Ensuring your investors are happy, looking after your staff and creating and leading the business strategy are all areas which fall squarely on the CEO’s shoulders. In this episode we are looking at these areas with a number of business and technology experts. We are joined by Cyril Journoux, CEO at PCL Ceramics, Sinead McHale, CEO at Satago, Richard Youngman, MD at Sicon and Sage’s own EVP and Managing Director UK&I, Paul Struthers gives his viewpoint on the challenges the CEO has faced this past year.
Ensuring your investors are happy, looking after your staff and creating and leading the business strategy are all areas which fall squarely on the CEO’s shoulders. In this episode we are looking at these areas with a number of business and technology experts. We are joined by Cyril Journoux, CEO at PCL Ceramics, Sinead McHale, CEO at Satago, Richard Youngman, MD at Sicon and Sage’s own EVP and Managing Director UK&I, Paul Struthers gives his viewpoint on the challenges the CEO has faced this past year.
CYRIL 0:00
We are forming an automation business in the ceramic industry. We've been around for 30 years. Really, we started as a spin-off of a company called Porvair, which is a chemical company, and we branched out looking at the automation and the equipment sides that originally we were doing forming technology using post plastics and we were the first in the industry to introduce a pressure casting to the ceramic industry.
NICK
Casting of ceramics is a manufacturing business, what has Covid been like for you because you can't uproot robots and send them home?
CYRIL 0:45
If you look at 2020 it is a year of two parts. The first part has been really tough. It completely stopped between March and the end of the summer to a point where we were all wondering how we're going to survive. we really worked as a team and said ‘OK, how do we restructure the business, how do we make sure we have a business at the end of the year?’ and then suddenly after the summer the confidence came back. Our business is about growth and about confidence from the customer that they're going to grow, so the second part of the year was an amazing recovery. We actually had our largest monthly sales for our consumable side in November, so from no orders for eight weeks right in the middle of the start of the pandemic to a record month later of the year.
NICK 2:00
I'm delighted that things are going wonderfully but not everyone has been lucky. What did you do in the tough times? I mean, you must have had to make some tough decisions?
CYRIL
It is really reacting and managing cash and see how we are going to manage the business and make sure we don’t spend money we don’t have. Looking at the long-term vision of the business and take the opportunity to look at our technology, services, speak with our customers and listen to what they want and really plan and hope for the best. It was tough, we spent time with our staff, so everyone understands the changes and also saying ‘We are going to have to work as a team and make sure that we come out stronger’. It was tough but we focused on the positive to see how we could change the business for the best to get back to normal. We always thought that at some point business would come back and we are hopeful for that.
NICK
Sinead, you spend your time looking at the numbers. One of the first things that Cyril said was ‘You check your cashflow, you think about the real basic numbers’. Is that the experience of your clients?
SINEAD 3:37
Actually, I spent the weekend just looking at some of the stats that we've seen pre-COVID and what's happened in the last 12 months. I can 100 per cent echo what Cyril said. If I look at our client base the first kind of… well, actually, this time last year March, April, May, we saw from most customers that revenue dropped 50 per cent year on year. That's huge, the direct impact on these businesses and I can speak for myself as a business owner, we are a small business. It's that fear and anxiety of ‘How am I going to manage cash flow’ because it is about the people that are on payroll. We're all going through this and you don't want to have to let people go. It's trying to really get a focus on that. I don't think anybody thought that lockdown would last as long as it did or that we did three versions of it. We've seen the direct impact of that on businesses and this will be boring stuff, but this is the stuff that will resonate with accountants. Stuff like DBT – Days Beyond Terms – it is amazing the difference that that makes to the business by you agreeing to put your customers on 45-day terms versus 30. That 15 days could be what saves your business, just getting the cash in your account as soon as possible. I guess in that regard cash is king. The pound in your bank account today is worth more to that pound tomorrow. It was a reassessment for a lot of people about how their cash flow worked and how it would impact them that was so unprecedented. We just didn't know how to react to it. I think that looking back on our customer base that's what I would say is the biggest challenge that they had.
NICK 5:21
Fabulous, thank you. I'm delighted to have someone with financial insight on the podcast as well. Richard, turning to you, how about your experiences and those of your customers?
RICHARD 5:33
I sit here a little smug at the time because we're in a good financial position. I was able to say to the staff, ‘Look, guys, we have got enough money in the bank to get us through the next six months.’ We decided not to furlough anybody and to spend that that quiet time, assuming that nothing was going to happen for three months, looking at our products and development and doing all that work we never get time to do. I think we were worried about them and their mental health and all those sorts of things. You could see they were genuinely scared, and I think we all were at the time about what is going to happen at that stage. Giving them that reassurance and also from our point of view not having to worry initially about the cash. I know that wasn't the case for an awful lot of our clients but at least we were able to be there and respond to the people that needed us to help them as well without having to worry about getting new sales through the door for a period of time. I hope that was a good thing. That quiet time lasted about two weeks I think and then we started to get people knocking on the door going ‘We have got someone who would like to put in a new manufacturing system’ or put in a barcoding system and it was manufacturers I think that came back first into the sector. We were able to respond to them and help them, but I think we had a lot of additional time that suddenly was available and we're looking at our internal systems and how our business was running, and I think they were doing the same. So it was them reflecting on ‘What can we do better, how can we improve our systems’. We saw a big increase in people just then starting to buy software to improve the processes and manufacturing was a big sector for that.
NICK
Richard, solid sales pitch for technology there. Is that a fair comment? Did you stand back and say, ‘Right, we deal with the crisis and then we work out what a future might look like’?
CYRIL
Exactly that. As Richard said we had a quiet time. We say, ‘How are we going to come stronger out of that, the best way is to look at our technology, do the things we never had the time to do and launch the project we never had time to launch’. We spent a lot of time working on our technology road maps and we surveyed our customers and talked to them to understand what they wanted from us in the future. And we also introduced a lot of technology to work with our staff. That took a lot of education as staff were not used to Zoom Team or this kind of technology and work also remotely. ‘How do we teach them, how do we make the rest of the team efficient?’ I have to say everybody's has been great and flexible? Simple answer to your question is yes.
SINEAD 8:46
For me personally as CEO, I was obviously nervous because we didn't know what was going to transpire over the next few months, but I have to convey that ‘Let’s take this as an opportunity to pivot, to do something different and to really put ourselves out there and put ourselves to the test’. Are we as good as we say that we are. You’re putting your name on the line for that, you are putting your business on the line for that, but I think that's what you have to do, you have to lead from the front and say, ‘We will grab this opportunity’. We don't just do cashflow, we are also a lender, so we had to really think about how we were operating and lending to businesses. We had to redefine probably that side of the business. Now again I'm answerable to a board, to investors and stuff so I had to really believe in what we were doing. I equally needed my team to believe in those suggestions and again it was about getting people on board, taking an opportunity for us to be best in practice, to be the best provider out there. You know what, we did it, but it definitely took some time because it was a new way for us to operate. The responsibility and onus is definitely on me to do that but you can only do that if you're surrounded by good people and if you've got a really good team. I think for us Covid proved that we did have a really strong team, we've got the best people I think that are in the sector. And it’s all in a direct response to what we saw with Covid and what we got back from customers etc., about what they wanted. I definitely think that as CEO you can focus on one-year, two-year, three-year strategies and very much focus on what the board want to hear and what investors want to hear. As Cyril said you have to pivot slightly and think, ‘Let's really get down to what pain points the customer is feeling and what anxieties that they're having right now and see how we can solve for that’. Definitely a different approach but it's worked out well for us and we are more in tune with our customers now than what we ever were before.
NICK
Lovely, we are going to meet face to face again with our customers, I'm sure, but in this remote world you really have got to just think customer first no matter what, right?
RICHARD 11:05
Yeah, it is interesting isn’t it. Here we are on a Zoom meeting and if you go back a year, we were doing lots of remote support and our team were geared up for doing remote implementations and things like that. Nobody ever turned the video on, did they? That, I think, probably saved a lot of us. We were able to trade and do demonstrations and have our meetings and discussions and save a huge amount of time and make that remote working work for us. A bit further down the road we realised that there are a lot of people on furlough and we could train them, that was an allowable thing to do. We did over a hundred training courses in the last year which is phenomenal. We could never have done that before. One of our meetings had 220 people on for a conference. Some astonishing stuff that we were able to do but thanks to the technology again.
NICK
I'm going to ask you a strange question Richard. I can't get over the fact that we've been here for a year. Are you a different manager now?
RICHARD 12:04
There’s a good question. What I've tried to do with the team because things have changed. Literally ‘There's the plan off we go’ and two weeks later ‘Guys, the plans changed and we can now do this as an opportunity here’. I think what I think I've been better at doing is putting down a good story to the team, making a change in strategy quickly, giving them a good explanation of why we're doing it, making sure everyone's on board with it and then we're all going together. I think the team has been fantastic and Sinead’s comment about having the best team I think it's when they've shone in a situation like this, you give them an opportunity. I think that clear leadership is really key.
CYRIL
Yes and also the education. Sinead was talking about cash and has spent a lot of time explaining what's the cash management in simple words to most of the staff to understand why and why we had to make some decisions. I have said that the key things we learned is also emphasising strong integrity from everyone and explain why when they work remotely we are not going to be on their backs and it is all about the trust building the team. The same as my two colleagues here, we had an amazing team, and everyone really pulled their weight and understood the challenges we were going through. From a personal point of view for me, what I have learnt most is managing the emotions. A person takes a decision on gut feeling and I think that the mindfulness of saying ‘What is the emotion of the decision’ which can be wrong and ‘What is the right gut feeling’ and making out the difference between the two and trusting my gut decision which is what I have always done but doing it efficiently in that moving environment and that has been a strong learning.
NICK
Efficient gut feel?
CYRIL
Yes. What I mean by that is you have to make decisions without having all the information and I have to do this all the time. You have to be mindful that sometimes your emotions can make you go in a different way. It is all about making the difference between being overwhelmed and having too many changes and saying, ‘How am I going to manage that?’ and saying, ‘I need to make a decision and the right decision is this.’
NICK
Right Sinead, how on earth can you cope with this. We have just listened to Cyril talk about making decisions without having enough data at his fingertips. Can you cope?
SINEAD 14:49
No is the short answer. In my world, where everything is data, data, data, it's about pulling that data together but also about making those informed decisions and Cyril is so 100 per cent on the spot. It is so easy to get carried away with the emotions and it's all driven by the uncertainty and also the weight. I have got fifty people working for me and they all have uncertainty happening in their own personal lives. I have got to be as solid as I can be, as the CEO, as the leader of this team to make sure that I’m getting the best that I can out of all these people for the business but equally that they're OK in their own surroundings. And we’ve shifted in the way that we work and everything for us is data driven – how customers behave when they log in, picking up patterns, so that we can deliver the best experience that we can for them. You know, we are in a data driven business and it is about taking that data and using it properly. You can have data and if you don’t utilise it is like what is the point in a sense. As CEO I have had to change the way I operate in terms of looking at 12 or 24 months as I am now looking month to month and the only way I can make really informed decisions is having up to date reporting and being on top of what is happening in the business and around me and it is 100 per cent data driven and as a business owner and leader that to me is the core of how we push forward and how we service our businesses. Not having access to the correct data almost makes me anxious. It is key and if we didn’t have it we would be in muddy waters.
NICK
Guys I want to do a little bit of forward looking now. We are speaking one year into the pandemic, there is hope on the horizon, most CEOs will have dealt with the emergency, the crisis. They would have got their businesses on an even footing. They would have furloughed staff and they'll be thinking about what does the future look like? I'm really interested in your perspectives on the lessons that a CEO can take forward now.
SINEAD
I think it comes back to knowledge is key. I think every CEO make your CFO your best friend. You've got to understand the numbers, you've got to understand what's happened in the last few years, you've got to think about scenario planning because without that knowledge it's very difficult to really put yourself in a position to think about moving forward and to create a business that's sustainable. I said it earlier, we do not know what's going to happen in the next 6 to 12 months but we have to take a positive view that it's going to get better. We've now got vaccines and people are going to start travelling again. I think you've got to understand those numbers. Don’t just leave it to the CFO to put together the cash flows, really work with the CFO to understand what a 10% variance in revenue looks like. There are changes in legislation coming, there's new funding coming down the line, the debt recovery scheme. Do your homework so you know what's available to you. A key thing, and I would say this based on what we see happening with our customers, don't leave it to the last minute when there's a VAT bill due. Do not go looking for funding the day or two before because you're going to end up with an expensive solution, you're going to potentially tie yourself into all sorts of debenture securities which might not necessarily be right for the business. It really is important to prepare yourself and to start looking at stuff in an operational basis. We would advise customers from a cash flow perspective to start looking from 12 to 16 weeks out and really know what's coming in and out to the business in terms of hard, cold cash. The one mistake I think a lot of businesses will make is they just assume because they've issued an invoice it's going to get paid. The two things don't equate. And my final word would be invest in tech because there's amazing technology out there and as Richard said we are dealing with teams and where would we be without this tech? It would be a very different well for us, so take advantage of the tech that's out there and work with your CFO. It is key.
NICK 19:35
Lovely, thank you. That's finance. Cyril, I know you come from a sales background. What's our advice to CEOs looking forward in sales and marketing terms?
CYRIL
You can sense the two different personalities between Sinead and me.
NICK
I can't wait until you do get to meet face-to-face.
CYRIL
I think for me it's been two things really. The first thing is that we spoke about the strong team which helps you to make the right decisions and take risk. That's the number one lesson: have a great team. And that has helped me a lot. The CFO and the rest of the team are extremely important for your decisions. The second thing for me is look after yourself. It's been a very draining, stressful time and we need to look after everyone, but I've also made sure I looked after myself. That has been one of my key lesson because if you're efficient you should look after yourself. If your mindset and head is in the right place the team will follow you.
NICK
Excellent. I'll give you that on the leadership front but I'm going to nudge you again because you come from a proper sales background and sales has changed forever?
CYRIL
I think it's too early to say. I think we probably use technology a lot more but I'm not a believer that we are only going to have Zoom meetings, I think we will still have face-to-face meetings and we need to build the relationship, we need to shake hands. When you agree and you commit to something on behalf of your business the customer needs to trust you and nothing can happen and you need to be face-to-face and the customer needs to look at you in the eyes and say ‘Yes okay I am committing to that, can I trust you?’ I think on that front that's not going to change. We are going to revert to normal and I think what has changed is the knowledge of the customer and the access to the data. A few years 70 per cent of customers know more about your business than you before they meet you. I think that knowledge is 100 per cent and the access of the data and the research that has been done and people understand the need to collect information about you. That is what has changed, the knowledge of the customer.
NICK
Fabulous, thank you Cyril. The other aspect that I think has changed enormously looking forward is technology and Sinead was saying earlier technology has changed forever. Richard, how does a CEO keep his CTO at bay and their demands for budget and make the right sorts of decisions?
RICHARD 22:30
As we went through the summer things started to get busy and they felt things were going to improve and things began to pick up and businesses were picking up. I'm sitting there thinking ‘What's driving all of this?’ And I think there’s a number of things. One is people were looking at their systems and going ‘They are not very joined up’ and so a drive to make their systems more integrated whether they're disparate systems being connected back up but ultimately it comes back to that same point we talked about a few times which is data, getting access to that data in an easy-to-understand format. We've done it for ourselves in house as well. We had some time to look at our own systems and there were so many inefficiencies. We have put in a whole new service desk and a project management system and CRM all joined up and it has made a huge difference. I think we're only seeing the start of that. I think that's the same thing that businesses have been trying to do certainly during this pandemic because we're now ahead of last year.
NICK
It’s little wins now as well, you don't have to do massive Big Bang tech anymore. I mean, automations, for example, is one of the big things this year?
RICHARD
Definitely, automations, integrations and just things that give you that joined up system. It's not expensive as subscription pricing now has made things an awful lot easier. We certainly make it an easy in, easy out, there's no big commitment, if you want to try it for a couple of months, try it and if it doesn’t work for you you can back out of it. That has certainly given people the ability to explore technology in different ways they wouldn't have done before because the costs were prohibitive.
NICK
Lovely, thank you. I want to just finish off with a couple of open questions and I'm really interested in thinking about those who have made it this far and survived through. I think that means that businesses who have survived this far are by definition stronger, sharper and ready to go. It's been a traumatic experience for everyone. Sinead has that changed competition, the way we run our businesses as a whole?
SINEAD 25:02
It's almost like it’s survival of the strongest, which is a horrible thing to say, but I do think that is what has happened. Anyone who has traded out of the last 12 months – and I'm in good company with Richard and Cyril on this call – you know, it’s fantastic and we should be hugely proud of that and the fact that we are able to implement new tech or new processes to make our businesses as strong as we can. In a sense I think if you are forward-looking the world is your oyster, really. There is lots of opportunity out there. We've had more new businesses set up in the last 12 months which is fantastic because people are taking the opportunity to probably reset where they are from a personal perspective, to think about their careers and think about what they want. I guess pros and cons to everything but I think there's huge opportunity and we'll see a huge uplift in entrepreneurs taken advantage of the current environment and it will be fantastic to see that growth especially with young companies and great to see a certain generation just really, really going to do something for themselves rather than starting off early in large companies. To see that initiative being encouraged and nurtured I think is fantastic. I think the government will step up the grants et cetera, and the support and the growth scheme is launching later in the year so a huge opportunity for the right mindset and the young and innovative.
NICK 26:30
With entrepreneurship comes fearless innovation as well and that’s going to benefit everyone isn’t it. Cyril what is your view of the future. Tough times but what?
CYRIL
From our industry we must provide the best service and give the best technology and we will survive and have survived. We have tried to support our customers and changed the way we install our equipment and we have managed to install equipment remotely which we never did before. The customer recognised that. If you look at competitors because we have been able to do this, we came strongly out of it. The customer recognised the benefit of doing things differently and also providing a great quality product which has helped them make more profit. In the industry there was a time when people were looking at the raw costs not focusing on the higher quality as they get better value for their money. For us, that effort in supporting the customer despite the tough times has made a massive difference and we will have to keep that going as they expect that now.
NICK
Brilliant, thank you Cyril. Richard, how about you, what's the future look like in your in your world?
RICHARD
Going back to Cyril’s point customer service is going to be key, I think. It is those that look after the customers now that are going to be the ones who really succeed. When I look at the organisation again over this last year, I think we've done well but I know we can actually do quite a bit better now looking at the statistics and response times and things, I think we could do better. We're going to look at introducing something like an MPP score for next year as part of our company bonus scheme. Bringing that whole ethos into the company and just trying to go the extra mile. I think that's going to be the thing that will hopefully set us aside even more than the competition.
NICK
I am so taking customer focus away as pretty much the number one takeaway from this conversation, I really am. Right, one last question to all of you. I've asked everybody this in this series of podcasts. Being a year in what advice would you give to the March 2020 you? Cyril you go first.
CYRIL
I think in a simple way never take a decision too early. I spoke earlier about efficient gut feeling and so use your get and make sure you take the decision and do it. That's what I would have wished to do differently this year.
NICK
Excellent. Sinead?
SINEAD
Similar to Cyril I would say. You make a decision, based on the information you had at hand, so it was the best decision you could make at that time. That's key and don't second guess why you did what you did at that time.
NICK
So commit basically?
SINEAD 29:54
You need to own it. I think it's owing it and not being afraid to say, ‘This is the decision I made, it may not be the right one but it's the best I could do at the time with what I knew’. You are going to get it wrong, and I will speak for myself here, I like to be in control and be right and it is not nice to be the CEO and to realise that you've made a lot of mistakes because the buck sits with you. So own it and just accept it and move on.
NICK
So live with your whopping mistake and own it and bring everyone out of it as well. Lovely. Thank you. Richard?
RICHARD
I think gut feeling. It is a funny thing to say that we run our businesses on gut feeling but I do. My gut feeling said ‘Don’t furlough the staff, we can use this time and invest it back in the business’. I would say exactly the same thing to me if it was coming round again. I think that was a good decision because we were there for the people that needed us, and we could respond to them quickly. It is a funny thing to finish on but listen to your gut. If it’s wrong deal with it and own it. You did it for the right reasons and you could explain it. Being clear with the team, ‘We are going to do this, that is the plan, go with it, it will work’.
NICK
The pandemic has been an enormous shock for all of us but I can't help thinking that at the speed of modern business today, partly thanks to technology, C suite professionals are going to have to keep on making decisions faster and faster and in circumstances of economic turmoil for example that mean you have constant uncertainty. Sinead, you mentioned at the very outset the idea of a two-year plan. I mean, nobody's got a two-year plan, everybody's working month to month if they're lucky. I'm really into this idea of how we deal with uncertainty and how we can help CEOs deal with uncertainty. Sinead, let me start with you. I know you're a data fan, what when there isn't any?
SINEAD
That's actually a really difficult question to answer because it's making me anxious even thinking about it. So much of what we do is driven by data. I totally appreciate the customer side is so important and the face to face with people. We are providing a service to customers in that we are analysing their data and it's about positioning that data for them so that we're empowering them to make the right decision, to make informed decisions.
NICK
I know you're a data fan but let me throw this in the pot then. Do you not get support from other CEOs, do you not hang out on networking groups and all that sort of thing so you can take the temperature of other people's perspective as much as reliant on it?
SINEAD 33:00
Definitely. I'm fortunate enough to have a good circle of not just CEOs but C suite and also my own kind of C suite. We’ve got me really good people, and sometimes just having a conversation with somebody else is like lifting the lid off a pressure cooker. You understand that they're having the same issues and concerns that you are and it’s the greatest sense of relief that you're not in this alone. I definitely do leverage what I see our competitors are doing and those honest conversations that we have with other businesses. I am always going to lean more on the data I guess than anything else.
NICK
Cyril, how do you deal with total uncertainty?
CYRIL
I mentioned earlier about gut feeling which is about what you know. For me I just look at what I've got in front of me, what's the best decision I can make with what I've got in front of me and what do I see the implication of the decision? That has helped me to make the right decision at the right time if I can. Sometimes I just make the wrong decision and I just have to accept it. Richard mentioned that if it was the wrong decision then change it and put your hand up and say ‘Team, that was the wrong decision and now is the best way forward so let’s do it’. It is the agility and quick decision making and reverting the decision if you made the wrong one and not being precious about ‘I've made the decision, so we stick to it’. It is that honesty with the rest of the team.
NICK
That's a good point and a very tech point as well Richard. The cost of making a bad decision and the speed at which you can reverse it is probably lower as risks are down. You can dive into a new market and have a look and see what it’s like and if it doesn’t work go and do something else. Is that fair?
RICHARD
We do that every day, it’s about R&D. We rarely have enough data to make a decision on a new product and a new direction to go in. My gut told me that we needed to create a CRM system, so we've spent quite a lot of time and effort creating a new CRM system that joins various non-integrated systems back together again. I mean that's going to be a fingers-crossed one, Nick. That is still in the mix at the moment, will it be a good decision? We started off with something simpler that wasn't quite enough, so we changed direction and made it a proper CRM system. It was a gut feeling thing. I think I'm right and I think it will be the right decision and take a little while longer. We are just buying another building, a lot of people are vacating their offices at the moment, and I've just bought the one next door because I don't believe that it's going to be the case. Again, it's a feeling that I think people are better back in the office and they'll work more productively back in the office. I'm going with what my my gut tells me there and acquiring that building to allow us to spread out a little bit more and be ready for that expansion.
NICK
Thanks. I'm just going to a allow myself to get a smack on the wrist here because when I said hasn't the risk of trying something new, hasn’t that risk reduced? Cyril was shaking his head so have I been very unfair there by the way?
CYRIL 36:41
No. You’re not entirely wrong, but the difference is what risk you take. Some of them can be really costly. You have subscription but it's not only about the finance side it is about the moral of whatever you do with the stuff. I've made a mistake recently and I took the decision and I had to reverse that the decision because it has a massive impact on some of the work we have done and the quality of the product we are delivering to the customer. That was my wrong decision. It all depends on the decision. If we go back to the technology, I agree we can test and try things easier than we used to, but the technology is just an enabler and what you do with that technology is more important than anything else.
NICK
Technology isn’t strategy, it'll support strategy but strategy rests with you on your shoulders.
CYRIL
And your team.
NICK
Yeah. Just one last thing on this question about decision making. We haven’t talked about, you've mentioned your teams, but we haven't talked about the role of your Exco, your senior leadership team, your board, etc. Do you need them more than ever now?
SINEAD 38:05
I'm going to say yes, a hundred per cent. You need to have the buy in of your investors because a typical investor wants to see a return and if they don't see the return they want to understand why. If you know that they have confidence in you and being the CEO is the loneliest job in the world because you've got to answer to an investor but you equally have a team of people that you're responsible for. So having the support of an investor that acknowledges and appreciates what's happening in the market and supports your decisions, good and bad, is really, really important. Equally for Exco because you can have a dream and a vision but if your senior team don't buy into it it's very hard to deliver that and it's very hard to convey that message. That waterfall impact down to the team if they don't buy into it. I think it's crucial.
NICK
Gentlemen, your views?
CYRIL 38:55
I feel very privileged because the shareholders have been supporting me, the expectation in line with the challenge we had was all about survival. I think coming out of it we gained the trust of the board and all the stakeholders are really confident that we're doing the right thing. So it got us out stronger from that point of view because they saw how we behaved in adversity and now that we’re looking forward and say, OK, we can grow and sustain that growth, where they trust us because we went through that big change. Coming out of it has been positive and I feel lucky.
RICHARD
Myself and my wife own the business, so we have no shareholders and investors to worry about which is great really. Fortunately, I have a good senior management team who temper some of my crazy ideas sometimes and keep my gut instincts of doing something new and innovative a little bit more under control perhaps. [40:05]