In conversation with Andrew Bond, CEO of 8common Limited

Today we welcome Andrew Bond, the CEO of 8Common.  Andrew's leadership narrative isn't just about the corporate climb; it's a deeply human story of personal and professional growth. His remarkable odyssey at 8Common began in the role of a customer success manager, where he embarked on a journey of learning and development. Over time, with unwavering determination, he climbed the rungs to become the CEO, a role that comes with a wealth of insights and experiences.

As we explore Andrew's journey, we also uncover the innovative products that define 8Common. The company, publicly listed on the ASX, is celebrated for its two flagship offerings: Expense8, a sophisticated tool for travel and expense management, and CardHero, a cutting-edge technology platform tailored to provide tailored card payment solutions for enterprise organizations and government departments.

Andrew's story is a reminder that leadership is a journey of growth and development, and his rise to the helm of 8Common underscores the power of commitment, adaptability, and an unshakable spirit. So, get ready for a conversation that not only sheds light on the leadership ethos but also unveils the innovative products driving 8Common's success, offering valuable insights for leaders and aspiring leaders alike.

Transcript

Sumith Dissanayake: 0:01

Another exciting Books of the Boardroom podcast. Today I'm joined by Andrew Bond, c e o of eight Common Limited, uh, company listed in a six. Andrew, it's a great, great pleasure to have you on our podcast.

Track 1: 0:16

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Sumith Dissanayake: 0:18

I would like to like you to introduce your company, eight Common to our listeners. Uh, what does ACOM do and how did you, uh, progress through the ranking to become the company c e o today?

Track 1: 0:34

Yeah, so I mean, ACOM does, uh, we, we have two primary products, one called Expense eight, one called Card Hero and Expense eight is probably the larger of the two, not probably is the larger of the two. Um, so expense eight is a travel and expense management tool. Um, so effectively when, when. People in organizations are spending money on their company credit card or booking travel. They, they use our system. Um, we primarily like to play in the, in the sort of government and large corporate space. Um, so we, we kind of love, love complexity and that's where that sits. Um, and we, we do the, we have about 170,000 users of the solution. Um, in government. We have, I think, 162 agencies across the country using our solution. So we have all of Northern Territory government that uses us. We have, um, most of New South Wales government uses us and. Right now we have about, I'd say about 20% of the federal government, but we have a contract and a mandate to roll that out to, um, probably another a hundred thousand users, um, after those that are, that are already on it now. So, and, and outside of that, we we're very big in the large corporate space. So Woolworths have been a customer of ours for 20 years, mi to 10 Amcor. Um, so that, that very large and complex, um, corporate sector as well. Uh, so expense eight's one product Card Hero is our second product. Card Hero is a, is a funds disbursement tool, uh, or, or card, I should say, prepaid card. So that plays in the not-for-profit space, particularly in the N D I S at the moment. So one of our existing customers who is a large not-for-profit with expense eight, came to us with a, with a problem with their, um, people that are in housing for For, um, disability care and they had this issue where, um, you, you'd have a house with let's say five people with disability in it. Um, and these, and these are people with sort of intellectual dis disabilities, so varying degrees of sort of financial capacity to look after themselves. And they within these homes, so five people with disability, five people would be there as carers who would sort of work, work. Shifts and look after these people. And, um, they didn't have a, a, a mechanism to spend money on client's hearts. So what they had was just your normal debit cards and bank accounts. And so five people would've five cards for the different people in the house. And these were just normal bank accounts. Um, you couldn't get any data out of them. They would, they would, at the end of the month, they would log into the, into the net bank and download a statement into Excel. They'd write what they spent the money for. Um, It was, there was, there was no controls over where the money was spent. Um, it was, it was quite a pain for them. And they came to us and said, guys, can you, can you guys figure this out for us? First time we said, no, we don't think we can. Um, second time we said, maybe, and then third time we said, yeah, we've, we've worked this out for you. And we built this card hero product in conjunction with those guys. So effectively what it, what it allows'em to do is they get, uh, digital, digital cards on their phone as well as one physical card, uh, and an app, and they can spend money on, uh, for multiple people. They can upload a, uh, a photo of the receipts. Uh, live at the, at the register. Um, there's a whole bunch of, um, rules and restrictions so that, you know, if I'm a carer, I can spend money on, I can't spend money on gambling or alcohol or anything like that. But if I'm a. If I'm a person with disability and it's my money, I can buy whatever I want, whether it's my money to, to spend. So, um, it's been very, very good for those guys to, to sort of control fraud and control compliance, um, improve transparency for the, for the. You know, the families of the people with disability. It's, it's been a, been a really impactful product. So those are, those are the two, two products in, in, in a very short, um, intro. And then I, I think the second question was how did, how did I traverse the, the ranks? Um,

Sumith Dissanayake: 4:36

been with the company for a while now. You started at a very um, uh, customer success manager type of role. And then progress through the area.

Track 1: 4:44

yes.

Sumith Dissanayake: 4:44

like to understand that career prohibition because that's very important for our listeners for sure.

Track 1: 4:51

Yeah. Um, so I joined, I think my eight year anniversary is in two weeks. I think it was 17th, August, 2015. Yeah. So I, um, my previous role I worked, um, in, in, in the software industry. I. Uh, for another, another company who's, who's now a partner company of ours called Satori Group. And we, uh, I ran the professional services practice there and I was, um, I think I was pretty good at my job and it got to a point where I thought to myself, I want to do my own thing. I, it was always, always where I wanted to go. I always wanted to, to run my own company. And there, there used to be this guy there called Chris used to always say to me, he's like, Bondi, you're a, um, sorry. I refer to myself as Bondi'cause that's what everyone calls me, not Andrew Um, even, even my mother calls me Bondi, um, which is quite funny'cause her, her last name is Bond as well.

Sumith Dissanayake: 5:43

incident when I was writing you kind of a script, right? I accidentally put, um, an eye at the end and I,

Track 1: 5:52

Oh, like Bondi

Sumith Dissanayake: 5:53

and then I removed it because I thought, wow, that's, I don't know where, but I just saying, I dunno how

Track 1: 6:01

Yeah, every, everyone calls me Bondy once they get to know me. Um, this, this guy Chrisy said, Bondy, you're a salesperson. You just dunno it. I'm like, nah, I'm not a salesperson. Like I had the image in my head of what a salesperson is. I'm like, I'm not that guy. No, no one likes a salesperson. I've got of thinking of the used car salesman. And eventually I was sort of thinking about things and there was no opportunity for me in the, in the existing company to, to sort of move too far. And I wanted to do my own thing and I. If I'm gonna, if I'm gonna run my own company, I need to learn how to sell. So, I, I left Satori and joined acom. Um, and I joined on as a customer success manager and was, you know, initially the role was half, half sales to new customers and half looking after existing customers. So for me it was a risk, but not a, not as big a risk as I knew I could manage existing customers. So I thought, Worst case, I can do half the job with, you know, with with no problem. The other half, I'll, um, I'll back myself. I actually took, uh, a 50% pay cut to do that as well. So I remember the, the salary I was on, I took half, half the salary and then took a commission that would get me back up. So I kind of backed myself to say, all right, if I, if I do this, I'm no worse off. If I, if I, if I don't do very well, I. Quite, quite far off financially. Um, so I, I, I did that and I joined the joined acom and, um, they brought on two customer success managers at the time, and it was the first time that the role had ever been in existence. And it was myself and another, another lady. Um, and after oh three, four months, six months, six months maximum, she, um, she got cancer. Um, And the, the c e o at the time came to me and said, what, what do we do? And I said, all right, well, I'll, I'll take on everything, but we, we need to focus on our existing customers and we're just gonna have to accept that the, the new sales pipeline won't, won't work. Um, you know, there, there won't be much time for it. So we made that decision and, and looked after our customers.'cause at, at that time we had a bit of churn. We were, we were moving from Um, a product called I C M S, which we'd upgraded to expense eight. And we were out there trying to get everyone to renew. And when you, when you go to every single customer and say, we need you to renew and sign new contract, they look at other options. So we started to the churn. So I have to sort of jump into that. And I did that for probably, probably a year and got all the customers, resigned back up, and then took over as general manager. So the c e o left, um, c e o left the c t o left, c f o left.

Sumith Dissanayake: 8:37

Right.

Track 1: 8:38

And then the chairman came, came to me. He, he actually flew to Sydney. He's based, he was based in Singapore now based in kl. And he flew over. He's like, all right, well, let's, let's meet you. And the, and, and then the product guy and went. Let's find a, make this work. And I was like, oh my, alright, let's do it. So I became general manager and then, um, the chairman kind of, um, guided me along the path. So he sort of said, Andrew, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make you c o o and then in 12 months time after that, I'm gonna make you the c e o and, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a lot of work to, to clean things up for you and, and give you a nice, smooth path. But that's, that's your trajectory and. He, um, he did exactly what he said he would and he, he took myself and Ben up to be c e o and c o o and I've been c e o for four years in September. So quite some time now.

Sumith Dissanayake: 9:26

know, how is, like you have run the business as a C E O. Wow.

Track 1: 9:31

Yeah. Yeah. So I became c e O when I was 37, I think. 37. Yeah. Pretty. Which was pretty scary at the time.

Sumith Dissanayake: 9:41

for sure.

Track 1: 9:42

And the funny thing is when he, when when, when he made me c e o, uh, chairman, he was chatting to me one day and he's like, Andrew, the first, I think the first thing you should do is win all of federal government. I. So at, at the time, we might've had 10 customers in federal government out of a hundred, and I think it's currently 170. He said, I think the first thing you should do is win all of government. And out loud, I said, all right, let's do it. But inside I was like, all of government like this. This guy's crazy. What do you mean all of government? How am I gonna do that? I took on the challenge and I, in my head, I gave myself five years to do it. I thought that was a reasonable timeline and.

Sumith Dissanayake: 10:27

Right. Wow.

Track 1: 10:29

Yeah,

Sumith Dissanayake: 10:30

a tremendous achievement for sure.

Track 1: 10:33

yeah, yeah. It's pretty, pretty crazy.

Sumith Dissanayake: 10:35

how did you do it? I don't, I don't want that strategy, but I want that exact, like, that attribute that you, uh, you know, sort of, uh, uh, or a discipline that you exercised to get that a hundred percent success. What was that?

Track 1: 10:52

Yeah, it's a combination of things. There's a, a lot of it is, um, you know, consistency. So, you know, I would, I mean, firstly, we, we, we set the goal, right? We said we we're gonna win all the federal government. So we set that goal and then we didn't, we didn't spend too much time thinking Strategically, how are we gonna win it? Like, who are the people? And like we, we didn't really do that traditional sales plan or, or you know, where, where you can identify the, the key people that you need to be influencing all that kind of stuff. We, we just, we just ran really hard at it. So I would go to, to Canberra every two weeks and back, back then I was driving a pretty old and Um, not, not so nice. Toyota Corolla and myself, the c o o and the chairman would drive down probably every two weeks. Chairman would flying probably once a month, and we would drive down to Canberra and we would stay in very cheap accommodation. Probably too, too, too embarrassing to say But we would get, we would find super cheap accommodation and we would, um, we would, we would just hit, hit the road and we would Um, essentially we focused on our existing customers, um, made sure that they were super happy and, and what we learned was we learned a lot of things, but one of the things we learned was we, we have a great product and our, and our customers are very, um, uh, very parochial and, and, and really sell us. So we didn't, um, we decided we're not gonna hire any salespeople. Um, nothing like that. No. No. Sort of traditional sales tactics. We just said, let's, let's love our existing customers and let them sell for us because, In, in government. The beautiful thing about government is they all talk to each other. Um, you know, Woolworths don't talk to Coles and say, what are you guys using for your, for your system to do X? How you, how are you handling this problem? They don't,'cause they, they, they're competitors and they don't care. Right. Woolworths doesn't call, doesn't call someone in another industry and say, what are you guys using for this? Unless they happen to. Government. They do, they all talk. It's a, it's a very insular, little, little, um, part of the world where everybody talks and everybody's friendly and they, they can, they can go around and ask. So when people started to have, um, you know, issues around their travel expense management, they would, they would ask around the other agencies and say, what do you use? And our customers say, we use expense eight and we love it and it's amazing. Come over and we'll show it to you. So we didn't even have to do like, demonstrations of our product or hardcore, um, yeah, no, no traditional sales tactics. We like the cust, our existing customers would demo to the new ones. And they would give'em a real live demo of a real system, not, not the Acme code that you are used to getting from, from most people with a beautifully, um, scripted, um, demonstration. It was a real deal. They would tell'em the good things, bad things, and we just started to pick up momentum. Um, and then I think five years ago, just over five years ago, we, we, uh, attended and won. A, um, a government panel, which was a, which was a, a sort of panel with multiple people on it. But what it did was it narrowed us down to two, just us and our biggest competitor. So there were, there were five or six different products they were looking for, and they said, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll bring onto the panel as many good ones as there are, and agencies can choose which, which one they want to use, but that choose from this. And got it down to just us and our biggest competitor. Uh, and then two years ago, almost to the day we won the, the, the single mandate. So, um, yeah, it was, it was a lot of hard work, determination, a lot of discipline, um, a lot of driving to Canberra, but just, just having that discipline being, being there, being present, and loving our existing customers.

Sumith Dissanayake: 14:34

Yeah. I think that's the story that a lot of people don't know most of the time, right? They only see the outcome, but they don't see the effort. So I can relate to myself as

Track 1: 14:43

Yes.

Sumith Dissanayake: 14:43

we have been through the similar kind of a setup. You know, end of the day people only see where we are now, but they never embrace the that we've been through.

Track 1: 14:54

Yes, a hundred percent. They don't, well, it's, it's, they say that all the time, right? All the overnight successes. They've been, they've been working hard for 10 years and no one noticed them. And, and one day it all finally just clicked and it, and it went off. So you see it all the time.

Sumith Dissanayake: 15:06

so,

Track 1: 15:07

Yeah.

Sumith Dissanayake: 15:07

used to call them the passport years, like where no one, you know, worried about it. So you are no one, so no one

Track 1: 15:13

Yes.

Sumith Dissanayake: 15:13

about you. So only they start talking about you when you get to somewhere. Yeah.

Track 1: 15:19

Hmm.

Sumith Dissanayake: 15:19

That's

Track 1: 15:20

that's right.

Sumith Dissanayake: 15:20

to hear that story and very inspiring. since this is your first c e o role, so you. Had, you know, I

Track 1: 15:28

Uh,

Sumith Dissanayake: 15:28

can, I, I can imagine that you haven't had anyone that you can, you know, emulate and, you know, train and get trained kind of thing, right? So I'm sure I is still fresh to talk about that transition someone you know, you, um, I can, I know that you're from a finance background, so you very, we are very tick, tick and you know, we are very conservative in our approach as well. And how was that transition? Uh, was it hard for you to do, to become someone who is supporting a team to achieve their targets?

Track 1: 16:02

Yeah, a hundred percent. It, it, it's very, you know, I found it quite challenging to

Sumith Dissanayake: 16:06

I.

Track 1: 16:07

To know what to do in, in situations because yeah, you go from, you know, some, some people, and I was one of them, are, are very good at, uh, achieving a list, uh, you know, a list of outcomes and, and working on it and doing, and, you know, doing the work yourself and getting the outcome. And I, and I was one of those people. And then, you know, I went from, from really ahead. I had, when I first started, I had no one, no one who worked for me. So everything I did was for myself. And I sort of took over five people maybe, and then all of a sudden there was 50 people working for me. And you can't, you can't do all the work and you, and you're looking after people who, who are experts in what they do, and you don't know a single thing about it. Barely. Barely. And you, and you, doesn't matter how much you try and learn, how much time you spend with them, I, I'm never gonna be an amazing coder. I can't, I couldn't, couldn't code if my life depended on it. Luckily, or maybe I could now because chat PT has, is starting to do some coding for me, but I I, I couldn't sit there with a blank, couldn't sit there with a blank screen and just say, okay, I'm gonna build something. Um, so yeah, it becomes quite difficult and, and, and it took me a little bit of time to realize that I. I, I, firstly, I can't do everything and I haven't, I haven't got a list of, of tasks that I need to do. I have a list of outcomes that I need to achieve, and, and the time span is quite different as well. You go from, these are the 10 things I need to do this week, uh, to, these are the, these are the five things that I need to do in the next 12 months. So you have to change your, your mindset from being a doer to being. Someone who supports and encourages and grows the team, um, and helps them achieve their goals. Because if they don't, if that, if, if none of the thing hit their goals, then well, surely you're not gonna hit yours, right? You're not gonna get the revenue that you're targeting if you're not supporting your, your team to, to get there. So, um, yeah, it took, it took a. It took a bit of learning. It took a few, um, a few losses in that sense to, to try and do things myself and then realize that I can't

Sumith Dissanayake: 17:58

No.

Track 1: 17:59

I can't code, I can't, there's a lot of stuff I can't do. I can't, I can't jump on the support desk and help them out, so just. You know, learning how to, how to inspire your team and, and really play a, a, um, a man manager role type thing versus a, a doer. I'm not a player on the, on the, on the soccer field anymore. I'm the, I'm the manager and I've gotta get the outcome, but I'm, I'm not there. I can't kick the ball. I'm too old and, and overweight now to, to be playing soccer

Sumith Dissanayake: 18:24

You know, I was gonna ask this question as well, and, you know, down the track about your, soccer career. Uh, you know, you've done well in

Track 1: 18:32

Oh yeah.

Sumith Dissanayake: 18:33

what, where, where are you on on that now? Are you playing at least for fun?

Track 1: 18:38

Uh, no, I'm not. I, um, yeah, I played, I must've played 20 years of soccer. I started when I was four and I kind of gave it up when I was early thirties, maybe 31. Um, just took up too much time, but I, I did make a, uh, a great comeback on Thursday night.'cause my son plays, all my kids play soccer, but my son plays and they have an annual parents versus kids game. And I'm, so the, uh, the parents played the under eights. Uh, we won seven one and I scored two goals and I only came for the second half. So, uh, fair to say, I'm still a soccer superstar in my own mind.'cause I, I, I beat up a bunch of eight year old kids, seven and eight year old kids, and then game, but I'm not, uh, yeah, I don't play anymore. It just takes up a lot of time, um, to hold. Whole half of your Saturday and my, my Saturday mornings are already kids' sports and my Sunday mornings are kids' sports. So to take up my Saturday afternoon would gimme not much time left. So I'm happy. I'm happy just encouraging my children or watching. I still watch a lot. I think I mentioned in the before the podcast. I'm going to the Matildas tonight, so

Sumith Dissanayake: 19:41

yes, yes.

Track 1: 19:42

I'll, uh, I'll, I'll support other people in, in the game and try and try and grow it and try and grow it, particularly for my two daughters who play. I like to. Do what I can to make sure that women's sport and women's soccer in particular is, is getting up to the levels of support and, and

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:17

I lost you

Track 1: 20:18

we still. Oh, okay.

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:20

for.

Track 1: 20:21

I didn't lose anything. It's all good. I'm back.

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:23

that's right. Alright, Andrew. Righto. So right.

Track 1: 20:29

Yeah. Perfect, perfect. I didn't, I didn't lose you at all. That's, that's interesting.

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:32

for, you know, maybe 30 seconds. That's all. That's good. This

Track 1: 20:35

Okay.

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:36

a, you know, commonality now that we need to accept in the, uh, online podcast,

Track 1: 20:42

Yes.

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:42

Right? So, coming back to that, working with people, I know it is not easy, right? So, one things is,

Track 1: 20:49

Hmm.

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:49

know, I think one of the hardest thing for me is to work with people because if I'm given a job for me to complete, of course I, I know how to do it. But in a

Track 1: 20:56

Yes.

Sumith Dissanayake: 20:57

space even that is even harder because it's like a project. So, you know, so the whole project depends on everyone's contribution and

Track 1: 21:05

Hmm.

Sumith Dissanayake: 21:05

how, how and when do you decide, like you know, how to push these people or get the pedal off, um, and then of course let it go. How do you do that?

Track 1: 21:17

You, you have to, you have to spend a lot of time really getting to know the people that, that work with you and for you, and understanding what makes'em tick. Um, you know, what, what gets them, um, excited, what gets them, um, You know, and some, some, some people, if you give'em a kick in the bum, they'll, they'll react very poorly. And some people will, will, will, will, will get moving. And I'm one of the latter ones. Sometimes I need someone to sort of light a light, a firecracker, And I'm like, I wake back up and I'm like, all right, let's go. But some people, you, you, you, you sort of, lot of, lot of fuse under them and they, they don't like it. They go into the shell and they, they. Perform worse. So, um, I just like to spend a lot of time with my guys, um, as much as, as much as I can, uh, in, in multiple settings, whether it be work or, you know, just, just taking out, if you're in the office, take a, take a different team member out for lunch every day and get to know them. Get to know what makes them tick. Get to know what ambitions they have or, or don't have. Um, you know, no, no. Know as much as you can about your people so you, you know how to get the best outta them. Um, So, yeah, it's really, really understanding the individuals.'cause there's no one, there's no one way that works for everybody. There's no silver bullet in. Anything in life, in my opinion, there's no, I dunno if you've, what questions you got lined up? When we, a lot of people sort of say what's the, what's your, what's your, you know, thoughts on this, what's the way you do this? What's the way you do that? And most of the time I'm like, it, it, it depends, depends on the people, depends on the situation. If there, if there were one way that worked for any particular discipline, then everyone would do it and it would just work. And we would never have any problems

Sumith Dissanayake: 22:54

So, so,

Track 1: 22:56

Project management approach that worked every single project would, would be on time, on budget, within like every, everything would be perfect and we'd all be doing the same thing, but there's, there's not, and d different things work in different situations and that's very much the case with people.

Sumith Dissanayake: 23:09

yeah, no, that's, I love that approach of, you know, getting them on one-on-one basis and then trying to understand, so my next problem, or the, the issue is the finding the time to do it. How, how do you balance that? Like is it like you let go some portion of your work that you know, usually what people do, uh, to find that time, or how do you balance it?

Track 1: 23:33

I just incorporate things into, into my normal day to day. Like I've, I've, I've gotta have lunch, even if I'm really busy, and I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna duck down, grab a sandwich and eat it at my desk for 15 minutes. Why not do that with somebody who's, yeah, if, if I'm busy, probably, probably my team is busy as well, and I'll just walk past, say, I'm gonna have to get a sandwich. Anyone will come with me. And then you spend the five minutes walking down while you're waiting for your, to order the walk back. You know, you, you'll get 30 minutes with somebody pretty quickly. Um, it's really just about, about incorporating and, and sort of in a sense you've gotta kind of mix your professional and your personal. Stuff into molded into one. You've gotta have dinner every night as well. If you're in the office and you're gonna, you're gonna have dinner in the office, or you don't need to be home for something, you're gonna go out for dinner. Take, take someone with you, you know, coffee, how many coffees? I, I, I would get two or three coffees a day. Each, each time is 15 minutes. Right? To go down, get it, wait, take it back upstairs, take someone for you with a coffee, like, just, just chat to them for 15 minutes. And you do that consistency and back, back to the consistency. You really get to know a lot about people.

Sumith Dissanayake: 24:38

Yeah. No, that's, that's fantastic because you have stuck it up with the right kind of, you know, place where you are not losing anything. So you pretty much. Making use of that time that you spend anyway,

Track 1: 24:52

A hundred percent. One, one of the, one of the companies, uh, values is make it count. So make make that time count. Take that, that 15 minutes, you're gonna get a coffee. Just use, use it for something else as well. Like, make, make that time count.

Sumith Dissanayake: 25:05

but love it. Really love that approach. Great It's a different, different, um, definitely a golden nugget from the forecast for our business for sure. Yeah.

Track 1: 25:16

Good stuff.

Sumith Dissanayake: 25:17

And I know, uh, in my note, I can see that, uh, you as a finance, you know, from the finance background also, you had a, you know, if you were in it, you would've had a really good career and become one of the top CFOs in the country. So at what point, uh, and why you decided to, uh, sort of, you know, segue from, uh, finance and going to more operational type of,

Track 1: 25:42

Yeah. Um, well, thank, thank you for that. Uh, uh, yeah, who knows what I could have been in finance, but, uh, it wasn't, it wasn't what I wanted to be. Um, but yeah, I had a, I, I, I did a, I did a economics degree with, with accounting in, um, in university, and then I joined Woolworths was my first job, and I was in the, in the finance team. There was, look, I, who knows what I would've become, whether good or bad, c f o, but, um, I definitely had a lot of potential. I was pretty, pretty good at what I did. I thought, and I probably spent three years doing finance stuff within Woolworths. And I'll never forget the, the C F O one day called me in into his office. This was like seven o'clock at night maybe. I was working on this project and it was, I was working, working late. And he called me in and he said, uh, uh, and at the time, my project was finishing up and I had two choices. One was to stay in the finance team and take on a finance analyst role. And one was to, to go do more project stuff and he sort of sat me down. He said, Andrew, you've got a lot of potential here. I think you could be the next c f O of or not the next A C F O of, of Woolworths. Um, and he gave me his pep talk and, and I walked out and I was like, being the C F O sounds like the worst job in the world. Why would I wanna be the C F O I don't wanna, I don't wanna get more into the numbers. I was like, I, I thought about what I liked and what I liked was, I liked at, at the time, I, I used a lot of, um, a lot of software to get the numbers and analyze them and come up with the insights, and I thought that is fun. I like, I like doing that. I like digging into the numbers and using my tools to get all these numbers that the other, the other sort of accountants spend weeks trying to get. They just report the numbers, but I'm, I'm in there and I'm analyzing it. I'm using these really funky tools, like that's what I wanna do. I don't want to. Just, you know, run p and ls all the time. And, and so the poor guy probably thought he gave me this super inspirational speech and was gonna get me to stay and be, you know, put me on a path to Cism and turned, turned me off because it was the first time I ever thought about it that I was actually going down this trajectory. And I was like, that's not what I wanna do. So I decided, um, I would, I did contracting for a little bit, but primarily I thought I. Give you the number and the analysis and the, and the, and the insights and not just sort of be, be an accountant. So I ended up joining software, joining the software world and initially in the, in the space of finance software. And haven't, haven't left for, geez, 15 years now, maybe.

Sumith Dissanayake: 28:10

Yeah.

Track 1: 28:10

Yeah.

Sumith Dissanayake: 28:11

I'm sure your finance background helps to, helps what you do now as

Track 1: 28:15

Oh yeah. Definitely because, because we primarily sort of talk to CFOs and finance people. Um, if you, if you don't understand at least basic concepts of accounting, um, you'll find yourself outta your depth in, in meetings with finance people very, very quickly.

Sumith Dissanayake: 28:32

Yeah, that's for sure. And you know, the software that you build is for them to use for them to be effective in what they do as well.

Track 1: 28:41

Correct. Yeah. And ultimately our, our software now is, is there to, to save finance people a lot of time. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, it's, um, yeah, the accounting background definitely helped and particularly when I came into the shop, I was able to very quickly slide in, I could pick up the phone to the customer and understand what they were talking about when they were telling me there's something, there's something wrong with the, with the F B T component of our system or whatever it was. I, I knew I lingo implications so. I didn't have to. You sometimes when you start a new job, you can be asking for the first six months. What, what does that acronym mean? Can you, can you repeat yourself? Can you explain it? And experienced.

Sumith Dissanayake: 29:22

That's, that's fantastic. So let me ask a, a few questions to understand your leadership philosophy. Do you follow any leader or any philosophy as such? Or is it something very I. In building new, like, you know, authentic leadership style that you are

Track 1: 29:41

So we, um, as a company, uh, and I'm a supporter of this, we, um, we sort of base our strategy and, and leadership of Vern Harnish.

Sumith Dissanayake: 29:50

Yeah.

Track 1: 29:51

So he, his book is sort of required reading in our company. We, um, whenever it comes to speak in Sydney, which is kind every two years, we go and we go and see him. So a lot of our, um, company philosophies are based around Fern Harnish for sure.

Sumith Dissanayake: 30:05

Great.

Track 1: 30:06

Um, so his, I think his book is sitting, it's right there just over my left shoulder. I can, I can see his, uh, scaling up book if I open it up and shows you on the screen that the podcasters can hear it. But, uh, you'd see a whole bunch of highlighted stuff, all my notes. Um, so yeah, we're, we're pretty, pretty all in on, on Bern Harnish. But then, I mean, I'd, I'd like to think there's my own personal. Style and, and character in, in, in my leadership style. I think it's, we're all, we're all a little bit different, and we should embrace that in our, in our leadership.

Sumith Dissanayake: 30:41

Right. So what, what was the main concept that, that you exercised from that book, Mike?

Track 1: 30:49

Probably the, the number one concept is something called the one page plan. So the, um, what we have at ACOM is we have a one page plan and it, and it's nothing ridiculously complicated. It's, um, it's an Excel spreadsheet that's online that everyone can view and. Basically it outlines everything from the, from the very high level so that your, your company values, um, you know, your strengths and weaknesses, where you like to play, what your, what your, it's called a big hairy, audacious goal or A B H A, what your B H A G is. Um, then it sort of goes down to like five year plans, three year plans, one year plans, and quarterly plans. And everybody in the entire company can see that. So once a quarter, we get together and we say, What's the, what's the quarterly theme for next, next quarter? And we, we come up with the goals and we put them on there, and then we have a meeting. We say, everybody, it's, it's, it's on here. This is what we're thinking, this is why we're thinking it. This is what we wanna focus on. But here's the, here's the quarterly theme. Here's the quarterly goal and the quarterly reward. I. So everybody gets to see it, and, and it's, it's, you know, there's no one, no one is restricted from it. Everyone can see what are the, what are the, what's the number one thing we're working on? The one thing that the, the management team wants to get done this quarter. And then what are the sort of next five priorities, and then what are the annual I. 10 year priorities. What are the five year numbers that everybody knows where we're going, what we're thinking, why we're thinking that. Um, and then off the back of that, every single person has a one page plan as well, and everybody can see everybody else as one pager so that the individual one pages will have things like every meeting that I attend on a, on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, six monthly, um, basis is in this and everybody's is in there. Um, and every, everything that I'm, I'm watching. So any, any particular projects that I'm keeping an eye on, um, whether internal or external, uh, all my KPIs are in there so everybody can see that. So what that does is just. Everybody can see everything and it's, it leads to this transparency, but it also leads to a lot of efficiency. Now, for example, if, if, if I were to, to to show you my one page plan, it would tell you that on a Friday afternoon, I update the sales forecast in preparation for my Monday, um, revenue and and sales meeting. So if you, if you come to me on a Thursday or a Friday morning and say, Andrew, what's the sales forecast look like? I can point to the thing and say like, don't, don't you, you can see right here that on at three o'clock on a Friday is when I do my sales forecasting. Don't talk to me at nine o'clock and ask me where it's up to, you know, it's at three o'clock, right? Or, you know, if you, if you come to me and say, um, you can, you can look into my one pager and say, I can see Andrew has a finance meeting every, every Monday afternoon. With the C F O, we run through all the numbers. If I need something from the C ffo, that's, that's where I can, you know, that's where I can go. I can say, Andrew, I know you've got a meeting on Monday with the C F O. Can you raise this topic for me? So everybody knows what everybody's doing. You can drop in, I can, I can drop into, into yours hypothetically, if you are, I don't know if you are running a project for me, I can drop in and say, I can, I can actually edit it and put stuff in there as well and say, um, I want you to look at this particular dashboard, or I want you to focus on this number. And so you can, you can drop, drop into people's one pages and say, I think you should be looking at these numbers. You know, we've got this, we've got this revenue forecast, for example, and you're the project guy. Um, I want you to look at this'cause you now you can see how your number impacts the, the total number and, or, or what, whatever it is, but just, just allows people to, to, to drop in and say, I. Andrew, I want you to keep, I want you to keep watch of, of this particular number or this, uh, project or this thing that's happening in the business. Um, so that's probably the biggest sort of firm harnish tool that we have implemented and been very successful with. And it, if I can, if I can give you the backstory, um, effectively when I, when I did take over as general manager, I think I mentioned that the, the c e O left, the C f O left, um, and the c t O left within the space for three months. It was a very busy time. We had a lot of stuff on, which is, which is normal now, but, um, everything was everywhere. Projects were behind. There was all this internal stuff and we sat down one day and we, we, on the whiteboard, we wrote every single thing that was a priority. Um, I'm sure we've done this before as well. You, you write everything is a priority and you say, we're gonna assign it a priority. Um, we're gonna, and then we're gonna sort of, Pick out the top ones. And we did that, and I've still got a picture of that, um, of that whiteboard. And there must have been 50, 50 things on it, and 40 of them were priority ones. And, you know, there was nothing, nothing much in the, in the, in the lowest priority bucket. And we said, all right, this is it. We're gonna, we're gonna order it and we're gonna attack it. And. We didn't, we tried to nudge everything along at once, right? There's probably, honestly, 30 priority ones outta the 50. Tried to nudge'em all along. Nothing actually got done until we sort of implemented the Vern, um, the Vern Harnish way of doing things, which is pick your, pick your top five priorities to focus on, and then if only one of those five priorities gets done in the next quarter, which one is it? What's the number one thing? And just focus on that. Get that one thing done. If you get one thing done, much, much better outcome than. Not getting 30 things done right and just nudging them all along 10%. So,

Sumith Dissanayake: 36:13

that

Track 1: 36:13

um,

Sumith Dissanayake: 36:13

really

Track 1: 36:14

I've seen a huge difference.

Sumith Dissanayake: 36:16

Wow, that seems really well into the, I'm sure the type of an industry you are running as well.

Track 1: 36:24

Yes, that's right.

Sumith Dissanayake: 36:24

Wow, that's great. Alright Ma, I think we are slowly coming into the end of the podcast now but I mention this on the podcast for sure. you were nominated for the 2022 Executive of the Year Award from C

Track 1: 36:40

I was, yeah. C C E O of the year award.

Sumith Dissanayake: 36:42

Yes.

Track 1: 36:43

Yeah, I was,

Sumith Dissanayake: 36:44

How did you feel when you were nominated and, uh, you know, it's such a prestige award. Uh,

Track 1: 36:52

yeah. I, um, to be honest with you, my, my first sense was disbelief and not, not like shock, like, Must be a mistake. Um, I mean, and I had the same feeling like maybe, maybe 12 months before that I got a call from, from the c e O magazine. They said, we wanna feature you guys. And I just thought it was another, another sales call and it was gonna cost me money and all this kinda stuff. And I looked up and like Elon Musk is on the cover, Hugh Jackman's on the cover. I'm like, what on earth are these people? Like, what do they wanna speak to Andrew bonded ACOM for like, what's going on here? And I had a similar feeling when, when, you know, one of my, one of my team. Sabrina, she's super superstar and she, she's like, you should apply for this. You've got a great story. And I was like, nah, no one cares what entry bond from ACOM and thinks like you're crazy. She, she pestered me, pe me and I said, all right, we'll do it. It's, you know, there's no cost involved. It's prestigious. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll, I'll, I'll fluke something and get a, get a mention in the bottom. And then it came back and said, you're a finalist. I think I was in the top eight. And,

Sumith Dissanayake: 37:54

Wow.

Track 1: 37:55

um, I said, I said to her, I was like, You know, that's, they're just, they're just trying to fill the numbers or I just didn't, I didn't believe it. I just, so it took, it took me a while and, um, To sort of come to terms with the fact that it was legitimate and, and allow myself to be, you know, proud and happy for, for the achievement.'cause it was, you know, as it turned out, it was quite legitimate. Even, even at the awards when I, I I, I, I wasn't successful and I was like, ah, I told you I was a waste of time. And she, she went off and spoke to somebody. She's like, no, no, no, you were, you were in the top few. You like, you didn't miss out by much. You actually were really, really close. And I was like, oh, wow. Maybe, maybe I am more interesting or, you know, maybe my story's a bit more interesting than I give myself credit for, but, It was, um, look, it was, overall it was really good, you know, personally, um, it was, it was fantastic. It was good for the company as well because, you know, a lot of, a lot of people dunno, our company, we're not a, we're not a huge name. Um, so when, when investors and potential investors, I. Sort of see on LinkedIn or, or wherever, wherever they come across it. Maybe they read it in the magazine. They're like, oh wow, this guys are legit. Like this guy's in the, in the magazine. He's nominated for an award. Um, so yeah, it was pretty, pretty, pretty amazing. I've still got the, the magazine is, is one of the things right next to my book.

Sumith Dissanayake: 39:08

Wow.

Track 1: 39:08

Again, it's, it's, it's, it's a shame. It's not on, it's not on video, but I do, I was on the, the, the C, the c e o of Zoom was on the front cover.

Sumith Dissanayake: 39:16

wow.

Track 1: 39:17

'cause it was during Covid and, and his business was, was going nuts. And I'm, I was in there so,

Sumith Dissanayake: 39:22

I, that's

Track 1: 39:22

um,

Sumith Dissanayake: 39:23

good achievement. But I, when I look anyway, you know, the same thing when I looked at it as well, when I saw that, you know, it builds the credibility, it builds that, you know, of thing that okay, wow. Kind of a feeling and want to work with, you want to sort of, you know, and no hesitation not to,

Track 1: 39:39

Yeah.

Sumith Dissanayake: 39:39

know, deal with, uh, Andrew anymore kind of a feeling. So that's fantastic.

Track 1: 39:44

Yes. Yeah, it was really good. And I mean, the, the, the, the best thing that came out of it, well, 2, 2, 2 really amazing things came out of it, which had nothing to do with me being a C one was If you Google me now you actually get me, which is cool because previously, if you Google my name, I dunno if anyone knows this, but in, in the books and the movies, Andrew Bond is James Bond's father. So all you would get is a whole bunch of James Bond stuff. And now if you Google Andrew Bond, as long as you're in Australia, you'll get a little bit of that still, but you'll actually get Andrew Bond's, the c e o,

Sumith Dissanayake: 40:15

a c o.

Track 1: 40:15

um,

Sumith Dissanayake: 40:16

your profile has been optimized.

Track 1: 40:19

my, my, yeah, my, my ss e o is. And then, uh, the other thing was they, um, you know, they, we did the, I did the interview and they said, all right, we need to book in your photo shoot. And this was, uh, about July, 2021. So we'd been in Covid for a little while and I wasn't in any good shape at all. And I was like, I've got eight weeks to be photo shoot ready. And I trained the hardest I've ever trained to lose a whole lot of weight. Look good for the photo shoot. So that, that definitely helped. But then that link linking back to my other story, the, the day before the photo shoot was, was the 2021 parents versus kids soccer game. And I had this little moment during the game where the ball popped up nicely and I thought, I. I know what I'm gonna do here. I'm gonna do a bicycle kick and score a goal, and it's gonna be, and it's gonna be glorious. And it all went down this slow motion. I hit the ball. I didn't score a goal, but landed right on the, on the, on my back and, and hurt my, hurt my back. So I, all these post, all these poses in this photo shoot, I could barely move. And I'm smiling, but I'm in agony. Yeah.

Sumith Dissanayake: 41:25

got the

Track 1: 41:25

But

Sumith Dissanayake: 41:26

back. Right. So, because some good, good things happen behind the scenes, people don't see them. Oh, yeah,

Track 1: 41:33

Hundred percent. Yeah. So it was good. Good recognition.

Sumith Dissanayake: 41:36

ask you one, one last question, right. Because of, you are coming from the tech industry because there's a significant

Track 1: 41:42

Sure.

Sumith Dissanayake: 41:42

talk going on about the AI taking over, you know, the opportunities for people. And how do you

Track 1: 41:48

Yeah.

Sumith Dissanayake: 41:49

uh, AI in inversion, uh, into the, the IT sector and also maybe finance as well? Um, where do, what do,

Track 1: 41:57

Hmm.

Sumith Dissanayake: 41:57

do you see like the, the next trajectory for the AI to take over some of our jobs or the roles or the tasks?

Track 1: 42:06

Yeah, I think, um, I think like most technology revolutions before it was not, there's a, there's a lot of, you know, fear that, that, that sort of gets out there. I mean, you know, you could, people thought computers were gonna take over their jobs. I. In some senses, yes, but ultimately they led people who were capable to do a lot more with their job than they could before. And I think AI is definitely the same, but it's, um, in my mind it's not, it's not a fad or a passing thing. Um, and it's probably been around a lot longer. I talk about sort of overnight successes. You know, AI has been something in the background for a very long time. It's that kind of exploded when chat pt, uh, came out and everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Um, but. Ai, I mean, I use, uh, AI a lot personally. I use it to help, uh, correct my, my emails. I use it a lot for, um, reports and, and just, just to get the words right, I use it. I, I'll see the best use of this. And one of my investors called Martin gave me this tip. If, if your kids are probably a little bit tall, but if anyone out there has young kids put into chat, G P t, uh, to, to write you a kids, Fairytale or a kid's story using your kids' names, and it will write the best story that your kids will love more than anything else in the world.

Sumith Dissanayake: 43:25

Yeah.

Track 1: 43:26

Um, so I've been doing that a lot recently. So I think the other day I, I had a, my kids asked for a story and I, I said, what, what, what do you kids wanna be in the story? And they said, we wanna be bears. I said, okay. So I asked a story about three kids, um, with my kids' names and they're all bears. And, and it wrote this amazing story about, about my kids and I. Going back to the work stuff, it, it, it will enable everybody to become a lot more productive. Um, I don't think it's going to, it might replace some, some jobs, um, but I don't think it's as scary as everyone thinks. I think, um, it will enable everybody to do their job a lot quicker. You know, a good example in the, in the sales sort of realm. Um, my salesperson and I decided that, uh, universities would be a really good. Um, fit for our product. We have, we have a few customers from universities. They're quite similar in a lot of ways to government. So we said, let's, let's have a look at this. Let's have a look at government. I. This was just when chat t's latest version had come out in March, and I said, let's just try this chat t and see, see how good it is. And we were able to, in the space of an hour, have an entire view of the, of the landscape of the university sector in terms of how much money they had, how many, how many people worked for them, what the biggest ones were. So that, that, that kind of market scanning and trying to determine whether you should enter a market or not, that can take weeks, if not months, to pull together to say is, you know, is, is the industry big enough? Is it complex enough? Does it, does it, does it fit us? We did that in hour. Do that now. And then, so, and in the space of, honestly two hours, we did, we did all that for universities. We, we got it to write a whole bunch of LinkedIn posts for us. That, you know what? Some, someone else we know spends a lot of money getting their LinkedIn post written for them and, and going back with copy. This thing was running perfect copy every single time. So, um, and that, that, honestly, man, we, we, we would've done a month's worth of work in two hours. Um, and it was all enabled by the ai. The AI didn't, didn't do any, any of the sort of thinking for us. It just brought us the information and it brought it very quickly. So, um, I think it's a, an enormous enabler. Uh, anyone in the development space would probably know by now, can, it can take the time you need to write code or read someone else's code and just slash the amount of time needed. So, um, yeah, I think it's a very useful tool. I think it's, I think it's definitely more than just a fad and I think it's gonna, I think it's gonna enable a lot of, uh, a lot of people to do a lot more than they currently are able to.

Sumith Dissanayake: 46:08

Oh, that's a great thought. And, um, you know, I'm, I'm the same, I'm thinking the same way. It's not going to replace me, but

Track 1: 46:14

Yeah.

Sumith Dissanayake: 46:15

transform you pretty much into.

Track 1: 46:18

Yes.

Sumith Dissanayake: 46:18

Useful, more valuable for the human community. Um, yeah.

Track 1: 46:23

I think so.

Sumith Dissanayake: 46:23

nice thought. I love the, the whole conversation I'm sure your story does resonate with lots of our, our listeners and how could our listeners get in touch with you if they want to have a chat with you or to, uh, you know, discuss further, what's the best way to connect?

Track 1: 46:44

Uh, best way to connect would be to, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I don't post a lot, but, um, find, find me on LinkedIn and, and send me a message. I'm always, always up for that. Or if you wanna, if you wanna post my, um, my email in the, when, when you, when you publish the, the podcast, happy to do that as well.

Sumith Dissanayake: 47:00

Perfect. Thanks Andrew. Thanks for the very insightful conversation.

Track 1: 47:07

You guys welcome. Thanks for having me on.