#321 Frank Greeff - The $180M Founder Blueprint for AI Businesses

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Guest: Frank Greeff
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frankgreeff_


0:00 — Preview & Intro
6:11 — Building the Next Company
9:20 — Team and Talent
15:39 — Vision and Community
22:26 — Content and Distribution
28:18 — Founder Priorities
33:58 — Product and AI Strategy
42:05 — Money and Discipline
52:09 — Family and the Future

Chapters

• 0:00 Can Lightning Strike Twice?
• 1:42 Lessons From 400 People To 50
• 4:22 Culture, Control, And The Cost Of Scale
• 5:56 Secret Exits And Human Fallout
• 6:55 Sponsor: Fixing Broken Sales Ops With Aura
• 9:34 Why Go Again: New Levels To Learn
• 12:42 Why The US Wasn’t A Fit Before
• 15:02 Small Teams, 10x Talent, And Brutal Hiring
• 19:36 Communicating Layoffs And Protecting Culture
• 22:13 Building Brand Through Community Experiments
• 28:24 Content As A System: Categories And Formats
• 31:44 Prioritisation And Founder Time ROI
• 36:19 Founding Members And Go-To-Market
• 39:08 Context Over Channels: AI Product Edge
• 42:34 Beyond Shared Inboxes: Towards A Business Brain
• 45:22 Wealth, Choices, And Choosing Hard Battles
• 49:09 Health, Routine, And Energy Management
• 53:26 Food Simplicity And Dopamine Baselines
• 56:17 Parenting For 2039: Focus And Humanity

Transcript

Darren: 0:00

Is it possible to exit a company again for nine figures after doing it once and with no experience before you did it the first time?

SPEAKER_03: 0:08

I think after, you know, 13 years of kind of compounding lessons, I'd like to think you have a slight advantage to know what you're doing again. At the time of exit, we had 400 team members. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of management and layers and blah, blah, blah. This time we're like, can we go bigger, but can we have a maximum of 50 people?

Darren: 0:25

How do you prioritize what you should work on as a founder? Where do you put your time and energy?

SPEAKER_03: 0:30

In those obsessive early months, it was an embarrassing amount of time. We would spend four or five hours a day trying to produce content and you get 100 views on TikTok and you're like bashing your head against the wall. It's humbling because you've just sold your business for this big number and then you're sitting in front of TikTok and it's like no one gives a fuck, bro. We had learnt levels one to three of business. So we kind of mapped out like our next product we're gonna go all in on. It had to unlock these new lessons that we hadn't yet learned. That was the core driver. One of the most important things for us is the smaller volume of people that you employ.

Darren: 1:00

And there's a key reason why, because is it possible to exit a company again for nine figures after doing it once and with no experience before you do it the first time?

SPEAKER_03: 1:16

Is it possible? I would like to think it is possible. I don't I don't know if what this if the statistics against me once more, but I think after you know 13 years of kind of compounding lessons, um, I'd like to think you have a slight advantage to know what you're doing again, but I'll find out very soon.

Darren: 1:31

What are some of the things that you are deliberately not doing that you did the first time? Like, what are some of those hard lessons that you were like you burned yourself against the fire and you're like, I'm not gonna do that again?

SPEAKER_03: 1:42

So um probably in in no particular order, like one of the big ones was at the time of exit, we had 400 team members. Um, that's a lot of people, it's a lot of humans, it's a lot of um management and layers and blah, blah, blah. Uh, this time we're like, can we go bigger, but can we have a maximum of 50 people or 40 people, or you know, these the WhatsApps of the world sold for a billion dollars and had 15 people. And so, like, one of the most important things for us is is is the smaller volume of people that you employ. And there's a key reason why, because um everybody in our business today, so today we have a team of 15, um, all have shares. And so, what we would rather as the end of an exit is every single one of the people that we've employed become millionaires. Um, that's so much cooler than having like you don't have that ability if you have too big of a team.

Darren: 2:32

It's also about how much they're willing to commit, right? Yeah. Because like you're the founder, of course, you want to have like the biggest impact, but if they don't feel connected to the mission, well then how could they be asked to, you know, work late or come in early? There's no there's no intrinsic motivation to it. Also the fact as well that when it's smaller, you can kind of control the elements a bit more. Way more. Like way more. How did you find that when you were like scaling the last business and it was just going out of control, right? Because a lot of time, did you feel like you kind of lost a love of it?

SPEAKER_03: 3:04

Um, I don't know. Actually, I to be truth be told, like all the way up to the exit, I I still loved what I did every single day. Like I really did. It doesn't mean it wasn't super stressful and it was like absolutely brutal a lot of the time. But I um well, there was parts that I didn't love. Like the honest truth is if you put the 400 people in a room, I wouldn't be able to name all their names. And from like a humanity side, I think that's kind of sad. Like, you know, it's a bit sad that someone's, you know, is there 38 hours a week, you know, putting their you know, um time and energy into creating this thing and you couldn't tell like what your name is. Um, I think that's just kind of sad. And that and that I think that's just very standard for a for a big business, right? As a CEO and as a founder. The other parts is like um, I think like things become a lot more out of your control. Like there's only so much you control, can can control in terms of like output, energy, enthusiasm, culture, um, once you start to have that many team members. You know, so we spread across three countries for our offices, then you've got plenty of people working from home, you know, building a culture of a company, um, trying to bring your founder infectious energy into a room is impossible when everybody is spread across all of like that. Um, and so I think those types of things, it often it's the humanity side that I go like that. That was the the most challenging. Uh, and then the last one was up until the day we exited, um not one of our team members knew that we were selling the business. And so they only found out the moment it went on the stock market and was a public piece of information, which is um firstly impressive that we're able to keep such a secret for a year, but uh secondly, quite sad and challenging because you've been working with like, you know, really close team members who have no idea the day before and the day after it's all of a sudden this business has changed. Like that's again back to the humanity challenging.

Darren: 4:55

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SPEAKER_03: 6:11

So I think, like, interestingly enough, like those probably weren't my drivers to get back in the game. Like the better, faster, cheaper probably wasn't, didn't really ever appear in my psyche to go, like, that's why I want to do it. Um, how we thought about it was really simple. And when I say we, me and my brother, my co-founder Jacques, um, we had learnt levels one to three of business. So we know what it looks like to build a company. We know what it looks like to get a really good market share in Australia, kind of international, but not really going into New Zealand. Um, we know what it looked like to build a company that required lots of humans. And so we'd learnt a number of lessons. But then there were so many lessons we hadn't yet learned. So we didn't know what it looked like to have a company that you could have a big impact with a small smaller number of team members. We didn't know what it looked like to have a company that from Australia you could have customers in the US. Like there was all these learning blocks that we wanted to learn. And to be honest, that was the driver to go again. So we kind of mapped out like our next uh product, our next business we're gonna go all in on. It had to unlock these new lessons that we hadn't yet learned. Um, that was the core driver. Now, the beautiful part, of course, is well, AI was, you know, it was going you know thick and fast, and that was like a value add to our decision, um, but it wasn't a driver.

Darren: 7:25

How come you'd never branch out to America before? I would think just logical explanation is like America's where the money is. Let's just sell towards America. Um, do you think it's maybe like a geographical thing down being down here on Iraq? Like what's what's a lot of the reasons why you wouldn't have expanded?

SPEAKER_03: 7:42

So the key reason why is is just really specific to our last business. So our last business was a real estate marketing platform that connect real estate agents or realtors to um real estate suppliers like marketing, photography, signboards, blah, blah, blah. Um the Australian-New Zealand landscape is almost identical. It is completely different in the US. And so you're not you're not creating like a logical jump over where you're launching the same platform. You're it's an entirely different landscape. And I'll share one simple, uh small reason why. Here in Australia, the homeowner or what we call the vendor would spend somewhere between 10 and 20,000 to market the property themselves. Um, if the property doesn't sell, that doesn't matter. They've still lost the 10 to 20 grand. In America, there's no such thing. The real estate agents there pay for the marketing themselves, which means they spend 200 bucks. And so our entire market share was based on this idea that there's this 20 grand wallet and we could take some of it. In America, there's none of that. So it's a completely different business model.

Darren: 8:44

Dude, it reminds me of uh like Uber going into China. Yeah. You know, it's just like, yeah, Uber works in London, but you go into a localized market where the language is different, the culture is different, and you're going to get absolutely slapped. Yeah. Um, when you speak about like the smaller team, the more effectiveness you're getting now. Have you looked at some examples of like one-person businesses that have got uh you know buildings like lovable is a perfect example? You know, have you looked at that kind of model and thought, okay, how can we mirror some of those behaviors? Because that's like the revenue per head of those companies is monumental. Have you looked at some of those like top 10 lists?

SPEAKER_03: 9:20

Yeah, so I wouldn't say I know the top 10 lists. I've definitely looked at those um different companies in awe, you know, like lovable where it is today. I understand it to be at a six billion valuation, and they have a hundred team members. Like, wow. And I think they just clicked over 200 million annual recurring revenue. So just incredible. Um, but then there's also the the WhatsApps of the world which sold it. I think they had 15 employees for a billion. I think Instagram was nine or 10 employees sold for a billion. So we we were just looking at what was possible, but not necessarily what they did. Um, but how we thought about it for ourselves was like, okay, the only way that you make that work is you have to have the literal best talent. And and the biggest learning for us is the best talent isn't like a two times multiplier, it's more like a five to ten. And so I'll give you an example. Like, in order to hire our now eight or nine engineers that we have full-time, we've done about 120 job interviews. So for every 13 or 14 interviews, we hire one person. And there's a key reason why is because the only way you know what best is, is you have to create a measuring stick. So you now know by having enough volume, what does average look like, what does good look like, what does you know, amazing look like. Um, and so once we had done that, once we had found the team members, we now go like, oh, holy shit, because our previous business, um, we didn't have 408 players. Like, I'd be totally lying if I said we did. And so now knowing what that world looked like in this world, I'm like, oh wow, this is it's it's a whole different game. Uh and the cool thing is it's a very uh like once you set and you you keep that kind of baseline of like raw intellect, like enthusiasm for the mission and all of that kind of stuff, then it becomes self-policing. When someone comes in, you know, they they leave really quickly. So, like one of the sad truths about our business today is we're pre-product pre-launch and we have already turned over 25% of our team members. That's the brutal like humanity part of saying, I want the best talent. Well, that means like if you've made the wrong assumption that someone is good, you have to move on really, really quickly. Like we've had people come in for their first day, and on their first day, they realize I am not good enough to be here and self-selected out.

Darren: 11:35

What I always say, man, is there's not a shortage of people, there's a shortage of talent. So if you don't have a talent acquisition strategy where you're constantly bringing people in and pruning people and they're coming in and they're applying, and you have your eye on this, you're gonna get absolutely sideway meshed in one go because you might need that resource and it's just not there. Like you don't find a full stack engineer in 20 days, right? You don't find like a top like sales rep even in like a month that has to be constantly pruned. I uh one of my clients said to me yesterday, funny enough, you mentioned this. She said, in the when you're looking for great talent, the people that are applying for roles, they're generally the bottom 20% of the market. So the top 80% of people, they're not looking for roles because they're in open AI, they're in perplexity. So to find the top 80%, 80% of people, a lot of that is like spearheading, headhunting, and so on. I thought it was a super interesting, you're usually left with the bottom. So, what does that mean? That means you need to be hiring more, create that perpetual loop. Um, how does that actually impact? I'd love to get your thoughts on this about if you are letting people go, because funnily enough, I've actually been in a very similar position where we've had to leave a lot of poor performers or not top performers go. And it's about making sure that the culture is still intact, that doesn't affect the rest of the team. How have you approached that?

SPEAKER_03: 12:54

Yeah, it's a good question. And and it's it's a it's a mildly sore subject. And the reason why is because it's only been recently in the last few weeks that we've had to make some really tough decisions. How we do this is like I'm a big believer in communication solves almost everything. And so day one, when you're in an interview with myself and Jacques, um, we're really clear. You we say our role of founders and leaders, we have one job that is the most important, and that is finding amazing talent. And we spend most of our time doing that. And what that means is like when we find these people, we have a standard, and I literally say to them, but the challenge you're gonna experience when you come here is you will see us have made the wrong bet and we're gonna move people on. And I and I kind of like pre-frame what you're about to experience. Um, and then the difference, what happens is kind of like when you then go and make a decision and and go, okay, we have to move on. We now have enough data. This person is not quite there yet. And it's not because they're not good, like they're good, but they're not excellent, you know, like and that that's the standard you want is only excellence. And so then we bring the team back and we go, hey, do you remember when we first talked about this? You remember when I said, you know, we only want to have a business that has A players or A players in the making? And they're like, yep. And I'm like, we've now had to make a decision on this person. And I know that's gonna be really, really tough because the person is a great person. They're a really nice person, and culturally they're awesome, but then they're not at the standard. And it's kind of like when they, when they hear that, when they connect to the first time when you told them and you're very consistent with it, um, I think people realize, like, firstly, they kind of go, Well, fuck, I'm so glad I don't have to make that, you know, those conversations. But also because everybody is part of either our employee share scheme or have shares, it's kind of like they soon, my hope, is realize like you're only doing this not because you're trying to be a bad person, but you're doing this because we're all in this collective thing putting our heart, soul, and effort into it. You want to have the biggest impact, and I can kind of trust in you that you're making the right tough decisions to make sure we're gonna get there.

Darren: 14:53

Before we move any further, I have one short question to ask you. Have you been enjoying these episodes so far? Because if you have, I would truly appreciate it if you subscribe to the channel to help more business owners grow their online business today. It's like every like every conversation, every different conversation that's not made carries a debt and it carries over time. And as a result, that debt creeps up in you and you gotta pay it back at some point. Speak to me about how you guys are building the community. I think that's a super unique mechanism that you have. Um, it's like this kind of viral engagement that's showing really your company, which is which is actually really awesome. If I go to your LinkedIn or go to your Instagram, it's a very strong community that you've built internally. Well, what's the angle there with that?

SPEAKER_03: 15:39

So I so I guess like for it for a tiny bit of piece of context for everybody listening, um, the business we're building is Kinso. What does Kinso do? Um, the problem statement we went after is business communication happens in too many channels: Gmail, Slack, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Instagram, and beyond. And our job is really simple. Bring all of those into one application, then use AI to understand a user's priorities and base all of your communications on what matters to you most right now. So that's the that's the kind of the thesis that we're going into it. Um, and then you you mentioned around like the community. So where we started with this whole journey was about a year ago. And so one year ago, through kind of experience our own lived problem, which is this business communication problem, we mapped out, um, you know, for the lack of for a lack of a better word, a white paper. And so Jacques and I said, okay, it's five years from today. Um, what have we done and where are we? And what are the strategic chess moves that we're going to need to do in order to get there? And funnily enough, like our starting position was less so about this Kinso thing, and it was more so like what we wanted to do to the ecosystem of founders in Australia and how we wanted to make Australia like a place that is known for exceptional business and exceptional talent. And so, like our end goal was five years from today, we've bought a building. This building is like a the we work version of like founder startup hub. And it's something that is like thriving, it's like cool, people want to be there and amazing, like talent come there to do their business and build businesses. And we went, okay, cool. In order to be there, what do we need to do? And so one of the key ones for us is like we need to, we need to have brands and we need to make sure that people know that like um, you know, we know our shit when it comes to business. And so how do we get there? Is like, well, number one, we get to show people that we've done it once, we can do it twice. And so if you can do it twice, then like, oh fuck, okay, maybe it wasn't, maybe it wasn't an accident, maybe they know what they're doing. And so we're okay, okay, we're gonna need a we're gonna need a business that can showcase that. And then the second part was we need to have a distribution mechanism, a way in which we can capture as many eyeballs as possible. And let's call that top of the funnel, which is which is views across social platforms. And so I'll come back to your, I'm coming to the community part. Um, and so we kind of went on this journey to start building brand and and building personal brand. And for the first few months, our job to be done, me and Jacques, was we needed to learn the art of social media um in a really um obsessive way. And so it'd be like literally like every single day, three or four pieces of content, obsessing over the tiniest details. Why? Because we were trying to understand the framework, the formula, and the repeatable nature of what you can do. Once we had thought, like we're nowhere near masters, but once we thought, okay, we know enough, we now need to bring in characters. Because one of the things about the algorithm is it doesn't matter what you do, you're gonna go to an audience that the algorithm decides that's your audience. So I don't say things I don't believe that make me um a man's man as such, but 85% of my audience is men. I can't help it. You know, it doesn't like a lot of my content is about like me and my family, my kids, you know, it's going to men. And so we knew that by bringing in characters, which are our team members, they each have their own audience, which is like a funnel. So when, you know, when Talia started and she's a 21-year-old girl, like when she's talking on camera, that's a different audience. When Lulu comes in, 22-year-old girl, different audience. Jacques, different. And so the way we thought about it was we're creating these different opportunity buckets, which brings in different types of eyeballs, which will then flow through. Then, to your question, and your question is about community, what we wanted to do is we wanted to understand, like, you know, you've got views and engagement and numbers on a screen, but like what does that translate to that in actual humans and and their willingness to kind of um actually be part of a community? And the reason why is because um numbers on a screen mean something, but like real human interaction is where like the magic happens. And so what we would do is we'd do these little micro tests. And so a micro test might be okay, tomorrow, like literally in 24 hours, we're gonna rent a room for 150 people and we're gonna host a 150 person event and we're gonna do a fireside chat. I would put one Instagram story up and say uh it's tomorrow. And by the next day, we'd have a room filled with 150 people and we'd have multiple people fly from us around Australia to get there. And so we we were doing the reason we had these like time. Constraints of like it's tomorrow. It's because we're trying to see like what are people's willingness to move through that funnel really, really quick? Because that was a real that's our real measurement of true engagement, not like they watch for 17 seconds, you know? And so finally we started to add like we added multiple of these kind of like in-person community things. So, you know, the other day we did uh an Instagram story, we're doing a run club tomorrow, you know, in the morning, 50 people at the bottom of our office, and now we're running through the city with 50 people. Um, you know, we did um we we hosted a private lunch at our office. So we got an instant, we got a private chef to come, and we had 40 founders with a day's notice to come and be in our office to work from our office. Um, and then lastly, we had uh we would do a weekly thing at my house where we would do every um founders with over 10 million plus in revenue could come and I would cook lunch with my chef background. Um and every week we hosted that for six months, and every single week we would have people fly from around Australia or New Zealand or you know, to come to these events. Um, and so to back to your point around this idea of community is like I I believe if you look into 2026 and you look at like what are the things that tech and and and AI will not change, in my opinion, it's humanity. And so humanity I'm super bullish on and it's an intangible. You know, when you walk into a room and you go, fuck, something about this is just so cool, you know, and it's like it's really hard to try and replicate that if you don't understand it.

Darren: 21:26

100%. First of all, I fucking love how obsessive you are about shit. Oh yeah. It's like it's like a good trade that I picked up. I'm like, this guy just obviously just loves to go super deep on shit. But dude, you're absolutely right, right? It's why we're here today and we're not online. It's like we just said about this earlier, it's the indirect OROI. It's like you can't quantify it, even like the other founder dinners that you do for people that are above 10 million, like they may not use your software, but they could just have a chat with someone in New York and then start a partnership on XYZ. So it's serendipity, it's like that's how luck happens. I want to go back to the content part. So you mentioned that you were learning this thing, and you know you're not fucking 21, but you have 21-year-olds that are obsessed about this. What was that process like? Did you say you've got to bring in a bunch of Gen Z people, right? Who understand social media, right? That's super, super important. Were you kind of breaking down your own, I guess, like limiting beliefs with content, social media? Like, how did that process go, right? Because it may not, or did it, come native to you initially?

SPEAKER_03: 22:26

Yeah, so it didn't come native in in any way, shape, or form. One of my challenges, which people get to experience when they hear me on a podcast, um, is I believe education lives in the depth and the nuance. And so if someone asks me a question, sometimes it's gonna be 10 minutes of answering. And so that doesn't work on Instagram. Because someone's like, I need to know it in 40 seconds, and I'm gonna give you 12 seconds before I skip. And so it's like it was really hard for me to go like, how do I condense like value in such a short period of time? Because real business and real depth happens over like nuance. Um, and so how do we do it? It was really like it was just about shots on goal. So in the beginning, it was like, okay, how can I, how can I just do as many shots and not care about the flops and the failures and the 200 views and the 300 views? But what matters is each time we do a piece of content, how do we obsess over the details to understand like what do we get right, what do we get wrong? And and so what we were trying to do is, you know, if you think about like the 10,000 hour principle, it's like, you know, you've got to get 10,000 hours to master something. It's true, but it's also not true because if you do 10,000 hours of the same thing, you're just gonna have the same outcome. So you need to actually have like 10,000 hours where you do, you do, you try, you learn, you go again, you go again, you go again. And each time you're adding these changes. And so kind of like back to your question is like what we did was essentially like we tried everything. Like, you know, we tried every different type of format. There's a period of time where I'd be like doing a business lesson while cooking food. Cause I was like, that's a visual hook, like, you know, like doing, you know, doing all of these different types of things, um, you know, looking uh elsewhere for um uh what's the right word? Kind of inspiration, you know, looking out outside of different niches. Um, and where we kind of got to is we went like this, and this kind of boils it down for help people like think about it. We pretended we were a media company. Let's think about Netflix. And so if you go onto Netflix, you have documentary, comedy, uh, rom-com, uh action, da da da. And so those are your categories. Then inside your category, what you'll notice with a Netflix is they will they'll bring out, let's say, a movie, and that movie is a shot on goal. If that movie doesn't work, it's the last time they ever make that that type of movie. If it does work, they make number two, number three, number four until they've rinsed the ability to make the same movie a thousand times. And so how we thought is like, what are our categories? And that might be education, inspiration, entertainment. What are our shots on goal inside there? What are our little movies that we're trying to do? And once we find one, you don't just move on. Now you got to go, like, how do I repeat that and make that a repeatable format? And so that's what I talk about when I say, you know, we then brought in a team because once we created a number of repeatable formats, we now have like a formula that the team can work within. So, like, my favorite example is this. We had a young gal, um, she's shout-outs to Lulu if you're listening, you're legend. Uh, she joined us about three or four months ago. Her first month, she so she started an Instagram account when she started with us for her personal brand. Um, month one, 150,000 impressions. Month two, 500,000 impressions. Month three, two million. Month four, two and a half million. So it was kind of like a lot of people will ask us this question, like, oh, how do you hire influencers? We're like, no, no, no. It's not about hiring influencers, it's about having a formula and a format that then when they come in, you can identify, like, okay, this person can be able to work. You apply the formula, and then they are able to grow. And then you can create these little organic content machines and not pay money and ads.

Darren: 26:01

What's interesting there is you have applied your format and then they've implemented it, versus you would usually think someone would come in and be like, okay, I saw this fucking thing on TikTok. Let's try that. And then you're like, oh yeah, let me just try that. Doesn't work, and then you quit. It's like you obsessed over it first, and you prioritize that first. So I think it's really cool when you say categories and formats, because the way I see it, man, you're doing fucking everything, right? You have your own podcast, you still have your own podcast, you have your own YouTube channel, you're doing your own solo ones in the car, and then you have a ton of formats on Instagram. The question for you is how do you prioritize what you should work on as a founder? Because there's product and it'll always be product, and then there's operations, but product with it up, and then there's marketing. Where do you where do you put your time and energy? Because no customers, no business, no product, no need, no way to get customers.

SPEAKER_03: 26:54

Firstly, it's kind of like in those obsession, obsessive early months, it was an embarrassing amount of time. Like we would we would spend four or five hours a day trying to produce content and you get a hundred views on TikTok and you're like bashing your head against the wall. And it's very uh, I hate the word, but it's humbling because you've just sold your business for this big number and then you're sitting in front of TikTok and it's like no one gives a fuck, bro. You know, like and it's like very much like keeps your head firmly on the ground because you're like, wow, it doesn't matter what I've done, I've got to learn this thing. Um, today, with uh us being launching in about a week's time, it's about 12 minutes. So today, because we have created this formula, this format, the way in which we do it, Talia will come in the morning and she'll say, Okay, um, here is a script. I will walk into a room, I'll hit that script, you know, now because enough enough um repetitions in one go, maybe I'll stumble a couple of times, redo it, that's it, hand it over, and then boom, that's my done, I'm done for content for the day. Uh, and so like that was our whole goal the whole time was like we need to learn it, we need to understand it, we then need to pass it on. And then when we when we're like later in the piece, if someone's just like handing you something, you can go and then you can just move on. Because yeah, like as we launch and have customers and have revenue and have conversations with investors, I can't spend that much time sitting in front of TikTok, right? And so um, that's kind of like the the amount of time now, but it takes those reps to first to get there. Um, I feel like there's a part of the question I've kind of missed though.

Darren: 28:18

No, not necessarily, it's more just with the prioritization. Oh, yeah, prioritization. Yep, cool. Because like you're gonna you're gonna need to be in customer support for a bit, you know, you're gonna need to be looking at those complaints coming in, checking all those different things that are basically dragging your energy, which make it harder. And like this is this, and the reason I'm saying it is because this is like a personal thing. It's like as our business has grown, I've been recording less, but then I'm like, oh wait, the thing that got me there is the thing that I need to go back to be prioritizing, and then it's just a prioritization thing. So even this morning it was like a calls in the morning, I'll call us in the night, gotta fucking show up, smash this, and then go back to doing the founder stuff. So, how do you how do you think about that kind of cocktail basically on a daily basis? Because you also got two kids, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you got other shit going on too, man, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 29:06

So, so like that it's a really good question, and it's a it's a funny one because obviously at the time of our last exit, you know, I've got an executive assistant, I'm, you know, my my diary is managed by her, my day is filled. I sometimes had a 15-minute window on the day where she'd bring me lunch, and then we, you know, we sell. I no longer have an assistant. I have to go through like the self-identity crisis of like, what do you mean? I go pick up my own lunch. You know, like this is outrageous. Do other people do this? And then you know, we start the next business, and then all of a sudden I'm now like sitting with my brother at a bank, you know, and we're like, we're opening up our business bank and you're doing what I call, you know, founder tax, those annoying things that don't actually make you any money, but you have to do it because you're the founder. Um, and so it's really funny to go from having the knowing what it feels like at scale to getting back into day one and you know, I'm doing payroll, I'm sitting there on my phone setting out payroll because I don't have a payroll person. Um, and so to answer the question, like how do you prioritize? It changes in stages of your business. So how I think about it is like depending on where you are in business, if you look and audit your time, let's say you look at your week and you say, okay, how do I spend my time? And you look at those tasks that you're doing, and you say, okay, what tasks can I do that make the biggest return on investment? And so in the last business, I was the salesperson for seven or eight years, and I could go and close, you know, many of our deals were five to$1.2 million recurring revenue deals, right? And I was the one that was taken from the start to the close. And so that was the amount of money I could generate our business if I was in the, I was, if I was in a deal room. Um, but I could also answer customer support tickets, which I can solve that problem with$20 or$30 or$40 an hour. And so I just think about like the prioritization question is you audit your time during the week. You say, what's the maximum I can earn my business in terms of like where I spend my time? What's the thing that's actually cost like I could replace for 40 bucks an hour? And I always just think you need to continuously audit what you're doing. And your job is to always push your per hour earning to your business, and those other tasks are the ones that you you you hire for. Um, and so that for for me, it's for me at the moment, like um the one thing in terms of prioritization I don't like to outsource is the customer element. And I'll give you my favorite example. It happened this morning. Last week we did demos to our first 130 customers, and I personally ran those demos. They're an hour long, and I did them in groups. One of our customers, he was from he's from Norway, of all places, he said, Um, I missed those demos. Would you mind doing a one-on-one for me? Now, someone might expect me after the big exit and all that kind of stuff to be like, sure, one of my team members can handle that, or here's a recording. I'm like, no way, of course. I'd love to. Right. So then this morning, 7 a.m., first thing I do in the morning is I'm doing a one-on-one demo with this guy. And the reason why is because two things. Number one is I again, just like with the content, I need to learn and understand our customers. Like, how do they talk about us? How do they talk about our platform? What are the moments when then when I show them, they go, fuck, that's good. You know, like what are those aha moments? Um, because I need to learn that once more because that's the only way I can then teach a team to understand like what do we talk about when we talk about our business. Um, and then the second part is like one of the things that I'm obsessed by, and you soon realize I'm obsessed by a few things, is being unreasonable. Like if there's a single word that I want us and our business to be remembered for is how unreasonable we are in our approach. Um, and the things that others are not willing to do, those are the things we double down in. Um, yeah.

Darren: 32:40

Just unscalable. Doing unscalable in the beginning.

SPEAKER_03: 32:42

Doing unscalable shit.

Darren: 32:44

Yeah, exactly. It's funny, dude, because for our software we have a WhatsApp community that's community support, and I did every single onboarding call myself. And what was interesting there is like why? Is because I saw the prioritization, what does someone what does someone want what someone don't want, right? Because like feature debt in software is just a fucking like how much startups have failed because they just build a bunch of shit and nobody needs them. Whereas like they were like, oh, I really like that inbox part. Let's just only do that thing and do it better than everybody else, and just double tap on that. Tell me more about on the on for King So specifically, how do you plan to really scale up? Because if you're staying small, do you plan to go after individual business owners to allow them to grow, or are you gonna start kind of scaling up from like a large sales team? Like, what's your kind of longer term strategy, you think? Are you an agency owner, coach, or consultant looking to scale your online business? At VOX, we help business owners scale their online business with content. We help them specifically build a high-ticket offer, create content that turns into clients, and also help them with the sales process to make sure every single call that's booked in your calendar turns into a client. If you want to see more about exactly how we do this, hit the first link down below and watch a full free training on how smart entrepreneurs are building a business in 2025.

SPEAKER_03: 33:58

Yeah, so from a um from like a how we enter the market to ultimately where we go, we'll really be defined by what we what we call our founding members. And so this is like a branding piece that we didn't want to have beta testers because the beta testers just makes it sound like, I don't know, inhumane and weird. Uh, we wanted to have founding members, the people that help us shape our product. And so we have 130 people across the world who are all very specifically business operators or business founders. And so what does that mean? It means people who are in different types of businesses who are the decision makers for those businesses. Uh, and so we're entering as an individual user subscription, but we've entered very strategically with founders and those types because, well, guess who makes the decision when it's time to roll this out to your company? It's you. And if I can deliver an incredible experience to you and solve your problems, who do you want to deliver like that to next? Your business. Um, and so like the reason I say is like where we go is like we have a series of hypotheses around like what we believe the value proposition is, but only through them actually using it, getting the daily, giving us the daily feedback, do we actually find out like what are those true moments of value that we maybe misunderstood or we need to double down in? Uh, and so the the the like like where I think it goes is I I believe we will we will win the race of like context in the most rich form. So there's a lot of products out there who are an amazing email kind of auto AI responder. But the problem is like email is only one part of your context. And so if we can win the race of understanding like the related nature between your emails, your Slack, your LinkedIn, your WhatsApp, your Instagram, by having all of that communication, we can better understand the user. And by better understanding the user, then we can do more for you on your behalf. And so when an email comes in and someone says, like, hey, I want to do like X, Y, and Z, and we say, Well, that's not really like you don't really do that kind of thing because that's not part of your priorities. And then your auto drafting is not just about the words, but it's about the intent of you. Well, that becomes fucking powerful.

Darren: 36:05

Tell me about the context window for for AI specifically, because it's over the past year, I've I imagine you've seen quantum improvements in what you can do with AI, right? It's more as law. It's like costs you half much and you're getting half double the amount of output. So are you kind of seeing huge improvements in the product just based on like the LLM and stuff? Like how how do you think about that?

SPEAKER_03: 36:28

There's like the integrating with the LLM part, but then there's all the work that happens actually before you get there. So one of the problems is like the reason we needed so many engineers in the brightest ones is because if we just fed some all of someone's email context into an LLM, it's like it's too much noise and it doesn't know what's real. And so we had to do a lot of work to like better kind of what we called context cards, which is like when that email comes in, what were the actual critical parts of that email, the kind of the analysis before it even goes to an LLM? And then like what kind of metadata could we attach to that um to make it better? So I'll give you an example, right? So like we have this concept of prioritization. So when you're in the app, your messages are prioritized based off you and your goals. For example, you may have someone international that reaches out to you, you know, they're in the US time zone. Um now their email becomes an amazing priority because you've got like a 20-minute window before their time zone, they're no longer going to be at work. So it's about the things that you do kind of prior to the LLM that actually where we believe the magic is. Um, but to answer your question, like it is a very cool time to be doing this because like, you know, as we're kind of building the new the, you know, the next big model comes out, you know, like like and it's cheaper, you know, like like you know, like Gemini 3 just came out and it's like, oh, perfect, you know, like a click of a click of a button, like all this, all this additional raw intellect, all these researchers working on this thing, and you get to go, like, okay, change that thing out, boom, like it becomes better. It's what I think about for lovable. Like, I go, like, man, that's so cool for lovable because I've built this product. Um, and at its core, the product is integrating with one of these foundation models, you know, the frontier models. And they're like, boom, this new model comes out, and they go, boop, change it, and like all of a sudden the product gets better. I'm like, fuck yeah, that's so good.

Darren: 38:10

I really resonate with that though, because it does it's not about just sticking fucking AI on anything, right? Like, I think uh something that I've just from chewing glass is like the data needs to be correct first before you want to do anything with it. So just like you know, taking your example, if you're pulling in the wrong pieces of information from Instagram and from WhatsApp, well then it's going to be shit and it's going to like not work. So I guess like that's where all the engineering work goes first, right? To make sure I guess this is stuff that you'll a user will never see. That's right. It's all the pretty stuff under the hood. Tell me more about when you are integrating with these platforms. What's gonna go into my head is is there an opportunity for you guys to be able to manage the inboxes of like sales teams? Because you think about it as like you're doing Instagram as well, yeah, Instagram as well, yeah. Would you would you be able to use it as like a uni inbox for multiple members?

SPEAKER_03: 39:04

Yeah, so that and that's where when I talk about before around this idea of like we're working with individuals, but then we move into business. That's like uh those are the kind of the logical question marks for us. It's like, okay, as you move to a business side where you have multiple team members, um, there's kind of different pathways you can go. And there's like the tried and tested kind of like almost like a ticketing system, which is the you know, the um, you know, you've got a bunch of sales team members and they're all managing like a single inbox across channels or like setters or something like that. Um but I think those products, like there's enough of them. I think where where I'm probably more interested in, again, we'll be guided by you know the the the users, I think it's more interesting to understand it's like what are the relevant pieces of context that we have about a business? And then you're kind of creating a contextual like business brain, you know, when you're like all these different team members are having communication and now like that is feeding into like like main business context. Context and then like how do you use and like help a person when they're perhaps like answering a question that's a commonly answered question in the business, like oh boom, this is how we normally answer it, like that kind of stuff. Um, but I don't know, you know, that that's the fun part about where I am today, and and a fun part about I I don't I love ambiguity, like like I don't know where it's gonna go. Um, and I but I do know it's gonna be sweet.

Darren: 40:22

It's kind of like an opportunity, more so than anything else, because if you could prioritize inbound messages from prospects, well, dude, like you could just make so much money, then it goes from just streamlining to making money. So it's like the next vertical of software. I guess if you look at some of the competitors, or not competitors, but some of the platforms like Salesflow, which is as slow as fucking anything, or Manichat, which is very, very poorly organized. Um like Manny Chat is a seven-day access, and that's the highest level of permission that that meta give you is seven days access to the chats. So you can see everything, but you can't engage with it. So it's useless. And it's fucking expensive. If you have like a like a large team in there, like it's quite expensive. Sales flow, same issue, doesn't have any tagging, doesn't have any uh doesn't have any assigned person. Yes, yeah, so it's basically just like a dump of data, yeah, and then it's like figure it out, yeah. It's just like figure it out, you know. So unless you have like a bunch of other things supporting, I think it's just like maybe like an opportunity, could be could be like girl in the red dress example, but sounds like a way to really dial up the the value, basically. Love that. Tell me more about on your own personal side. I think something that's really maybe people don't recognize as much, is like the fact that like you're so dialed in on family side, the health side, and so on. Um, and I want to speak about the book specifically. Um, where have you found like founders to really fall down in other side or other aspects of their life? Founders making a ton of money, but their health's and shit, and their foods and shit, and the relationship area and shit. How have you found that uh as you've kind of grown, right? Because you've been exposed to so many people.

SPEAKER_03: 42:05

I mean, I've I I've I've seen all the different shapes and sizes. Yeah, I've I've I've been in you know like groups of like kind of like you know CEO groups, and you've got a person who's running, I'll I'll anonymize it, but you know, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business, uh, and they're on to their fourth marriage, you know. Like so I think something I've been thinking about recently is like, you know, people talk about you know becoming rich is is all about freedom. And I think that's that is definitely true. But I think about something else. Becoming rich, you get to choose your battles. So at the end of our last exit, it's kind of like I now have the I I now can afford myself to choose which battles I want to go into. So for example, I am not pushed into making a decision to go, I need to go for this type of business. Why? Because it gives me money really quickly, because well, I don't need to worry about that. So I get to choose the the particular area sector, the battle I have. I then also get to choose the battle of, well, I can succumb to the world's pleasures now. You know, I can go out to the fancy dinner every single night, um, I can drink during the day, and I can fucking do whatever I want, right? And I'm not gonna run out of cash. And my battle then will become I become lazy and I become, I start to feel shit. And, you know, I maybe start to eat away at um years of my life. And now my battle will be just living, you know, the everyday thing. Or alternatively, I can battle against those things and I can, you know, at the moment, uh every weekend I'm running a solo marathon. And so every weekend. Yeah, for the last month. Um, and because I'm trying to train for in in a month's time, I'm trying to do a hundred kilometer um run with with Jacques. And so, you know, it's 4 a.m. I'm waking up, my wife's asleep, my children are asleep. Like, I I can choose to not do that, but instead, like my battle is I'm gonna go out there and do it. And so I think it's like really you get to you get to choose which battles you want to have each and every day. Um, and so I don't know if that answers your question, but I think it's like that kind of showcases to you that there is uh there'll be a full spectrum of people that like haven't, you know, for example, you know, don't have their marriages intact, or don't have their health and fitness intact, or don't have like all these different things. And so my the battles I have chosen is like um the ones that are hard now and and and forgiving later.

Darren: 44:22

Really good point, man. About you know, you can really derail yourself with all the money. Do you feel like uh the exit and the cash gave you more freedom or less freedom? Way more, yeah. Like but I mean like resistance to you know, like the pleasures or uh more options, which can almost give I'll give it, I'll give an example. So because you can do anything in the world, does that get to a point whereby you're kind of like paralyzed being like fuck we should be in the Malfi coast and we should be here, we should be doing this? Whereas when you're broke and you have less choices, like I gotta make this fucking business work. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm gonna eat the chicken and rice, I'm just gonna go to the gym, right? Is there like a like a side of this where it's so many options can lead you to a lot of paralysis? I I'm just not that kind of person.

SPEAKER_03: 45:10

I I just don't put that much thought into many things, you know. I'm just like, oh yeah, this is what we're gonna do. Like, okay, cool, that's what we're gonna do. And I don't think about all the I think about all the options. That's when I say before I'm a simple man, like give me the water.

SPEAKER_01: 45:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 45:22

Just need water. Yeah, like yeah, so I that's just that's just who I am. But I um I think like I think your your previous question, you actually you're you're touching on the like the the family side there for a bit. Did I did I address that? You didn't miss it. You didn't, yeah.

Darren: 45:37

For me, it's more about uh the fact that you've maintained so much of your health and like now you're running daily fucking weekly marathons and everything. Whereas a lot of guys I spoke to Dave about this yesterday, which was I feel like I never agreed with the whole point that the busier you are, the more money you wear, the more your health gets impacted. You know, you see the traditional CEO and he's overweight and he's in a suit. For me, that was always such an important value that I'm like, look, I don't give a shit how busy I am. Get into the gym or go for a run or go for a walk. And it sounds like to me that you're quite similar in that. It's like it's always been a big health uh factor. And then I guess because you're a chef, the food is such a big component for you too, which is uh which is super unique, right?

SPEAKER_03: 46:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the um I think yeah, to that to that point, right? Is like everything is a game of priorities and everything is a game of trade-offs. And so the trade-off of of not doing it is like the you know, like we talked about before. Uh, and so for me, it's just like that is like that is a core priority. And so, like, you know, how I kind of juggle it with having a family is like I'm up at 440 seven days a week. I I will train in the gym for an hour, I will then go for a run and we do we run six to seven times a week. On the weekend, the reason I do I leave my house at four is because I want to get home to spend time with my family. So by the time I've finished a marathon, my wife's only been up for an hour. So as far as she's aware, I'm just sleeping next to her, you know what I mean? Like, so I um yeah, like I just I think you know, when people say that shit, unless it's like, I don't know, Elon Musk, because I've never worked at that level, I think there's a very finite number of people that get to say, like, oh no, I just can't prioritize. Because also, realistically, a lot of the time it's just like not putting the thing in your mouth. So there's no prioritization that needs to happen. The thing is just gonna go, like you're just gonna eat that thing, which like which is ideally you shouldn't be eating every single day because it's not like it's not good for your health. And so, like this idea of like, I just can't prioritize my health if you it's like, what do you mean? You just don't put that down.

Darren: 47:32

How do you uh how do you maintain like your your energy during the day because you're running so fucking fire, you're doing a bunch of stuff, you're up early, you're managing a family. Um, yeah, I'm curious. Like, how do you how do you go about your food? How do you go about your training? Like I said, it's a genuine thing that I'm like, it's awesome to see, right? Because you pack everything into one day.

SPEAKER_03: 47:50

This is the boring part of me, and I always get worried that people then hear me go, yeah, but I'm not a fucking freak. And that's okay. I um the boring part of me is like I go to bed the same time every single night, seven days a week. So I'm I'm in bed at 8 15 p.m. We st we start my my children's nighttime routine at 7.15. And so for an hour, we're we're putting the kids to bed. Um, I finish work, I I we start at um, we start at 7 a.m. We finish at 3:30 p.m. So I'm I'm home with my family from 4:30. So from 4:30 to 7 is is is is family time. And so how I maintain my energy is all I just go to bed really early. So then when I wake up early, I've had my seven to eight hours sleep and I I don't drink and I eat you know eat the same kind of like very nutritious foods at all times. And so for me, uh, that is the energy management piece. The cycle that, you know, at one stage of my life I was in was, you know, you start Monday, you know, a bit like low, and because you've had a big weekend, and then Wednesday you're starting to get good, and then by Friday your peak energy, and then you release peak energy into the weekend, and then on Monday you start again. And the biggest thing for me is like when I stopped drinking um was just like stable energy consistently, and it's like once so I I've I haven't had a sip in 15 months. I then had a period of like two or three months when I was in Europe, and then before that was another year, so it's kind of like a couple of years, but yeah, now now I've I've not even like I've gone to Europe since and just didn't didn't bother picking it up again.

Darren: 49:22

Well, I guess, dude, like when you're in Europe, it's like maybe like a glass of wine. Like for me, it's been three and a half years. No, not a thing. Yeah, nice. Irish people and Australian are very alike, right? It's not a drink, yeah. Yeah, that's it. No, it's just it's just not, you know, American guy is a little bit different, but for Irish and Australian, it's just like you're on it, yeah, or you're not on it, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 49:41

And I think million or none.

Darren: 49:43

Yeah, literally, and I felt like that a lot of my like mid-20s, I had honestly wasted, but I'd slowed my progression. And I guess stopped it, done. Yeah, easy. Um, as a chef, I'm curious what your food's like daily.

SPEAKER_03: 49:57

So food is um uh uh fuck. I tell you what, if people saw us during the these days and knew about the exit and then saw what we eat, they would be like, what is going on? Uh back to this idea, we're simple people. And so like our our daily, our daily lunch at the moment is we get a a a roast chicken from the from the from the shopping center next door, and we cut up a cucumber and a tomato and an avocado, and we have that with chili sauce.

Darren: 50:26

And like, and like it all's healthy, man.

SPEAKER_03: 50:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, shit, yeah. You know, it's like high protein, like great. And so you know, I think most people would expect, you know, you've made this many millions, surely you'd like you've you've you're living good. And it's just like we just like the problem with like living good at all times is that becomes your new baseline. There's there's your new dopamine. Like, so if I get you know a$1,500 steak for lunch every day, soon I'm like, it wasn't as good as yesterday's$1,500 steak. And so during the week, we are we're eating the same as what we did when we had like no revenue earning$1,400 at$400, you know, 12, 13 years ago, right? Like it's just like that's just who we are. Then at night time, you know, three or four nights a week, I'll cook a couple of nights a week. My my wife will cook. My style of food is very um, it's very like steak um chicken or fish. Most of the time it's steak because I just love it. And then it's just like as many vegetables as I as I can get into a salad and on the side of some kind of like a like a potato or something.

Darren: 51:25

Crazy, dude. Because you're like you've kept all your side as well when you're running so much. So you're eating a lot of you eating a lot or what?

SPEAKER_03: 51:31

Um, I'd probably be eating like 2200 at the moment. Yeah, yeah. But I've lost, I have, you know, this is one of my guilty pleasures. Each each summer I like to you know get dialed in for summer. And so I've lost about 13 kilos in the last uh, I don't know, six months. So yeah, yeah. So you gotta get to get shredded, keep your wife, keep your wife.

Darren: 51:52

So going into Sydney summer, yeah. Show your wife, you made a good choice. I sold a business of building a new one, but I'm still shredded, which is like the ultimate list. That's right. Fuck man, that's crazy. How um how do you want like to raise your kids knowing what you've done and what you've experienced?

SPEAKER_03: 52:09

Yeah, I love this question. Um, I think about it way too much. Here is the starting position. My son Oscar will graduate high school in 2039. I have no idea what the world looks like in 2039, um, and neither does his future school. And so I then have to ask myself the question, okay, like I am preparing him for a world that no one knows what exists. You know, do jobs exist like they do today? Fuck, I don't know. Um, like does university or college make any sense? I don't I don't know. I don't probably not. Um, and so then I think about okay, like what are the things that matter and what are the things that cannot change? And it comes back to this idea of like, well, it's the humanity. It's the I believe the superpower of the younger generation today and will probably remain the same, is the ones who can focus. You know, if you look at like the TikTokification of the world and like the short attention spans we have, I think one of the most important things is like your ability to pick up discomfort and stay there and remain with the whatever you're doing. So, you know, like I've had a 14-year-old reach out who wanted me to be his mentor and he's like, I have this business idea. And I go, you know what? The idea itself doesn't matter. What matters is that in three years' time you're still doing that idea, just because that focus and that discipline will matter. So that's like kind of part one is that ability to kind of focus and be uncomfortable. Part two is like, how can they, you know, what what is humanity? And so it's like for me, it's like it's the creativity and it's like the mess and the magic of being human. It's the ability to like walk in a room and create a feeling. So even if we create, you know, let's pretend we have robots that look like us, I don't know. Can those robots make a feeling? Can they can they get can they walk into a room and create that feeling of like how we're having a conversation today? And I don't believe they will be able to. And so then, like, how do I teach him, how do I teach him to like be good with other humans and then create that like that connection? Because what I can what I can promise you is that that is gonna be disproportionately advantageous to his life. I don't know if him being a software engineer is gonna help him. And so for me, it's all of these like almost like old school, like, you know, old school things that would help you in a cave, the things that would help you stay in your community of a hundred so you didn't get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. It's that stuff. Um, and then of course, the last thing for me is the battle that I'm gonna have to experience is, you know, our background is uh my my dad went bankrupt. Um and so my whole kind of childhood growing up, I don't necessarily remember it, but we didn't have any money. And so, you know, I I have an incredible relationship with money because um we didn't have any, and so like there's a lot of, you know, like I'm not, I don't know, like we're just like we're commercially driven, but like yeah, we didn't have any money. Where my son, like, he wakes up, he looks at the ocean, his dad drives a Lambo. Like it's you know, it's a totally like how do I teach him to like not be able to like not go to school and be like, yeah, my dad drives a Lambo. And like, fuck, I don't know, I don't want to not drive a Lambo, so now I have to I have to learn like how to do that.

Darren: 55:14

You gotta solve a different problem. Yeah, it's interesting because you know I didn't have much money growing up as well, and I felt like that when I started to like build a business, I was quite scarce of money. Like I was like not necessarily like afraid of it, but I was more like I just didn't didn't spend it. Did you find did you change that relationship for yourself and you're like fuck it? Like I have to let go a small bit.

SPEAKER_03: 55:34

It's interesting because my eldest brother is really like that. So my eldest brother, and I think it's because a sign of the times, like he was, yeah, he remembers my dad going bankrupt. He remembers us living in a caravan with a family of five, like he remembers that acutely. My middle brother does too. Like he remembers walking to school with like his shoes falling apart and going, like, what you're like, his thing he said told me the other day, which blew my mind, is like he's like, he's he's like he remembers it like eight or nine years old, going, like, one day I'm gonna have enough money to buy my own shoes. Like, like those are core memories. I don't remember that shit. Like, I have no idea, I was too young. Uh, and so I don't think I there therefore had like that finite um, like, you know, don't spend a dollar, don't spend a cent. But what I did have is I had like I had this desperate need for independence. And so at age 12 or 11, I got my first job. And my first job paid$5 an hour, it's totally illegal. I shouldn't have been able to give them that job. Um, then by age 14, when I was allowed to have a job, my entire way through high school I had three jobs, you know, washing dishes, the floor, um, uh a waiter, and uh kind of kitchen hand. And it's because I wanted to have my I wanted to make my$250 a week, so I didn't because I didn't need to rely on anybody, I needed to have my own money. Um, and so I never had to like shake this like you know, money is finite thing. Um, because I do very much have the approach of like abundance. Um, but yeah, I don't think that's by like by design, it's just like sometimes nature nurture.

Darren: 56:51

A combination, and then I guess a big thing is the skill, right? When you're when you're able to make your own money, whether it's working or 14 years old, like like okay, I was given the money, but I got the job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does that make sense? And then now you're like, okay, now I have the fucking skill and I have the ability, and you're going again, you know. So it's like I guess for you is as you said, nature nurture. Half of it was given to you in terms of the ability, yeah. And then you developed it too, right? Which is uh it's an identity piece. Did I want to say a massive thank you to you? You're a legend. Um, I'm excited to see the progress, especially when you launch, and I wish you guys the very best of luck. Thank you. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03: 57:26

Hopefully, we I didn't really ramble too much.