1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:30,000 I'm Josh. Welcome to Two Commas. This is the podcast all about exits. And we talk to luminaries and industry leaders that have sold their business for seven figures or more. Today I'm joined by Myles Valentine. Myles has been described as a serial entrepreneur. I've known Myles for a number of years. And he was very strong in the telco space originally, and then moved into sort of tech. 2 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:42,800 Telco software and so Myles has been around tech for probably more time than he cares to remember. And he had a wonderful exit back in the early teens in New Zealand. So first up, please welcome along Myles. Myles, thanks very much for joining us today. 3 00:00:42,840 --> 00:00:44,760 Thank you. Thanks Josh. Good to be here. 4 00:00:44,800 --> 00:00:56,000 Great. I always like to start these conversations with a bit of an insight into the origin stories. So would you mind giving us a bit of a snapshot of the early days for Myles kind of career and some significant moments in your journey, please? 5 00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:25,000 Yeah, sure. Well, without wanting to go too far back. I was working in property development during the 80s. The very real bubble that we all found out was a bubble when there were 42 listed property development companies on the New Zealand stock market. And after 87, there were two left about three years later. So sure enough, company went flat. I lost my...in fact, I resigned before the end because it was very plain to see. And 6 00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:36,360 sat there literally thinking what am I going to get into? Long story, my boy, with I started selling telephone systems and or started a business selling telephone systems with two partners. And 7 00:01:37,600 --> 00:01:51,640 because telecom was deregulating, God bless Roger Douglas. Those were the days when if you recall, you probably were probably too young, but it took you six weeks to get a telephone line and took you six weeks to buy a fax machine. If you had a bottle of scotch, you get a lot quicker. And I'm not kidding. 8 00:01:51,640 --> 00:02:14,920 The post office operated very, very, very inefficiently. Anyway, we got into selling phone systems, did that rather well, grew a business. That was where I discovered sales process and the value of a sales process. We very religiously followed a sales trainer called Brian Tracy, Psychology of Selling Program. And we being the sales team, we had about a dozen sales people, we had a couple of girls and 10 guys. 9 00:02:14,920 --> 00:02:26,880 We followed a model and a process and frankly clean telecom up. And we were obviously, we were the second biggest supplier of phone systems in the country. We had offices in Wellington Christchurch, but telecom were 10 00:02:27,320 --> 00:02:39,520 20 times bigger than we were, but we were the second biggest. Got acquired by Ubix, had a very real restraint of trade not to get back into phone systems. So started ZCOM, which was voice technology at the time. 11 00:02:39,520 --> 00:02:56,160 And what we did, we built call center software. So we took control of the PBX over when somebody rang an 800 number. And again in 1994, this was quite new stuff. I mean, 800 numbers were only, they were out there and they were around, but they were about 12 00:02:56,160 --> 00:03:12,680 64 cents a minute, literally. They were mind bogglingly expensive. But people were starting to realize the value of a call center and they were called call centers and not contact centers. So we started building software that controlled the call. So when somebody rang the 800 number, we 13 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:20,440 decided who they talked to, decided the messages they listened to, reported on the call. We invented callback. 14 00:03:20,440 --> 00:03:30,760 You know that, in fact, I want to say we, a chap called Peter Bonham, who was our senior lead developer guy invented it. And you know, to this day, 15 00:03:32,480 --> 00:03:39,160 that take press one to retain your position in queue and we'll call you back just as if you waited was exactly how we started it. 16 00:03:39,160 --> 00:03:48,440 We, yeah, so that was 1994, the start of voice technology. We moved into Australia. 17 00:03:49,600 --> 00:04:00,400 At that stage, we only connected to the NEC telephone system, which was one of the dominant systems in New Zealand, but was the dominant system in Australia. And so we expanded into Australia, 18 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:10,480 partnered up with NEC. They ended up ultimately taking our product and selling it for us. But initially it was more of a partnership. And then 19 00:04:12,440 --> 00:04:22,000 when my daughter was born December 96, my wife spent the next year, I was gone every Monday morning on the 6am flight to Sydney. 20 00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:35,320 And I'd come home at midnight on Thursday and God bless my sister-in-law who called in and helped my wife bath the older baby, because I wasn't there for the first year. And lived in Sydney and it went pretty well. 21 00:04:35,360 --> 00:04:46,360 In fact, it went very well. It was good. And then, I'm giving you a bit of a history now, but then trade and enterprise, New Zealand trade and enterprise in 1996, 22 00:04:46,360 --> 00:05:03,680 brought about 20 venture capital investors down from Taiwan, of all places. And we, there were a group of, I don't know, actually, I didn't really even know how many, but I guess a dozen or so technology companies pitched to them. 23 00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:23,360 Now, 1999, no one really knew what VC was. I mean, it was, we didn't really know what it was. Well, in fact, no, we didn't know what it was. We just thought it was money. And we knew we needed money. We were thinking about, well, just expansion generally, not really having thought that far ahead. We were going, we were going well, you know, we were making good sales. 24 00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:46,880 We were profitable to the extent we were investing in ourselves. And anyway, so we pitched to these 20 odd people sitting in a room. And about six weeks later, I get a phone call from a guy called Stephen Ching, who was actually the CTO of ASIC computers. And he was also head of their company. 25 00:05:46,880 --> 00:06:12,960 Which was called Hontang. And, you know, literally, it was a phone call out of the blue, he rings me up and he said, My old Stephen Ching, he spoke excellent English. We'd like you to come to Taipei, we'd like to invest in your business. And I'm like, sorry, who are you again? And anyway, so we went out and retained what we call it the CTO. 26 00:06:12,960 --> 00:06:29,280 So we went out and retained what we call at the time, a consultant. There was a company floating around called Caltech, which was nothing to do with any American company. It was a couple of individuals, Douglas Paul and Wendy Hall. And I think there was another one, another partner. 27 00:06:29,280 --> 00:06:44,080 But we dealt with them, we retained them. I went up to Taipei with Wendy, she came with me to act as my consultant, because I don't know. In fact, I suspect she didn't either. But you know, we really didn't know what the hell we were doing. We really had no idea. 28 00:06:44,080 --> 00:06:58,960 And anyway, we went up there, we met a number of people over the course of a few days, came back to New Zealand. And about a week later, they came back and said, Okay, we're prepared to put a million Kiwi in, if you can match it from local investors. 29 00:06:58,960 --> 00:07:20,400 And again, back at that time frame, we had quite a number of Taiwanese immigrants that had moved to Auckland. And Acer Computers holds a very strong reputational, well, very strong everything positioned in Taiwan. It was a bit like in the old days, you know, Fletcher's Challenge was to New Zealand, you know, if Fletcher's Challenge was investing, then Kiwis would have followed type thing. 30 00:07:20,400 --> 00:07:48,000 And so Caltech raised a million locally, predominantly from Taiwanese investors. And we had our 2 million bucks in Kiwi. And that was about September, October, November 99. Well, at the time, the currency was 40 cents in the dollar. So 2 million Kiwi was actually only 800 grand US, which as we learned very quickly was nowhere near enough to move to America. 31 00:07:48,000 --> 00:08:05,040 So but I moved. So this January 2000, wife and now three year old daughter and four year old son, we moved to Southern California. And I think we ran out of money in June. 32 00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:22,960 Just a few months later, it was so we just so underestimated how much and again, these were the days where there was no sass, you had to you had to buy all of your hardware for your it environment, you had to create a LAN and something that I think is now well known. 33 00:08:22,960 --> 00:08:40,720 But because you're coming from New Zealand, you've got no credit history. So we had to we prepaid our entire one year lease on our apartment for the whole year, plus a $5,000 US because everything's in US of course, dog deposit to bring the dog over what have the dog there. 34 00:08:40,720 --> 00:09:00,400 And yeah, you ran out of money fast. Ultimately succeed, which came out of left field was screen sharing technology was just starting then. Because when we first started in February, we brought we brought a couple of Kiwis with us who were acting as channel managers. 35 00:09:00,400 --> 00:09:18,720 And their job was to go out and find any see resellers in America to resell our product. And we you know, we did that recently successfully. We found a group and found a list and got on the phone and called them and set up a point, you know, and we set up appointments and the Kiwi way being you go out and have a meeting, you get on. 36 00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:34,400 And what that means over there is you get on a plane, you go to see them. Well, that's freaking expensive and very time consuming. And so and and back in the day, every demo we did was face to face. 37 00:09:34,400 --> 00:09:44,520 So we started within about two weeks, we realized we can't do this. This is ridiculous. But as I say, screen sharing technology was just starting. So we started to be able to do remote demos. 38 00:09:44,520 --> 00:09:57,480 If that hadn't come along, and you know, we all the work from home things quite topical at the moment, obviously, America was working from home in 2000, because you don't have offices over there where everybody works in the office. 39 00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:11,560 They're all over the country. Big place. You know, the end of end of ZECOM in 2012, we I think we had about 65 people around America, and there were only 15 or 20 in the office, you know, because everybody's working from home as they do. 40 00:10:11,560 --> 00:10:23,760 So the screen sharing thing enabled us to do remote demos and that we kind of got our feet. And, you know, that was the that was kind of the start of ZECOM getting to that point. 41 00:10:23,760 --> 00:10:35,600 And by this stage, we changed the name voice technology. There were two voice technologies in the US. So we changed the ZECOM, you know, silly process about how do you go through changing names? 42 00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:45,800 We paid a consultant until I got fed up with the first bill that came in. It's like, you know, we're not going to do that. And then lovely girl called Theresa Murphy in our marketing department said, well, what about ZECOM? 43 00:10:45,800 --> 00:11:02,920 Because everything had to be called COM in those days. You remember, COM was if you're a dot com, it matters. Yeah. But but, you know, again, there were when we say when we when the family was moving and people going to America, it's fantastic. 44 00:11:02,920 --> 00:11:08,640 And I go, look, you know, it's a bit like a gold rush. I don't know whether the gold's going to run out. I don't know whether it's going to work. 45 00:11:08,640 --> 00:11:17,440 I don't know whether we're going to find it, but we're going. So, you know, and and really, you know, well, what turned out to be a fantastic adventure? 46 00:11:17,440 --> 00:11:22,720 I really, you know, I was not that keen to move to America at that point. I really like New Zealand. 47 00:11:22,720 --> 00:11:30,760 I thought it was the best country in the world. And why would I want to leave? But at that point, I really well, when I got to America, I really said I enjoyed it a lot. 48 00:11:30,760 --> 00:11:38,320 And and, you know, the opportunity and I think we pretty regularly that it's a great country to go and do business in. 49 00:11:38,320 --> 00:11:52,480 And yes, so so it was a great adventure. And, you know, then we went through, I don't know whether you're going to ask about all some of the really interesting things that mistakes that we ultimately made. 50 00:11:52,480 --> 00:11:54,840 I'll definitely get to those. Yeah, I'm sure you will. 51 00:11:54,840 --> 00:12:03,240 There's some a lot to unpack there. The thing that stands out for me probably about that journey is that it's been said that success involves sacrifice. 52 00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:10,960 And so what I heard you say is that early on in the ZCOM Voice Technology journey, you made the decision to invest a lot of energy into the business. 53 00:12:10,960 --> 00:12:16,360 And the consequence of that was the family time that you had. And then you decided to move country as well. 54 00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:22,880 And so that's a lifestyle sacrifice, a quality of living, access and continued dialogue with friends and family. 55 00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:30,880 You know, those things have to happen along the way as well. And so I don't think it's something that people often reflect upon from the outside, you know, the overnight success story and, you know, sold for a whole bunch of money. 56 00:12:30,880 --> 00:12:36,560 And they don't appreciate there's been a lot of decisions along the way because every decision has consequences that involve sacrifice. 57 00:12:36,560 --> 00:12:40,840 So I just thought I'd call that out. I'm curious. You bootstrapped at the start. 58 00:12:40,840 --> 00:12:48,800 You raised in 1999 just pre tech rec, which was fantastic timing. If it had been six months later, the money probably wouldn't have existed. 59 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:55,440 And so what happened? You ran out of money relatively quickly in the United States without delving too deeply into it. 60 00:12:55,440 --> 00:13:00,480 I'm curious as to how you solved that problem that you faced when you ran out of cash flow quite quickly. What did you do? 61 00:13:00,480 --> 00:13:10,760 Well, one of the by this stage, Caltech had gone off and as the VC market was evolving in New Zealand, 62 00:13:10,760 --> 00:13:19,040 AMP, a part of AMP that doesn't exist anymore, I think, was had decided that they wanted to get into VC. 63 00:13:19,040 --> 00:13:30,200 And Douglas Paul had picked up a contract to manage AMP's VC portfolio, which didn't really exist at the time. 64 00:13:30,200 --> 00:13:38,720 In fact, they acquired another business that had a portfolio and Douglas started to manage that on their behalf as a manager on contract. 65 00:13:38,720 --> 00:13:45,200 So suddenly we had, well, I'll say access. I mean, we had an entree into AMP money. 66 00:13:45,200 --> 00:13:54,160 And at that point, they chose to invest alongside Hontung. And so a degree of luck. 67 00:13:54,160 --> 00:14:02,640 We were kind of right place, right time talking to the right person. And, you know, well, it was actually a good decision for them. 68 00:14:02,640 --> 00:14:11,800 They, funny enough, at the end, they got out too early. They actually sold before we made our sale, which was a really... 69 00:14:11,800 --> 00:14:17,640 I ended up writing to them about three times to make it very, very clear in writing that I was recommending they did not sell what they did, 70 00:14:17,640 --> 00:14:30,640 which was in about 2011. But anyway, they chose to. But back then in 2000, it was a good, not bankable, 71 00:14:30,640 --> 00:14:42,400 riskable VC investment. And ultimately it did pay off. I mean, the valuation then, I think, was six Kiwi, seven Kiwi. 72 00:14:42,400 --> 00:14:51,360 So it was a reason. And look, as we all know with VC valuations, they're very much put your finger in your mouth and wait for the wind. 73 00:14:51,360 --> 00:15:01,680 So but yes, so right place, right time. And then ACC bought a bit of... 74 00:15:01,680 --> 00:15:06,600 I had a problem with my partner, as often happens, or he had a problem with me. I'm not sure. 75 00:15:06,600 --> 00:15:13,400 But no, I had a problem with him. And we ended up... 76 00:15:13,400 --> 00:15:17,440 Yeah, I won't go into that path because there's a few individuals that are well known around New Zealand. 77 00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:26,760 But we ended up, ACC ended up buying part of my partner's stake. And so now we had AMP and ACC in there. 78 00:15:26,760 --> 00:15:33,840 And so we were reasonably funded, but then we didn't actually raise much more for... 79 00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:38,160 Well, actually, we didn't raise much more. We grew within... 80 00:15:38,160 --> 00:15:41,840 Yeah, I wouldn't say we bootstrapped it. We were sort of growing reasonably and making profit. 81 00:15:41,840 --> 00:15:51,320 And the more we grew, we just had to manage our investment alongside how the revenue and margins were going. 82 00:15:51,320 --> 00:15:57,720 And you know, software, it's copy, colon, A, and you've got another copy of it. 83 00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:02,280 So if you can start, if you can keep growing. And again, it was pre-SAS. 84 00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:07,080 So we were selling, it was the day every first of every month, you're back to zero. 85 00:16:07,080 --> 00:16:16,440 And again, from the telephony space, telephony had no concept around maintenance contracts. 86 00:16:16,440 --> 00:16:24,880 So the telephony market pushed back really hard on paying a support contract for this, 87 00:16:24,880 --> 00:16:29,080 what they thought was a piece of telephony, but it wasn't. It was a piece of software. 88 00:16:29,080 --> 00:16:34,560 So that was a real hurdle we had to get over in that sector. 89 00:16:34,560 --> 00:16:44,800 And yeah, so by the time we sold, we had about 750,000 US of maintenance coming in every month, 90 00:16:44,800 --> 00:16:49,040 which was a start, but you know, it was quite a big machine by then. 91 00:16:49,040 --> 00:16:53,520 We needed to sell three to four million a month. So every month. 92 00:16:53,520 --> 00:17:00,280 And that was a thing that I certainly did not miss after we sold that constant every month, 93 00:17:00,280 --> 00:17:05,920 you know, where you're at with the number. Because if you didn't get over that break even point of 94 00:17:05,920 --> 00:17:10,640 whatever it was, 3.2, 3.4, and you lost money, but the moment you got over it, 95 00:17:10,640 --> 00:17:13,880 you were at 88% GP and suddenly you were in Clover. 96 00:17:13,880 --> 00:17:18,480 So if you were 300 grand above your break even point, then it was a great month. 97 00:17:18,480 --> 00:17:25,680 And if you're 300 below, it was a hurt. So yes, as I say, it was the days before SAS. 98 00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:32,120 And yeah, I've started to delve into the numbers and you mentioned the P word along the way there, 99 00:17:32,120 --> 00:17:36,000 which is interesting. So I believe business and life is quite cyclical. 100 00:17:36,000 --> 00:17:41,080 And so you talked about profit, which in the early noughties was the thing that you were building 101 00:17:41,080 --> 00:17:43,640 your business to achieve at a certain point in time. 102 00:17:43,640 --> 00:17:48,040 And then you'd build upon that and then hope that someone might turn up and value that revenue stream, 103 00:17:48,040 --> 00:17:52,480 those customers at the geographies that you're working in, all those things that lead to a great exit. 104 00:17:52,480 --> 00:17:57,040 And then, of course, during the late teens and the early twenties, we went through the heyday of 105 00:17:57,040 --> 00:18:00,360 invest at all costs and get revenue at all costs. 106 00:18:00,360 --> 00:18:04,480 And so valuations went through the roof and business fundamentals seemed to be forgotten about. 107 00:18:04,480 --> 00:18:07,320 But we're back to that space again of profit being very, very important. 108 00:18:07,320 --> 00:18:09,200 So it's just funny how these things kind of turn around. 109 00:18:09,200 --> 00:18:13,040 But I'd like to kind of start to delve into the exit itself. 110 00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:15,280 And you started to talk about some kind of revenue metrics. 111 00:18:15,280 --> 00:18:18,080 I'm curious if we could get a sense of the scale of the business. 112 00:18:18,080 --> 00:18:22,840 And when you went through the sale, three to four million US per month, 750k or so. 113 00:18:22,840 --> 00:18:28,080 If we could just clarify the scale around these numbers, the offices, the number of staff that you had 114 00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:34,280 just to kind of expose the value, the volume of the business at that point. 115 00:18:34,280 --> 00:18:45,960 Yeah. Well, as I said, what we had realized, unfortunately, and I can't really tell you when it was, 116 00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:48,800 call centers wasn't a great space. 117 00:18:48,800 --> 00:18:54,960 While it was nice and technical and really looked pretty good, it was bloody hard. 118 00:18:54,960 --> 00:18:58,880 There's a lot of technology that go and again, not SASS. 119 00:18:58,880 --> 00:19:07,080 So when we sold a system, we had installers that would turn up on site, walk into an IT room 120 00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:15,120 and with a server, sometimes quite a big server, in fact, oftentimes a big server and plug it in. 121 00:19:15,120 --> 00:19:17,480 And plugging it in and making it go was hard work. 122 00:19:17,480 --> 00:19:22,760 Well, sorry, it required a lot of expertise, telephony expertise, IT expertise. 123 00:19:22,760 --> 00:19:30,920 And so and that expertise was hard to find and relatively expensive. 124 00:19:30,920 --> 00:19:36,840 And then we needed trainers to train the users and how to it sounds simple, log on, log off, 125 00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:41,200 but how to use the system, how to program it, how to manage it, the administration, so forth. 126 00:19:41,200 --> 00:19:46,880 So the realization was it didn't scale very well. 127 00:19:46,880 --> 00:19:50,480 It was hard work to scale because of all this expertise that was required. 128 00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:56,160 Now, if it had been an SASS world where you could literally kind of turn it on and then just train people how to use it. 129 00:19:56,160 --> 00:19:59,280 Well, that would have been an awful lot more scalable. 130 00:19:59,280 --> 00:20:02,400 So we had had this somewhat uncomfortable realization. 131 00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:10,120 So I'm not sure what it was, probably the 2000s like, OK, this is this is quite hard. 132 00:20:10,120 --> 00:20:14,640 And when we were looking at the multiples of. 133 00:20:14,640 --> 00:20:18,840 Whatever, and we, you know, we track those multiples pretty clear, where I certainly did. 134 00:20:18,840 --> 00:20:25,560 There were a number of M&A sources of information around acquisitions and what they've got at. 135 00:20:25,560 --> 00:20:31,600 And we weren't really we knew we were at the low end of the multiples, you know. 136 00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:37,320 One, two, you know, God bless, maybe three and times revenue. 137 00:20:37,320 --> 00:20:39,280 Yeah, times revenue. Yeah, times revenue. 138 00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:44,200 And we were only doing the profitability because again, 139 00:20:44,200 --> 00:20:49,200 and at the time, I kind of talked about it with a few commentators afterwards. 140 00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:54,000 I mean, we probably should have gone way smarter and raised an awful lot more capital. 141 00:20:54,000 --> 00:21:00,520 Like like one of our big competitors did Genesis, who, you know, they started like about the same time as we did, 142 00:21:00,520 --> 00:21:08,680 but they went out and raised 70 billion and they were acquired by Alcatel and kind of the rest was history. 143 00:21:08,680 --> 00:21:11,800 And just went big from the start. 144 00:21:11,800 --> 00:21:17,680 And we had this small to medium positioning because we'd come from New Zealand. 145 00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:21,840 We thought that was again, big mistake. We should have got a lot bigger, a lot faster. 146 00:21:21,840 --> 00:21:31,320 So lots of lessons. But so the scalability was was a problem, which ultimately was getting at all effective revenue. 147 00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:36,120 So, yeah, there was, I say, you know. 148 00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:41,320 Some disappointment there, obviously, because we would have much rather be to 5X than 149 00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:45,080 what we ended up being. It was in the low ones in terms of the revenue. 150 00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:53,320 And because we'd chosen not to. And again, my board was made up of every one of them was an accountant, 151 00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:59,160 except me and the chairman, who was a Canadian Kiwi, actually, but Canadian. 152 00:21:59,160 --> 00:22:06,520 So I had a very fiscally driven board who were very, very focused on governance and numbers and 153 00:22:06,520 --> 00:22:11,880 but numbers being profitability, not growth. And they did not want to dilute. 154 00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:16,880 They did not want to go and raise overseas capital. So. Yeah. 155 00:22:16,880 --> 00:22:21,920 You're kind of constrained. It was a it was a you know, and when people ask at the end of the 156 00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:25,640 asked at the end of the day and we got a bit of criticism at the time, you know, why did you sell? 157 00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:30,720 You sold too early. You sold out. God, the shareholders all hated each other. 158 00:22:30,720 --> 00:22:33,200 18 years in by then as well. It's not exactly early days. 159 00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:38,360 Well, they'd been in for about 12 years at that point. But still, you know, there was a lot of, 160 00:22:38,360 --> 00:22:43,600 you know, they hated as well. But, you know, they were all ready, ready to move on. 161 00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:48,080 Lots of conflict. I was spending a third of my month just just sort of going around the shareholders 162 00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:54,000 and keeping them all kind of in line. It was time. 163 00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:57,000 And as I say, we sort of realized the scalability wasn't such. 164 00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:00,560 So we and and we're also about to go through this massive. 165 00:23:00,560 --> 00:23:05,400 We had moved onto the Microsoft platform, which wasn't a P.B. 166 00:23:05,400 --> 00:23:11,120 Xbox anymore. It was this amorphous sort of thing of software that floated around 167 00:23:11,120 --> 00:23:15,240 ultimately, you know, ultimately the cloud. 168 00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:22,480 So we had to do this major migration shift technology change to to not plugging in literally 169 00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:32,600 with a with an ethernet cable into a box, but integrating with this this very nebulous telephony 170 00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:39,520 platform. And back in the day, Microsoft didn't understand the value of telephony always working. 171 00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:44,000 You know, when you think back 15 years ago, you know, if a phone call ever cut off, 172 00:23:44,000 --> 00:23:47,200 it was like, what went wrong? You look like you're a bunch of cowboys. 173 00:23:47,200 --> 00:23:52,080 Exactly. Wow, that's not reliable. Well, nowadays, you know, we have so many drop calls on cell phone networks. 174 00:23:52,080 --> 00:23:54,440 You don't even think about it. You think about it. I lost you. 175 00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:59,640 And so so Microsoft weren't ready for telephony. 176 00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:06,600 I don't know what state they're in now, but back in the day, I mean, there was no no, you know, 177 00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:09,600 who do we ring if it doesn't work? What do you need to do that? 178 00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:12,440 Just send us an email. No, no. The call centers down. 179 00:24:12,440 --> 00:24:16,360 You know, this thing is making five thousand in revenue every 10 minutes. 180 00:24:16,360 --> 00:24:19,560 What do you mean? We've got to send you an email. 181 00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:25,240 So there was a real change of or sorry difference in expectations between us and them. 182 00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:29,720 But sorry, that's coming back to the point of the coming back to the point of the multiple. 183 00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:35,800 So we had a major change that we that we had done, but we could see it was just going to keep on going. 184 00:24:35,800 --> 00:24:39,840 And it was keeping on going. So there were a number of reasons to. 185 00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:47,760 OK, let's look at our quote strategic options. And and and that's what we did. 186 00:24:47,760 --> 00:24:52,320 And then, you know, then we started the process of looking at the strategic options and 187 00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:59,520 and identifying a an investment banker is as they were called. 188 00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:06,640 And we we picked a company called Coram that offshore based or yeah, 189 00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:12,400 offshore based Washington, sorry, Washington, Seattle, Washington based. 190 00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:14,280 And we started to go through the process. 191 00:25:14,280 --> 00:25:18,800 OK, you know, took us through that. So for those unfamiliar dealing with investment bankers, 192 00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:23,000 because the way that I look at the world is that at the small end of town, you deal with a business broker. 193 00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:27,600 And if you're medium, you deal with one of the fat for M&A divisions typically. 194 00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,800 And at the top end of down, typically is where the investment bankers kick in. 195 00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:36,840 But I'm curious about the nature of the experience with those folk, how they manage the process. 196 00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:41,880 Was it a white glove kind of silver service sort of experience or was it a bit loose and wild? 197 00:25:41,880 --> 00:25:44,280 Kind of just unpack that a little bit for us if you could, please. 198 00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:45,800 It was very it was very hands on. 199 00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:50,240 I mean, the first thing they they really said, well, they they got to know the business a bit. 200 00:25:50,240 --> 00:25:53,840 They decided, OK, they could understand it then. 201 00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:59,160 OK, so you they were asking me, you tell me who do you think would buy you? 202 00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:06,760 So we came up with a list of 30, 40 entities that were in different groups. 203 00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:11,880 And then they added a few who did they know inside all those organizations? 204 00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:16,400 And that's one of the criteria that we sort of looked at in terms of how well connected were they. 205 00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:21,400 And and then they they pulled together the sorry, you write the I.M. 206 00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:25,480 The information, the random they finesse it. 207 00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:31,040 And then they they send out a basically a two page just got a client the space. 208 00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:37,760 If you're interested, come back and then and then the bigger I.M. goes out to those that are interested. 209 00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:45,680 And you then I ended up on a oh, sorry, we ended up in a roadshow traveling around. 210 00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:52,240 Probably went to seven or eight people that or entities that had got the full I.M. 211 00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:54,160 would definitely serious had the grunt. 212 00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:55,560 You know, they could do it. 213 00:26:55,560 --> 00:27:00,560 And we did that over the course of a couple of weeks. 214 00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:02,400 It was like a shortlist series of meetings. 215 00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:04,480 You turn up to a bit of a pitch, explain the business. 216 00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:08,720 We're a little bit more than that because they had they had a reasonable. 217 00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:12,240 Most of them knew the space. 218 00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:16,160 That all obviously read the I.M. that that furnish a set of questions, we'd answered them. 219 00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,400 So the actual meetings were more than an hour. 220 00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:23,200 They were, you know, we were there for probably. 221 00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:28,120 Two, three, four hours in each one, as we went into a level of detail, 222 00:27:28,120 --> 00:27:29,520 like pre due diligence almost. 223 00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:31,240 Oh, yes, yes, exactly. 224 00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:34,560 And, you know, to get them to the point of. 225 00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:41,120 Were they. Qualification that they were interested in us and were we interested in them? 226 00:27:41,120 --> 00:27:44,200 And that was probably a lesser concern there. 227 00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:48,040 So, yeah, did that roadshow. 228 00:27:48,040 --> 00:27:53,840 And then and then the you know, it's all about the tension that the investment banking can create, obviously. 229 00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:57,800 And the goal being that you want two or three people, three or four or four or five, 230 00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:01,720 maybe more than the area, the more the mirror you've got at the table at the end, 231 00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:06,120 who want to buy you the better. 232 00:28:06,120 --> 00:28:16,560 And yes, so that's that's a key piece of the investment bankers role to get to get multiple parties at the at the table at the same time. 233 00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:21,240 So you had seven predominantly North America based on this all North America based. 234 00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:23,360 They went through the process of the pre D.D. 235 00:28:23,360 --> 00:28:28,280 And so how many were they thinned down to that then went into deep D.D. and was the process to. 236 00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:30,160 OK, great. See a little bit of deal tension going on. 237 00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,680 So there was a there was a yeah. And I was going to say a model. 238 00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:37,160 There was a reasonable amount of tension. Yeah. Yeah. 239 00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:45,160 And. Yeah, so so we kind of knew then, you know, we had we had a fish on the hook. 240 00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:51,800 Just now a question of going through the, you know, getting the getting the fish into the boat and. 241 00:28:51,800 --> 00:29:04,720 Yeah, then then as it evolved, one one acquirer sort of got more way more interested and 242 00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:12,160 which was a company called Inch House and the the guy behind Inch House and look, I. 243 00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:15,520 I looked up for before we came to this. I assume he's still alive. 244 00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:19,360 He was he was reasonably old. 245 00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:25,480 Getting a resume on now, he was probably mid 60s, I guess, when early 60s, when when he acquired us 12 years ago. 246 00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:29,560 So I assume he's still around. But he. 247 00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:31,760 He is an inveterate acquirer. 248 00:29:31,760 --> 00:29:38,480 He had bought something like 200 companies before he bought bought us, which was a staggering number. 249 00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:42,960 He put together a company in Canada called Open Text as a roll up, 250 00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:46,520 which I think is still one of Canada's largest software companies. 251 00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:52,400 And he had a model and he had a formula and he did not stray from that formula. 252 00:29:52,400 --> 00:30:01,320 So we ended up employing a US based financial controller for the period of the acquisition, 253 00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:04,960 which was only about four months. This guy did very well out of the options. 254 00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:09,120 So in fact, he sent me a note afterwards, thanking me for paying for his kids college education. 255 00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:11,960 You're welcome. It was quite unique. 256 00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:17,560 But he was a US based CFO because he spoke the same language, because he was in the same time zones. 257 00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:20,400 He was there. He could deal with them. And and very. 258 00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:26,440 Yeah. And so his big and first task was to take all of our financials. 259 00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:31,240 And we had we had, you know, New Zealand, Australia, 260 00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:39,680 US, UK, Asia, financials that we prepared every month, obviously consolidated, 261 00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:43,840 putting all of those into his formula and into his literally his spreadsheet. 262 00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:50,480 And that was one of the one of the warnings that I woke up at 4am because Steve was in Toronto. 263 00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:55,200 And I rang up to find out what had gone on overnight. 264 00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:58,200 And I got Steve and he said, oh, I've got a problem. 265 00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:02,520 I was like, shoot. Because our process was really fast. 266 00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:06,800 We did the LOI over the course of Easter. 267 00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:13,200 I was actually up at my beach house in the far north. 268 00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,320 And I literally went through every phone. 269 00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:20,400 I had landlines, cell phones, backup batteries, everything. 270 00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:25,400 Every day I was on the phone solidly for three days to Steve and to Nat, 271 00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:29,520 the investment banker negotiating the LOI. 272 00:31:29,520 --> 00:31:37,880 And we so between then and we the deal went unconditional on May 31. 273 00:31:37,880 --> 00:31:43,400 So it was between about April the 8th and May 31, which is phenomenally quick. 274 00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,560 It was seven weeks or so. But it's because this guy had a formula. 275 00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:51,200 He was just so damn good or so damn structured and how he did it. 276 00:31:51,200 --> 00:31:55,280 And we so I rang up Steve one morning. 277 00:31:55,280 --> 00:32:01,760 Oh, we got a problem. You know, because that was probably the seven busiest weeks of my life. 278 00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:07,520 I think it was it really was 16, 18 hours all day every day, 279 00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:10,080 just just until he went to bed and you wake up in the morning straight on the phone. 280 00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:16,200 Steve and Frank, the US based finance guy, 281 00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:20,800 he had just completed after about two weeks of work, 282 00:32:20,800 --> 00:32:26,040 this whole recategorization of all of our numbers to theirs into his format. 283 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:32,480 And he had put the machine, his PC into the boot, the trunk of his car, 284 00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:34,880 and gone out to dinner with Steve as he finished it. 285 00:32:34,880 --> 00:32:41,000 Steve was still at work. Steve knew went home and Frank had finished at whatever time it was in Toronto in the office. 286 00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:42,360 Steve had said, you want dinner? 287 00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:50,480 Frank had said, yes, put the PC into the boot, gone for dinner, come back, boots jimmied, computers gone. 288 00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:56,320 Well, so it's whatever time it was in the morning in Toronto, I'm trying to get hold of Frank. 289 00:32:56,320 --> 00:33:00,960 He's on the plane flying back to California and I don't know whether he's done a backup. 290 00:33:00,960 --> 00:33:05,480 So I've got it was about the most uncomfortable four or five hours as I waited to get hold of Frank. 291 00:33:05,480 --> 00:33:08,520 Had he backed it up before he put the freaking computer into the back of the car. 292 00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:10,600 Pre cloud base, of course, everything sat on disks. 293 00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:14,960 Well, it was just you know, it was just into any head back that up. 294 00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:16,480 Yeah, he had backed it up. 295 00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:21,320 Frank worked on he had a Mac and he put it into iCloud. 296 00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:27,320 And thank God because because Steve was one of those short attention type guys. 297 00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:29,360 He was ready to move on to the next acquisition. 298 00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:30,720 He was sort of getting to the end of it. 299 00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:35,200 And if that if we had to start again, I don't think we would have got back there. 300 00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:38,760 So anyway, that was a that was a blip. 301 00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:49,920 But so so the due general so Steve and a Toronto sorry an accountant from Toronto and an accountant lawyer from Toronto. 302 00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:55,160 He turned up in New Zealand mid the DD process. 303 00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:57,160 I don't know when it was probably the end of April. 304 00:33:57,160 --> 00:33:59,120 And I did a tour with him. 305 00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:02,360 We went round. We were to any see in Australia. 306 00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:06,640 We went to Cisco, who we partnered up with at that stage. 307 00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:10,280 We were we were a partner of Cisco's in the call center space. 308 00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:12,280 We went to resellers. 309 00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:17,320 He did his own due diligence as in the face to face kind of interviewing. 310 00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:20,760 And it was an interesting first. 311 00:34:20,760 --> 00:34:23,080 He really was. I remember his shoe. 312 00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:24,520 The guy was with a fortune. 313 00:34:24,520 --> 00:34:32,280 I mean, probably in those days, in those days, it was I think we calculated his his shareholdings with about half a billion. 314 00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:36,760 And just in in inch house, it was at the time. 315 00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:43,880 And the first airport, his shoe fell apart and and very first airport. 316 00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:50,160 So he just said to the girl behind the counter, he said, you know, have you got some of that subductive fragile type? 317 00:34:50,160 --> 00:35:00,040 He taped a shoe up and we went around for the rest of the week with a 318 00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,800 it was really he was he was interesting fish. 319 00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:05,800 But not nice. 320 00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:10,720 Yeah, look, you know, Bell is a nice guy, but but very financially driven. 321 00:35:10,720 --> 00:35:19,440 It's been said that time kills deals and ordinarily a quick DD process is one that tends to take, you know, for maybe six months or so. 322 00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:21,240 Seven weeks is remarkable. 323 00:35:21,240 --> 00:35:29,760 And so that demonstrates, as you said, a experience based on a maturity around the DD and an understanding of what it was that he was looking for and looking at, 324 00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:33,520 as well, no doubt. But what do you believe was the thing that got him across the line? 325 00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:37,920 So why did ultimately the deal get done for inch house to buy Zcom? 326 00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:41,840 We were very clean. It was it was relatively easy. 327 00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:48,800 I guess we were just a very it was a it was a relatively simple business. 328 00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:53,440 There was we had we had lots and lots of product validation. 329 00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:59,280 I mean, we had, as I said, you know, three and a half thousand sites were running all the time. 330 00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,640 You know, they didn't stop. 331 00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:03,800 He could see we had the people we said we had. 332 00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:07,400 He could see that he talked to the resellers that we said we had. 333 00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:14,480 There were no I mean, what are the scary things for for a the founder or the board when you sell a business is the reps. 334 00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:19,360 And if they're buying the company, which they did in our case, the reps and warranties you sign. 335 00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:24,440 And at the end of the day, I was perfectly comfortable signing them because I knew them intimately. 336 00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:29,880 You know, I I'd been involved in every step of the state, every step of the way. 337 00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:38,120 And so the reason it was so quick, I think, was it was a very clean deal. 338 00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:44,000 And I can't remember I said it before, but we were one of the first companies he bought. 339 00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:46,920 He normally bought distressed companies. He normally bought companies that were in the crap. 340 00:36:46,920 --> 00:36:51,200 And we were not. We had a couple of conversations about this while we were traveling. 341 00:36:51,200 --> 00:36:57,840 And because he sort of had to get his head around that, that we were. 342 00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:01,680 Yeah, we were making sales, making money. 343 00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:09,200 We were OK, because he wasn't used to it. So. So, you know, at the time, you know, 344 00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:13,840 I mean, the investment bank said, well, that's that's going to be quick, you know, with the deadline that it set. 345 00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:18,400 And I didn't really know any better. It was the first real I'd ever been to. 346 00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:22,760 That was for sure. So and I've got to say at the end of the seven weeks, thank God, 347 00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:24,720 it was only seven weeks because I don't think I could have lasted. 348 00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:26,680 What a guilt. She said, what a kill. 349 00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:29,200 It was really very, very intense. 350 00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:32,520 So it was it was a clean, easy deal. 351 00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:35,520 And also, he was so kind of experienced. 352 00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:40,280 You know, there was no earn out. There was no I had no retention. 353 00:37:40,280 --> 00:37:44,960 He wanted me to stay for a year at the end of the day. 354 00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:49,720 As I say, the deal was done May 31. I rang him up in about September and said, Steve, this isn't working. 355 00:37:49,720 --> 00:37:52,360 Because he'd made me understandably and it was fine. 356 00:37:52,360 --> 00:37:56,280 I was now Asia Pacific president. 357 00:37:56,280 --> 00:38:01,520 So I wasn't I wasn't running the company because the company was being morphed into Inch House. 358 00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:08,400 My U.S. president, the existing U.S. ZECOM president became the U.S. 359 00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,760 president for Inch House because he lived there and that made sense. 360 00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:17,800 And he was a very good operator. And look, I was I didn't really care. 361 00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:21,680 I didn't care about the title or the role, but running Asia Pacific wasn't really going to cut it. 362 00:38:21,680 --> 00:38:24,760 I didn't you know, if I was going to hang around, I wanted to do something a bit more meaningful. 363 00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:30,440 And it also I was I, you know, fear to say I was fairly 18 years have been a long time. 364 00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:35,880 So so I rang him up in September and said, hey, Steve, you know, I'm figuring you're expecting this call. 365 00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:39,920 And he definitely was, which is why he hadn't put a retention in there, 366 00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,160 because he knew that I probably wouldn't last. 367 00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:45,080 Sunset. Yeah. And he said, look, do me a favor. 368 00:38:45,080 --> 00:38:48,040 Let's not tell anybody till December. And I said, yeah, that's fine. 369 00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:51,600 You know, so I stayed quiet. And, you know, early December, 370 00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:56,000 I announced the staff and said, hey, guys, some guys and girls, I'm leaving at the end of the month. 371 00:38:56,000 --> 00:39:04,920 And he brought he had an Australian guy who he brought in to replace me and kind of handover was complete. 372 00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:15,800 So he was he was a very savvy acquirer, which which and you hear so many tales of woe of companies that are not woe. 373 00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:19,440 That's probably the right word. But, you know, troubles and integration is difficult. 374 00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:23,640 Yes. This one was actually pretty easy. It worked out for him. 375 00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:27,720 He had a, as I've said a few times, a very financially driven guy. 376 00:39:27,720 --> 00:39:31,560 That was the very first line on their website. We are a financially driven company. 377 00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:35,920 It's going to say we're people orientated. We believe in culture. No, no, no. 378 00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:40,000 We are a financially driven company. If it wasn't in the budget, it did not happen. 379 00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:48,800 OK. And budget time, as I heard from the what Ernie, my US president, 380 00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:53,160 they were pretty interesting times. Yeah. Yeah. Everything worked by that budget. 381 00:39:53,160 --> 00:40:00,880 So but Steve rang me up probably about July, August. 382 00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:03,760 And he said, Miles, he said, you're not charging enough. 383 00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:06,400 We're not charging enough for maintenance. I'm going to I'm going to double them. 384 00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:08,520 I'm doubling maintenance overnight. Right. 385 00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:12,840 And I went, well, well, well, well, well, Steve, Steve, Steve, hold on. 386 00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:18,080 It's been a really long and so I started to try to talk him out. 387 00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:20,440 He said, Miles, I'm not asking for your opinion. 388 00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:22,880 I'm I'm bringing up to tell you we're doubling maintenance. 389 00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:25,280 So effective 90 days, we're doubling maintenance. 390 00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:28,760 Remember how many customers you lost to? Wow. 391 00:40:28,760 --> 00:40:32,680 I was so wrong. I was so, so wrong. 392 00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:35,840 I kicked myself over that for leaving so much money on the table. 393 00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:38,520 I've told this story so many times. Oh, what an idiot. 394 00:40:38,520 --> 00:40:41,560 I could have we could have been making so much more money because, you know, 395 00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:45,600 if our maintenance had even been 300 grand more a month, that would have, 396 00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:48,840 you know, damn near doubled our profitability in the last year of business. 397 00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:51,920 He doubled it and lost two. 398 00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:55,400 Wow. People often say that one of the first things you do when you buy a business 399 00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:57,840 is come in and put prices up by 10 percent and see what happens. 400 00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:01,680 But putting them up by 100 percent is a bold, bold move. 401 00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:03,880 It was a big lesson for me. 402 00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:06,800 We've we've bled into the next bit of the conversation, 403 00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:10,400 which is things that you in hindsight look back upon and go, 404 00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:12,040 we could have done that a lot better. 405 00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:15,840 Or if we'd just seen this thing coming, it would have had a markedly different result. 406 00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:17,160 So that's clearly one of them. 407 00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:20,320 What are the other things that spring to mind for you around potential missteps 408 00:41:20,320 --> 00:41:22,840 or things that if you'd handled differently, would have had a 409 00:41:22,840 --> 00:41:24,840 quite a big impact on the outcome? 410 00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:30,120 Yeah, we sort of moved out of small to medium as our space faster. 411 00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:35,160 It took, well, say me, it took us way too long to realize that 412 00:41:35,240 --> 00:41:37,720 that selling bigger things is better. 413 00:41:37,720 --> 00:41:42,440 And I kind of blame that or attribute that back to our sort of 414 00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:46,800 New Zealand and Australian upbringing where, you know, we think that. 415 00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:49,360 Small to medium is OK. 416 00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:52,240 And, you know, that's our place in the world, 417 00:41:52,240 --> 00:41:55,200 and particularly in the American space, because that's where we play. 418 00:41:56,440 --> 00:41:59,040 We should have gone bigger. 419 00:41:59,040 --> 00:42:01,640 We should have focused on the bigger market a lot faster. 420 00:42:03,920 --> 00:42:08,640 That was. But that's the first big mistake we made. 421 00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:12,560 The you know, this this was at the time quite very big. 422 00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,200 We were approached or we found actually we found there was a company called 423 00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:22,000 Exponence that was a roll up company in itself that had been put together 424 00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:27,160 in the US and they acquired the Avaya growing and emerging markets business, 425 00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:34,000 which basically the Avaya PBX space under about 500 extensions, 426 00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:38,360 which was they were the biggest reseller in the world of telephone systems 427 00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:43,120 at that time. And they they were acquired by this roll up company called Exponence. 428 00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:47,520 And we I chased down Exponence, got to 429 00:42:47,520 --> 00:42:51,360 the head office was actually in Santa Clarita, which was about two hours north of us. 430 00:42:51,360 --> 00:42:55,400 We were in Orange County, got to basically sold into them. 431 00:42:55,400 --> 00:42:59,600 Long story short, they they they said to us, OK, we want to take you. 432 00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:01,560 We want to take your product on. 433 00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:04,600 We want to brand it. 434 00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:09,720 And we want the first right of refusal to buy you in two years time. 435 00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,120 And we. 436 00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:16,080 And there was a degree of exclusivity. 437 00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:19,440 And there was a degree of exclusivity in there, too, on the NEC system. 438 00:43:19,440 --> 00:43:23,680 They wanted exclusive supply on the NEC system and. 439 00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:27,640 No, I've got the wrong, sorry, exclusive supply on the Avaya system. 440 00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:30,000 We could keep the NEC stuff out to one side. 441 00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,600 So we thought we'd died in gone to heaven and, 442 00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:38,240 you know, biggest reseller reseller in the world in America 443 00:43:38,600 --> 00:43:42,160 wants to take your product on, wants an exclusive fantastic. 444 00:43:42,160 --> 00:43:47,600 So within about a year, they got up to about three million in revenue. 445 00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:50,560 By that stage, we were doing four in the US. 446 00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:57,760 And on Halloween 2003, I got a few. 447 00:43:58,440 --> 00:44:00,920 And there was some things going on just immediately before that. 448 00:44:01,560 --> 00:44:05,680 Avaya realized that they had made a huge mistake selling this business 449 00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:07,400 and they needed it back. 450 00:44:07,400 --> 00:44:11,400 So they reacquired it back from exponents and exponents had got themselves 451 00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:16,440 in trouble on the share market because they were subject to a to a shorting. 452 00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:24,280 Stock play and they got themselves in the crap and they needed to sell it. 453 00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:25,520 So they sold it back to Avaya. 454 00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:28,040 Well, Avaya, the first thing they did, they went. 455 00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:31,240 So we've got three quarters of our business with this reseller. 456 00:44:31,240 --> 00:44:33,560 On Halloween, I get this phone number, a phone call from 457 00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:40,520 the MD of or the CEO of exponents going, look, Miles, I don't know how to say this, 458 00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:42,560 but we've been reacquired by Avaya. 459 00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:44,760 You need to talk to them. 460 00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:47,200 You've been shafted as the context of that call. 461 00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:51,880 We lost our we lost three three with the 90 days they took us off. 462 00:44:52,200 --> 00:44:54,880 They initially told us that no, no, no, no, no, no. 463 00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:56,600 There's a place for you. 464 00:44:56,600 --> 00:44:59,360 Very good in the low end call center space that we need you. 465 00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:03,560 And over the course of 90 days, you 466 00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:06,160 more conversations we had, the more we started thinking 467 00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:08,480 these guys are going to drop us. 468 00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:09,600 And that was a big problem. 469 00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:13,400 So lesson, huge lesson, don't ever, ever, ever have too much 470 00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:16,920 too many of your eggs in one basket, even if the baskets are really attractive. 471 00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:19,000 It appears really attractive. 472 00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,600 So that was a very tough year. 473 00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:25,080 We grew 15 percent. 474 00:45:25,080 --> 00:45:26,600 We took it all back. 475 00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:29,880 We that was when we started to really push maintenance. 476 00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:32,600 We did up our maintenance at the time. 477 00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:34,800 We started to do it all directly, which was really good, 478 00:45:34,800 --> 00:45:36,840 because we started getting 100 percent of it instead of 479 00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:40,440 about 40 percent, which is what we were getting through the reseller. 480 00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:42,840 So lots of good things came out of it. 481 00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:44,840 But boy, it was a bloody tough year. 482 00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:45,840 Two thousand four. 483 00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:51,280 And as I say, we grew 15 percent by the end of it, but we grew an awful. 484 00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:53,560 It was one of the better things that happened to us actually. 485 00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:57,000 Because and in the meantime, the board had agreed to this. 486 00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:01,080 And I again, I I was feeling naive from a 487 00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:05,800 I guess equity side or or 488 00:46:05,800 --> 00:46:07,000 corporate structure side. 489 00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:10,480 You never, ever want to have an exclusive and a right 490 00:46:10,480 --> 00:46:15,400 of first refusal, because no acquirer is ever going to look at you 491 00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:19,080 knowing that all the work they do to acquire you can be undone because somebody 492 00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:22,680 over the, you know, over the fence has got a first right of refusal 493 00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:24,880 if they if they want to buy it instead. 494 00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:28,800 So, you know, my message I've said to many, many, many entrepreneurs 495 00:46:28,800 --> 00:46:32,800 over the years is don't ever, ever have a first right of refusal with anybody. 496 00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:35,800 It destroys your ability to sell yourself. 497 00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:40,800 It's interesting because that was essentially like a downstream sales opportunity. 498 00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:45,200 And so I think as opposed to supply supply side. 499 00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:51,000 Well, and as a Kiwi company, we wow, you know, I've got somebody that's going to buy me. 500 00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:54,400 You just don't realize that you've got no tension in that situation. 501 00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:56,000 There's no one's ever going to provide the tension. 502 00:46:56,000 --> 00:46:58,400 So you're never going to maximize your outcome. 503 00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:01,800 So, yeah, that was the first thing. 504 00:47:01,800 --> 00:47:08,200 Yeah, that was that was another very aligned to that same experience lesson out of that. 505 00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:11,200 Yes. Yeah, those are a couple of goodies. 506 00:47:11,200 --> 00:47:17,000 So going through the negotiation process, you mentioned that you had some a bunch of different investors 507 00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:22,800 and there was some conflict that was between those investors and some challenge in managing those people. 508 00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:27,600 You had obviously a board, you had partners, distributors, etc. to consider. 509 00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:32,800 So I'm curious as to when you got to the negotiating table and when you were evaluating the terms 510 00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:36,800 that were able to have some some pushback and some movement on, 511 00:47:36,800 --> 00:47:44,600 how did you you privilege those different terms and what became really important to you as you were as you were negotiating? 512 00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:49,200 Good news is I had a good chairman by and the Canadian chairman was actually excellent, too. 513 00:47:49,200 --> 00:47:55,200 But he we ended up the board wanted a New Zealand based chairman. 514 00:47:55,200 --> 00:48:04,000 And we ended up actually ultimately getting rid of Owen, which was a shame because he was he was good. 515 00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:08,200 But I've got to say, Brian Allen, who was our chairman at the time of sale, 516 00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:12,800 the sale negotiation was really when I was using all those batteries up that weekend, 517 00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:18,400 a lot of those phone calls were to Brian and he gave me some excellent, excellent advice. 518 00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:21,600 Do you recall any specific things that he mentioned at the time? 519 00:48:21,600 --> 00:48:25,200 Sorry, it's a while back. I probably can't. 520 00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:29,400 I probably can't recall the specifics, but he was invaluable. 521 00:48:29,400 --> 00:48:38,900 And and also actually during that next seven weeks because because yeah, he was he was very, very good. 522 00:48:38,900 --> 00:48:44,000 So Brian and I basically just did the best thing. 523 00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:48,200 Well, I'll say for the business, we didn't because it was going to be good for the business. 524 00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:49,400 It was going to be good for the shareholders. 525 00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:54,400 So we didn't really and by that stage, the shareholders were all like just get a deal done. 526 00:48:54,400 --> 00:48:59,700 Thankfully, there weren't any specific things that any of them wanted or didn't want. 527 00:48:59,700 --> 00:49:04,800 It was we could just do the right thing for the business, get as clean a deal as we possibly could. 528 00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:07,600 I was we I think we were all in agreement. 529 00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:10,400 We didn't want to know in our type situation. 530 00:49:10,400 --> 00:49:17,200 We all knew that that those are fraught with grief and particularly actually in in Houses structure. 531 00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:20,800 We were definitely going to be morphed into them pretty much immediately. 532 00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:24,700 I mean, how it just an earn out wouldn't have worked. 533 00:49:24,700 --> 00:49:30,600 So, you know, Brian and I really just did the cleanest. 534 00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:34,300 Well, the cleanest deal we could do and that worked. 535 00:49:34,300 --> 00:49:39,900 And we probably for you know, we probably missed out on, I don't know. 536 00:49:39,900 --> 00:49:42,500 Another million or two. Not sure maybe. 537 00:49:42,500 --> 00:49:46,200 I don't think it would have been any more, but the clean deal was definitely very valuable. 538 00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:52,300 Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, my recollection 30.6 million USD about 40 odd million Kiwis. 539 00:49:52,300 --> 00:49:54,800 So, you know, one or two million here. 540 00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:59,700 Easy to say, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that material. 541 00:49:59,700 --> 00:50:04,800 Well, particularly when you either, you know, you one hand you get a deal on the other hand, 542 00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:06,400 you want to two more million more you haven't. 543 00:50:06,400 --> 00:50:11,000 Yeah, it's like, oops. So, yeah. 544 00:50:11,000 --> 00:50:20,000 So, you know, I think it was fair to say we were all at the time, we were all pretty happy. 545 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:20,600 Yes. 546 00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:22,400 It was a good outcome for us. 547 00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:25,600 Said we'd kind of figured out was a tough space. 548 00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:29,100 It was going to have more of a tough space coming. 549 00:50:29,100 --> 00:50:36,500 So we were, you know, we kind of fought our fight and Inch House has actually continued to. 550 00:50:36,500 --> 00:50:38,700 They've done, they've done continue to do pretty well. 551 00:50:38,700 --> 00:50:39,600 Okay. 552 00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:41,000 I must have been having a look at there. 553 00:50:41,000 --> 00:50:45,200 I wish actually in hindsight that probably the thing that none of the shareholders wanted 554 00:50:45,200 --> 00:50:48,300 and I probably didn't either at the time, we wanted to be paid in cash. 555 00:50:48,300 --> 00:50:50,200 We didn't want to get stock. 556 00:50:50,200 --> 00:50:54,800 We should have taken stock because the Inch House stock quadrupled over the next two years. 557 00:50:54,800 --> 00:50:55,000 Yeah. 558 00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:55,800 Timing wise. 559 00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:56,200 Yeah. 560 00:50:56,200 --> 00:51:06,100 It was, you know, Steve was a very good, very good manager as a public company 561 00:51:06,100 --> 00:51:09,800 and as a public company entity in Canada, they performed very, very well. 562 00:51:09,800 --> 00:51:13,500 So, you know, it would have, could have, should have, we should have taken some stock instead. 563 00:51:13,500 --> 00:51:18,500 But then again, he would, he probably wouldn't have given it because he valued his stock immensely highly. 564 00:51:18,500 --> 00:51:18,800 Right. 565 00:51:18,800 --> 00:51:20,100 He'd rather pay cash. 566 00:51:20,100 --> 00:51:20,900 He wanted to pay cash. 567 00:51:20,900 --> 00:51:22,500 So, you know, we all thought that we were good. 568 00:51:22,500 --> 00:51:26,700 We're all on the same page in hindsight. 569 00:51:26,700 --> 00:51:35,800 Ernie, the US president did very well out of the option scheme because there were quite a few options with four year terms to them. 570 00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:38,100 So, I won't say they came cheaply. 571 00:51:38,100 --> 00:51:41,700 My only way to see value is options of a stock very highly. 572 00:51:41,700 --> 00:51:50,900 But Ernie did well over the course of the next few, well, four years time out of Inch House options. 573 00:51:50,900 --> 00:51:51,300 Yeah. 574 00:51:51,300 --> 00:51:51,800 Yeah. 575 00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:52,400 Which was good. 576 00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:53,300 So, yeah. 577 00:51:53,300 --> 00:51:59,300 So, you were a long time in Telco once you added all up, you know, the P&BXs through the 80s and early 90s. 578 00:51:59,300 --> 00:52:05,100 And then you started Voice Technologies, ZCOM, sold, exited in 2012. 579 00:52:05,100 --> 00:52:08,500 So, both of those things happened in the same year. 580 00:52:08,500 --> 00:52:17,100 Did you go, I'm going to wade back into the Telco space or I'm going to take some time out or I'm going to move into a completely different part of the world because I am over Telco. 581 00:52:17,100 --> 00:52:17,900 What did you do afterwards? 582 00:52:17,900 --> 00:52:20,400 Yeah, I was over Telco. 583 00:52:20,400 --> 00:52:23,900 And I mean, at the end of the day, I'm a sales guy. 584 00:52:23,900 --> 00:52:27,600 I couldn't even identify a line of code. 585 00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:30,200 I mean, I don't know a damn thing about software development. 586 00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:33,500 Or sorry, I do actually, but I don't know how to write software. 587 00:52:33,500 --> 00:52:38,600 I know quite a bit now how to make good software. 588 00:52:38,600 --> 00:52:40,900 But I learned that slowly. 589 00:52:40,900 --> 00:52:50,900 But as a, you know, I'm fundamentally, you know, a revenue focused type person. 590 00:52:50,900 --> 00:52:54,500 I didn't really want to. 591 00:52:54,500 --> 00:52:56,700 I didn't want to get back into Telco. 592 00:52:56,700 --> 00:53:03,800 I kind of did not much for a little while and then I started to do some angel investing. 593 00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:05,200 Kind of enjoyed that. 594 00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:09,800 But then realized I didn't really enjoy putting small amounts of money into companies. 595 00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:14,800 It was a bit of a, you know, as they say, spray and pray type situation. 596 00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:17,700 But, you know, there's been some very good outcomes lately. 597 00:53:17,700 --> 00:53:22,300 Cami being one that where spray and pray has worked extremely well, which is fantastic. 598 00:53:22,300 --> 00:53:26,800 I mean, New Zealand needs some successes or more successes. 599 00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:36,700 But no, I actually teamed up with a guy, Mike Stokes, and we started a sales leadership 600 00:53:36,700 --> 00:53:42,100 mentoring networking type operation. 601 00:53:42,100 --> 00:53:44,100 We were called Sales Syndicate. 602 00:53:44,100 --> 00:53:45,800 It's now called Indicator. 603 00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:52,900 And we ran, we had four groups of about a dozen, fifteen sales leaders. 604 00:53:52,900 --> 00:53:53,900 We'd meet once a month. 605 00:53:53,900 --> 00:53:54,800 We'd bring in a speaker. 606 00:53:54,800 --> 00:54:00,500 We'd try to educate them and enhance their knowledge about sales leadership. 607 00:54:00,500 --> 00:54:02,600 And I really enjoyed doing that for about four years. 608 00:54:02,600 --> 00:54:04,500 And then Mike wanted to make it bigger. 609 00:54:04,500 --> 00:54:10,800 I was very happy with a relatively small monthly commitment that it required for the four groups. 610 00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:15,100 And we very amicably parted ways. 611 00:54:15,100 --> 00:54:18,300 And he's gone on to make Indicator much, much bigger and better. 612 00:54:18,300 --> 00:54:22,500 So I enjoy doing that for about just before COVID actually. 613 00:54:22,500 --> 00:54:30,000 And then I've done a bit of consulting since I'm definitely on the sort of phase out. 614 00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:35,000 I'm now predominantly spending most of my time down in the South Island and playing a few 615 00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:37,000 bit of golf. Should be a scratch golf. 616 00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:41,000 I've only made a golf of playing, but I'm not nowhere near it. 617 00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:48,100 You know, a fair bit of golf, mountain biking and walking and yeah, it's really quite enjoying. 618 00:54:48,100 --> 00:54:49,700 The fruits of the labour. Pretty much retirement. 619 00:54:49,700 --> 00:54:58,900 Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so I'm relatively very happy. 620 00:54:58,900 --> 00:55:00,300 Yeah, great. Yeah. 621 00:55:00,300 --> 00:55:05,600 I think it's always a bit of attention for a lot of us to achieve that consistent kind of satisfaction and contentment. 622 00:55:05,600 --> 00:55:13,200 But it definitely takes a conscious decision not to go for the next things. 623 00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,900 Yes. Really, because there's a little voice telling you, you probably should. 624 00:55:16,900 --> 00:55:18,400 You know, what are you? Why aren't you? 625 00:55:18,400 --> 00:55:22,700 And there's another voice saying, maybe not. 626 00:55:22,700 --> 00:55:24,700 I call that the tyranny of drive. 627 00:55:24,700 --> 00:55:30,000 So from the outside, people that don't necessarily have drive, look at those of us that do and they say, 628 00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:31,300 well, you're lucky you have drive. 629 00:55:31,300 --> 00:55:34,400 And I say, that's like a monkey that's on your back 24 7. 630 00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:39,500 And it's the thing that wakes you up at 3am and the thing that consists that you work on the weekend 631 00:55:39,500 --> 00:55:44,300 and the thing that says to you when you've sold a company and you're financially secure that you should go out and do another thing again. 632 00:55:44,300 --> 00:55:48,000 And so it becomes a bit of a beast to have to tame. 633 00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:51,500 It's taken me a long time not to feel guilty about not doing things. 634 00:55:51,500 --> 00:55:55,200 Yeah. And you know, that guilt thing is very real. 635 00:55:55,200 --> 00:55:57,700 When you should be. 636 00:55:57,700 --> 00:56:00,000 Yeah. So long time. 637 00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:03,300 Yes. Yeah. But pardon question for you, Miles. 638 00:56:03,300 --> 00:56:10,800 So in an alternate universe, one that didn't see you head down the path of becoming a very competent salesperson 639 00:56:10,800 --> 00:56:14,700 and then becoming a founder of a few different companies and then exiting those things. 640 00:56:14,700 --> 00:56:20,200 So the career path that you look at that you could have had and you go with some interest. 641 00:56:20,200 --> 00:56:25,000 Wonder what that would have been like for me to do the vocation that would have been fascinating or enjoyable for you. 642 00:56:25,000 --> 00:56:30,700 Oh, I would have I would have stayed in property. 643 00:56:30,700 --> 00:56:38,600 Which is a very New Zealand answer. I don't mean that, but I really enjoyed the property development we were doing in the 80s. 644 00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:42,200 Company I worked for Bexley was doing a few different things. 645 00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:46,100 And, you know, we were just we were building a timeshare. 646 00:56:46,100 --> 00:56:49,000 We would do it. We were sort of trying to be a little bit nontraditional. 647 00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:50,900 But property development, I really quite enjoyed. 648 00:56:50,900 --> 00:56:55,500 And I would have liked to have stayed there. 649 00:56:55,500 --> 00:57:04,300 Yeah, if I had an alternate, my son is now in commercial real estate and I really liked that property space. 650 00:57:04,300 --> 00:57:08,400 Not not not. I don't own flats and things like that. 651 00:57:08,400 --> 00:57:10,200 I'm not I'm not saying that I'm talking about commercial. 652 00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:22,000 Yeah, same. Commercial development, adding value, you know, taking a taking a piece of land and building something and turning it into something with way more value. 653 00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:27,400 Yes, that would have been the other path if if. 654 00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:31,600 And I could have nearly followed that. 655 00:57:31,600 --> 00:57:32,800 Yeah, we're off camera. 656 00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:35,600 How fate comes. Fate works in a very strange way. 657 00:57:35,600 --> 00:57:44,200 I mean, I I bought a hutch dresser, a cowrie hutch dresser on the side of the road, took it to a paint stripper to get the varnish taken off. 658 00:57:44,200 --> 00:57:50,300 And in the the furniture place, all these cordless phones. 659 00:57:50,300 --> 00:58:00,600 And it was an American guy who'd come down to New Zealand to work for Telecom as part of that whole US rock regional operating company structure. 660 00:58:00,600 --> 00:58:05,900 And he brought all these cordless phones down. And I had a mate who worked for Sanio who'd shown me a cordless phone. 661 00:58:05,900 --> 00:58:08,900 Again, this is 1985 or six. 662 00:58:08,900 --> 00:58:11,800 I remember ringing up my mother and saying, Mom, you're not going to believe this. 663 00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:15,500 I'm talking on a telephone. There's no cord. She's like, don't be stupid. 664 00:58:15,500 --> 00:58:22,700 I said, truly, I am anyway. So I as a sideline while I was at Bexley, I started selling these things to my friends. 665 00:58:22,700 --> 00:58:27,700 You know, I was getting three hundred fifty bucks and they were costing me a hundred of land. 666 00:58:27,700 --> 00:58:34,400 And that's how I got on the phones. It was just such a random fate experience. 667 00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:37,400 If I hadn't bought that hutch dresser, I never would have gotten the telephys. 668 00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:43,800 Well, it's interesting off camera we were speaking that you actually did manage to scratch that itch of commercial property, 669 00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:49,500 despite the fact that you're an entrepreneur, having bought the property that you're in and no doubt some other ones along the way as well. 670 00:58:49,500 --> 00:58:58,600 So it's a I guess a testament to you can have things that satiate interest as long as you're doing the main thing, the main hustle as well. 671 00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:01,800 You have a side hustle is essentially what I'm trying to say. 672 00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:07,500 Well, it's been a really insightful conversation, particularly around the structuring of the deal, establishing tension, 673 00:59:07,500 --> 00:59:13,600 the mistakes that you made along the way, enterprise versus SMB, taking funding versus not taking funding. 674 00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:20,800 The value of external advice and probably the big one for me is the thought process that you had around pricing 675 00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:28,300 and that when an acquirer came and they doubled the prices for your customers and you lost almost no customers whatsoever as a consequence. 676 00:59:28,300 --> 00:59:33,900 I think should probably give people a lot of pause for consideration about their pricing structure and how they go about doing things. 677 00:59:33,900 --> 00:59:36,300 But it's been a really valuable conversation. 678 00:59:36,300 --> 00:59:38,900 I thank you very much for coming on today and look forward to keeping in touch. 679 00:59:38,900 --> 00:59:40,500 Thanks, Josh. It's been good fun. 680 00:59:40,500 --> 00:59:41,100 Great. 681 00:59:41,100 --> 00:59:42,100 Nice chatting. 682 00:59:42,100 --> 00:59:44,100 Thanks, man.