WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.051 --> 00:00:05.275 When I say it like this, it's almost like it's so obvious, but you get a bit blinded sometimes, don't you, to go with a good opportunity. 2 00:00:05.996 --> 00:00:13.461 Welcome to Hitting the Ceiling, the show for entrepreneurs and leaders who refuse to let a ceiling become the end of their story. 3 00:00:14.468 --> 00:00:18.852 Kieran James did not come up through a traditional accounting firm. 4 00:00:19.112 --> 00:00:28.581 After building a training department for an accounting software company, he trained a successor, asked to move into a commercial role, and was refused. 5 00:00:28.821 --> 00:00:33.966 Then, an investor backed him with £50,000 and a blunt proposition. 6 00:00:34.426 --> 00:00:37.267 start a business and learn by doing. 7 00:00:37.547 --> 00:00:48.710 Stride then evolved through customer discovery into an outsourced finance company that now takes accountability for the full finance seat inside of organizations. 8 00:00:48.950 --> 00:00:52.111 Beneath the business is a more personal ceiling. 9 00:00:52.211 --> 00:01:00.733 Karen has deliberately designed a life around family, home education, elite age group triathlons, and freedom. 10 00:01:01.053 --> 00:01:03.915 His challenge is no longer simply building the company. 11 00:01:04.115 --> 00:01:10.800 It is deciding what must receive less of him so the right people and priorities can receive more. 12 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:14.282 Kieran, welcome to Hitting the Ceiling. 13 00:01:14.588 --> 00:01:22.073 When did the thing that built the business start becoming the thing that was holding it back from growing? 14 00:01:22.313 --> 00:01:24.655 When you're growing a business, there's lots of things that hold it back, aren't there? 15 00:01:24.995 --> 00:01:28.958 There's bottlenecks that keep coming up and you keep realizing what's going on. 16 00:01:28.998 --> 00:01:35.723 So when we first started the business, it was actually my knowledge, walking into a space that I had no connections. 17 00:01:36.583 --> 00:01:41.847 You know, typically if somebody started a business, let's say it's like an accounting firm, they'd have somebody who knows how to do accounts. 18 00:01:42.087 --> 00:01:43.108 That would be their starting point. 19 00:01:43.875 --> 00:01:46.598 And they build around that with, I don't know how to get sales. 20 00:01:46.778 --> 00:01:47.779 So that's the bit I need to work out. 21 00:01:48.459 --> 00:01:51.002 We walked in going, we actually don't know what the business is going to be. 22 00:01:51.302 --> 00:01:52.223 That needs some evolution. 23 00:01:52.243 --> 00:01:54.085 We don't know what the customer is going to be. 24 00:01:54.105 --> 00:01:55.226 We don't know how we're going to deliver it. 25 00:01:55.766 --> 00:01:59.530 So every single variable of the business had to be identified. 26 00:01:59.570 --> 00:02:01.632 So I think that's the first thing is knowledge. 27 00:02:01.872 --> 00:02:04.034 How do I know what to do, where to do it? 28 00:02:04.234 --> 00:02:05.676 How do I choose the industry? 29 00:02:05.696 --> 00:02:06.296 All that kind of stuff. 30 00:02:06.957 --> 00:02:08.538 Then it became my mental space. 31 00:02:09.058 --> 00:02:18.684 I think that growing up in a relatively working class background, you know, my parents tell stories where they bulked our food out with oats to try and make it go further. 32 00:02:18.784 --> 00:02:20.525 But it gave me a scarcity mindset. 33 00:02:21.406 --> 00:02:24.048 And even now, I've talked to my wife about it this week. 34 00:02:24.788 --> 00:02:36.115 We were talking, you know, watching moments where I'm interacting with my kids with that scarcity mindset, because you grow up just with ingrained that there isn't abundance, there is a limited amount, and you need to be really careful about, 35 00:02:37.059 --> 00:02:50.644 And that affected everything from the way I priced in the business, the way I felt when we charged new customers for work up front that we would do as part of sort of like an onboarding phase, how I interacted with the team. 36 00:02:50.664 --> 00:02:51.905 So it went through everything. 37 00:02:51.925 --> 00:02:53.785 So the second was this side of things. 38 00:02:53.905 --> 00:02:57.967 And then from there, once I worked on myself, it became a lot more logistical. 39 00:02:59.142 --> 00:03:17.168 And I think the things that stopped us growing were, obviously, you've mentioned in the introduction around the franchise approach, thinking that we can scale quickly through a model like that without really de-risking or realizing that actually, if we go like that, it's going to cause a bit of an issue for the business. 40 00:03:17.848 --> 00:03:31.531 In your own words, can you really describe, which I think you did for scarcity, but if you could explain to our listener the difference in the mindsets of scarcity versus abundance and how you see that? 41 00:03:31.811 --> 00:03:35.312 Yeah, I think it's worth, because I think it will be more relevant doing it in two scenarios. 42 00:03:35.772 --> 00:03:45.975 So if we talk about in the home scenario, and I'll talk about the exact scenario that happens with me is, let's say you get a nice piece of food, maybe salmon and cream trees, croissants, whatever it is. 43 00:03:47.835 --> 00:03:52.818 you would let your, in my case, 11-year-old and 9-year-old go to the cupboard, help themselves to that. 44 00:03:53.218 --> 00:03:56.580 If they find that's something they wanted to have, because it's tasty, it's nice, you want good things for them. 45 00:03:56.820 --> 00:04:06.386 With the scarcity mindset, what you do is you go, oh, no, let's hold that for a special occasion, for the moment when it feels right to enjoy ourselves and have a moment with that. 46 00:04:07.447 --> 00:04:08.247 So that's at the home. 47 00:04:08.327 --> 00:04:09.788 In business, it comes about with 48 00:04:13.767 --> 00:04:18.241 prospects, feeding the need to fight for business, 49 00:04:19.935 --> 00:04:30.844 or to find the way that your solution matches their solution, rather than being really clear that your job is just to find a solution for them, whether that's you or some other thing else. 50 00:04:30.864 --> 00:04:31.745 It doesn't matter whether it's you. 51 00:04:32.045 --> 00:04:33.426 It's about you're just there to help people. 52 00:04:33.446 --> 00:04:37.009 I think even just subtle little things like that change the way that you interact in conversations. 53 00:04:37.390 --> 00:04:45.556 And I think that from a pricing perspective, the abundance thing came from a real understanding that when I started in business, I thought that good business 54 00:04:46.277 --> 00:04:47.078 was good value. 55 00:04:47.438 --> 00:04:49.880 I define good value as low cost. 56 00:04:50.480 --> 00:04:51.261 Yeah, cheaper. 57 00:04:52.222 --> 00:04:53.002 Cheaper, yeah. 58 00:04:53.202 --> 00:04:55.004 And that was such a locked in mindset. 59 00:04:55.384 --> 00:05:05.752 I think that it's really hard to change from that to go into suddenly going, actually, I need to add quite a bit of profit onto this because that gives me scope to over-service, deliver excellent stuff, 60 00:05:06.012 --> 00:05:24.333 capacity to pay my staff well, to pay myself well, because I deserve that, to get the best systems, rather than buying the cheapest of laptops, because you're like, well, I just need something to make do you go for the software that's going to make all this hardware that is going to make your team enjoy what they're doing and have a great experience in their working environment. 61 00:05:24.973 --> 00:05:35.499 And it's so subtle, but it's something that has, for me personally, taken quite, it took probably four or five years of the business before I came around to realizing that buying the best pair of boots is better than buying the cheapest pair of boots. 62 00:05:35.759 --> 00:05:37.940 And it's ultimately just a better way to live, right? 63 00:05:37.980 --> 00:05:38.340 Yeah, 100%. 64 00:05:38.481 --> 00:05:44.364 And I think, you know, I mean, the act right working, which the thing that really hit me was we were growing well in sales at one point. 65 00:05:44.404 --> 00:05:46.445 We had a great operating model. 66 00:05:46.485 --> 00:05:47.906 We knew we were lean and efficient. 67 00:05:48.807 --> 00:05:50.168 and we weren't paying our staff market rate. 68 00:05:50.288 --> 00:05:51.830 And I was like, something's wrong here. 69 00:05:52.250 --> 00:05:52.991 What are we doing wrong? 70 00:05:53.051 --> 00:05:55.433 So that kind of, you know, sometimes you need those moments, don't you? 71 00:05:55.553 --> 00:05:58.615 The sort of kicking the teeth to go, something doesn't add up here. 72 00:05:58.675 --> 00:06:01.378 Where are we going wrong in this model of what we're creating? 73 00:06:01.658 --> 00:06:04.240 Obviously, pricing was the answer in that scenario. 74 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:10.165 And then when you think in contrast that scarcity mindset with an abundance mindset, 75 00:06:10.325 --> 00:06:15.169 When did you make that shift from recognizing one that you had a scarcity mindset? 76 00:06:15.189 --> 00:06:16.530 It is biological. 77 00:06:16.590 --> 00:06:23.215 We're all hardwired to operate from a scarcity perspective because to me, abundance is sort of earned. 78 00:06:23.235 --> 00:06:27.899 You got to go through the crucible of scarcity to understand abundance in the first place. 79 00:06:28.319 --> 00:06:31.502 What do you think about how you operate now? 80 00:06:31.602 --> 00:06:37.807 How does abundance thinking, abundance mindset come through with the way you're taking your business now? 81 00:06:37.987 --> 00:06:39.267 There's kind of two questions in there, I guess. 82 00:06:39.427 --> 00:06:42.048 The first question is, how does abundance mindset happen? 83 00:06:42.068 --> 00:06:43.288 The second is, how are we doing that now? 84 00:06:43.468 --> 00:06:47.930 So in terms of the first one, I think there's a decision you can make, but then there's also a journey. 85 00:06:48.170 --> 00:06:50.710 So the decision is, I'm going to be aware of this. 86 00:06:50.750 --> 00:06:52.051 I'm going to have a conscious effort. 87 00:06:52.071 --> 00:07:01.193 So for me, I do remember a moment where I made a decision and realized that I had that mindset because I was creating a proposal for a new prospect and, 88 00:07:02.299 --> 00:07:07.363 And I was putting the details out there and the numbers were the highest we'd ever quoted anyone. 89 00:07:08.164 --> 00:07:15.190 So then I was trying to find reasons to say to my other director at the time, this is why we should reduce the cost. 90 00:07:15.790 --> 00:07:19.173 And I realized it wasn't anything to do with what the customer wanted. 91 00:07:19.794 --> 00:07:22.216 It wasn't anything to do with what was right for delivering. 92 00:07:22.276 --> 00:07:25.798 It was all to do with me thinking, if I say that to the client at that number, 93 00:07:26.679 --> 00:07:28.242 I feel nervous that that's a high number. 94 00:07:28.923 --> 00:07:31.767 The reality was it was exactly the right number in the first place. 95 00:07:31.827 --> 00:07:36.113 Our pricing was absolutely fine, but this was even after we'd done some pricing changes. 96 00:07:36.233 --> 00:07:41.281 Our pricing was fine, but I was concerned that if I'd looked at that, or in reality... 97 00:07:41.641 --> 00:07:45.342 If I'd taken that to my dad and he looked at that, he would have gone, oh, that looks expensive. 98 00:07:45.402 --> 00:07:48.583 Actually, it was really like kind of linked in with this kind of stuff, right? 99 00:07:48.704 --> 00:07:49.484 So I think that's the first thing. 100 00:07:49.504 --> 00:07:54.926 The second thing is you kind of, even in that response, I've kind of explained that there's been a bit of a journey. 101 00:07:54.946 --> 00:08:00.027 And I think, so I think you can't just overnight just change something that is so fundamental to what you've grown up with. 102 00:08:00.047 --> 00:08:01.748 So I think you need to be on an evolution. 103 00:08:02.088 --> 00:08:04.389 And every time you make a decision, check those decisions. 104 00:08:04.869 --> 00:08:06.970 Is there an emotion coming into this that is not... 105 00:08:07.390 --> 00:08:07.690 logical. 106 00:08:07.710 --> 00:08:09.312 And I think that's what an integrator is for, right? 107 00:08:09.332 --> 00:08:14.556 Or other great directors in your leadership team, that they're going to come back and say, is that an emotional conversation there? 108 00:08:14.736 --> 00:08:16.337 Is that, you know, where's that coming from? 109 00:08:16.437 --> 00:08:17.678 And they're going to challenge those beliefs. 110 00:08:17.698 --> 00:08:26.666 So I think a healthy leadership team in this case can challenge those things as well and support in that as long as the whole leadership team doesn't have a scarcity mindset. 111 00:08:26.686 --> 00:08:30.929 In that case, it might be time to get somebody into the team that doesn't or non-execal to support that. 112 00:08:31.264 --> 00:08:32.305 Yeah, totally. 113 00:08:32.545 --> 00:08:40.129 And love that, that the leadership team is kind of holding up a mirror to you in a lot of ways saying, Hey, is this how we really want to operate? 114 00:08:40.169 --> 00:08:42.410 Is this how we really want to think? 115 00:08:42.670 --> 00:08:50.175 But still that takes a pretty sophisticated leadership team to go from scarcity to abundance because it's just pretty rare in the world. 116 00:08:50.815 --> 00:08:54.517 I'm not sure that very many people think in terms of abundance out of the box. 117 00:08:54.577 --> 00:08:56.138 I'm pretty sure they don't in fact. 118 00:08:56.718 --> 00:08:59.380 So that's gotta be a pretty high level leadership team. 119 00:08:59.820 --> 00:09:00.901 Again, I think it's been a journey. 120 00:09:01.081 --> 00:09:01.802 I think it's been training. 121 00:09:01.822 --> 00:09:11.270 But this kind of links really well into the whole CFO question as well, because actually many, many finance leaders have a scarcity mindset. 122 00:09:11.610 --> 00:09:18.316 More have than don't, actually, which sometimes in ways makes them a good finance person because they're going to always de-risk and hold things back. 123 00:09:19.076 --> 00:09:26.783 But in my team, we're now really focused on if we have a question like, we want to grow, how many people do we need? 124 00:09:28.151 --> 00:09:32.355 And the question is, okay, I think we're going to get X number of sales, which means we need this many people. 125 00:09:32.375 --> 00:09:36.499 And it's a really cautious approach, actually, to scaling. 126 00:09:36.519 --> 00:09:41.283 Whereas the other answer is, what would be the quickest way to scale? 127 00:09:41.384 --> 00:09:45.567 If money was no object, what actions would we take to scale the business? 128 00:09:45.607 --> 00:09:46.088 What would we do? 129 00:09:46.108 --> 00:09:46.929 What would we invest in? 130 00:09:46.989 --> 00:09:48.170 Who would we have in our team? 131 00:09:48.590 --> 00:09:53.155 How many clients do we think we could get if we could just throw whatever we wanted at this? 132 00:09:54.122 --> 00:10:01.005 And from that, create a plan backwards from that number and go, actually, now, okay, how can you obtain those resources from the right people, the right places? 133 00:10:01.586 --> 00:10:06.468 And obviously, with that CFO head on, the finance director kind of head on, it's okay. 134 00:10:06.748 --> 00:10:08.930 And how can we mitigate risk to do that journey? 135 00:10:10.170 --> 00:10:16.074 And so that we can give our business not just one step, but what's the biggest step we can take between here and where we need to be next. 136 00:10:16.514 --> 00:10:17.915 I think that's definitely been a journey. 137 00:10:18.076 --> 00:10:18.876 And that's not just for me. 138 00:10:18.896 --> 00:10:24.100 That's my whole leadership team has been on that journey of kind of going incremental to explosive. 139 00:10:24.120 --> 00:10:27.062 What's the thought process that has to happen to take us from one place to another? 140 00:10:27.182 --> 00:10:29.003 I think that scarcity breeds incremental. 141 00:10:30.200 --> 00:10:34.863 and abundance breeds leaps or strides as it were. 142 00:10:35.123 --> 00:10:37.625 Or strides, yeah, nicely done there. 143 00:10:37.685 --> 00:10:48.573 You know, you have an interesting start to your business, having someone say, hey, I need you to go start a business, go find product market fit, and here's some startup capital to go do that. 144 00:10:48.753 --> 00:10:51.275 Obviously you had experience in accounting, 145 00:10:51.595 --> 00:11:00.459 Tell me a little bit about that and what process did you use to discover and find product market fit for your market? 146 00:11:00.479 --> 00:11:04.381 Because you didn't have a product as far as I can tell when you got started. 147 00:11:04.661 --> 00:11:18.907 We had a hypothesis, which was in the UK, there's something called an umbrella company, which is where people who work part-time short shifts, they can get one employment for help with getting a mortgage, et cetera, going through this kind of 148 00:11:19.167 --> 00:11:19.548 agency. 149 00:11:19.988 --> 00:11:23.532 So that was our kind of hypothesis was, it's a very fast growing market. 150 00:11:23.552 --> 00:11:24.713 We've seen lots of people in it. 151 00:11:25.033 --> 00:11:25.994 Maybe that could be a model. 152 00:11:26.014 --> 00:11:33.042 So we started with that hazard hypothesis, but very quickly we realized that we didn't have any connections in that marketplace and 153 00:11:33.512 --> 00:11:34.413 We didn't know enough about it. 154 00:11:34.953 --> 00:11:38.715 And a really, really important thing that I learned early on was about market timing. 155 00:11:38.755 --> 00:11:42.697 In that market, the market had grown, had all the great opportunities of new startups. 156 00:11:42.957 --> 00:11:46.019 Then you'd had big incumbents come and have private equity investment. 157 00:11:46.439 --> 00:11:49.041 And then it started to consolidate in the marketplace. 158 00:11:49.061 --> 00:11:53.323 And suddenly now to enter that marketplace was a loss of cost. 159 00:11:53.403 --> 00:11:59.607 So we ended up in a place where if we wanted to go into that, unless we could get scale ridiculously quickly, 160 00:12:00.763 --> 00:12:06.305 50k wasn't going to go very far in that journey, we would have had to have scaled up absolutely. 161 00:12:06.325 --> 00:12:11.906 We would have put probably five to 10 million into that to make it even make a dent in the market of what was going on. 162 00:12:12.046 --> 00:12:15.647 Although I started with a hypothesis, I would say I still spent far more than I should have. 163 00:12:16.067 --> 00:12:26.510 I call it part of my MBA, my on the ground MBA, which is we spent 96,000 pounds in the first year and we made three and a half in turnover. 164 00:12:26.910 --> 00:12:33.544 which is just about the biggest fail you can make when you're in a business that most people who start accounting firms, for example, or finance firms, 165 00:12:34.849 --> 00:12:38.531 they don't ever make a loss because they start as a profit and they just deliver the work themselves. 166 00:12:38.611 --> 00:12:52.316 But because I couldn't deliver the work, I effectively ran it like a tech startup with having investment, loads into every possible marketing strategy I could think of, email marketing, went to events, spoke at events, cold calls, door knock. 167 00:12:52.356 --> 00:13:01.079 I mean, I did everything, which was a great learning, but it wasn't so good from a balancing perspective on cost. 168 00:13:01.459 --> 00:13:03.040 And then I found something called 169 00:13:03.860 --> 00:13:18.729 the Lean Startup, which I would say is like a really nice precursor to the whole EOS side of things, which is when you, I think EOS works amazingly well when you know what you need to do to grow, you have an established business to scale. 170 00:13:19.110 --> 00:13:22.032 What I really like about the Lean Startup is you can know nothing. 171 00:13:22.952 --> 00:13:23.833 about your business. 172 00:13:24.093 --> 00:13:34.082 It's the process to just test that model and go, you know, there's a great book called The Mum Test, which talks about the ugly baby syndrome, which is, you know, when you have a baby and I've had two, they look beautiful. 173 00:13:34.102 --> 00:13:35.203 They're the most beautiful things in the world. 174 00:13:35.283 --> 00:13:41.549 And I would absolutely say 100% unequivocally, my kids were the most beautiful kids in the world, but not everyone else thinks the same as I do in that, right? 175 00:13:41.789 --> 00:13:42.970 And that's the, that's the idea. 176 00:13:42.990 --> 00:13:48.876 The Mum Test, that book is great about sort of helping you to identify what are the assumptions you're making that are actually for 177 00:13:49.436 --> 00:13:54.357 not founded on anything other than your own personal perspective and not your clients or potential prospects. 178 00:13:55.257 --> 00:14:04.340 So the journey with the Lean Startup, a tool particularly called the Business Model Canvas was really, really fantastic. 179 00:14:04.640 --> 00:14:06.260 And I use that a lot in the early days. 180 00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:11.341 I don't now use the Business Model Canvas as much, but I still use the principles from it when making new decisions. 181 00:14:12.022 --> 00:14:12.762 The idea of, 182 00:14:14.122 --> 00:14:16.124 We don't go out to market knowing everything. 183 00:14:17.025 --> 00:14:21.868 We go out to market testing our assumptions in that journey. 184 00:14:21.888 --> 00:14:26.652 And don't get caught up in the idea that you have to be so fixed when you start getting a new product or a new opportunity. 185 00:14:27.673 --> 00:14:29.754 In the UK, we've built a community for... 186 00:14:30.675 --> 00:14:33.760 people running on EOS to try and really get people to engage together. 187 00:14:34.220 --> 00:14:41.611 And that was entirely ran on the business model canvas process of just test, measure, see how people respond, get some feedback on the scorecard. 188 00:14:41.932 --> 00:14:44.395 And I'll put that back through so there's some EOS falling in as well. 189 00:14:44.816 --> 00:14:45.216 So it was... 190 00:14:46.338 --> 00:14:56.648 I think it's important that you identify when you go into a new market or a business that kind of assumption you're making that might damage you if you just hold them 100% true. 191 00:14:57.008 --> 00:15:03.915 At what point during that journey were you pretending that there wasn't a problem? 192 00:15:04.155 --> 00:15:06.658 You had to have seen it coming at some point. 193 00:15:07.038 --> 00:15:11.384 I think my integrator at the time saw it before I did, ironically. 194 00:15:12.245 --> 00:15:13.347 We'd implemented EOS. 195 00:15:14.288 --> 00:15:17.973 We were probably about 18 months into implementing EOS when this opportunity came up. 196 00:15:18.394 --> 00:15:19.635 And as a visionary, I saw... 197 00:15:21.017 --> 00:15:46.322 opportunity revenue wise but didn't see the opportunity in terms of what builds a great business so i would say that you know we i did mitigate some of those risks you know we're already learning that we needed to do that so pricing was already starting to change etc there was a couple of things we just didn't cater for so first thing is that the data we got was going to be a mess so we spent you know that was going to be a lot of effort second is the relationship between the franchisor 198 00:15:47.262 --> 00:16:06.577 and their like the and managing director of business the and the team and that person and the front and the rest of the team and the franchisees there was a couple of things that were very subtle but they were it was clearly frustrations but in that within the kind of the setup i think 199 00:16:07.707 --> 00:16:23.913 In hindsight, it was kind of obvious that we were going to have some challenges taking that client on, even if we had just one of them, because of this discrepancy between this person who made the decision and the person who we were trying to deliver to, who was not the same person. 200 00:16:24.233 --> 00:16:24.353 Right. 201 00:16:24.573 --> 00:16:25.233 You know, it's great. 202 00:16:25.434 --> 00:16:27.354 The idea of being mandated to go somewhere. 203 00:16:27.374 --> 00:16:35.598 But when you think about, you know, a lot, some of these, these people, you know, their businesses where their, their mum was doing the accounts for them and suddenly they had to pay for it. 204 00:16:35.998 --> 00:16:48.843 You know, it's that, I guess in a way, despite I've talked about the lean startup, you know, if you actually really understood your client, you'd go, would I want somebody to tell me I had to change my account over to somebody else and for me to pay more money? 205 00:16:49.064 --> 00:16:52.265 When I say it like this, it's almost like it's so obvious. 206 00:16:52.645 --> 00:16:55.088 But you get a bit blinded sometimes, don't you, to a goal, but good opportunities. 207 00:16:55.108 --> 00:16:58.872 You know, Warren Buffett is a great example of somebody who clarifies this so well. 208 00:16:58.912 --> 00:17:02.536 He says, he talks about the 20, he says, how do you prioritize? 209 00:17:02.556 --> 00:17:04.478 He says, well, take your 20 best opportunities. 210 00:17:05.239 --> 00:17:07.441 Now, fill those down to five opportunities. 211 00:17:07.942 --> 00:17:08.623 I'm paraphrasing here. 212 00:17:09.063 --> 00:17:13.388 And then he says, now pick the top three opportunities that you're going to do. 213 00:17:13.448 --> 00:17:18.534 Okay, now just do opportunity one and avoid opportunity two and three with everything you've got. 214 00:17:18.994 --> 00:17:23.119 You deliberately choose not to do the second, third opportunity because they'll be the distractors from the first opportunity. 215 00:17:23.739 --> 00:17:31.648 I think the opportunity to grow was there, but I was distracted by all these other components of it I thought were good. 216 00:17:32.369 --> 00:17:34.912 I didn't focus on the number one thing, which is build a great long-term business. 217 00:17:36.267 --> 00:17:40.970 So I think the moment that we realized, it actually dawned on me, it was probably too late. 218 00:17:41.010 --> 00:17:50.475 It was the moment where they said, we're selling out or we've been sold rather because we get told after the fact we've been sold and instantly your alarm bells go off going, right. 219 00:17:50.876 --> 00:17:55.178 Are the rules the same or is this going to change things in that journey? 220 00:17:55.418 --> 00:18:03.083 I guess one of the lessons we've learned from that is, and not just because we don't really deal with too many franchisors nowadays, is when you're going to work with a client, 221 00:18:03.883 --> 00:18:11.548 Understand, especially at a high level like we do, when you're understanding their leadership team, is there a healthy dynamic within that team? 222 00:18:12.189 --> 00:18:14.130 Because don't expect you to be able to fix that. 223 00:18:14.250 --> 00:18:19.794 You need to be coming into a team that you can fit into well, but you're not the answer to a healthy leadership team. 224 00:18:19.814 --> 00:18:21.615 You're the answer to the product or service you're dealing with. 225 00:18:22.096 --> 00:18:23.937 I think that's a learning curve from it. 226 00:18:24.137 --> 00:18:44.180 you of course had customer concentration risk there and with a franchisor you think oh i actually work for 100 businesses not one but at the same time you kind of just work for one you end up with a huge level of concentration risk there as well what have you stopped doing now that you used to feel 227 00:18:45.261 --> 00:18:48.402 was absolutely essential to the growth of the business. 228 00:18:48.522 --> 00:18:57.166 And tell me about the process of letting go, of delegating and elevating, kind of stepping back from you being the central decision maker. 229 00:18:57.186 --> 00:19:02.628 Yeah, I think, you know, even when you don't deliver the main work, I still ended up getting to the point where, 230 00:19:03.328 --> 00:19:12.899 it didn't take me very long to be able to learn all the things that we needed to do and why they were important, how to deliver it and start looking at the nuances of tax and stuff around it. 231 00:19:12.939 --> 00:19:18.886 So, you know, we always, I was always engaged in that because I do have an analytical personality, which means, 232 00:19:20.188 --> 00:19:25.473 I know in hindsight, I shouldn't have, but I had a bit of a control thing where I was wanting to make sure things were right. 233 00:19:25.753 --> 00:19:29.997 First thing I found quite easy to let go of, though, was team leadership. 234 00:19:30.677 --> 00:19:39.965 You know, I consider myself to be probably a good, somebody who's good at rallying people around a cause or an idea, but not necessarily the person who's going to manage and hold somebody accountable. 235 00:19:40.986 --> 00:19:44.688 I realized that there was somebody else in my business who was better than me at that. 236 00:19:44.728 --> 00:19:45.868 So that was the first thing. 237 00:19:46.329 --> 00:19:55.593 I did hire ahead of time somebody that could come into our leadership team and add maturity and experience and things that probably beyond what we could really afford at the time. 238 00:19:55.693 --> 00:19:57.274 But I knew it would make a good difference. 239 00:19:57.294 --> 00:19:57.694 And it did. 240 00:19:58.054 --> 00:20:00.975 As the journey has gone on, I've been able to release quite a lot. 241 00:20:01.155 --> 00:20:06.898 You know, our finance, even our own finances, I've released that to one of our team, which is, you know, that's a big deal for somebody who's those finance. 242 00:20:07.618 --> 00:20:10.399 as I did by the end of it, by this process. 243 00:20:10.880 --> 00:20:15.001 So I released that and I've also stepped down from doing operations. 244 00:20:15.261 --> 00:20:18.923 At the moment, I ended up, last year I was in just... 245 00:20:19.917 --> 00:20:21.938 visionary and sales or growth. 246 00:20:21.958 --> 00:20:23.899 We call it sales and marketing growth for the business. 247 00:20:24.219 --> 00:20:30.722 I have actually since taken back the integrator seat, but because I think this is quite an important thing in that it's not, and it's not for everything. 248 00:20:31.243 --> 00:20:42.448 It's a, um, in the timing of our growth and where we are, we, the person in that seat became the right person in the wrong seat. 249 00:20:43.843 --> 00:20:52.708 So we've adjusted as a business and we are on our issues just ready to remove me out again, back into that integrator, away from that integrator seat as quick as possible. 250 00:20:53.208 --> 00:21:00.353 However, what it's allowed us to do in that process is something that I've been finding really, really hard over the last, because we're over a decade old now, which is to try and step out of the sales seat. 251 00:21:00.433 --> 00:21:09.218 So we're actually in the process now of moving the team so that I will step out of the sales seat over the next six months, which from a founder's perspective, I think is quite a 252 00:21:09.938 --> 00:21:14.901 it's always more, especially as a visionary who's very self-focused, it's probably one of the hardest roles. 253 00:21:15.742 --> 00:21:27.050 So I think once that's through in the next six months, and we've began that process, you know, the integrator role, although it's difficult to hire for, for me to let go is actually a lot easier because we've had a process like that before, it's in place. 254 00:21:27.090 --> 00:21:31.293 So I think we're on an ebb and flowing journey is probably the right thing to say with that. 255 00:21:32.133 --> 00:21:32.914 And a journey that's 256 00:21:33.434 --> 00:21:34.735 I find it quite easy to let go. 257 00:21:35.055 --> 00:21:39.317 And I don't like to do the stuff that's the day-to-day keeping things going kind of stuff. 258 00:21:39.997 --> 00:21:51.223 But equally, part of that abundance mindset and some of the learnings around that is also realizing sometimes where you are in a season where your business needs a certain type of person. 259 00:21:51.463 --> 00:21:59.448 Actually, I read Mark Winter's visionary book, and that's what led me to that decision, because it kind of talks about the right type of integrator for the right timing of business. 260 00:22:00.268 --> 00:22:12.677 And the difference between, you know, perhaps somebody who can support you with the role out of EOS within the business and can structure things and be part of like leading the operations versus somebody who's going to be the commercial head who's going to make decisions that are going to be high-risk decisions to move the business forward. 261 00:22:12.837 --> 00:22:14.638 I'm still on the learning curve is probably the best way to put that, Mark. 262 00:22:14.818 --> 00:22:16.079 I think it's interesting too. 263 00:22:16.259 --> 00:22:24.805 If you're familiar with an article that Paul Graham wrote, he talks about founder mode versus manager mode. 264 00:22:25.065 --> 00:22:28.767 And that sometimes in those growth trajectories, 265 00:22:29.801 --> 00:22:37.105 the leadership of the business, the founder, the visionary, has to go into founder mode versus manager mode. 266 00:22:37.325 --> 00:22:46.590 And I think it's useful to talk about it in terms of, as Mark Winters talks about it, who wrote Rocket Fuel, which is all about that visionary and integrator relationship. 267 00:22:46.750 --> 00:22:50.712 You gotta find the three-part puzzle piece and it's gotta fit, right? 268 00:22:51.072 --> 00:22:55.955 You gotta fit with each other and you gotta fit with the business itself. 269 00:22:56.895 --> 00:23:02.239 And anytime any of that gets out of whack, it's just not going to work. 270 00:23:02.559 --> 00:23:12.966 It's almost like a relationship, a marriage, and where one person is growing and the other one isn't, that creates lots and lots of conflict. 271 00:23:13.927 --> 00:23:34.033 And I think the same is true for that visionary integrator relationship and the business relationship, where if the business is growing and it's starting to take off, which clearly yours is, both the visionary and integrator have to be able to grow at the same speed and pace as the business with each other. 272 00:23:35.453 --> 00:23:43.242 And with the business simultaneously, otherwise you might no longer be the visionary for the business or the right fit visionary. 273 00:23:43.703 --> 00:23:48.408 And your integrator puzzle piece might not be the right fit for you or for the business. 274 00:23:48.849 --> 00:23:53.915 Or in some scenarios, the integrator can actually keep up with the business, but the visionary can't. 275 00:23:54.115 --> 00:23:55.735 And so then you have to swap that out. 276 00:23:55.756 --> 00:24:07.439 So if you think about it in those three-part puzzles, as you're growing and scaling, you do have to flip to founder mode if your integrator can't keep up with you or with the business itself. 277 00:24:08.739 --> 00:24:17.162 And so you're kind of managing this three legs of that stool at the same time as you grow. 278 00:24:17.182 --> 00:24:21.043 And I think that founder mode versus manager mode is just kind of a good way to, 279 00:24:21.911 --> 00:24:29.513 think about it, that you have to flip that switch at certain points in time in order for the business to keep growing and for you to serve customers well, et cetera. 280 00:24:30.034 --> 00:24:31.614 I think you mentioned about Rocket Fuel. 281 00:24:31.634 --> 00:24:34.155 Obviously, I've mentioned about the visionary book. 282 00:24:34.555 --> 00:24:40.957 There's another good book called Second in Command as well, which is between the three of them, they've given me a good understanding of. 283 00:24:42.300 --> 00:24:49.904 you know, if you say as a visionary, what you think is you think I'm going to get an integrator, they're going to come in and they're going to solve all my problems and they'll just do everything. 284 00:24:50.344 --> 00:24:53.966 And like, it almost like the picture is almost painted that they'll just know what to do. 285 00:24:54.547 --> 00:25:00.150 And what I realized is the integrator role is just as important a role to define really clearly as any other role. 286 00:25:00.250 --> 00:25:03.952 In fact, far, far more important to define what your strengths as a visionary are. 287 00:25:04.572 --> 00:25:07.474 So what is the complementary strengths of the integrator you need? 288 00:25:08.174 --> 00:25:09.055 What things, you know, 289 00:25:09.775 --> 00:25:29.245 that are you in terms of your business and the stage you're at in the next 24 months what do you what do you need that integrator to primarily do because obviously interest can get involved in everything they can do lots of you know they can manage many different projects and get involved in all these special things actually fundamentally what do you need do you need them to do between here and the next point 290 00:25:30.045 --> 00:25:36.111 And to really just make sure that that role is focused entirely on just solving those challenges as their primary. 291 00:25:36.131 --> 00:25:40.155 They can do other stuff if they've got more time, but like those, you know, it's first things first type moment. 292 00:25:40.175 --> 00:25:43.298 And I think that's a learning I've been on in that journey as well. 293 00:25:43.715 --> 00:25:45.756 So you have a pretty unique business model. 294 00:25:45.796 --> 00:25:52.800 You were mentioning the umbrella company and the fractional leadership, which is really the core of your business. 295 00:25:53.021 --> 00:25:57.463 What are your thoughts about the fractional leadership as an industry? 296 00:25:57.483 --> 00:25:59.705 I think understanding the fractional industries. 297 00:25:59.725 --> 00:26:00.445 Yeah. 298 00:26:00.545 --> 00:26:05.387 quite important because I don't think everybody always understands it because they always, a lot of people see it as fractional leadership. 299 00:26:05.667 --> 00:26:09.588 Actually, fractional has been personal assistants. 300 00:26:09.728 --> 00:26:12.229 It's been part-time help over using Fiverr. 301 00:26:12.449 --> 00:26:15.350 So there's been freelance, that kind of freelance support for a long period of time. 302 00:26:15.890 --> 00:26:26.914 So I think the change that's happening is at the leadership level or at key strategic positions, people are being more comfortable going, actually, let's find somebody who is exceptional. 303 00:26:27.194 --> 00:26:29.375 We just want a piece of them, not all of them. 304 00:26:30.255 --> 00:26:36.236 And I think that there's a lot of moving parts that have made that so far, get to where we are, but also will continue to do that. 305 00:26:36.476 --> 00:26:42.437 What we're trying to achieve and what we're trying to see more of is a fractional function, not just a fractional leader. 306 00:26:42.497 --> 00:26:50.859 So rather than just say, we're going to do the finance leadership, they realize the importance of the other stuff, which is, you know, how does the data get into the business? 307 00:26:51.059 --> 00:26:54.259 How's that organized, structured, the systems, the technology, all that kind of thing. 308 00:26:54.299 --> 00:26:56.720 So that's where we're trying to separate into that. 309 00:26:57.340 --> 00:26:58.321 So that's an interesting model. 310 00:26:58.842 --> 00:27:00.263 And that's one thing that's evolving. 311 00:27:00.864 --> 00:27:15.839 To your other point, about five years ago, if you spoke to most fractional finance people globally, they'd probably say, my limit is somewhere between a 1 million and a 5 million turnover, whatever currency, US dollars, euros, pounds, doesn't matter, about the same sort of number. 312 00:27:16.060 --> 00:27:18.762 Whereas now we're already getting somewhere closer to $2. 313 00:27:19.543 --> 00:27:21.665 20 million at the moment in terms of what that's capable of. 314 00:27:22.025 --> 00:27:37.938 I think going forward, what we'll find is people will engage in fractional leadership up to 50, you know, maybe even more than that million or upwards, because what we're finding is we're finding because of technology, because of AI, the scope that what a leader can achieve within that smaller space of time is significantly greater. 315 00:27:38.538 --> 00:27:46.664 There's a lot more connect connectivity because, you know, we went about 10 years ago through a big data boom where people started to put their data together, which has a supported, uh, 316 00:27:47.563 --> 00:27:50.484 AI rollout and being able to use that data in wise ways. 317 00:27:51.124 --> 00:28:04.269 So if a business understands its asset in data and then understands how to use that with AI and pull the information and analyze the information, a leader can make strategic decisions without having to do all that background work. 318 00:28:04.289 --> 00:28:09.831 They can be more in the conversation, in the story, in the decision-making process than all the stuff that happens behind it. 319 00:28:09.851 --> 00:28:11.472 So I think there's a lot of moving parts happening. 320 00:28:13.750 --> 00:28:20.973 And obviously in certain geographies like the UK where leadership is, or hiring is becoming more high risk. 321 00:28:22.034 --> 00:28:25.575 I think people will, because of that ability to remove them from the business is a lot harder. 322 00:28:26.556 --> 00:28:34.059 I think that you'll find those anywhere like that will also grow even quicker because they'll be spurred on by that decision. 323 00:28:35.580 --> 00:28:38.982 I think people are also getting a bit smarter about protecting the asset. 324 00:28:39.542 --> 00:28:41.563 You know, people have seen businesses go up 325 00:28:42.323 --> 00:28:43.064 suddenly lose. 326 00:28:43.084 --> 00:28:45.325 And I think a lot of businesses now are going, okay, I've got an asset. 327 00:28:45.365 --> 00:28:47.827 How do I keep this asset, this business that I've created? 328 00:28:48.327 --> 00:28:58.995 And one of the ways to do that, especially businesses, maybe because we're in a bit of an echo chamber on the US, especially businesses on the US, you tend to be more thinking, okay, how can I remove, keep your personal dependency from that business? 329 00:28:59.775 --> 00:29:06.997 And having something like fractional allows you to have perhaps multiple people or have somebody in the team that has a little bit of extra knowledge in certain areas. 330 00:29:07.598 --> 00:29:13.900 For example, like a fractional finance leader, but also a fractional manager in the finance rather than having somebody doing both roles. 331 00:29:14.160 --> 00:29:19.142 And those sorts of decisions help a business to be able to de-risk from somebody deciding that they want to move ship. 332 00:29:20.342 --> 00:29:21.443 So there's a lot of moving parts there. 333 00:29:21.803 --> 00:29:24.946 It is interesting as it's harder to employ people. 334 00:29:25.006 --> 00:29:28.769 It's harder to remove employment when you have it. 335 00:29:29.269 --> 00:29:32.552 I think humans are just like electricity and water. 336 00:29:32.592 --> 00:29:35.274 We move to the path of least resistance. 337 00:29:35.574 --> 00:29:42.639 If you put up a bunch of resistance for hiring and firing, then we're just going to do something a little bit different than hiring and firing. 338 00:29:42.660 --> 00:29:42.760 Yeah. 339 00:29:43.540 --> 00:29:46.703 That essentially gets the same thing, but avoids all the friction to it. 340 00:29:46.943 --> 00:29:48.184 You just see this happening. 341 00:29:48.204 --> 00:29:54.890 And I think that's part of like you kind of squeeze it and it just takes off with the fractional leadership and just the concept. 342 00:29:54.930 --> 00:30:02.037 As you said, being a consultant, giving, working for multiple organizations at once is nothing new. 343 00:30:02.457 --> 00:30:05.680 But at this level and at this scale itself. 344 00:30:05.940 --> 00:30:13.911 and the ability for people to have access to top talent without having the money to pay for them full time. 345 00:30:14.672 --> 00:30:17.857 It's just a unique thing that I don't think ever existed before. 346 00:30:17.957 --> 00:30:20.240 And yes, I think it is enabled by technology. 347 00:30:20.545 --> 00:30:25.429 Our model probably wouldn't have been able to be developed 10 years ago because I don't think the market would have been ready for a model like ours. 348 00:30:25.449 --> 00:30:28.411 You know, Fractional has always been very self-employed. 349 00:30:28.671 --> 00:30:34.295 There are organizations that deal with Fractional and they tend to have their Fractional team as subcontractors. 350 00:30:34.815 --> 00:30:35.856 Our model is an employed model. 351 00:30:35.876 --> 00:30:39.799 So all of our team that we place into businesses, they're Fractional, but they're our employees. 352 00:30:40.159 --> 00:30:42.581 And that's quite important because it's a different type of person. 353 00:30:42.861 --> 00:30:44.362 than the person who's going to go and be self-employed. 354 00:30:44.382 --> 00:30:55.486 Most self-employed people, they might not be as entrepreneurial as somebody growing a large business, but they tend to have an entrepreneurial spark at least in them because they have to do a bit of sales to sell themselves to somebody. 355 00:30:55.546 --> 00:30:59.148 They've got to do a bit as well as being able to do the service that they're delivering. 356 00:30:59.168 --> 00:31:03.970 A marketing strategist has to sell their consultancy and deliver a marketing strategy. 357 00:31:04.230 --> 00:31:06.911 Whereas models like ours that are arising now, 358 00:31:07.711 --> 00:31:15.614 You can find somebody who's a specialist in their industry, you know, in ours it's CFO, but perhaps they might not be the person who tries to, wants to sell. 359 00:31:15.674 --> 00:31:20.396 So it almost, these models like this are opening the market up to almost a new type of person in that space as well. 360 00:31:20.896 --> 00:31:26.739 It's the person who can be technically great in their role, but doesn't have to be the person who wants to be an entrepreneur in that journey. 361 00:31:26.879 --> 00:31:29.620 So that's why I think there's capacity for more people in the market because of that. 362 00:31:29.824 --> 00:31:33.746 And I have to think that you are in a competitive industry. 363 00:31:33.866 --> 00:31:37.448 There's lots of pre-existing consulting firms and things like that. 364 00:31:37.708 --> 00:31:40.990 And it makes me wonder, what does your team do? 365 00:31:41.050 --> 00:31:49.854 What does your business do from your business model perspective that your industry thinks is just totally out there? 366 00:31:50.935 --> 00:31:51.895 Well, I think there's a couple of things. 367 00:31:52.075 --> 00:31:57.457 The first thing is actually our principle that we run through stuff, which is my background is not from accounting first. 368 00:31:57.817 --> 00:31:59.937 So we're not trying to be accountants first. 369 00:32:00.678 --> 00:32:03.078 And I keep banging this on with our team over and over again. 370 00:32:03.839 --> 00:32:08.240 You know, you've seen our values as one of the lines under our values, which is we're not here to be accountants. 371 00:32:08.260 --> 00:32:13.721 We're here to provide financial clarity, which means we don't care what this business looks like. 372 00:32:13.861 --> 00:32:15.682 What we care is, are we having the outcome of, 373 00:32:16.342 --> 00:32:18.103 that we need to have for the person in front of us. 374 00:32:18.583 --> 00:32:27.486 And that's why we've created our financial clarity index, which is like a tool to be able to analyze whether we're actually achieving what we said we're going to achieve for somebody. 375 00:32:27.906 --> 00:32:35.389 You know, it's not about, although we do do accounting as part of what we do, we're really outsourced finance and outsourced financial clarity. 376 00:32:35.429 --> 00:32:36.590 So it's going, okay, you're a leader. 377 00:32:37.310 --> 00:32:40.952 What do you need to know to make great business decisions from the finance function? 378 00:32:41.152 --> 00:32:42.313 What finance information do you need? 379 00:32:42.813 --> 00:32:44.454 And how do we connect that with the rest of the business? 380 00:32:44.934 --> 00:32:52.098 And that means that if AI comes in and starts taking over and we all need to be experts in AI and technology, that's not a problem. 381 00:32:52.298 --> 00:32:56.760 If we become a technology business and we're building software that delivers technology, 382 00:32:57.040 --> 00:32:57.801 financial clarity. 383 00:32:57.961 --> 00:32:58.942 That's not a problem. 384 00:32:59.302 --> 00:33:01.104 If we're all accountants, that's not a problem. 385 00:33:01.124 --> 00:33:03.306 If we're FDs, CFOs, it doesn't really matter what we do. 386 00:33:03.326 --> 00:33:05.367 What matters is the problem we're trying to solve. 387 00:33:05.387 --> 00:33:11.172 And I think that's, it's a subtle, it's a really important way because it changes the way you run your business. 388 00:33:11.272 --> 00:33:12.193 So I think that's the first thing. 389 00:33:12.614 --> 00:33:16.057 I think the second thing in our model is that employment, which I said, you know, we've chosen to employ. 390 00:33:16.357 --> 00:33:23.043 It's higher risk for us as a business, but we've realized that what it gives us is access to a pool of people that other people aren't accessing. 391 00:33:23.803 --> 00:33:30.667 So there's a benefit from a recruitment perspective, but there's also an element of us being able to control the full function. 392 00:33:31.228 --> 00:33:36.651 So rather than just saying we're going to be senior leaders, and if you've got a team below that, that's great. 393 00:33:36.671 --> 00:33:39.292 We'll try and talk to them and interact in some way. 394 00:33:39.753 --> 00:33:44.436 We're saying outsource your finance function and we'll control all parts of it. 395 00:33:53.461 --> 00:33:54.462 Do they have financial clarity? 396 00:33:54.482 --> 00:33:58.564 Do they have meaningful analytics within the business? 397 00:33:58.724 --> 00:34:05.708 Are their people, systems, and processes appropriate and suitable for the business and its plans? 398 00:34:06.409 --> 00:34:11.092 And is the quality of the data and the inputs and the infrastructure behind it good enough? 399 00:34:11.852 --> 00:34:15.795 And that means it allows us, it's something that we're, because we're so honed in on that, 400 00:34:16.535 --> 00:34:19.997 It allows us to, A, productize it in a way that other people can't. 401 00:34:20.357 --> 00:34:28.881 B, it allows us to direct our staff in a different way than trying to just tick a compliance box on getting your taxes, returning, whatever. 402 00:34:29.101 --> 00:34:34.104 But also we get to control the whole outcome of what we're trying to give, which is financial clarity. 403 00:34:34.524 --> 00:34:37.226 I think lots of other people are, you know, they're great at giving reports. 404 00:34:37.246 --> 00:34:41.828 And there's some great firms out there and they're great at giving strategy, but it's hard sometimes to control the whole funnel of that. 405 00:34:42.925 --> 00:34:53.490 And I think I've seen marketing, the reason I talk about marketing a couple of times, because I've seen the same, I haven't seen the model in finance, but I've seen the model in other marketing agencies where marketing agencies will say, I'm going to do your entire marketing outfit and I'll do your SEO here. 406 00:34:53.510 --> 00:34:56.331 We'll do your, you know, your event management here. 407 00:34:56.351 --> 00:34:56.892 We'll do this here. 408 00:34:56.932 --> 00:35:01.314 And somebody, you know, an organization will outsource the full function with leadership and everything included. 409 00:35:01.334 --> 00:35:08.257 And so I think that's the bit we're kind of learning from other parts of the fractional model and bringing it into the finance one. 410 00:35:08.818 --> 00:35:12.760 All right, Kieran, last question before we conclude here. 411 00:35:13.320 --> 00:35:18.503 What one thing, if you'd done it two years earlier, would have changed everything? 412 00:35:19.483 --> 00:35:27.507 I think if we'd spent more time when we first implemented EOS... 413 00:35:28.767 --> 00:35:37.850 on really honing in on our target market instead of kind of muddling through and figuring it out as we went along. 414 00:35:37.870 --> 00:35:41.671 If we'd spent more time just really putting exercise into that, I think that would have been fantastic. 415 00:35:41.972 --> 00:35:48.514 And it would have really helped us to move there quicker and make decisions quicker and bank our eggs on the right horses. 416 00:35:48.694 --> 00:35:50.074 We'll say we'll buy money on the right horses. 417 00:35:50.114 --> 00:35:50.514 That's the one. 418 00:35:50.955 --> 00:35:52.255 All right, Kieran, sounds good. 419 00:35:52.495 --> 00:35:54.636 Thanks for being our guest today. 420 00:35:54.656 --> 00:35:57.357 And till next time. 421 00:35:57.657 --> 00:35:57.997 Thanks, Mark. 422 00:35:58.477 --> 00:36:03.739 If this conversation gave you something to think about, I'd love to keep that going. 423 00:36:04.220 --> 00:36:16.545 I write a newsletter called Clarity Break Thoughts, where I share simple ideas, questions, and reminders to help you step back, think clearly, and lead with more intention. 424 00:36:17.205 --> 00:36:21.908 You can subscribe at eosworldwide.com slash clarity break thoughts. 425 00:36:22.408 --> 00:36:26.950 Again, that's eosworldwide.com slash clarity break thoughts.