd meet entrepreneurs and these entrepreneurs would think you're helping me with this and that.

Dr Chris L. Brown (04:49.095)
And I'd say, is much more interesting than what I'm doing and I want to spend time helping them. that then, I ran into a really clever tech dude that I call him. And he said, can you help me? And we ended up sorting him out. And then he said, you should join, come on, have a beer with me down at Everly. And there's this guy called Nicky Shevak and come along.

you know, look at joining StartMate. So I'm not a tech dude. And I met Nicky and he said, well, we don't have one of you. Like you've sold hundreds of companies, so love to have you. And that was another starting point of being exposed to more really clever entrepreneurs. And then also through a really good lawyer that was on the board of a couple of the university student unions said

A lot of these really smart professors need help negotiating how to spin their IP out of the universities and how to negotiate and how to position what they're doing and sell and get into another country and I go, I can do that. so I some really great entrepreneurs through that process, made lots of friends, still do mentoring at universities for very clever people.

I just enjoy helping people. enjoy the business side of being able to work out how does the product need to be positioned, what's the customer need, how do we sell it, how do we price it, what's it solve. I it's just stuff I like. I love learning and seeing an economic outcome which is an outsized return. One of the first businesses I sold was It's

a lot of money versus more money than most people have seen in a lifetime. I thought, this is what I love. This is what it's all about, is getting these outcomes and helping. then, not just, is it luck or what was the DNA of the process around how to create those outcomes? What do you need to do? And what are the real things? There's so much noise out there about you should do this, you should do that.

Dr Chris L. Brown (07:14.978)
dissecting what the key things are, and more so not the answers, but the questions you need to ask. So if you ask the right questions, you'll get the right outcomes. And knowing that where to start, what to listen to, what to say no to. And that, it's almost like a lifelong game, a lifetime game of chess. can never become the best, you just have to keep striving for mastery at this. And it's like, capital allocation, hiring.

raising capital as well and knowing what to spend it and what order and what best to make and what timing you're looking to see things pay off through to leadership and training and culture through to building sales teams, choosing co -founders, deciding who you will let invest in your company as a founder. So auditioning investors rather

called him the digging bowl out. So. It's a big puzzle, isn't it? I mean, it's a huge puzzle that, you know, you're looking to solve essentially. Yeah. And with that early experience, you you mentioned this guy that was, you know, yelling at his customers or whatever initially, and that was like, what's this guy on about? What did you find out from him in terms of his process and the way in which he sort of interacted and thought about sort of developing business and relationships with customers?

things that stood out, you saw how he sort of approached a new customer conversation or something like that, was there? Yeah, that's a good question, because I've never really thought what was it about him that was successful. He was exceptionally good at putting a deal together and also the tax knowledge around that. But he wasn't afraid to stay out of his comfort zone, I guess, because he would be

saying we're gonna raise money for this, we're gonna do an IPO, we're going to sometimes do things that you might think you have no right to believe you can do, but somehow or another, and being connected and

Dr Chris L. Brown (09:28.929)
again, knowing how to put a deal together, it would happen. Quite bold. Yeah, bold. Yeah, like I've heard lots of people talk about the analogy of what's an entrepreneur? it was Christopher Skase and Alan Bond. But now an entrepreneur is a household word almost. And we've had entrepreneurs for a very long time, but we potentially have had very much of an economy

Yeah, we've got some really good entrepreneurs, but it's become more commonplace and as Australia's become more on the map with developing outstanding companies that have had critical success globally, it becomes more of a mainstream and people have an understanding of this accelerator, there's lots of grants that people can get access to, maybe not enough, but there's still lots of avenues

And also success breeds success. So you're seeing a lot of the early stage Canva's and safety cultures and a whole bunch of exceptionally good companies that are getting some money off the table and that's going back into new companies. And that knowledge more importantly is that hard fought knowledge is being shared. Some of these guys are helping other companies and that's what it takes.

great accelerators around, but it's just all fascinating. Yeah, it's sort of a flywheel, isn't it? A system that sort of builds momentum over time and you get some success and role models and then you can kind of develop out of that. People see it so they can imagine it. Not everyone's got an imagination. But yeah, look, we've had some exceptional founders in Australia. mean, one of my very close friends is,

founders of BigCommerce, listed on NASDAQ. There's just so many good examples and it's great to see and there needs to be more. How would you describe him? mean, his style of leadership and what he's been able to sort of achieve. Are there things that stand out that are really sort of clear signals of his sort of style? Well, I think the thing that really strikes me

Dr Chris L. Brown (11:56.626)
him is that he's one of the most intelligent people and hardest working and works things out and just is, but then brings the team along as well. And they weren't afraid to ask for help. They openly admit, you know, there's not a lot written about them and particularly this guy. But he, they sought out really good mentors in the US.

they, it's that knowledge is very, particularly 10, 15 years ago, it was not mainstream, certainly not in Australia, but being able to access that information and also getting on a plane going over to Silicon Valley, which is like talent and finance and knowledge dense and going to see that. But they also went and found some great people in Texas and Dallas.

Austin rather and You you just go and learn that's that's again you learn yeah, it's a learning catapult It's a rate of learning. Yeah, yeah, and now you're prepared to do the work Yeah, but also then and what they both did the founders Which was really I think a very Smart thing was they they they found someone they felt there was a better CEO than they

So they appointed that person. They took it to a very large number. They said, but it needs to go to this number now. And so that's a, the self -reflection and understanding, you know, what is my season? Where are my limits? And they wouldn't have been able to get a good CEO if they hadn't done the amazing initial work. Like one of the hardest things in the world is to build a piece of software that people buy.

and keep buying and they did that really well. And then they found a person that also, and they also found a COO who was one of the most exceptional people that I felt was just an incredibly good hire of people. And that's one of the biggest game changers is being able to find the right people, but also keep them on the path of wanting to do a good job as well and being.

Dr Chris L. Brown (14:24.91)
might sound silly, everyone wants to do a good job, but people know when they're in a good team and they know that that leadership is keeping them on track and setting them up to win and challenging them and making sure they feel part of the place and all going after a common target and that cohesion of what he was able to also achieve as well. And it takes a number of people.

When I spoke to him, he would openly say, well, I was just part of the team. And that's also, it wasn't that I'm like boss, you I think that's important that people feel like we're all equal, we're all a we're all gonna get this job done and we're all gonna chase it, we're gonna win. Yeah, yeah, strong team orientation. Strong, strong team orientation. And when you reflect on your own sort of leadership style, and I mean, you've had a very successful career with Hall -Chad Week and building that business as a partner there.

over many years. How would you approach things? How would you think about the team and building that culture and the business over time? Well, mean, a professional services organisation is very different in some ways to a product company. you need a lot of people. You need to keep them productive. You need to train them. You need

do a whole bunch of things to keep the oxygen in the tank high. And so I think the similarities are that people want to know, they want transparency, they want to know how we're going, they want to know where we're going. They want to know what the leadership is. They want to know, do we have a plan? Are we consistently clear? Are we consistently delivering?

and treating them the right way and training them as well. giving them, and sometimes it may not be technical training. It might be, know, so -called soft skills, which in my opinion are hard skills. Because, you know, I used to say this all the time, that if you, no matter what you did, if you could communicate better, you'd do it 30 % better. You could be the world's best anything, but if your communication skills are up there too, you'd do it 30 % better.

Dr Chris L. Brown (16:53.006)
Yeah. Because you can be an expert at any discipline, people need to know what you know, but they only care about that once they know how much you care. you've got to look after your team. It's a hard job. And I think that COVID set up a situation where there was just so much expectations on the corporation.

it became their everything in some ways because they were stuck and it was a terrible situation. there was so many different types of leaders. There's people that can be charismatic. There's people that can be visionary. There's all sorts of different things that a leader could be, but what a leader needs to be. I think one of the key things is integrity.

do what you say you're gonna

tell bad news early, be open and upfront about what is beyond your control. And there's magic pill or magic formula. It's just really, know, knowing it's one of the most important things you've got to do is you've got to leave, you've got to train, and you've got to bring people along. And if you don't do that, your customers won't be happy.

So I have this expression where I say, you put customers first, but team are very like, or in the Olympics at the moment, split second, like hundreds of a second, second. And if you do that, and then your stakeholders third, your shareholders, you win. So isn't that what you're trying to do? Don't put yourself first, put your customers and team first.

Dr Chris L. Brown (18:56.101)
A team likes doing a good job. A team genuinely likes seeing progress and winning and all that sort of stuff. setting that up so that can happen, equipping people, giving them the agency and the accountability and the belief and the training, it's the role of a leader. Yeah. When you think about experiences over time, are there particular

Leadership challenges that you see come up time and time again. There are sort of things that leaders need to overcome You know do maybe it's hiring related or it's you know Yeah, I think that leaders is It borrows from concepts of sport and there are similarities but in the context of business it's essentially the head of the team and

The challenges that they have, they've got to decide, where do I spend my capital? Do I hire more people now? Do I put more money into training or staff? Buy more staff? Pay more on marketing? That capital allocation is, I think, the right top of the tree in terms of the decision making because what leaders need to do is they need to make better decisions.

and you're not always going to get it right, but you've got to be having that thirst for learning and doing it better, having a little bit of humility without appearing weak. So the things that I see the mistakes made is that sometimes they're not good leaders. They're good operators and sometimes people get promoted to a leadership role that are just good operators. They get into something and that's why when

started writing this book, said, how do you actually set up a business? Well, first thing is you gotta look at yourself and work out, what are my weaknesses? What are my gaps? What's my style? How do I work with other people? Am I suited to this? Am I a better lieutenant? Am a better technician? Own yourself, own your position in terms of your skills and your preferences.

Dr Chris L. Brown (21:25.25)
I think sometimes you see a poor leader is when they talk about my subordinates or they talk

Dr Chris L. Brown (21:37.284)
you know, their remuneration first. Yeah. It's all about them. It's all about them. you you instead you look to well, how am I going to do a great job? How are we going to see things take care of themselves? How are we going to be this level of competency, this level of our reputation? Because it's all about repeat business.

There is no business if it's one -off. So you gotta do a good job and you gotta build the thing that builds the thing. And then you've gotta make sure you have the right people wanting to stay in the team and so training

Dr Chris L. Brown (22:21.933)
self -fulfilling prophecies of I get better, they get better. But my job is to help them get better so we can all, because there's no leverage in one person. You've got to be able to work out how do I get technology, people, capital allocation, so therefore hiring and spending, right? Because a lot of these companies and the CEOs are coming, sometimes the companies are successful in spite of them.

And sometimes it's because of them. And we don't necessarily have a real level of knowledge sometimes of what the reasons are. When you look at executive remuneration and boards, and who might be on the panel to decide, do they really know what the reason is? What is a board now? What does a board do?

That's a good question, I think. How much of it is spent on governance? How much is it spent looking at are we taking enough risk? How much is spent on is the CEO a good leader? Are they getting results? they short -termism, long -term? What are the bets they're making? Are they making the right bets? Are they making more good calls than bad calls? Yeah. Also, how are they shaping the culture, which is not something that's kind

often on the boards of gender, isn't it? Well, the culture comes back to what we chase. So we go, are sales led. We're nothing, we don't have sales. Yeah, it's important. Or, you know, we don't tolerate this or we don't tolerate that. It comes back to, starts with integrity and saying, how do we win, but also do it in a way that we have a business going

we survive a setback. If we lose one thing, we're not all over. So that's the risk management element of a good leader too, so that they're not going through one -way doors and thinking, well, if this doesn't work, but they've also got to take enough risk, so they're educated risk and not wanting to be wrong,

Dr Chris L. Brown (24:43.849)
wanting to get to the truth and seeing that that's my job is to help us make better decisions for the long term. Yeah, and a willingness to be wrong too and to say, okay, I was wrong there. Yeah. Admit it. How many times people say, I'm sorry, I was wrong. Yes. What percentage of the time you hear that conversation? Not a lot. Yeah, no, it's a difficult thing to do, isn't it? But that's where it gives the freedom of being wrong.

and saying, look, we got it wrong. This is what happened. We thought this and we were wrong. But we're do better. And then you see that with leaders like some of the, you know, some of these cyber security threats that have happened and realities where people's data have been leaked and they try and hide it or cover it up or say, well, this has happened and it didn't. But I mean, a lot of the time the cyber security stuff and you look at, you

the StartGrowth website and look at Richard Boxill, for example, he's arguably one of the most talented advisors in this space. a lot of the time, it's actually, it's not a technical issue, someone just made a mistake. And that left a, let's call it a back window open into a system. people, the culture of an organization and taking the right risk and taking the right precautions.

If people don't own that and care about that, it exposes the company. And I think boards are increasingly interested in how do these things happen? It's not spending more money on IT sometimes. It's just spending the right amount of training on your team so that they know the consequences. They say, my job is to do this, but your job is actually, we're all working for the company. So what's the right thing for the company is to follow the procedures. Let's have the right procedure. But how do we know which ones are the ones that are overkill?

and which ones are the right ones to follow. That's knowledge. That's where that learning and getting the right people in to help. So you could spend $5 million on, $100 million on cybersecurity stuff, but there's probably $20 million that makes the 90 % of the difference. And that's where asking an expert is so important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of value in that. There's a lot of value. And I mean, I think a lot of these issues come down to culture too, right? In terms of is

Dr Chris L. Brown (27:10.202)
sort of reinforced by leadership that these things are important things to be paying attention to, right? It's a little bit like the customer experience. Do we really tolerate whether or not we treat customers poorly or not, right? Whether that's a high priority or not. And so, yeah, I can see that's No, you're right. If the team don't feel like the CEO cares about them, how are they going to go with the customer?

Look at a classic example of, people might think it's a little bit of an old industry, but retail or even hospitality, you could spend $2 million on a fit out, half a million dollars on rent. And you could do brilliant. You could have every person coming into the store on the foot traffic, a perfect position

the customer walks up to the desk of the 19 year old says, you're right. Now, a tiny bit more training on that communication, a tiny bit more training on how to build that relationship and what their role is and not thinking this is a stop gaps job. I'm

at how little training people do. And look, of course, the margins and the competition is fierce and rants, cetera, it's like saying, I don't want to win. It's that last piece of the puzzle where people will just refuse. And there's some unbelievably talented people that will say, you do these three things and you use this database or this platform to know that your teams

did this and you see the difference between the results that certain retailers are getting versus other retailers. It's chocolate cheese. Yeah. And it's all people related. It's all people related. It's all how you set them up to win. training has been given lip service. know, we do training. I some training is like, you know, it's a process.

Dr Chris L. Brown (29:35.446)
all his handouts, etc. Magnificent book that Peter Ritchie wrote called The Magic of McDonald's and lot of people used to look at the resume of someone, they've worked at McDonald's, great, they've been trained well. It's true. He was very instrumental in taking that level of training to the next level. He had great training that the US had developed, but then he said we need to put more into that training. We need to

more of our profit into training. That's how important it is. And I tell you what, it paid off. There's a great quote I think from Richard Branson, I it's to do with if we train our people and then they leave, why would we do that? But then if you don't train them and they stay, is the problem. So I think it's an investment. And you see I think

A lot of super successful businesses, a common denominator is that investment in people, right? They've got tremendous capability in those people in their teams. Well, I think that training's had a bad rap because a lot of people think, no, we have to do training. But the people that have had good training, that's helped them not only in the job, but also they become more confident. become that knowledge and

ability to communicate, for example, that's supplied in their relationships, that's supplied in life. It's not just a work. I'll only use good communication in work. It's actually a life skill. And that to me is, that's why lot of the longevity of looking after people and training them on the right things, and that's secret. What's the right thing? Like you can do countless hours of wasted money.

And potentially our productivity has that really increased with all this money that's been spent on training. If not, that's because it's the wrong training. So it's the wrong deliveries, the wrong processes, what's been given lip service. if it's given lip service and the CEO doesn't back it. Yeah, yeah. I think some of the best programs that we've been involved in over many years has been where the CEO is part of those training programs, right? They turn up, they're there, they're leading

Dr Chris L. Brown (32:00.097)
they're engaged, they're a learner as well. So it sort of sends that right signal to that, hey, this is important. It's important for me, it's important for everyone. Yeah, there was a, when I first, you asked me about what I remember, and I just remind me of something. Everyone used to be Mr. when they started. It was like there was something to aspire to. Yeah, very formal and sort of, you know, this is, and respectful, right? There was a respect, was there was something that these guys had made

they had this respect, it was a prestigious role and et cetera. But I'm wondering if people lost that. Are people still wondering, do I still want that? Or is that a function of maybe they think, well, what's the point? There's no work -life balance. Or I'm never gonna be able to afford a house anyway.

and I sort of travel on holidays. But if someone is just starting out, having left school, and I would say that finding that person that teaches you stuff, not necessarily by belting you with it, but really nurtures and mentors you, and you seriously appreciate the help and effort they're putting into you, that is gold.

to have that learning of what life's all about in business.

Dr Chris L. Brown (33:35.584)
Yeah, probably 80 % of businesses are the same. They've created a product, sell it, create distribution, reinvest, think about the next product, attraction retention of flights, developing better and better teams and better and better processes. yeah, those things happen with good people. There's only so much technology, good technology is written by good people. So like it or not, we still are

the central theme in success and so training and knowing which people fit in what team or how they would fit into a team in a more cohesive way and what are we ready to hire that person here? What do they bring? Do their skills and their aptitude and their own style fit in or are they gonna be grind or how does that work? Speaking of that, mean, you

Most businesses, I all businesses have this where you have conflict, right? You have teams not working well, people, individuals not working well together. I mean, how have you sort of approached those sorts of things where you've got those sort of issues that pop up, inevitably, right? Well, I guess it comes down to how have I approached it. Firstly, it's hard.

I've got the answer. I prepared this one earlier. I think from listening, trying to understand the other person, where they're from, asking good questions, genuinely being on the side of everybody, putting the whole team first, not being selfish.

So how to get cohesion? I think within my teams, I've had a very, very, you know, I've had exceptionally good teams over the years. They're good and bad. And I think the times when I have not been as happy with my teams have been when I have been maybe a little less self -reflecting and thinking, I can do anything, I've got this, I've got

Dr Chris L. Brown (36:00.604)
And maybe being a bit too ahead of myself and not thinking, hang on, I've got to make, I'm not important in this. I am the least important person in the room. So that humility as I got more, the more I learnt, the more I realised I didn't know. And I had to try harder to make everyone else win. It wasn't about me, it was about the team. And people know when you're

bullshitting and you really are genuinely digging in and you're sitting down next to them and talking to them about, you know, what happened with their girlfriend on the weekend and know, a little bit of that's really important to build trust and connection. A lot of times, I would say the first time I worked there, everyone was a mister and there was no one, you you just didn't mix with people. being approachable and being.

letting people know, you're a person too and you make mistakes. But I'll probably make less mistakes, hopefully, because I've got a bit more experience. here's, they want to be treated with respect and heard and recognise that they have problems too. And it's not all about what productivity they had. It's, yeah, look, it's hard running a business when people either have a bad day and

blow up at other people and bring everyone down and work out, well, yeah, sometimes you'll have some steam off and then...

This balance is just not easy. Yeah, no, it's a challenge. People, easy. This would be easy without customers and people involved in it, No employees, no customers. No employees, no customers. So easy. Yeah. Something we've talked about quite a bit, you know, the past several months is around narratives, right? For CEOs that are great CEOs and great founders of businesses, they're good

Dr Chris L. Brown (38:06.169)
telling the story of their business. it's a skill that you've got and you've coached a lot of different leaders in this area. I how do you think about that process, that narrative of developing that? What's the sort of way in which you tend to approach it and think about it? I think it'll be really helpful for people. Okay, well, I like to think of that conversation

the customer, we put them in the middle of the page. And we think, what are they doing? What's their life like? What are their challenges? What are the processes that they suffer through? How can they get better? Richer, faster, have more relations, whatever it is that our product claims that it might be the solution for. And then I try to say, let's break it down and work out are we telling the truth.

How do we make it simpler, more clear, more human as well? How do we create connection with people? How do we explain their world better than they can describe it themselves? So they feel like, we're an insider. We've seen this problem. Here's what we can do about it. And they don't feel like they're

is actually a problem, it's a real problem and no one's been fixing it, feeling like, you know, I thought I had to suffer through this. We think we've got something that might help, but would you like to try it? So, not selling is a really big difference. inviting people into the room and building trust and genuinely having an interest in them.

and solving a problem for them as opposed to, okay, look, I've got this pen, you need it. Or, know, keep buying this, it's not bloody much use and you're the wrong customer for it. So it's around getting the right customer, the right message and the right product. It's around getting to really understand them, are they the right customer? Is this the real problem that they have or is this like I'm solving?

Dr Chris L. Brown (40:29.45)
I've got a problem looking for a solution for a problem. Is this a present in real pain? How are the, what's their work around? What's the cost? Where is this in the value chain? How easy is it to implement? Is this a distraction? Is this not going to fit into the sequence of what they have? What's the cost? What's the price point? What's the value? What's chance of success for them?

These are all the different metrics that I look at and work out. Okay, we'll just back off for two minutes. Tell me in 10 words. Simplify it. I love that movie with Danza Washington, he says, explain it to me like I'm an intelligent six -year -old or something like that. We don't need jargon. We just need to say, it does this for people who have that, or whatever

the simplest version of the problem is. I think it's a great insight also there David on the importance of, I mean you're really sitting in the customer's shoes to say, let's get on the same side of the table as the customer and look at what's their world look like, right? What are their priorities? What's important to them? And really getting that insight to be able to do that effectively. Every business has to do that. Going back to accounting, and I used to see some

People say, but this isn't working or they haven't got this minute right or they haven't got this perfect journal or this perfect whatever. I hate to break it to you, but no one cares. Why do they come in? because they have to get a tax return done. No, no. The ATO said they have to lodge a tax return. That's not because of us. That's not even why they're here. They just go, I want my life to be easier.

Dr Chris L. Brown (42:30.276)
I want to get on with what I'm doing and if you can help me do that and you've got to therefore discover, you've got to have that product or that customer discovery to work out is this a fit for them. And trust, if people consume your content, they build trust, they'll buy from you because you've actually done the work to help them as well. people like doing business with people who they like.

who add value and they go, sometimes people go, why are doing all this stuff? There must be a catch. And building that trust and adding value and showing people this is a solution without selling to them. lot of people say that salespeople have sales commission breath. But the best salespeople don't sell. They create buyers.

They're really creating a customer, they, in many ways, because they're solving the problem. They're just helping. They're just helping. They're saying, is this an issue? How do you do that? that must be bad. yeah, but I do this. How does that go? Well, is that gonna work? Nine times out of 10? How much time does it actually take? You've gotta find the surface area of the problem, understand it from every angle.

It's not just your product. People don't care about their product. They care about their problem. This kind of leads me nicely into sort of getting a bit more perspective on some of the things you're working on now. So you're a founder of a business and co -founder of two businesses. Tell me a bit more about what's going on and how you're fitting all this in. It's a busy life. Yeah, I'm breaking my own rules when it comes to focus.

But in some ways, look, I mean, I just decided that I wanted a change and I had a friend that we were going to go into business together, personal setback that he had, we're still very good friends. And I decided, yeah, what I wanted to do was to focus on helping companies get to $100 million in revenue. Sounds a bit lofty.

Dr Chris L. Brown (44:57.913)
But again, I knew I could do some parts of that. I knew I had to get other people involved who have very deep knowledge in certain areas because it might be sales, marketing, hiring, et cetera. Whatever the gap is that the person has, I wanted to have a situation where I had the best in class inside the tent. And so I set up Star Growth and that business

is essentially like the Harlem Globe shoulders of business. Or as another one of the friends, he was also an expert on the group, says this is the Westfields for specialist advisors. But it's not so much just advisors, people will get in with you and solve the problems. They might just say, here, I'll try this. It's like, let me write this for you. Let me do that for you. Let me make this part of the puzzle happen. So that's what Star Growth is. It's a marketplace of world -class.

experts that have got knowledge in a key number of areas that are the secret to unlocking that success. And we sort of divided into four swim lanes, which is technology, includes growth and also AI and machine learning and cybersecurity. The second is, which is not really a sector, but selling. both retail,

marketing, sales, et cetera. And then the third is in property, because there's really only two significant ways that people get wealthy in any country, and that is through either business and property. So, got some amazing people in that part as well. And then the last thing is health and wellness, because to be honest, if you don't have that, you don't have anything else. So again, hand -picked.

from all the people I've worked with in the last 30 years, the exceptional human beings that are both nice and incredibly knowledgeable, shared this idea to them and they said, to be part of it. set the website up and had our first event with an exceptionally good CEO who was CEO of a,

Dr Chris L. Brown (47:23.979)
Top 100 company globally, top media company in Australia and a top finance company. So he's done it all when he's been chairman of lots of things and smart dude. So I interviewed him, he'd just written a book. And then we've got another tech founder that's coming up to his third exit. So these are all just friends that I've worked with over the years and they've just got.

incredible knowledge to share. It sounds like fun too. It is fun. So that's called Start Growth and the second business, we're in the premises of Audio HQ and that's been set up to... It's a beautiful spot. It's a beautiful spot. It's been set up so that we can help find and write artists, musical artists, hit records and we're also looking at setting up a management.

division for some very select entertainers that we think that we can help progress. And then one that's probably a bit more close to home, which is in the property space, called Prop Data IQ. And that is for developers to help them buy sites better, faster, and cheaper. To learn on the job,

is a very expensive way to learn. You have to actually roll the dice and say, let's see how we go. It's 100 grand for an entry cost just to get reports, et cetera. We can do that in a minute. What they do in months through very, very eloquent algorithms, machine learning, AI, and again, it comes back to people. So handpicked. Some friends that I've worked with.

that are best in breed, in financial property analysis, and also machine learning and AI. And myself, do what I do. And we launched that about 24th of August, and we've already got a wait list that's very big for the product. very exciting. I'm really chuffed with that. And the last thing is the business upstairs, which is we call Oxygen Fun. And what we do in that is,

Dr Chris L. Brown (49:51.474)
We take heat from any source and we plumb that through to two types of containers, both mobile and fixed. And in that we grow a number of different plants and also all sorts of other things that we're looking at and experimenting with. Those that produce is saleable, but also...

It increases the efficiency of many businesses from data centers, so people, that's one of the most fast growing areas on the planet. Every new business needs data, more data, more data centers, in turn, more space and more heat, energy, et cetera. So our product, our solution, reduces the amount of energy required, but it also, which in turn reduces.

price of the service, which makes a huge difference to people's businesses across the board. Then also what it does is that we are in advanced stages. We know that what it does is reduces carbon, so they're essentially the recipients that this heat goes into. And it's waste heat. That's the other beauty of this product too, it's waste heat. And it goes into

these containers and that generates a carbon certificate. The price of carbon, certainly in the next year especially, is going to go through the roof. That's the expectation. And through that process, people are buying carbon offsets. We will be creating carbon offsets. at a reasonable scale too, we can go to the market and sell those credits. Or the parties

have the end -to -end solution, they get those credits if they want. Gotcha, makes a lot of sense. Interesting diverse businesses, mate. Very, very... We're not in accounting anymore, Dorothy. No, no, very, diverse. When you think about AI technology, mean, it's been pretty mind -blowing the last few months, really. I mean, how do you see that as a tool that... How do you see that impacting, I guess, the way business is done

Dr Chris L. Brown (52:18.182)
Have you had some thoughts on... Yeah, fundamentally. Like for example, the oxygen farm, you can imagine how many people it takes to run a site, know, from growing plants inside a container 24 -7. We use software that one of the founders wrote. That software controls the temperature, the humidity, the flow of...

water and nutrients, the mix of water and nutrients and pH levels. It's basically like having, if I was Steve Jobs, I might describe it like having a thousand farmers in your pocket or in your container. They never get tired and they just keep working. So it's endemic, it's everywhere. These generative AI models are being applied.

made me the last 5 % of some really great companies and it was really interesting to see Canva acquiring the AI companies recently through to some of the success of Jasper and a lot of those, well certainly Jasper heavily relied on OpenAI and people have found use cases for that and solved real world problems with it.

And it's certainly early days, but people are being very, very creative with I saw a thing called character AI and creating, know, another that and other entities or companies creating companions. it's, we're confronting the most, you know, blowing stuff. Mind blowing space, ethical issues. Like is this good or a bad thing?

one disaster, one hack away from a disaster. Obviously, Elon and a lot of other people I

Dr Chris L. Brown (54:26.911)
Light year more information than me. Talk about the safety of AI, et cetera. I don't know. But if you're not using it and finding out its limits and working out how to use it and be inside this, it's like you're missing out. You've got to be in it. Yeah, it's crucial, isn't it? Probably just a few questions to sort of wrap up the conversation. know, this podcast called The Relentless Customer Leader.

when you think of the term relentless, what does that sort of mean to you? Is it something that resonates as a term? Absolutely. There is no business without customers. So the business isn't set and forget. It is a continuous improvement process. It's a two, three way conversation.

customers. It's between your team, your customer, the company and the services you provide, the solutions, etc. It's that constant getting better. It's constant more value, more ways to show up, more learnings, more data, more insights. It doesn't stop. It's ongoing. And it's relentless is probably fairly appropriate.

But anyone that thinks that a business is passive, it's relentless. You can't stop. People talk about, and I think Tim Ferriss talked about the four hour work week. He said, well, it was sort of a bit of a joke at the time, but people do want that work -life balance. And that's really, as I said, the swim lane of stock growth is health and wellness and being up to the challenges.

keeping yourself mentally and physically healthy. So it is relaxing, so recognising that you have to look after your customers yourself, your team. Maybe one day we'll have everything run out on AI and we won't be required. It'll be a sad day. But it's always the promise of new technologies and we're going have more leisure

Dr Chris L. Brown (56:49.279)
Yeah, well, later in time. We'll do more high value things, et cetera. But I know, I like dealing with, there'll be, still to this day, there'll be, I remember a joke that someone said the last job that'll be lost to AI are comedians. But there'll always be more jobs. I remember when I started out working, they talked about I was year two

into my career and they said, self -assessment's coming out, no one's gonna need a tax agent anymore. Well, there's still tax agents. There's just new things tax agents do. It's different work, but it's still there. Someone's gotta run those systems, don't they? Someone has to run them, someone has to, yeah, exactly. Probably the last question that I had for you is, do you have some advice for up and coming leaders? What's something that you would advise?

emerging leaders in terms of their own leadership journey and being able to build capabilities themselves? I think that for new leaders it's not to think you got it, it's to keep learning, keep... I say about myself, I make less mistakes because I never think I know. Because I always think what have I missed?

and maybe having a healthy skepticism of, you've gotta get it right, doesn't mean you're right. And learning and saying, how can I make it better? It's not done yet. If you get to the end, you're not finished. You gotta ask another question. How can I do better? What did I learn? How can I reflect on action for action and in action? If I am gonna start

to think about being better, I should use a thinking model. So rather than just a random thought, I can assess what I did, work out which bit's better. Like people struggle to have the tools to work out what is it about performance that makes the performance better. And a lot of people think, we just need to try harder, or we need to work longer hours, or we need

Dr Chris L. Brown (59:15.461)
have more work -life balance. But all of those things are guesses. By being able to have a level of insight on what happened, asking questions like, say, what did you see? And then, know, did the person do a good job in spite of themselves or because of something? So it's that continuous curiosity.

and having like the right level of curiosity and conviction. Because people don't want to go, I don't know, and you go, you don't know. my God, you don't know. But it's a balance of curiosity and conviction. And that's what people look for in a good leader, think, is that they, know this, and we've anchored that. So we know what we did and that worked because of that. We're not like, we'll do it again this time again.

and building those systems and setting people up so they'll win more often is having some system thinking. But it's also finding the person that's gonna help you do that. Because you know, that has to be done. You might not be the right person to do it, but you've got to find the right person that loves doing that. Or bring someone or leverage someone off by doing, we'll do this together. I mean, my favorite

Dr Chris L. Brown (01:00:41.815)
analogy or story of any business or startup is like that chicken who found the grains of wheat. And so the chicken comes up, you remember, everyone remembers the story, the chicken found this wheat and he said, who will help me grind this wheat so I can make some flour? He went up to the cow and said, not I. And then he said, okay, I'll do it myself. And as you know, he eventually went through

and then as soon as he pulled out the left bread, everyone wanted to have the bread. And I thought that was the end of the story. And I thought, no, but what did the chicken do wrong? The chicken didn't sell the story. The chicken didn't. Didn't tell the narrative. The chicken didn't tell the narrative. So Chris, can you taste that bread? How sweet is that bread gonna be when it comes out of the oven, piping hot, and we're all gonna get around the table and we're gonna laugh and we're have some of

beautiful bread. Now do you want to help me? That's a great story isn't it? That's great story, I love it. That's what a startup is, you've got no reason to believe these two grains of wheat are going to turn into bread. With the right people and that relentless execution, or epic execution as I call it, amazing things can happen. Awesome.

Thanks, David. Thanks for your time, mate. was great. Great conversation. Appreciate it. Thanks, David.