Michael Hartley shares his decades of experiences leading startups and in particular the importance of a strong partnership between a non-technical founder and a CTO and the emotional resilience required through financial ebbs and flows.
You can connect with Michael on LinkedIn and check out Comply Pro.
Michael Hartley shares his decades of experiences leading startups and in particular the importance of a strong partnership between a non-technical founder and a CTO and the emotional resilience required through financial ebbs and flows.
You can connect with Michael on LinkedIn and check out Comply Pro.
I think the core assumption of management by it is that you know the business better than anyone else because you're on the inside of it. That's often not true. Just because you're inside, you need to treat yourself like you're an outside investor and do your job with an institute process, and that's really, really important.
Speaker 2:Michael is CEO and co-founder of ComplyPro. I love people.
Speaker 1:I think people are hugely important to me in all aspects of my life and I get a buzz out of being with people. I get a buzz out of working with people and I get a buzz out of selling to people. I think you hire talent, you give them the opportunity and you're with them to be the best they can be and them being the best they can be, your company will be the best.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan. Welcome to my podcast, where you will hear from a range of guests, including those from the startup world and those that have had incredibly interesting lives and some stories to tell. I would really appreciate it if you could hit the follow button and share this amongst your friends, but, as you know, time is limited, so let's get on with it and hear from our next guest. My guest today is Michael Hartley. Michael is CEO and co-founder of ComplyPro. I'll get him to talk about what ComplyPro does shortly. Welcome to the show, Michael. Thank you, Greg, Great to be here. It's very, very cool to have you here.
Speaker 2:I was up in your office in Birkenhead in Auckland, New Zealand, some months back and met a few of the team after ironically and we were just talking offline there before ironically meeting some of the team for the first time, even though they're fellow Kiwis up in the US for SESTA and then got to meet you and realized your story is a pretty cool story that I think a lot of people will get a lot of resonance from. I'd be keen, before we kind of get into the ComplyPro journey, just to talk a bit about your origin. Are you one of these guys that has always been entrepreneurial Like? Is that something that was in your childhood.
Speaker 1:So I did an MA Honours degree at Auckland University and you know geography and politics not exactly a tech degree Came out of that, and I was lucky enough to make the Lion Nathan graduate program when Kevin Roberts was tearing the place apart, and so I walked into a really far aim culture and I thought that's the way the world was. And so you know, I didn't have that corporate experience where things were slow and ponderous. My corporate experience was brutal, and that, I think, just sort of lit me up to the idea, not so much entrepreneurship but more that you didn't have to wait to do things. You could just get things done if you chose to. And and that was very much the the nature of the way Roberts ran Lion good or bad, just I did that for four years and then I got shoulder tapped by a guy called Jim Quinn to come work for a company called QED Software, and then I, then I was asked to come in as the developer manager. So Jim is just to shorten these connections. Jim is our current chairman, good mate, not quite as good as golf, as I am, but he's trying, and so the people I've collected along the way I've stayed pretty close to, and so Jim hired me into QED and that was. I was in as developer manager.
Speaker 1:I never cut a line of code in my life. I never cut a line of code in my life. I don't know how to cut code. And so I had to manage a whole bunch of engineers and I remember the entrepreneur at the time, john perry, sat me down and he said you know what? You're going to hire a whole lot of people that are paid more than you are. And I'm sitting like shit. I negotiated that badly and so it's, and it was kind of the nature of the game that I think the thing I learned from, you know, coming from line and going into qd was the nature of software, the nature of engineering, the nature of what it was like to decode, and back then it was all 3GL and it was COBOL. We were on Wang, then we became Progress All those old languages back in the day. But a management buyout was three other guys in 97. And I could write a short. I don't think I was 30 then. So, yeah, I could write a small book about what not to do in an mbo and saying that I, you know mbo's I don't know if they're in favor out of favor but you don't see them too often these days and and back then, being to financing was a great way to get yourself into companies.
Speaker 1:So that was, I guess, when I started scratching the entrepreneurial itch, but at the same time I become the ones that really drive me is that, you know, if you're not the engineer, then having engineering alongside you, having marking alongside you, having implementation alongside you, is really key. And so for me, I've never been the tech guy per se, but I've always been very close to to a cto and and you know I've had three of them along my journey and and that you know has made a real difference. So we went through a pretty tough first year, learned a lot of mistakes, and then we refinanced the MBO and we were very lucky that we built a software system that did ground-based reservation on the internet one of the first in the world and we sold that to Intercity Coachlines and a guy called David Strange was the CEO. He took a big bet on some young boys turning up and you know, david, we'll solve this for you and we competed against Cardinal Systems and Gil and those guys back in the day, and you know we handed them their ass and still I'm a little proud of them. So that was great. And then so we built this thing and at the same time the joint venture with Tapa Transport, simon who's since passed and the boys and we built a ground-based sort of inland container freight station system which was pretty unique at the time. So we took two products to market globally. We managed to sell NEG Group and Beeline with the transport reservation system. We also sold Leisureport, chris Help and those guys. And then from there, from the stuff we did in transport, we then got into Long Beach in the States. So I'm like 31, 32. We've got 80 staff. We're running operations in New Zealand, all through Australia, the United States and also in the UK. So that was pretty entertaining. We'd raise money from AMP, douglas, paul and those guys at Caltech. So that was again. I didn't even understand what BC was, but it was a great way to accelerate your company quickly and yeah, it was really good.
Speaker 1:And then com came along with the crash and also 9-11 really affected us because of our American market and my wife and I and my children were on a plane to America. So we got as far as Hawaii and the pilot comes on from the front and said America's under attack, we're going home, and it's like, okay, so you go through and you hear shit, I've got like 20 people up there and I've got all this money that I'm spending and I've got customers, this money that I'm spending and I've got customers and and also I hope the wife and I and the kids are going to be okay and I hope we get back to Auckland. So that all happened pretty quickly and we managed to put it all together next sort of five or six weeks. But the America we returned to wasn't the America we left right and and that changed, you know, for that changed everything and that, plus the dot-com and the rest of it, we got to a point where our investors didn't want to play any further. I didn't want to go any further. So we returned back to New Zealand and that company wound up being called Trinium. The guys who stayed with it, including my original CTO they had a very good exit a few years ago. So almost 20 years on, they stayed in, yeah, and so I came back to New Zealand and looking for what's next and I wound up basically applying for a job and I wound up for a job with a company called Econ's Wireless and Rolly Rogers.
Speaker 1:And so I go to this interview and I'm thinking, okay, well, you know, I'm into this, I quite want to work for someone again and get amongst it. Rolly's like an hour late, like he's just, and I'm thinking, get amongst it. Raleigh's like an hour late, like he's just, and I'm thinking An hour late, yeah. So I'm sitting there. I'm used to being the CEO, I'm used to people never late, and and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and and.
Speaker 1:Raleigh turns up and what started off being an interview hopefully Raleigh won't actually hear this but we go through an interview and it turns into a counselling session. And I'm not sure who was counselling who, because I had all this scar tissue and I'm trying to rebuild my life and Raleigh had this amazing company that had taken a few wrong turns and we got out of the interview. She said, oh, I'm not sure. And I went I'm not really sure either. And I got back and we were staying with mom and dad at the time and I said I'm having a beer with dad. I went how'd it go? And I went I'm really not sure. And I get this phone call from Raleigh and he said, well, still not sure. I said I'm not, still not sure. And I went in just on contract and then one thing led to another, then picked up some equity and Rolly put me in as CEO. He stayed as MD and we divided the business between technical and commercial.
Speaker 1:We had to make a few changes. There was a bit of restructuring to do. We moved out of a few things, moved into a few others, but we had this really strong technology base and the commercial side was good. But it was very a lot of feast and famine sort of marketing, and so we were able to put a bit more around that and I was able to pick the talent up that was in the team and build a strong ELT and then got into selling and we had a couple of really big clients and we just serviced them better and we got better results. But then we also we built a system which was called eService.
Speaker 1:Well, we were doing a bunch of things. We were a strong engineering company and my CTO and business partner now, john, he was running America's Cup and we were doing CDMA 95B so cellular and we were collecting data from the boats and we were putting it into a server and then handing it to Craig Meek and the boys, and they were turning that into money and gold. But we were the engineering side and so Telecom who were running it because money and gold, but we were the engineering site, and so Telecom who were running it because it was all CDMA they said, oh, look, we've got these guys in Qualcomm and we think you'd like to meet them. So John gave me a call and said look, I've got these people to talk to. I don't know who the hell they are, but you should come on. So they had lunch at the Soul Bar and spoke to the the other things we were doing and they went you've got to come and see us. And so we made a date to go and see them and go and see Qualcomm at the CTI show, and that was in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1:So we rock up to this show and we met a guy called Mike Shero Hopefully you also want to hear this. So Mike turns up. He's from Verizon Wireless. We didn't know who Verizon Wireless was. We didn't know who Verizon Wireless was, and they were about 18 million subs at the time. And they said, yeah, because it's all inside Qualcomm's CDMA walled garden. And Mike goes yeah, what we need is we need this, this and this. And so we showed him his service and that at that time was running on Kaiseri C135s on CD of one form or another, and it was a great system but very proprietary. So we showed it to him and John just doesn't look like and he goes absolutely when you need it.
Speaker 1:And Mike walks out and we make a date for Qualcomm in San Diego a few weeks later, and as soon as Mike's out of his shot, I said John, you've got no idea what brew is. I said how could it be? It's a binary runtime environment for wireless, it's a version of C and it's something that Qualcomm did for their garden. So anyway, john makes a phone call to the team and by the time we got to the hotel and had our third or fourth beer, the boys had sort of almost built our first prototype. So we go back to New Zealand, we took the prototype, we made it better, made it faster, stronger, and we roll into Qualcomm and we were pitching up against another 10 companies. So back then to get inside a walled garden of a carrier was a bit of a big deal, particularly in the US, and so everyone's pitching for their business and once you're inside the garden you become their fuel force automation product. Their reps sell you to 30 million, 15 million and sub. So it's a great opportunity.
Speaker 1:So we pitched pretty hard and we got I don't know 15 minutes into this pitch and on the way down we're driving from LA down to San Diego and we had our pitch. We're down, john's in the back seat, I'm in the off-hand driver's side, our sales guy's driving down and we go through this call and John is just making me rehearse over and over and over again. So by the time we get down there I had this 15-minute thing. So down we get into it two minutes into the preso and the lunch lady walks in, starts serving while I'm talking and then spills shit everywhere. I'm like gone. And so we managed to. I managed to recover. We got through the preso. It went really well. John's demo went brilliantly. Mike comes up to me afterwards and said I'm only used in two products VCW I became VCW Navigator and eService. That was a great ride Really. Really enjoyed that and yeah, so probably off-piste a little bit more, the company story is more than mine, but yeah, so we got that going.
Speaker 1:We then raised more money and to raise money. We still wanted to take this thing on. We built Econs absolutely the right way. We built Econs in what we called a perforated model, so Econs would always stand alone and all the new money in the new venture was a different place, which is called ui active. And so I moved back to the states with the family and we ran that for about a year and we were due to do our.
Speaker 1:I guess today you call it a series b, but it was more really a small series a, and the vcs were like, yep, we'll do it, but we want you to take on this other company in sy. And I'm like, hold on, that's not exactly core and you guys keep lecturing me on focus. But anyway, so I get on. With John, who's in New Zealand, I said, look, I need you to go to Sydney, I need you to look at this company. I need you to tell me if it's worth it. He goes to Sydney, calls me up, he says it's, can you make it work? He said yeah, probably. And so we did an M&A and we wound up buying these guys as part of the transaction. And it's just like everything you learn that your VCs are fantastic but they shouldn't be determining the business plan. You should have this secular fortitude to say no. Actually, that's not on core.
Speaker 2:We call it the balls yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you can say that, that we can put an explicit warning on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you gotta have the balls to tell your vc not to not get in the way. And I didn't, and so it went pretty well. We wound up in singapore and taiwan and netherlands and and the states and. But when we came to do an x round of funding, the vcs were like, yeah, this, we want more focus and stuff. Like you know what, I don't want to play anymore. So so I had a pretty good exit, got out of that and sat around my early 40s at this point going, yeah, what to do next? And made a kind of odd decision in that I didn't want to go back into the game. So we built a company called Rad3. So, john, cto he's your CTO now. Yeah, he's my CTO and my partner. Cto who's your CTO now? Yeah, he's my CTO, my partner and so business partner.
Speaker 1:And so we built Rad3 with another guy, greg Hart. He was our creative and just like this most off the wall sort of guy we needed. So the three of us got together, we built a thing called Rad3 and we built rich applications for wireless and, you know, sold them to Crown and DHL and Whole Foods Markets and we had a whole MIFX M2X. It's one of our original clients. So we did some really, really good business and we did that for 10 years.
Speaker 1:Team was never bigger than I think we got the maximum of 15. All our own money, no board of directors, no planes. My gold release status lapsed and they kept giving it to me, expecting me to fly again, didn't fly, got to watch my kids grow up, went to a whole bunch of school camps. You know all the things that you want to do as a Kiwi dad. Yeah, perfect, yeah, it was good. It was good and it probably put a 10-year sort of stunt in my career, I guess. But we did that for 10 years, did really well made some two, which is still it's impressive.
Speaker 2:That's very impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ask me what it is now. It's about 30 points better than mine. Yeah, no, it's 18, but you know it's still staying in a good day anyway. We got got to read three to 10 years and then went you know what, if we don't change, we're going to be doing the same thing. And, and you know, people talk about a marriage having a seven-year itch and a close partnership. 10 years is like, yeah, you're not going to be friends forever. It's gonna shit's gonna start going wrong.
Speaker 1:And at the same time, two guys came towards us roger harris, who's ex phoenix drinks, one of the founders there, and mike sharp, who's a man of mine from way back. And so mike had a problem in health and safety and you know he had an industrial accident. He got prosecuted for it. We talked about how an app could, and there was this moment with Mike where we're actually playing golf, we're on the ninth and I was winning and the phone goes and his face just changed and I went you all right. And he said, oh, we've just had an accident at work and he was gone. So obviously I wasn't around. But that moment of watching what happens when a boss with a whole workforce is responsible for a worker who may well have died, changes your life and you'll never be the same again. And so Mike put that to us and said, hey, how do you do health and safety and Roger's food safety requirement, which is what he came to us with? Mpi just changed roles when, yeah, this is actually a thing, and there was a few things that went into the mix of what we did next, and one was that, having done this before, I didn't want to have to build a company and go offshore the very first minute, right, and the problem with New Zealand is that our market is so small. If you're going to go into a B2B SaaS niche, you need to have a TAM that's large enough to support you. So what we were able to do with ComplyPro's platform, which has two children, sideapp and SafeFood, that we were able to go. You know what this thing if we can come up with one code base using a hybrid environment which was John's brilliance and then having AWS and all the good cloudy, heavy engine stuff we do, we can sustain it commercially because, instead of being a market of 40,000 or 160 food and construction respectively it's a market of 200,000. So that's what we got started with and that platform, that ComplyPro platform, gave rise to its two children SideApp and SafeFood.
Speaker 1:People ask me you know, do you like you know how are these things working and will you focus on one, not the other? And the answer I'm starting to give is it's like having two children. Right, you love them both dearly, but they're different, and so it's kind of a two products. One TAM was super important for us. Sorry, two Tams, one product. And so we got going. We had John Greg myself, rog, mike.
Speaker 1:We put in the initial money and, because we're all a little bit older, we had a bit more money than startups normally have to put in. And then Rolly, who you remember back from Econ's days. He came in alongside us as well. And then Lionel, who's Rolly's brother and also one of the founders of Navman, among many other things. He also came in and that core became the founders right, and we effectively and Rolly built a hardware platform that we use as part of our software, was part of our food safety product.
Speaker 1:So, between us, you know, apart from Lionel, we're all working in the business. We're all shoulder to shoulder, we're getting it done, and that was our first two to three years, 2018 through 2020. And it was. They were good times. We weren't sure if this thing was going to work and I remember getting. We were never pre-revved for long but we had to move volume to get because back then ASVP was sub a hundred bucks right. So we had to move volume and we had to learn quickly about what SESME and what new tools were. Yeah, it was a pretty exciting period and that sort of got got us to here.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's me and the company's all wound together and so comply pro now essentially has these two products in it, so it has a product that is a site application. So you've got site app and then safe food. So maybe just describe really simply what they do. Now, if you were selling this in you know 20 words at least, what is it so?
Speaker 1:safe food takes food safety compliance that you have to comply with if you're a caterer, a restaurant or a supermarket in new zealand that's by mpi. We take that, it's digitized and we put it down to the restaurants the kitchen experience so they can basically run their operation without using paper. So we we make your food safety paperless. We turn it into an app and we give what that proffer does really really well is it provides all the organisational tools that you need. So foodstuffs one of our clients. They're able to sit in head office and look at food safety across the whole organisation from our app. So it's not just an app, it's a whole back end. So it is again digital health and safety. Our focus is the construction industry mostly, and our focus there is making a tool that is very easy for construction workers to use but still complies with WorkSafe's requirements and gives the bosses what they need in terms of running their job sites. So we're real back to front ends of operation for both products.
Speaker 2:And you've taken those products offshore. Well, certainly the SiteApp one. Or are you also running FoodSafe offshore as well?
Speaker 1:So the first four, four and a half years we concentrated on the Australian New Zealand TAM. So it's, you know, 30 million people total. We've made sales. So you know that's how we got to our first 2,500 customers or thereabouts, or 2,500 logos. That's been a real ride. So we're the dominant player in food safety in New Zealand. For what we do, we would be top five in terms of construction, health and safety. On a good day with the wind behind us, we're probably number two or three, if not one. So we've got great customers in both. We did well on that. We learned our craft of how to make software as a service sales, sdr, ae, hubspot, now Salesforce, all that stuff right, and then the business built pretty good numbers. So I think we, you know, we built at that point to sort of three, three and a bit ARR and then we had this moment as shareholders. So do we stop here? You know we can see how we can get to six. You know we don't need to put a lot more money in. We, you know we don't need to put a lot more money in. We can keep going. Or do we go bigger and go wider?
Speaker 1:And the approach we took really for the last 80 months. You know which is where you meet yourself. And all the things we've been doing lately was go into the North American market, look at the global market. But we identified pretty quickly North America as we wanted to be. Take both products in, look at those initial customers, look at the sales cycle, look at the average sale value, look at how they're buying, look at the competition. Do all of that and I'd give a shout out to the NCT. They've been fantastic in terms of helping us on our journey. We've sort of been everywhere across North America to validate this and then actually not long after we met you that we met. Okay, we're either going to do this or not. And so we put in a bit more money and we put foot down and we set up a team in Toronto, worked across the US and I think we're now at 40, 50 customers.
Speaker 1:But this morning we dropped another couple of Canadian sales. We're starting to grow quite quickly. That's both products. So SideApp has gone in and we're doing pretty much what we do here. It's the same sort of ICP, a little bit bigger, a little stronger ASB, but essentially the same. And then in food safety we're going upmarket a little bit. So more catering-focused, more hotel-focused, we've got those type of clients in New Zealand Easier market to penetrate long range. So as we stand here today, we're about to set up our second approach in Vancouver offices in Vancouver services in the US. Our GTM is like probably everyone's, probably not. We're paid media, we're outbound, but we're also channel. So channel is the big opportunity for up there and, yeah, foot down. Here we go In the middle of our Series A going nicely and we should have some options to consider and yeah, it's starting to go okay at the moment.
Speaker 2:And Series A raising here in New Zealand or raising with North American investors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a real combination of everything. I think our long-term forecasts show us needing between 5 and 10 US, so that suggests that while that can be done in New Zealand, it can also be done internationally, because we're starting to get to that. Okay, we can have a serious conversation with an American investor, but in saying that, it's also great talking to local companies. So it's just sort of balancing that out why, having done this before, I really don't want to get to the point where you get the money in and you then have to reload on your VC partner. You've got to go again and find someone new, and so I'm keen that we put together the capital team, at least for our Series A plus, so we can actually see how we can get past that.
Speaker 1:I don't want to have to go back out again. We've got a couple of parties we're talking to in north america that are strategic. So in a perfect world, I try and combine all those things together and put together an 18 list of funders that have a combination of deep pockets, strategic experience and pedigree in terms of excellent. So that classic. You know, we don't just want their money, we want their skill, but actually we want their skill, yeah.
Speaker 2:On this podcast. We focus typically on startups, but you did touch on this whole management buyout experience years ago and almost writing the book and the masterclass on what not to do and maybe some tips on what to do. Any thoughts for those listening on things that they could or should consider around a management buyout.
Speaker 1:I think the core assumption of a management buyout is that you know the business better than anyone else because you're on the inside of it. That's often not true, and particularly a balance sheet or you know getting into the nitty gritty of the cap structure is also can get into, you know. You just assume that you've done contracts for clients and they've done the way you're doing them at the moment, but historical contracts might be quite different. So you really do need to. Just because you're an insider, you need to treat yourself like you're an outside investor and do due diligence and due process. I think that's really, really important.
Speaker 1:The other thing is that you need to kind of take yourself away from the business and the e-myth thing work on it. Don't work in it. And and the e-myth thing work on it don't work in it and build the business plan as though you're a fresh investor and even though you know the people and skills and everything else, you've got to treat yourself like you're an investor rather than a manager, and this is a transition you need to make and I think if I was advising anyone, I'd say look, step away and then step back in. Don't just keep doing your day job and one day start paying yourself instead of being paid for by someone else. I think also you need to question the valuation. You need to question because you're kind of held hostage to the transaction to an extent.
Speaker 1:Both parties are, and so it is an interesting thing. If I was involved in a management buyout. These days I'd be much more interested in partial buyouts or sequential buyouts with performance on both parties. But yeah look, I wouldn't be here today without having done it, and scar tissue was really good, you know, it was a good way to learn, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what doesn't kill us right Makes us stronger. And what about the relationship you have with John, your CTO, and even you know former CTOs you've worked with, as you say? You're not necessarily and even you know former CTOs you've worked with, as you say you're not necessarily a technical co-founder, although just listening to you, I think you've probably got some technical chops there. What do you think is something that you would recommend to people when working with a technical co-founder, when you are not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's one thing to have a commercial version or commercial you know my degree in that. You know research and understanding business is kind of what I love doing and so you can bring that to the table and then sit that down with a white piece of paper. But then you need an engineer who can take that vision with you and sort of run alongside you, not just take the spec and build it but actually add value to the spec and add value to the ideas, and then see down the pike and go okay. So if we're going to do this, we're going to need to stand out these type of servers. I'm going to choose this database and they're five to choose from. We're going to make this. You know we're going to use dynamo, we're going to use postgre, whatever it is, we're going to make the right choice.
Speaker 1:So you need a cto that is not locked into a track. You know you need someone who looks wide and left and up and down. But then you also need to recognize that they're just not normal human beings. They are. They're just completely different. And so we are people like you and I. We're emotional and we we get things done and we or rara and you look over your shoulder. Why is the cto not like this? Because they're not like this. That's the whole point, right? So, um, it is, men are from mars and women from venus. It's like you know, commercial is from mars and and cto's from venus. There's a thing in somewhere.
Speaker 1:So you need to be able to do that and you need to be able to combine your skills together, to work together well, and I think you need a CTO that has respect for the sales discipline, right, I think that's really, really important. And then you need a CTO that has a respect for the commercial obligation. You know, you will get used to it. We all see it. We see engineers who think they can do everything, and that's true to an extent, but actually, the way you build companies these days, it's almost an engineering project. Right, there's Brian Halligan and HubSpot and his book, and he's an engineer. But you look at what they did and how they built that company and what they were thinking about. It's actually quite it's that melding of ideas to the middle of it.
Speaker 1:The other thing I'd say is look, if you're young and you're in a startup and you're not technical, then it doesn't mean you're going to find a CTO, but recognize that that's not you. The worst thing you can try to do, in my humble opinion, is to think you can do that job. You can't do a specialist job and you need a good partner. I'd also discourage guns for hire. I think guns for hire and technology has its place, but probably not in a founding company. I think you know you need to be tight and give up equity. You know, just like you know if someone's prepared to give up a high paid technology job and run alongside you and listen to your bullshit, they deserve a piece of the pie. You know.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent, a hundred percent, and then back into sort of startups you know proper, they are tough right. They startups, you know proper they are tough right, they're really, really tough. And you, as you say, you've got scar tissue To date. What's the hardest thing you've had to endure and how did you get through it?
Speaker 1:I mean, without a doubt, the hardest thing is when the money runs out and you've got to let a whole lot of people go. You know, I think that is yeah. I mean, I've had really bad days where you've hired these people because you believe in them, they believe in them, they believe in you, you believe in yourself, and then, for one reason or another, that's all gone and that you know you can't. You'd be inhuman unless you said that was your toughest day, and the other tough day is that they I mean there's deals you win and deals you lose.
Speaker 1:I think it's when you plan that you absolutely believed and just gets a big frigging torpedo through the middle of it, like 9-11 or like the dot-com crashes that we've been through over the last few years, and you've just got to go yep, that future that I believed in is gone. And now you've got to. It's not pivot, it's just like you're having a bit of a genesis moment, you're about to change, and those are, weirdly, I quite enjoy that, but they are the hardest times too, you know, yeah, and what about the flip side?
Speaker 2:Are there some things that you have done, or maybe a superpower that you possess where it's made a really palpable difference to actually getting somewhere?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny, I'm doing a CEO training course that starts tomorrow with Morgo right, and Dr Joanna Matthews asked me a whole bunch of questions and she asked me these business questions. Oh yeah, sweet, got that done, gave her the answers to those in about three and a half minutes. And then she asked you these personal questions. I'm like oh shit, and I literally couldn't ask them. So I cheated and ripped up a quick poll on Slack and sent it out to my ELT and they didn't like some of the answers I sent.
Speaker 1:It seems to be my ability to strategize and then take action and then push that through, support and delegate to people. I'm a big believer in absolutely not a micromanager, but I think you hire talent, you give them the opportunity and you work with them to be the best they can be and, being the best they can be, your company will be the best. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a superpower, but I think it's definitely something I believe. In all the business books we've read and listened to, all the podcasts we listen to, there's those sort of themes in there. Choose the best.
Speaker 1:I think you know the thing I enjoy most well I I probably always get a buzz out of sales and meeting clients and winning business and there was a moment in our journey at comply pro that when we closed post-ups and it was incredibly competitive and it was a big deal. It was a life-changing job and and because it was not my first big win, but it's still a big win and roger and I were sitting in the office and you know he came from fmcg, he'd never really experienced this sort of pulp in his pump and he gave him a big hug and was sitting there and said look, mate, remember this moment, because they do not come often and when they do, yeah, that's your win and yeah, I love that shit. I absolutely live for it and I think that'll never get old.
Speaker 2:I don't think it will. Yeah, and I think the reality is you know there's a lot of talk all the time about you know working on your weaknesses, and I think screw that and double down on your strengths. I agree, like really focus on those strengths that you've got. The phrase is you know the zone of genius, work in the zone of genius and do what it is you do well and do it more.
Speaker 1:I agree more. And I think if you're honest with yourself and know where your gaps are, then hire for your gaps, right. If you know you're not great at spreadsheeting, then get someone who is. You know they're out there. And likewise with technology we were just talking about, you know, get a good CTO and then build it on that, build the people around that. Yeah, we just we're out and out. We've now got we had Audrey Chang, who's our CPO, and she just came out of Bushpay via a few other companies. And you know, we've never been able to afford, up to this point, a good product person and all of a sudden I'd be able to go right to the top shelf and, damn, that makes a difference, right. And so, like you know, I'm not products, not my discipline, right. So you go, and now I've got someone who's a good practitioner. Now I can build on that. That's fun. I love that part of the journey. I mean, hopefully we just can keep doing this and keep hiring real talent on that level.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's something there for people to really learn from. I think there just in terms of hiring well, getting out of the way of people who are good at doing what they do, and continuing to lead and inspire and just keeping the conversation on things that are a little bit uncomfortable for you ie talking about yourself have you got something that inspires you? Like a regular, you know, are you reading a book at the moment? Is there a podcast that you listen to? And I'm not talking about mine, but just other things that inspire you? Is there something?
Speaker 1:One of the things I guess I would say to any startup person in the journey is there's going to come to a point in your life where your own maturity is going to run out of puff, right, and you're going to have to take yourself away and you're going to have to do some work on self right and whether that's seeing a psych therapist or climbing a mountain or whatever it is, you do whatever gets you there. You see your zen moment. You're going to have to do it and you know, my moment was probably 20 years ago and see, while some of it fades, you're still there and you can still do my meditation. I still do a bunch of stuff, but so there's not necessarily a. You know, you have your practice, you have your daily routine, you have your exercise, you have your family time, you have other things. They keep you alive and keep you moving.
Speaker 1:I get inspired and I'm always soaking information up. You know the podcast nonstop reading all the time, thinking all the time. But I think the thing that recharges me, that gets me up for the game, I just love the water, I love diving, I love spearfishing, fishing, golf, mountain biking, that shit, and I've learned over the years to not think of it as a selfish act. I like to think of it as my recharge act, and it takes a bit of a twist. It takes a little bit to do that, but if you do it, you'll actually recharge more frequently. You get better. I think.
Speaker 1:The other thing on the recharge side is that there's a whole lot of research that says that 10 days away from the office is all you need. You don't need four months trekking in the Himalayas. It's lovely for different reasons, but you don't need it to work. But you do need 10 days and you need to that 10 days. It's amazing what that level refreshes. And so we give everyone five weeks a year here and I'm forever encouraging my team and my team's teams to go book some fucking life. Put it in the diary. No, you're going away. You don't need a month in, wherever it is. Go for 10 days, get recharged, get back, do it again, do it again, you know. So, yeah, I don't know if that's.
Speaker 2:I'm pleased you raised that, because I think the reality is we often think whether it's time away. I guess we can buy into why having a good vacation is great for resetting energy, but often we look at I don't know, taking time out to go for a walk or a run in the middle of the day might not be productive, when in actual fact it's probably more productive. Productive it's that whole sort of measure twice, cut once thing. When we're out in nature, when we're getting some exercise, when we're getting away from what we do, we actually create space to make better decisions.
Speaker 1:So when we get back into the office we've already measured twice and now we're ready to cut you know, yeah, when I was at a conference last year and jd from raygun was up speaking and he said something like I'm ad-libbing a little bit, but he said something like I sit at my desk, nothing's on fire, it's like it's nothing on fire. I just can't find it and it's sort of a and as your business builds, and particularly in the CEO role, that's so true, like I literally just sit at my desk, make my coffee and wait for the first thing to break out. But I think also that's the opportunity, right. I mean, if you haven't built a company that isn't pushing the boundaries and on fire in different places and giving you things to do, you probably haven't built a company yet. So it's a bit of a moment. But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:Step away, Absolutely just step away. And is there a particular philosophy or mantra that you live by and that you apply to your life? Is there anything that sets your compass?
Speaker 1:My wife will disagree with me 100%, but I think balance is super important. If you recognize in yourself that you can go deep and, you know, be very obsessive about something, then you've got to create balance. And I think the more obsessive you are, the more important balance is and, for the points you're saying, it feeds up. So I think, yeah, balance is really important. I think also, I love people. I think people are hugely important to me in all aspects of my life and I get a buzz out of being with people, I get a buzz out of working with people and I get a buzz out of selling to people. So, yeah, I guess my thing is like I love to communicate, I love to talk to people, I love to listen to people. Yeah, I don't think they're bad skills, but also it's quite easy for me and it's part of my DNA. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And is there a question that I haven't asked, that you would have wished that I had asked, or maybe even something that you would want to share with people that you think? Hey, this is a tip I would love to leave for founders?
Speaker 1:I think I mean, there's so many things you and I could talk about in terms of founder journey, right, but one of the things that's actually is listening to the aurora podcast your last one, because I did listen to your podcast and it made me think through how long it took aurora to get to where they are, right, and and being at that two and a half million hour hour and then jumping to 12 or 13 or whatever that number was, and the idea of a 10 year old startup is not failure, particularly out of this country, right, and I think in new zealand you wind up in this hiatus moment of we've got a good idea, we've got good customers, we're growing, but our volumes are nothing like our American peers, right. So we are, you know, we're just so much smaller, so much more pedestrian, we've used our own funds, and so that three to five-year startup mentality, pre-series A in New Zealand there's nothing we should be ashamed of. I think that is actually something that makes us build better, faster, stronger companies, and I also would say that we obviously chosen to step off. But I think there's a very valid conversation you can have that says we don't need to export. Let's just stay here and build a good company, right.
Speaker 1:And then I think you know, you look at, you know your journey, xero's journey. I mean that's such a cleverly put together strategy when you look back on it and you go at what point did they go, to which point when? How much war chest was kept aside? There's just there's so much about that. That's smart and I think all startups can look at those journeys. You know Rod's journey, the whole Xero thing. Yeah, there's a lot in there. Take away the big themes, yeah a lot in there.
Speaker 2:Take away the big themes yeah, I mean that was an absolute masterclass from Rod and the team and how to execute how to find a big market with a big problem, raise a ton of capital and execute a plan. It was very good. But equally, I think people will have picked up a huge number of lessons from you and the experience that you've had in your career, and we look forward to seeing what happens with Comply Pro from here, because, yeah, look, we all want people to go home safely at night, and so if there's a way of being able to do that better, then we applaud that. So thank you so much for your time today, michael. I'll include ways that people can connect with you and ComplyPro in the show notes, but thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 1:Thanks, greg, I really appreciate it. You so much for your time today. Thanks, greg, I really appreciate it. And look, I do really rate these podcasts that you do and ones like this, because I think it brings all of us together and, yeah, it gives a chance to share journeys. You can take one or two good lessons from your podcast.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that that's awesome. Thank you so much, michael. Thank you.