COACH'D
Join us on COACH’D, a podcast where the some of the world's top athletes, coaches, and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right.
Think of it as a "locker room" chat — unfiltered, raw, and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and culture.
COACH'D
Ben Tripodi - "CEO of Lumin Sport. Expanding Products, Technology Innovation & Raising Capital"
What if you could revolutionise the way teams operate with just one platform? Discover how Ben Tripodi, founder of Lumin, navigated the complex transition from a data visualisation company to a cutting-edge online programming powerhouse. With Lumin's all-in-one software solution, Ben reveals how it addresses 85% of daily tasks for strength and conditioning coaches, sports scientists, and athletes, making it an indispensable tool in the sports field. Tune in to learn about Lumin's bold moves to simplify operations and its rapid innovation cycle that keeps users at the forefront of sports technology.
Journey into the intricate balance of brand strength and product quality as we explore the strategic decisions behind Lumin's growth. Ben delves into the challenges of building a brand that stands out in a crowded market and the importance of aligning employees with the brand's culture and values. Hear firsthand how strategic planning, word-of-mouth marketing, and a dedicated team contribute to sustained business success, even in the face of market changes brought on by uncertain times like the COVID era.
We'll also uncover Ben's insights on the role of AI in coaching and the critical importance of the "jockey"—the passionate driver behind any successful venture. Learn how AI is transforming mundane tasks into automated processes, freeing up coaches to focus on the irreplaceable human elements of motivation and accountability. From raising capital to embracing risk and mindset shifts, this episode is packed with practical advice and compelling stories for entrepreneurs looking to navigate the complex landscape of today's competitive business world.
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https://open.spotify.com/show/1YJMztpYSgnPusEXB3fWcc?si=FJsWITv7QdSCSgCt3lkElw
Join us on Coached, a podcast where some of the world's top athletes, coaches and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right. Think of this as a locker room chat unfiltered, raw and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and sporting culture and sporting culture. Hear from those who have played, coached and built their way to the top with athletes from the field, coaches and medical in the performance setting, or owners, managers and brands in the front office, while also getting an insider's view on my own personal experiences in this high-performance world. If you're passionate about sports, curious about the minds of champion athletes or looking for information and inspiration on your own journey, coach is the place for you. Ben Tripodi, welcome to Coach. Thanks, mate. Mate. Probably the question on everyone's mind why would Lumen want?
Ben Tripodi:to enter the online programming space. Yeah, good question, probably a long story, but I'll keep it short. Number one, biggest reason was every single team that we sold our product to our AMS product had some sort of online programmer. And we just saw every team was paying for two products and we always are nice to have. You know, some teams thought we must have, but the majority of cases the online program program programmer came first Um and athletes using two apps, and so we thought the number one reason was let's, let's, create the all in one software that we're the only piece of software a team needs to buy.
Ben Tripodi:And that was the missing piece. You know, we started with AMS performance features, then we got the comms sorted and we got the medical sorted, we got scheduling sorted. That was the last, last missing piece for us to finally become the one piece of software that any team needs to buy, um. So we've now done it and now one app for teams. They're paying one, one software product. They're not going to buy multiple products and make it as easy as possible for them no, I love it.
Jordi Taylor:Uh, the problem that you were solving initially was probably that friction. You want everyone in that same place, same platform as you were wearing through there. Is that the same problem you're still solving now? Or, as you've come to market because you've launched, has things changed a little bit?
Ben Tripodi:Probably in the early days, it's changed.
Ben Tripodi:In the early days, we thought we were going to be a data viz company that replaced Tableau and Power BI and as we started to understand the problems of the people that we're selling to, we realised actually it was all about how do we get the data from athletes quicker, how do we get the athletes more engaged and how do we create this platform that is 85% of their daily tasks sorted, high quality, quality, done well, um, and, and the extra stuff they're doing on the outside can be you know, they can they can still do that in excel, whatever but so I think since launching strength, it's probably doubled down on actually, how do we become the best piece of software that does 85 of all daily, daily tasks of S&C, coaches, sports scientists and the athletes and not try to be this like you know, sports scientist or this incredibly complex trying to find that 0.01%?
Ben Tripodi:It's actually like how do we actually just become the best software to do the main things? Well, yeah, so I think it's just doubled down on that. Really, since launching Strength, it's made us realize even more that actually doing the simple things well, yeah, so I think it's just doubled down on that really, Since launching Strength, it's made us realise even more that you're doing the simple things well, really well, because I don't think any of our competitors have done it that well yet and I think we're getting close. But it's keep doubling down and doing the simple things well to save time for coaches and hopefully give them more data and get buy-in from the athletes more as well, because that's obviously been a big one.
Jordi Taylor:I think for me, one of the key things that I love about you guys in general is the fact that, with the strength reached out to me for some feedback, I reckon within two weeks it's been done, actually, from conceptualize, discuss to implement it. So it's like there's that fast track, like it's moving at a fast pace, which is obviously super important, because innovation is obviously everything, and especially in a place like this where you're new somewhat to the market like everyone knows Lumen as an AMS software, you're kind of new in this space. When you're going up against, say, some of the other companies that are pretty well-existed, they've got their features that people are used to how important is it that you have to be better than them? Or do you think it's not necessarily about being better, it's about being different and then better? Like what's your thought there?
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, we've had a lot of thoughts about this and we didn't jump into this, you know, without thinking hard about it, because we have really good relationships with all the people that we compete with and the brands that most people would use and know. We always thought we had something special here. You know, being an Adelaide company, we're pretty humble, you know, and we're a small team, but we have incredibly high product velocity and that's something that we've always been good at is just pushing out high-quality product often, and we saw specifically look, the AMS market is pretty crowded and I think we've carved a real niche out in becoming this affordable, very comprehensive, high-quality product without charging a fortune, and so we've carved out a good niche in the AMS world. But there's definitely more competitors in the AMS world and we found in the online programming world there's been very little change over the last few decades and that's no discredit to the people who have pioneered that space, but there just hasn't been much competition. So I felt like there was no real change in the products out there. They kind of were pretty stale, kind of resting on their laurels.
Ben Tripodi:So we knew we had to do something that was going to be better, but, without being arrogant. We didn't feel like it was that hard to do, knowing how good our product team is, knowing just how much we think about every product we release, there is R&D sessions we do with non-developers. Then, before anything gets to our developers to start programming, we've done market research, we've done some early testing. Then our sales people get involved and tell us a bit more about the market and we get people like yourself on board and then, before the developers even get it, they've got this full profile of how it's going to be used, what features and must-haves and whatnot.
Ben Tripodi:But we made a huge commitment. We knew when we launched this product there were going to be things that people loved about other products. So we knew we weren't going to win them over straight away. But what we knew is the ones that we did get on board, the ones who took a chance on us, who switched software. We wanted them to really feel loved and so we have. Yeah, 50% of our developers' time is just listening to feedback and developing straight away.
Jordi Taylor:And you've got that roadmap, which I think is pretty cool, and the user feedback, so like request a feature.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah.
Jordi Taylor:I think the transparency even around that, like I don't know how many other tech software companies have been like, hey, what do you want? And then it's like it's almost scaled on a value of okay well, more people want that, so that probably becomes a priority. Less of okay well, more people want that, so that probably becomes a priority. Less people want that. We'll think about it and we're going to park it there, but we're not ignoring it either.
Ben Tripodi:And I think that's a good point actually is that in the early days we did a lot of custom work and we switched that gear. That was expensive custom work right, it was good for some teams and I know some of our AMS competitors still do a lot of custom work, but we knew that in order for us to scale the company, we needed to be you know, try to be everything to a majority of people and not you know, not being something crazy to a very small percentage. And so we're the most democratic software product going around in sport, in that, you know, we have this thing called feature base. Essentially, it's all voted on and so it's all transparent. All the features we're working on are out there for anyone to see and users can vote on what they want done. And it took a little while for that to get traction, but now it's part of our onboarding experience and it's become a real part of who we are is, when we onboard someone, we talk about feature-based more than we talk about our own software, because we really value the feedback and it's been incredible, and so that's yeah.
Ben Tripodi:Product velocity and speed is it's funny we'll potentially sell into a client. You know, even a month ago. We'll do a demo with them and they'll go missing for a little bit and they'll come back. Oh, I think I'm ready to have another look. Can we do another demo like wow, this is is so different. All these features that you didn't have a month ago you now have, and that's pretty cool to kind of show. And hopefully we don't slow down on that. But we knew that when launching it we had to wow people with that, so that's been our number one focus.
Jordi Taylor:I think it's an interesting point you made. Like you have to sort of fit everyone and and the custom staff sort of fit. Maybe the tippy top. When you vanilla as such cause you kind of are you're not necessary, you know sweet chocolate or anything like that. You're kind of vanilla, like how does that then? How do you speak to the market in that regard, when you're speaking to everybody but got to speak to individual avatars within that market? Like how do you go about that? Is that when the marketing team really have to take over and sort of lead that, or is that coming from you as well?
Ben Tripodi:I think, well, my leadership style is very like hands off, but that's probably more of my own self-conscious of not actually knowing each department well enough to kind of step into. But I think we have an incredible brand and something that we've always built. Uh, we've deliberately built our brand. Uh, we're very transparent. That's it's one of our values, um, and so I think in all of our marketing we're very transparent. Our pricing's on our website. We don't hide our pricing behind walls. We have our seven day demo. You can just go online and download. There's no hiding. You don't have to talk to a salesperson if you don't want to, and so we've always been transparent.
Ben Tripodi:We've never hid anything and we've consistently tried to produce that marketing, to kind of speak to our values, and so that's all driven by the marketing team. We try to show off a good amount of product features as well as more of our own story and non-product things. We probably talk, you know, half on both. Like half our marketing doesn't even talk about our product, um, and so we value it a lot, um, and marketing's been been massive for us. So we try and change up the industry a little bit, trying to be something different, be new, be fresh. Um, but when you talk to someone from the company it it shouldn't be a shock. It should feel the same way as when you see our LinkedIn post or whatever. It should feel very consistent.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, brand I think that's a big one that people, I don't know they throw the word around, but it means a lot to a lot of different people. Like brand is something that takes a long time to build. It's not something that happens overnight Massively. Sales can happen overnight. Brand build it's not something that happens overnight massively. Sales can happen overnight. Brand is like long term and you, the more brand you have, the more opportunity you have to essentially add, say, something like strength as a, as a product, to your, to your community, versus trying to sell on every opportunity. You're pretty conscious in that, even with some of the marketing stuff you spoke about, or having not actually being product facing, but more so your story or the partners that you're involved with and stuff like that, what's brand like to you?
Ben Tripodi:brand. I probably didn't appreciate enough when I first started lumen um, but especially launching in the us recently, we really probably took us 12 months to actually build the brand there and then sales happen when your brand's there and um. I've come to realize that it's incredibly important and you know, I don't want to poo-poo the competitors, but there's very inferior products out there but their brands are so big that people still buy from them and it's crazy. Sometimes you scratch your head going why are people buying these products? They cost five times the amount and they're 50% of the quality of our product. It's just their brand is so strong. They've been around for a lot longer and they've done a great job at that. They've obviously provided enough good customer service over many years that that's what people think of immediately. There's one particular big company that we compete with who the executives just feel safe buying from them because it's like buying from KPMG. No one gets fired for bringing in a big four accounting firm to do your books, you know, but that doesn't mean it's a better product and so that's just purely. Their brands are so strong and so we've understood that. You know we've lost a lot of deals to brands rather than product.
Ben Tripodi:I think more so in the US as well, like my personal opinion is that they probably do business more with brands than even here. I think Australians are naturally pretty skeptical of everything, and so the product does shine a little bit, probably why I've had a bit more success here, also being from here. But I think in the US there is an opportunity to kind of like if you can build a good enough brand, people will buy from you and they love the sales people, they love the brand, they love the company and that's almost more important than the product. But we're trying to be different. We're trying to shine a light and it's just starting to happen for us. So it's been. You've got to be consistent with it, right? I don't understand when people change their names Like you spend so long trying to build up your brand. Even if you don't like your name, you got to stick with it because that's what you've, that's, that's all you've got. You change your name, you lose all your brand and so like yeah, colors, even down to yet a performance, performance, aqua colors, what we call it like. That is so unique to us. You know the way our website is, the way we do all that LinkedIn content.
Ben Tripodi:Everything is actually very well thought out and huge credit to our marketing team because it's not just something we don't just go do. You know we did podcasts. We stopped doing podcasts. Everything is deliberate, right of the return on investment. You know, we've gone to conferences. We're going to start pulling back on some, potentially the ones that didn't work, try new ones. So we're not afraid to just do something different. But you have to defend your brand at all times and even when we hired the office in the US, the US team, we hired them on brand and culture first before we hired them on skill. And yeah, that's pretty hard to do when you're entering a new market and you want sales and revenue. We actually went okay, your background potentially isn't as much sales and revenue, but we like you. You're going to be good for our brand. You're a good person. We trust you. Um, that is far more important than than any specific skill.
Jordi Taylor:I've got something on that, but before I go, back.
Ben Tripodi:So I've got a big big. Yeah, I've got something else.
Jordi Taylor:I've got something else in there as well, yeah for you to be because you were talking about, like competitors and how they just they come to mind For you to be. When someone says I want an online program, the first thing that a coach says is Lumen, Like, what do you have to do to do that?
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, well, I think you have to provide a good product and I think you have to respect people and respect that they're paying their money A lot of, and that's actually just on that.
Ben Tripodi:The other thing entering this market is a lot of people are personally buying this product rather than with ams, it's always a team buying. So you know people feel, you know it's their heart, it's a hard-earned money and so you need to have good, good customer service and and success and just treat people nicely, you know, and talk to talk to people Crazy, eh. And I think the number one thing that we took from this is just be a normal human, you know, treat people normally and just answer calls and emails and we're pretty hot on that. And obviously people need to have a good experience and then when people start having a good experience, they're going to tell their mates about it, and that's kind of the thing that we have to keep doing is get more and more people using it, keep giving them a good experience, and we know it's going to grow. We know we're going to be the first ones that the people then say hey, you have to jump on Lumen.
Jordi Taylor:Because word of mouth, even though it's in this day and age may not be as big as what it was, it's still probably the most powerful tool. How have you found just for people listening, because I think, especially a lot of CEOs or business owners it's a seesaw between brand and sales and they are two different things. They do mix in certain scenarios, but it is a seesaw and at times maybe you have to play the sales card a little bit more and at times you have to play the brand card a little bit more. But you've got to be patient and you've got to play the long game. Ceos or business owners need to rush, rush, rush and get to each point. We've got to make money. We've got to make money. We've got to make money Like that short-term cash. How negative and how detrimental can that be to the long-term success of your brand?
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, look, everyone's got a different business and everyone's set up differently. People have some outside capital, people who spend their own money to grow their business and it's all relevant, right, because when you're using your own money and you don't have a lot of it, you obviously just want to sell, and I can understand why people go that short-term route. But brand and sales works together. Brand is long-term. You can't create a brand in a year. It really does take time and we're only seeing the benefits of it, of the consistency, after seven years, almost so like it's taken this long to consistently build your brand and now the brand actually brings in leads and sales. But never did in the early days. But we still, we don't spend much money at all in marketing. Very like tiny amounts. People would laugh at how much money we spend on marketing because we just we just don't value it.
Ben Tripodi:We valued, you know, hiring people internally, getting them to be our voice and to produce good content and whatnot and build our brand that way. Um, but that takes time and then sales. You need sales. You know people still want to go do a deal with someone and sales is, I think, gets a bad connotation of like well, sales means I have to cold call a thousand people. We still do a bit of that. We have to do less and less, and now that brand's getting stronger but sales doesn't have to be bad, sales can be great. It's actually someone reaching out about hey, this is who I am, this is who the brand is. Can I help you through our product? What are you currently using and whatnot? And so they work hand in hand. Brand's long-term Sales, I still think, is long-term. You don't get sales overnight, but salesperson doing cold deals, you're probably still going to get some smaller wins, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to stay on forever, whereas the brand's kind of good for attention as well 100%.
Jordi Taylor:Have you or the team ever made a like obviously, hindsight's a beautiful thing ever made a mistake where you took a quick sale because it was probably what you thought you needed at the time, but then that was detrimental long-term?
Ben Tripodi:Well, I wouldn't say it was a mistake, but we made a very. So when we first started the business we had some pretty big clients. You know the Olympic program, especially in pro cycling. That was our big kind of where we started the business and we only did custom works. The idea for us was actually can you know, know, can we be kind of this custom house for pro teams? And that was good money. You could charge a lot of money being consultants, um, and then kind of once covid happened we my co-founder and I worked previously in a creative agency and we did a lot of consumer software. So that was always what we wanted to do was build this sas product that we could charge less for. But it was. You know there's no customizations, but when you focus on that product, obviously the product velocity can skyrocket because you're not doing, you're not taking time away to do this custom stuff. That doesn't scale very well. But that was a.
Jordi Taylor:Mistakes potentially along the way, yeah sorry.
Ben Tripodi:So I think we would have back in the day gone oh well, let's go get this big deal, big custom work, some upfront money. It's going to be amazing, our revenue is going to look great. But then you spend every team member's working on that for six months and all of a sudden your product hasn't improved. So we made a very deliberate effort post-covid to actually recreate our business. We lost all of our consulting revenue and said, all right, from today only we're only going to take license, like we're only going to sell our sas license to our product. And you mentioned our product velocity and feedback. We've only been able to do that because we don't.
Ben Tripodi:We said no to a lot of that old work. So I think probably in that transition we probably said yes to a lot of that old work. So I think probably in that transition we probably said yes to a couple of consulting deals and the money was good. And that was probably the biggest mistake where we were like no. And then we just put a line in the sand. We said, from this point on we're not saying yes to any. And it's funny, right? Because all of those teams that were asking us to do consulting work, our products got so good now but at a tenth of the price.
Ben Tripodi:They're now buying our product now as is just as a license, rather than thinking they needed this custom work. So that was always our plan was like. Actually, if we commit long enough, guarantee these teams that want to see this custom work, we'll actually get so much value from a scalable product for a tenth of the price, and that's probably our biggest advantage compared to our competitors is that we're much more affordable when our product is more comprehensive, I'd say, and you don't need the custom work when the product can do so much.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, business owners often talk about like push, pivot, pull. So push like something bad or not bad, but something tough is happening. You want to push through it, pivot okay, it's probably not the right time. We're going to maybe shift our focus or try something new or pull that Just like we'll scrap it and we're going to go back to the drawing board. I think that's a really important thing. You went through there before.
Jordi Taylor:I think every business, or even for coaches listening to this there's a point in time where they maybe want to change their services up a little bit what they did. So I'm going to get them to the next place. But there's a really like gray area, like that valley of uncertainty, where I can still keep getting money or keep doing what I'm doing and go half in on on what I want to do, yeah, and then that ultimately just delays that whole process, whole process, whole process absolutely your experience I think that you just spoke about then is exactly that yeah what would you say to someone who is going in that scenario and what was the reason that you decided to keep pushing, not pivoting, or not pull and change the business in a different direction there?
Ben Tripodi:I think it's a good question, like because we probably made some other pivots in the past During those years around COVID, like yeah.
Jordi Taylor:I'm a fucking pivoting my front.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, I don't celebrate any business. Who is just trying to have a crack and trying to survive because it's pretty crazy times.
Jordi Taylor:Do you also think? Sorry to cut you off, but in that period there I think it gave a lot of businesses false hope and false confidence because there was a way to get a lot of free money and that inflated a lot of people. That got this fake not necessarily fake success, but inflated success and once that dried up like reality, hit like probably 10 times harder Thoughts.
Ben Tripodi:Well, I think, as long as you're still on your strategy and you're just saying, hey, just while we need cash, let's just figure out how we can do that, as long as, yeah, you didn't get caught up in like that's the new normal, we probably did a little bit. We got into corporate well-being. We thought that we needed to do that because sport dried up. So the revenue we made from that for those couple of years basically kept the business alive. And then, once the world started to go back to normal, we thought, actually we don't. You know, we ended up selling off that part of the business and doubling down on sport again, because sport was what we were good at, it's what we knew, we had traction, it's what we knew users were still loving and our engagement was really high and we had traction. So now we knew users were still loving and our engagement was really high. And then, when we doubled down on that, the company just started growing each year, doubling every year, and that's purely because we focused. Our team got a bit smaller, unfortunately, but it means we're more focused, more refined. All of our employees here have been here for probably five years, all of them and so our retention has been amazing and it's kind of a very core small group and we then started focusing on being more productive rather than hiring heaps more people. Actually, let's just make the people we have more productive, and all our employees benefit from that. But on that, you know, there's probably.
Ben Tripodi:So your original question was the push-pivot-pull Push-pivot-pull. Yeah, the reason we decided to push in the direction we're going was because of our engagement data. We track everything on our software. We know how often people spend on each feature and whatnot. That helps us where we go. Well, if we spend more time on this feature, it's going to help more people because that's the most used, or whatnot.
Ben Tripodi:But you know, we decided to push because we saw our product engagement is very high and so, of our monthly active users, a very high proportion of them use it on a daily basis and for us we've got all of the industry norms, all of like SaaS compared to Slack and all these other really engaging products, and we're up there and so we're like well, people must be liking our product and we know that they're. You know, particular example moving to the strength world we like that's. Yeah, our engagement is really high and we didn't have a strength product that is the most engaging product because athletes literally have to log in when they have to do their strength work. So we're like only adding this can only improve our engagement, and it has, and we've seen. It was the first time that our hypothesis actually was correct.
Ben Tripodi:Normally we launch from staff and it doesn't really go because we have rose-colored glasses and everything that we do. We're the most optimistic, hopeful, bit naive company going around, but this one actually went to plan. But the reason we pushed and thought we could take on some of the heavyweights is we just knew how engaging our product was and we knew the retention of our customers and whatnot. We just thought, well, we already know they're buying a product like this and we know they just want one app, one simple software for the entire team to run off of, and so I thought it could only kind of begin. It can only be a better service to these customers and so far it's kind of worked that way, yeah you mentioned something interesting before, like around the team, how it's quite small.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, try to make people more productive versus adding more, more people and more voices to each I guess scenario or each team. How have you found you as a CEO? How have you cultivated that staff environment to keep people around when you've got a small team it's probably easier to manage as a CEO.
Jordi Taylor:Obviously it's less people right, less people to communicate, coordinate all that sort of stuff, versus going quite large. And the longer a team's around for the tighter that team is and, in theory, like the more productive it's going to be and the better the product. So, how have you found like that whole process? It's been a while.
Ben Tripodi:I started the business at 24, so like I'm 31 now and so I think just I've probably matured. Like people probably listen to my earlier podcasts podcasts Like probably just the way I talk is probably a bit different too. I'm not as so sure about things as I probably once was, Um, and I honestly wouldn't know why people stay around, but I do believe it's everyone's been a big part of that, right, and I think I mentioned before like I'm probably not super sure about my own decisions. I'm getting more confident now. But so then you naturally allow people to make their own decisions about their departments, because who am I to tell them what to do right, when they probably know more about it than me? They're more of an expert in that world, but that doesn't take, you know, in the early days. Like you know, we've had two I had a marketing and I had a product and customer support James and Jack. I hope that I don't think they'll mind me telling this story, but they've been with us since like interns, and we often joke that they worked for free for six months and whatnot, but they stuck around right, and not as a personality that goes I'm going to, it was just me and my co-founder, Ryan, and then James and Jack joined us for some work experience and some internship and I was honestly like, hey guys, we're tiny, we're just getting started. They stuck around and I always said to them hey guys, I really appreciate everything you're doing and it takes a certain personality to kind of go. I'm going to go just have a crack with these guys and I think I trust them. I think they're kind of onto something and then we did everything we could to pay them and then they got a job part-time, and now they're running departments. So they've been with us literally kind of since day one and so I think that's another part of they've seen the growth there as founders as much as Ryan and I founders, and so I think everyone here is pretty much a founder, which is kind of cool.
Ben Tripodi:And what I would like, where I'd like to see the business and technology has come so far and we're so we're such a we're a tech company, right. So if we can't make our staff productive through technology, then we're a tech company right. So if we can't make our staff productive through technology, then we're not a very good tech company. And I think people got carried away during those free money years where, like, you raise heaps of money and you just go higher, higher, higher. We now go at the stage where we go like, actually we've got such incredible people working with us who have been here for so long, who are all founders how can we actually just wrap technology around this team and just make it better? If you're right, smaller teams easy to manage. It's more personable when clients call us, they're talking to a real person and but it's like, how do we make their daily tasks more you know, how do we remove a lot of them to make them more productive so they can spend more time with customers, more time thinking about product, more time being creative, and that's not going to be like that forever.
Ben Tripodi:But I think, to circle back to your original question because I waffle so much is that I think our culture is pretty special and that's not because I've created it. I haven't deliberately created that. I think. Starting a business at a young age, I didn't have a lot of skills. I wasn't very confident, so naturally there was a lot of pressure put on everyone who worked for us. We hired young people as well, so we were all kind of just learning as we went and now we are pretty experienced and confident and mature. We've all grown up together and it's just super interesting, we're all having kids now. It's just this kind of real family kind of lifestyle. I think we've done a good job of actually scaling that culture, though, because we hired Blake in the US. We've got an LA office now and they feel the same over there Like it's kind of cool, you know, and when you go over there you're like, oh, this still feels like Lumen.
Jordi Taylor:And that's probably the best thing when you I've spoken to a lot of people that have multiple, especially in the space, like gym facilities or physio clinics, and they'll go from their main or HQ and they'll go to a different one or another one and each one feels different. Yeah, and that's like. They're like oh, what's going wrong? What do you reckon what's going wrong for them? Like I know each scenario is different, but like what's?
Ben Tripodi:worked for you, worked for us is that we've hired culture first. So, like Blake, prime example, right. Culture first. So like Blake, prime example, right, he's running our US division and we hired him purely on who he was as a person.
Jordi Taylor:Did you have him over here and spend a lot of time before going back? Do you think that onboarding process plays a big role?
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, so head of sales Ben went over there and spent a month with him when we first hired him and that was a big, big, big part of it. And then we flew him back over here and he spent a month here with our team and that was but to to blake's credit and to our team's credit is he's in a different times in a different country, but he's, he's used of like we use slack for our kind of internal communications. It's never, ever felt like he was. It just felt like he was. He was working from home, like just down the road, right, just his engagement on the tour, and he understood the assignment of like well, if you're not seen, you kind of probably need to over-communicate, and he's just done that so well. It's never felt weird, it's funny.
Ben Tripodi:The day that he arrived in the office only a few people had met him and he rocked in and everyone's like, oh, hey, man, hello, anyway, so he'd done a coffee, like just straight. It wasn't even like oh wait, great to meet you, it just went. It was so normal. It was just almost like he was away for a week, you know. So that was, that was pretty cool, um, and hopefully we can scale that, but I think it's just a huge credit to. We don't even do a particular onboarding or anything like that. Live and breathe our values, that I think you kind of have to be on the bus or off Like there's no. Plus, people get churned out pretty quickly if they're not buying into the culture.
Jordi Taylor:Well, you've got a bunch of A players, a C player, a D player rolls in. They get found out pretty quick right, absolutely.
Ben Tripodi:And it's not even about you don't even have to be the best at something, it's just have the guts to have a crack at something. And that, have the guts to have a crack at something. And you, and that's the other thing. No one ever gets told off having a crack, um and uh, and we're not a place where people can come when they get told what to do, like it's, you're here to to, to be part of the decision making process, the creativity, and we haven't. We have no passengers. So, uh, that's been good. You know, everyone here is confident that they can come in, share their ideas, no matter how stupid they are. But no one here is saying oh hey, geordie, today what I need you to do is do X, y, z, you rock up. There's no one telling you anything, so you have to figure out. Well, here's the strategy of the business, this is my role. I'll go do xyz, um, and even as a young person, we'll, as all being young people, we probably will struggle with that a little bit at the start. And then we hired a coo, who's actually my sister, um, she came back from america, x kpmg. She kind of came in and leveled up a bunch of young guys running a startup and completely changed the business in terms of processes, operationally. Um, you know, made us a proper business and that's been now. That's the foundation we now work on.
Ben Tripodi:So completely changed the business in terms of processes, operationally. Yeah, made us a proper business and that's been now. That's the foundation we now work on. So we didn't lose the culture, but we lost the scrappiness, which was the best evolution of our business. And since then it's just been game changing and everyone appreciated that. Everyone wanted that structure a little bit more, whereas I think in the early days we probably tried to be a little bit loose and, oh yeah, we're just a style, let's have a crack. But we wanted that culture and that mentality. But we needed the structure, yeah, for sure. When we added that it was just a, it was the holy grail, the values mentioned a few times.
Jordi Taylor:I did quickly see's on the wall. They don't really refer back to them or it's just something that they put there just to keep people happy, like what's your thought? You've mentioned a few times. Obviously it means a bit to you.
Ben Tripodi:Well, I think in the early days, we just Ryan and myself have always been a part of it. But one of them is be accountable and look, probably a lot of them are probably what I believe personally, and I think someone else told me this recently Whether you like it or not, the company is going to be in the image of the founder until there's enough people where the founder doesn't have as much control, and so I think I'm always an accountable person, Like I was always transparent. So I was one of them. I questioned the status quo. I wouldn't have started a business. I just never truly believed that.
Ben Tripodi:I've always probably had this weird, naive, false sense of confidence that you can kind of do anything you want to do as long as you're not getting in the way of anyone or hurting anyone, and so I didn't want anyone we hired to think that they had to do what I told them to do it, to think that they had to do what I told them to do. It's like, well, you've got to be a part of the team, but don't ever question the status quo. So that's one of ours as well, and we are always changing, and that was like just because you're comfortable currently, but if you have to change for another opportunity, like that's a big part of it, right, you can never get comfortable with where you're at because you're going to change again. So be comfortable with change um, so that's kind of another one. So they are a big part of us.
Ben Tripodi:The whole team created them years ago. Like they've never changed um, and I think we truly do reflect that in our product and our service. But it was all things that we thought were the reasons why people bought from us, and none of our values about making money or anything like that. And obviously we want to do that and we're not naive to be like well, that doesn't, it's not important to us. Of course it's important to us, but you know, we think with those values.
Ben Tripodi:We can make money because of those things, right yeah.
Jordi Taylor:Speaking of money, just pretend that it all finished tomorrow.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah.
Jordi Taylor:Lumen doesn't exist anymore. You've been a part of this is your fourth business now that you've been a part of through that growth period and to each of those probably had different experiences and things like that. For someone starting out in 2024, you had to start brand new tomorrow. What would you do to essentially not copy what you've done, but replicate all the good things that you've spoken about there around brand, around team culture, around finding potentially investors Like, what would you do tomorrow?
Ben Tripodi:I think about this a lot because, yeah, like I said, I grew up. I grew up as a human being inside the business and so I was kind of on the show to investors and whatnot, as I was just trying to figure out who I was. If I started again, I think most people don't. People think a lot of people think from I don't know what the word is, but it's kind of two ways of thinking about business and I think a lot of, especially in this industry, a lot of people are practitioners and they want to sell themselves as like, oh, my skill set's this, so I can make a business around that. But you know, firstly, I use this analogy quite a bit and I haven't said it for a while, so hopefully it comes out all right. But you need to know what your total addressable market is in anything you do. And I call that kind of like the pond, like how big is the pond that you're fishing in? And then your product is your fishing rod and so like, if you have a horrible fishing rod, a horrible product, you're not going to be, no matter how big your tam is. You're not going to be getting many fish If you have a killer product in a killer pond. It's like fishing with a net You're just going out there, just dragging up and collecting. So you need to have a big enough tam. You have a good enough product or idea for a product? Um, then you need a strategy, right, like there's no point just fishing anywhere. You have to kind of oh well, I'm going to focus on this particular area because I know fish go through this area all the time. Um, and so that's where your kind of strategy comes in.
Ben Tripodi:I think in the early days I I didn't really have a strategy. I just kind of went out there and just had a crack, whereas now I think if I started again, I'd be very specific about what our long-term target is, and you don't need timelines on that. That's just big and ambitious. But it's based on some facts, right, you know the term is big enough to allow for that target. It could be like I want to do $100 million in revenue. That's a stupid goal to have if you've got a small gym in which only has a total, just a market of 20 people in a small town somewhere. So you need to be realistic about what that.
Ben Tripodi:but it needs to be big and then kind of work back from that If that's your 10-year goal, or if that's your future goal, what's your 5-year goal, what's your 3-year goal, what's your 2-year goal? And just be really realistic on them. A little bit different. I'm not a practitioner. I'm not someone who thinks I have a particular skill set For me. I've always believed that I can achieve anything because I know I can access capital and I know I can hire good people. So I honestly believe that I could have a rocket company tomorrow if I wanted to. I have no idea about rockets, but that's beside the point, right. What you're trying to sell to, if you're trying to raise money, is you're trying to sell this vision of like. Well, I think we can get to this market because I understand the term, I understand our strategy. I've got, I think, an idea for a product and an idea for a product and then you go get the capital and you go hire the people to go get it done.
Ben Tripodi:Um, and that's simple how big's your term, you know what's the product you're trying to create? Go raise money to excite enough investors to give you the money to go hire the team to go do it. Whereas I think it's a very simple formula, it's harder to do in theory because a lot of things have to go right, but I probably would have saved myself a lot of time by just being a little bit more strategic, and so I guess the moral of my story is that try not to pigeonhole yourself in being the source of the revenue. You probably want to think about it a little bit top down. There's going to be times where you have to jump in and do the work.
Ben Tripodi:Um, there's plenty of capital out there, and raising capital for me was the best way to step out of the business, um, and you can scale much faster doing it that way. So you know it's a long-winded answer and I can talk all day about this, but for me it's just about yeah, be very specific by what you're trying to do and just be razor focused on that and have kind of one, three, five, 10 year goals, and I believe that more people should raise capital.
Jordi Taylor:That's going to be my next question. Even now, I'm only starting to learn a little bit of what that the options are actually available to access money. I think a lot of people traditionally go probably three routes, and correct me if I'm wrong on this their own personal savings, a bank loan or a loan from friends and family, and that's probably like where it stops. You said like, from your point of view, raising money is probably not too hard, provided you've got everything in place. Talk about, maybe, how you first went about that, because that's, I think, the first story is always really interesting. But then some of the other options that are available for people to actually access money from whether that be private investors or some of the other routes that you're sort of talking about.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, I've probably explained it too simply because, really, the only thing you need to know about raising money is just these valuation milestones. Really, the only thing you need to know about raising money is just these, these value valuation milestones. Right and again, this is what comes back to the term of the product. Right, because you know anyone can raise money and any investor would give you money if they can see a return on investment. Right, and so, whereas what most people think that number one is, they get greedy and think they have to own 100 of everything. I've never believed that and it's been good for me. You know you have to own a good amount enough to motivate you, but you don't have, because when you raise outside capital, you can grow this thing to bigger than you've ever expected, because you have the money. You're not relying on your sole personal savings Plus. You need to think bigger than what you're capable of, because it's not about you at all. It's about what can 100 people who are highly skilled can do. So I think, firstly, most people think they're not good enough to do it themselves. That's completely irrelevant and they're not thinking big enough. So they can never attract good capital because they're not selling a big enough picture because they don't think outside themselves Raising capital really comes down to.
Ben Tripodi:Obviously you need to know your numbers and you need to be good enough to really understand the industry and the business. But say that you think your company is worth $100,000 and that can be based on a bunch of different metrics, but it could be based on multiple of revenue or multiple of earnings. And you think, all right, if I raise $1 million from investors, if you can make that company worth more than the amount of money you've raised. Essentially there's a bit more math to it. But then any investor will go, oh yeah, they'll weigh it up. They'll be like, oh okay, is the risk and opportunity big enough? Then they'll give you money.
Ben Tripodi:Whereas I think where most people think is like they think, oh well, if I raise outside capital, they don't really believe their revenue is going to increase because they potentially don't really think about it. They think, oh well, I can just get paid myself more and I'll just do more of it. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. No one's going to invest in that. But if you think, all right, well, with a million dollars you can open three gyms up in areas where you think you can triple your revenue, then investors go no, your valuation is now increased. Then raise more money.
Ben Tripodi:Once you've increased your valuation, it can be on paper, and so you're basically just raising money to increase the valuation of your business and just keep doing that. Obviously, valuation of your business is based on market opportunities, revenue, a bunch of different things. But if you can show a pathway of what you're going to do with that money and how it will increase the value, so for those investors who bought shares a year at X valuation, as long as after you've taken their money and executed the plan with their money, their shares are worth X amount more. That's a perfect mass problem to have right. And so I think most people people if your TAM's big enough, there's a very clear path because it just never ends right until you hit the TAM. If your TAM's big enough, you're never going to get close to hitting it and you're not necessarily walking around the street just going to people.
Jordi Taylor:Hey, would you want to invest in my company? Not necessarily have to go on Shark Tank, yeah, like where do you go?
Ben Tripodi:That's a good question, yeah, and probably something I don't appreciate enough that most people won't know where to go. But it's just. I think people who are good at networking will always find money. You know people. There's investors out there, In fact a lot of people. Anyone who has a high-paying job like to invest. And it's not we're not talking, they're not putting millions in, but you might get 10 K from someone, 15 K from someone, and you never get one back. I think most people want just one person to give them a million dollars. Never happened. You probably got 20 people who were only putting money if the other 19 people put money in. So it's just a numbers game.
Ben Tripodi:You know there'd be plenty of people in your network who would have no problems with taking a pun. I think the line is don't take it from someone who can't afford to lose it. But also, most people who are investing are smart enough not to do that right. And so you have a certain amount of confidence that the people you're taking the money from are sophisticated investors or sophisticated people who understand the risks, because you don't want to be taking money from people who don't understand the risks, because that's never fun, Because that puts undue pressure on yourself, it puts pressure on themselves and it never ends well. But you know, it is probably still family and friends. That's still where most people raise their money from. But you'd be surprised how wealthy some of your family and friends are, and it's not even about flaunting their wealth. It's just people who are smart with money and potentially have a diversified investment portfolio. Unfortunately, in most industries where there's a lot of practitioners, they're probably not that type of person. So you do probably have to think outside of that a bit more. But you can ask your accountants, ask your lawyers, ask those professions who who are dealing with a lot of their clients. Maybe you know people who invest in things.
Ben Tripodi:Point of the story is there's money everywhere. It's not huge money and you're not going to get it from all in one person, but there's lots of little bits of money that people are wanting, and people want to be a part of a journey. They get excited by things. So if you're passionate about your business and you're just talking to people, the more people you talk to, the more people are going to go hey, do you need some money? I'd be happy to help out, and never don't laugh it off, don't get nervous or embarrassed. When that opportunity presents itself, you have to go. Yeah, actually I will, and then push it back and go hey, can you, I actually need 100 grand? Can you get 10 of your friends to put 10 grand in? And I'll be like, yeah, no, I think I could probably do that. Um, and so it happens slowly and it's not.
Ben Tripodi:You can't just go tomorrow, go raise money. It takes a long time. You've got to build a network up. But you've got to be really clear with your strategy, and this is where it comes down to the tam, your goals, and you have to be so hell-bent on that. You can't, you can't be flip-flopping every week. Oh, I think I can be bigger now, today or tomorrow. So you've got to be clear with that strategy from day one, before you're going to start the business, because then everything kind of flows from that, I think. Two, things.
Jordi Taylor:One that was phenomenal, so actually three things. Two you mentioned a lot of people think they have to own everything. Obviously, 100% of zero is zero.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah.
Jordi Taylor:Very different. Why do you think people have that mentality that they have to have everything? Yeah, and then the smart people realize that actually that's not the case at all. Like, I'm happy to have 10 of this, 10 of this, 2 of this, like what's the mindset shift? Or what do they think different to the person who thinks they have to have everything?
Ben Tripodi:And this is probably getting a little bit too political right now, but it's not even non-political. But I think in Australia we have this weird obsession with safety of like. I don't know you talk to like anyone who's kind of got a safe job and they get so paranoid by like their work or like, oh no, this is I can't let someone, this is my idea or whatnot. It's like no one gives a shit about your idea and execution is 99% of everything.
Jordi Taylor:Ideas are everywhere. You go down to the bar or the local pub and everyone's talking about ideas, but no one does anything.
Ben Tripodi:How many does because they're oh, I don't want to, I've got kids. Oh, I don't want to do that, oh, I couldn't possibly take a punt risk. I think in america that doesn't happen as much. Much more risk adverse, much more risk takers and and you know, whereas in australia we still have this weird obsession with, like a safe income and I'll kind of I'll answer a question in a sec, but I'll go to a story. During covid, we're still very small business and very patchy. We lost all of our revenue. We're probably like six weeks away from going under and you know, just year, because it's all we focus on. You find a way, right, and we found a way.
Ben Tripodi:But I had mates who were in safe jobs or lose their jobs, and it just made me realize like there is no such thing, there is no such thing as a safe job, so why wouldn't you take a punt on yourself? So, actually, another one today is this incredible book by Nassim Taleb. He's got a middle name in there as well. He's got a book called shit. I haven't forgotten the book. I quote this all the time. Anyway, I forgot the title. I'll find it and we can put it in the comments or whatever, but the thing that he talks about this scenario of two brothers, and one of them is a taxi driver, the other is a banker and they both earn, say, $100,000 a year. And the question he put to the audience was like, who do you think has the safer job? And everyone went oh, the banker. Because the taxi driver is self-employed and it was just a pure maths problem. He said well, based on risk, the banker has significantly higher risk of losing his income because all he needs is one person to make the decision for him to be fired and he loses 100% of his income. The taxi driver needs 1,000 people to all decide at once that they don't want to drive with him anymore for him to lose 100% of his income, and so it's 1,000 times more risk being an employee of the banker than it is to be a self-employed tax driver.
Ben Tripodi:So the reason why I talk about that is just risk. People see risk very weirdly and differently and I'm very fortunate that I've never really saw risk like that. I probably more saw the other way. It's like well, actually, why wouldn't you take a pun on yourself? And everything in this life is just kind of up for grabs, in a way, and nothing is safe, so you may as well kind of make your own path.
Ben Tripodi:The reason I kind of mentioned all of that is it's purely a mindset, and so where you get that kind of and I call it employee mindset and that's no disregard to employees, it's just kind of the easiest way to explain it is when that kind of flows through into, when they step out and go, oh, I'm going to start my own business, they kind of probably because it is a lot of risk, and they feel like, and they're putting their own money into it as well, and they just like well, I don't want anyone coming in on my thing because I've given up so much to join this journey, and I think that's a big part of it is, people are just so fearful of bringing other people in because they had to give up so much to do it and completely understand it.
Ben Tripodi:And that's why I think when you raise outside capital, put your own money in but don't put enough in where it's going to cause more stress on yourself. When you take outside capital in, you have to give up a piece of the pie, but what they can provide is scale and skills as well.
Jordi Taylor:Do you ever lean on your investors at all, or have you got pretty hands-off investors?
Ben Tripodi:no, a lot yeah skill um there's more, it's more than network.
Ben Tripodi:There's more than people. You can go higher with that money, right, um? But you got to give up. I'd much rather two percent of a big pie than 100 of nothing like. And the more fun you have because you've got a team and everything just gets better when you have more people and more money, but less control, less power, and if you're someone who needs to be in control all the time, you're not going to do well in that environment. So you have to let go of things and you have to be open to strategy. It may not always be the strategy, because enough people get involved and all of a sudden the strategy changes. But if you hire good people, then that's a positive thing. So I think it comes down to mindset People taking probably too much risk, as in like. It's so overwhelming the amount of risk they're taking because they're putting their life savings into it. They've left a high-paying job that they're like. Well, if I don't have 100% of the company, then I've just given up so much. So I think it's an element of that as well.
Jordi Taylor:It purely just comes down to mindset yeah, perfect. And then the third thing as well is you mentioned before you're not a practitioner, which is probably, I think, been to your advantage because you have a different perspective.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah.
Jordi Taylor:A lot of people listening to this are practitioners, yeah, practitioners. Yeah, they are coaches, they are allied health, whatever it is. How do they then get out of that little pond that they're in in their network, which is just other coaches, other physios, other people that they associate themselves with and step into maybe the big I don't say big, scary world, but to some people probably is like that big scary world of what else is out there, because you see a coach walk down the street in the city.
Jordi Taylor:Yes, you get like a sore fucking thumb.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah.
Jordi Taylor:Even me today, I'm in my joggers and shorts, like everyone else is wearing suits and whatnot. You're not, obviously, but you know what I mean. Like it's a different world. Like how do they bridge that gap a little bit? Any advice, I think?
Ben Tripodi:just talking to more people like listening to podcasts, simple stuff, but like, but I think it's an advantage, being a practitioner, you always the grass is always greener, right? Yeah, I wish I knew more about the things I don't know about. So don't, don't, don't, don't give up on that, because that's, that's, that's who you are, it's what you know, it's your skillset. So, like, almost lean into it. The business side of things are easy to learn, like that's. So that's probably the most important thing. But what it can do is you've just got to be mindful. Don't get trapped into you're not the person doing the work. It's just separating yourself from being the revenue driver.
Ben Tripodi:If you're the individual who has the skill set and is a coach and people love you as a coach it's almost like when we were doing custom work You've got to say, hey, I'm actually not going to coach you anymore, and there's going to be a period of time where you're not going to be making money and you're going to be hating it, because you're going to be like, oh, people want to give me money but I'm saying no to it. Oh, but I need the money. Oh, I should just go do it, and maybe you don't want to be the CEO of your own business or the owner. Maybe you want to be a practitioner, you've got to do one or the other or you can still do both. But you know, when I'm being a business owner, I'm thinking like a business owner.
Ben Tripodi:When I'm being a practitioner, I'm thinking like a practitioner. I think it's just being very clear with your roles in the business. As people try to be both. They try to be a practitioner who does a bit of the business side, and I don't think that can work that well. It needs to work in the early days when you don't have as much money. But you just need to be very clear that on Fridays I'm not a practitioner and I will never book a client in If someone says oh hey, please, I can't come in Thursday, can I come in Friday? No, not going to happen, because on Friday I'm a non-skilled business owner and I actually don't know how to coach on Friday.
Jordi Taylor:There's a really good podcast that Alex Mosey did on I forget the exact name of it and he had a very good terminology around describing this, but like, anyway, like one day he's doing his meetings, the next day he's doing all your creative stuff and he doesn't blend the two and he has it very hard and concrete, because you know what it would be like, for example, if you're in the flow, yeah, and you're doing something, but then you got a meeting at nine, yeah, or 9, 30, it's like, fuck, well, I got five minutes before the meeting. I'm gonna get make sure I've got my stuff ready yeah mentally you probably checked out already 15 minutes before the meetings.
Jordi Taylor:You know you got to go to the meeting. It might be a high press situation. You You've got the meeting, then you've got 10, 15 minutes after the meeting where you're coming back down. Then you've got to go straight back into the work where you're creative, like it's very jarring, versus trying to block your days out, like I know that was a bit of a sidetrack there, but no it was so true, and it's not always.
Ben Tripodi:I still don't do it well enough and there's always going to be things that come up, so you can't be so rigid where it ruins your life. I probably was trying to. I was once like that because I'm very I like things very clear, structured, clean, tidy. I don't like mess in, not in physical work. I hate having a dirty house, but I don't like mess in my head. But I've also come to realize that's just not reality. So you do have to accept that it's not going to be perfect at the time.
Ben Tripodi:But as long as you're striving for that, I think, and the easiest way is just about yeah, fridays I'm the business owner or not, and it's the whole cliche of you've got to work on your business, not in your business. But you can do both. You just have to be very clear with what hat you're wearing that day. And if you're not cracked up to be the owner to grow your business and maybe you don't want to grow your business, that's also fine. You don't have to have a big business or a fast growing business. I think you just have to be very clear with what you want your job and your life and your business and then everything flows on from that.
Ben Tripodi:If you literally just want a small business, you're never going to raise money because no investor wants to do that. That's completely fine. You will have to put your own money in um, you will have to 100 own it, but that's okay and you could become a really awesome kick-ass practitioner who has a small clientele and you have an amazing work-life balance awesome. All credit to you. Where the disconnect is is where people want to be a bit of everything and they're not really clear with what they want to be. They want to use their own money, money, they want to own 100% of it and they want to be a billion-dollar business. Unless you're Elon Musk, you do not have the capacity, skill set or the money to be able to achieve that.
Jordi Taylor:Musk come from money too. No one talks about that.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, potentially. But I also think, like he's raised money and whatnot, he's been able to get money. But I just think there's like there's different mindsets and if you're like I want to be building a business, well you can't be thinking like a small business owner that night. You've got to be thinking bigger and raise more money and hire more skilled people. So it all comes down to mindset and and just be very clear with what you're trying to achieve. I think most people are so messy with what they're trying to achieve and and you know they're messy is when you talk to them one day, they'll tell you one thing. You talk to them the next day, they'll tell you another thing.
Jordi Taylor:Or the same day or the same day.
Ben Tripodi:And that's fine for a period of time, right when you're getting started, because you don't really know, right, but there's a point in time where you have to go. This is what I for investors, staff, clients, clients want to be part of a fun, cool company that's doing cool things. People don't want to go like buy software from a boring, stale company, because they're also worried about if they go out of business. Right, you're like, well, if they're growing and they're getting bigger and they're able to raise more money like cool, cool, my product's going to get better and better and better. So yeah, everyone clients, staff and investors all want to buy into a story, and you've just got to know the story yourself before you go tell people the story.
Jordi Taylor:Almost ties back into brand, doesn't it? At the very start?
Ben Tripodi:Brand and yeah all of it.
Jordi Taylor:The last thing that I do want to ask is I think now we're at the phase where AI is pretty common to most people. If you could have a conversation with someone, they could throw up what their definition of AI is and what their thoughts on it is. Twelve months ago maybe, not so much so in the last 12 months, as a tech company, you mentioned technology, improving your staff, everything to do with your staff and everything you do. One of the things that I found really cool and I know this is just a singular feature, but I do want to dive more is the AI autofill feature. That's in the strength.
Jordi Taylor:Yeah, I think that was one of the best things I know. When I was talking to the guys, they were like oh really, I'm like, yeah, that saves a lot of time and it generally does, and even for niche exercises it does a pretty good job. 90% of that's good to go, which saves a lot of time if you're building out a lot of exercises. Yeah, so in a bit of a long-winded way, but for you and the team, how has that AI adoption been for you guys as a software and a tech company, and is it friend or foe?
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, it's a good question and I probably don't. I'm still trying to figure it out and I listen to a lot of stuff, I read a lot of stuff, try to understand more of it, and I think you asked me two years ago I would have been hell bent on being like it's a waste of time, it's just such a fad and obviously now it's not People, people we've been able to see that obviously there's some functionality in it. I still truly believe and this is not me just saying this because it protects us as a business. But I do think AI is so general at the moment that where I think the superpower would be is actually, yeah, like SaaS providers, like us software providers, like ourselves, incorporating AI. But the singular customer and industry specific niche is held by the, the traditional software companies, and it's how they use ai to obviously hopefully make their product better.
Ben Tripodi:Where the functionality is right now is really just in those things. Right, which we probably think is simple, but if they, if they have an impact, that's amazing is how do you just save time on the menial tasks that people still have to do on your platform? Right, like uh, create, create a new, um, you know, uh, exercise in the database you still had to go write out the summary, the, the, the description, the primary muscle groups, all of that traditionally you have to do is. We used ai to pre-fill that. So if you put the title in you can generate all of those fields and you can obviously go through and edit them if they're not up to scratch.
Ben Tripodi:Again, something that we're just like let's just try it out, see what works. And, yeah, the feedback's been incredible, so we're going to do more of that in this other little area as well. Okay, well, potentially this is a task which our users still have to do on a manual basis. It's like, well, maybe we can add AI there as well. And obviously, the big AI companies are getting better at, you know, outsourcing some of their stuff and it's getting cheaper as well, so we're able to do it without having to jack up our prices too much. So, you know, and maybe there'll be a stage where we go actually, there's a whole bunch of AI tools we can put in here.
Ben Tripodi:But there's a whole bunch of AI tools we can put in here, but it's expensive, and maybe there's an ability to go actually for the people who really want that. No worries, here's another little feature for you, another little option. Right now, we'll just keep rolling it out into those kind of areas where there's potentially manual tasks that can be done much quicker through AI. But we're still learning. We don't really know where it's going to go or not, but we're still learning. We don't really know where it's going to go or not. But yeah, I'm glad there's some little quirks, that we're able to put it in and if we can save time, then that's awesome, I think.
Jordi Taylor:One thing for me, working still with youth athletes I always find fascinating how they do things and what they do, and just the fact that not many of them anymore will type into Google anything. They will literally just go straight to ChatGPT and they will ask that into Google or anything. They will literally just go straight to ChatGPT and they will ask that. They will get that to do 95% of what they need. It's pretty amazing. So obviously that makes us feel a bit old, that they're only what 15, 20 years younger than us. But that's how they think. They don't think the same way. That's crazy, actually. So I find that really interesting because I've been reading a lot To me at this point in time, ai is just there to help, just assist. It's not going to replace anything. In my opinion, as of yet it's still too generic. It's getting smarter and smarter every day, obviously, but it'll be pretty crazy what it will do.
Ben Tripodi:What's your thoughts on AI and coaching? Because anyone can go on AI and type in, you know, write me a, say, a running program, a 10-week strength and conditioning program or whatever. Yeah, you know, how do you think about this as a coach's view?
Jordi Taylor:At the moment it still comes down to what the user inputs. Yeah, so the average punter probably doesn't know the nuances to be able to get something specific enough just yet. Yeah, so until the tools start to maybe ask for more information back from the the inputter or the person inputting information, it won't be as good. But fucking hell, it's pretty good. Like. It does better than and this is no disrespect to a cert three, cert four, student Cause I was certainly one of those at one point in time it does better than what most of those younger practitioners can can dish out in a fraction of the time. To me, the thing that can never be replaced is the actual coaching. It's the actual delivery of the service. You and I can have the exact same program on a piece of paper. It doesn't mean we're going to do it the exact same way. There's nuances.
Ben Tripodi:Being accountable, being motivated inspired.
Jordi Taylor:All those human-based elements that I don't think are going to be going anywhere anytime. Soon Again, it will become a really fantastic tool to enhance coaches' programming time and things like that, because soon there'll be a way like I'm sure there'll be a way to do it even sooner than probably the way I do it right now, where you input a program and it's like cool, exactly, and then next time there's certain prompts you put in. You know, hey, I've got a basketball athlete who's 16-year-old, who is 6'2", who is this amount of weight, who has a wingspan of this, who has this, this and this as their goals. Based on the information I've provided in these five programs, can you spit out a program that's two days a week, that's 60 minutes per long, that has this amount of exercises in it? Go, and it will probably be pretty good. That's cool. I reckon that's going to be sooner rather than later as well.
Ben Tripodi:But I think, coming back to what I said before, I think that's where, say, a niche, a coach can potentially create something where it's like, actually AI is not just going to do that right, some general AI boy is not going to do that, it has to have that niche element to it. And that's where I think potentially software products like ours have that niche element or something that coaches have, and so that's where I think AI will improve. Amazon and Google aren't going to go create that niche product for sports coaches, but potentially another sports coaching service already can add AI to make it better and like again, you said practitioner, that's like knowing.
Jordi Taylor:That's only information that a practitioner that is using the product or doing something day-to-day will understand. Yeah, there's a very good friend of mine. I won't say the exact industry and what they're doing, but, um, his partner works interior design has for the last five years longer actually, probably even way longer than that. Sorry if you're listening and but she found an opportunity that she was like hang on a second. I do X amount of buildings per year and they all require this one thing, and it's not like one of them, it's not like a table, it's like something that everybody uses a lot of.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah.
Jordi Taylor:And she's like okay, well, each building, like okay, well, each building, you know, spends forty thousand dollars on this very simple thing. Yeah, but they're all generic, they're all the exact same thing, and people want these unique designs, but we can't get them. Or if we're going to get them, it jacks the price up by five, ten times the amount can I maybe make something unique here, yeah, at a reasonable cost that can facilitate these needs.
Jordi Taylor:But that's only from someone who's been in that industry for a really long time that understands all the nuances that can look at it and go. Well, you know, in each building that's averaged five storeys tall, they're going to use this amount of this Like it's not something that someone could walk into and go. I reckon that's a really good idea day one. It's like that positive, optimistic, positive and whatever it is where you walk into something you're so happy, you're so excited and then all of a sudden you realize, hang on, there's a lot of information I don't know, and it just falls off a cliff Circle.
Ben Tripodi:Back on that what I said earlier is she could raise a lot of money because investors don't know that niche area right, they go. Well, she knows she's got the guts of it right. But what could she do with a million dollars? If she was willing to give, then she could go, depending on what the product is, go create lots of it and get it done faster and get it done cheaper and then able to achieve her vision much sooner, because she was willing to give up some of her company. But she was passionate so people wanted to follow her journey. She had this inside knowledge that no investor could go do themselves. They want their money to work, but they don't want to have to do the work. So she needs to have the mindset to go. Well, I'm willing to go do all those things right to achieve what she wants to achieve. But that's where it all starts. That's awesome. I have to send it to her.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, I don't know she's probably smart enough already, but yeah, it's. I think that's just that's a prime example, right? Yeah, people have those opportunities and it's so exciting, it's like, but then they just they. They tie their legs together to be like they can't let themselves open themselves up to opportunities. But people love passionate people. So if she's excited by it and talking about it, people want to be part of that. Staff want to be part of that, suppliers want to be part of that, investors want to be part of that. I just love hearing passionate people Full side chat. But, yeah, love hearing people be passionate about what they want to do and they're the people you want to just be a part of.
Jordi Taylor:You want to follow their journey well, last question, then, because I think this is probably really, really, really important how important is it to bet on the jockey if you are an investor? So maybe let's put the shoe on the other foot. There's someone listening to this who's going. You know what? I've got a bit of cash here that I wouldn't mind flicking to someone and potentially getting a nicer return on that.
Ben Tripodi:I've heard.
Jordi Taylor:Oftentimes, there's a lot of people who have the same idea or a very similar idea, but it's actually the jockey or the person riding the idea that they actually you know what, I don't care what you do, you could go and shine shoes or paint walls, I just know that whatever you're going to do, it's going to be successful because it's you the jockey. Yeah, how important is that.
Ben Tripodi:Oh, it's everything. Well, in the early days it's everything. Like the execution is everything. So the person leading the executions, or we, or you've got right and smart business people and investors know that ideas come and go Like ideas are worth nothing. They, they're literally worth nothing. And you've probably heard so many times where someone would be like oh, I had that idea ages ago. It's like you didn't do it, mate. So, like, everyone's had this idea. Every single person's had this idea that you've got.
Ben Tripodi:But it's all about execution and if you're not willing to leave your job to go execute, no one's going to back you. If someone's really taking the risk of, oh, I've given up a bit to go do it, huge win already. If they like you or they've seen you, if you build some credibility with that person over the time they've seen you do some other things they go wow, I really like the way they went about. That Passion is a big one. So, if you're not passionate about it, they know you're going to give up pretty easily. So, like, if you're passionate about it, they're probably going to put up with a lot of shit, shit and so everything.
Ben Tripodi:It's all got to do with the jockey, um. So, yeah, it's about credibility as well, um, because I guarantee people who've, uh, not kept their credibility will never get money from anyone, um, and so I think the age-old advice of when people, like everyone, thinks these wealthy, rich dudes just must have burnt some bridges together, I just don't believe that's the case, because there's no way you can make a lot of money without having any friends. You've had to feel a lot of credibility at the time, otherwise, no one's giving you their money, no one wants to work with you, no one wants to do anything with you if you're not a good person, and so I just I just don't believe that you can be ultra successful without being a good person. But yeah, it's all about the jockey. Think about it yourself, though. Would you give any of your money to someone that you didn't really like or trust or thought could do the job, no matter how good their idea was? You just wouldn't, would you?
Jordi Taylor:No, I do think, though sometimes and again, I've never sat in the Shark Tank situation, but I've watched Shark Tank a lot. I reckon it's a good show, sometimes situation, but of what Shark take a lot, I reckon it's a good show. Sometimes you might get sold on the idea, but then the person driving it isn't the right person for it. I think that's why I'm not an investor, obviously, but it would be interesting, because I know investors talk about there's 10 ideas and they diversify into 10 and they just hope one of them pays off. They're not backing all 10 that come off. That's the mentality I think. That's the big VCs though.
Ben Tripodi:Right, but most investors aren't that? Most investors are people like you.
Jordi Taylor:That's probably a good way. They have jobs.
Ben Tripodi:They're going oh, I've got a little bit of side money. I do just want to put 10K in this thing.
Jordi Taylor:I want to put 20K in this thing.
Ben Tripodi:Yeah, and so I think when it's your money or your family's money, you have to tell your wife about it or your husband about it. It's like if they also know the person. Oh, you know like so-and-so's son, we've known him for 10 years. He's tried a bunch of different things. I think this one's going to work. It's like okay, that's cool, you can put our money into that, because that's kind of cool. We trust him. He looks pretty rough. He's like oh, I can make you $1,000 tomorrow, whatever it may be.
Ben Tripodi:He's like, oh, I just need $1,000 now, whatever it may be Like you know that is too good to be true, and so most people aren't just putting money in willy-nilly. It's like no, I know this person. I like their mentality, I like the way they go about things. Plus, they're really passionate about it. I'm not a sophisticated investor, but I'm going to give them some money, but that's how it works. And so the jockey is everything, because they are literally the reason why they attract capital, why they attract people. People go for work for these people. No one's going to go work for a dickhead, or they better be getting paid a hell of a lot of money to go do that. You don't have a lot of money to pay, so you can't be a dickhead. And so there's all these things and you have to have. People want to be. People just want to be a part of something exciting. And if you're the person who's telling the story, the exciting story, you've got the trust and the credibility and, yeah, it's pretty exciting to follow those people.
Jordi Taylor:And so the jockey's everything. Absolutely, I love it, mate. Thank you very much for your time. Full transparency again is one of the key values. Like we're doing a little bit of work together at the moment, I've loved being a part of the team. Jack and Henry are awesome, very great to communicate with which again drop a note.
Ben Tripodi:But just on that prime example, we've known you for a long time and we like the way that you went about things and always being transparent, always being accountable, being a good person, and we know you wouldn't go screw over a bunch of different people, but we've seen that over a bunch of years so it's a no-brainer to come work with you. So I think, huge kudos to you and what you're building. It's grown fast, it's pretty cool and we're excited to be a part of your journey because you're passionate and you're doing something fun and exciting. So prime example right of someone who has created enough vibe that people want to be a part of that. So well done.
Jordi Taylor:I appreciate it, mate. You stole my thunder, but you know what. I'll leave it on that one. That's a good way to end for me. You can play that in all the recaps.
