Dave Cormack: Chairman of Aberdeen Football Club

Dave Cormack. I’m so thankful a mutual friend connected us. Our first pre-interview was at Starbucks and lasted 3 hours and 50 minutes! Dave is such an incredible human. Of course he’s successful with a business exit of $800 million. But there is so much more to this man. In this episode you’re going to hear Dave’s entire life story from growing up in poverty to selling a company and then buying the Aberdeen football club in Scotland! Loyalty, integrity and clearly defined business ethics are what drives 🙏Dave. He’s about much more than making money, you won’t want miss this episode! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

All right. Episode 44 today. I have Dave Cormack, Dave owner of the Aberdeen football club. And I love your story because of how it all started. So born into, I love that. I'm going to have you unpack this, but you said your bathroom was outside. So I think a lot of people get an understanding what that means. You weren't born and given a giant inheritance to go buy a, a soccer team, which is, is from your hometown, which is just so cool. I think that's every little boy's dream to buy your hometown soccer team. So there's some themes in here that really stand out. And I want to make sure that we get into them today is despite all this awesome business success we're going to talk about that you've had and then buying the football team, family was always first. And I love that. That's what I love in this story and the loyalty that you talk about inside of your companies. You have a unique way. You have a unique approach to life. You're clearly designed differently than so many people out there. And I want to understand that. So we're going to get under the hood and I want to know what, what makes you tick. So let's go back to your childhood. Where was it and what was it like? Well, it was, uh, it was, uh, by and large, a happy childhood because you don't know any different. My dad was from Edinburgh in Scotland and moved up to Aberdeen, met my mum and... And the rest is history, as they say. But my mum, they married in 1958. I was born January 59. But my mum's family had grown up in a set of, not an apartment or a flat, but a set of rooms in a tenement, as they call them back there, in downtown Aberdeen. And they had been there since about 1919, after the First World War, as I have researched. So my aunts and uncles, married, unmarried, my granddad, my grandmother had passed away before I was born, and my mum's side, all lived in these rooms. So, for example, in one set of rooms, there were three rooms, and at one stage, six, seven of them. But when I was born, there was a small, they called it a garret, which is one room at the top floor when I was a baby. But I moved out there when I was about three or four years old to the outskirts of the city, but my cousins and aunts and uncles and granddad all still lived there. And there was no running water. None. There was, I remember, between the second and third floors, or first and second floors, as they say in the UK, because there's a ground floor there. there was halfway up the stairway to the next floor, there was this kind of half circle shaped sink with a cold water tap. Other than that, all the toilets were outside. And I remember any time we had to go there, then it was cobwebs and spiders and stuff. The old air raid shelter from the Second World War was where they did their washing. So then they would have these kind of ringers and mangles where you'd take the washing and they'd go through there. Then they'd hang them up on the washing line outside. Yeah. Everybody was happy. I mean, you know, it was very family kind of oriented. But I would, when we moved... I would still be back there at weekends with my cousins and aunts and uncles and smoke everywhere. Talk about secondhand smoke. Everybody smoked. Smoking and factory smoke too or just smoking? Not so much that, I guess. There were factories by there, woolen mills, et cetera. But... I just remember aunts and uncles looking after us, chastising us at times. Back then, if you did something wrong as a kid, your uncle might slap you in the ear. And if you ever told your father that he'd done that, he'd hit you as well. So anyway, that was... I also remember my uncle who was single. And... And he'd take me to the football on Saturday to see Aberdeen. We'd come back and all the neighbours knew that between 5.45... p.m. and 6 p.m. He had that sink to himself. He'd strip down to his underpants and effectively use that cold water tap as bathing. And he'd get his aftershave on, his suit and tie on, and then he would go off to the beach ballroom for the dancing and try and find a young girl. What did mom and dad do? So my dad was in Gents Clothing. So he worked when he was in Edinburgh. He was in Gents Clothing. So every suit was custom suits. He actually worked for a company out of Leeds and worked in some of the big stores in Edinburgh, moved up to Aberdeen, a store called Faulkner's that became Fraser's. And so he was in Gents Clothing selling that. My mum... She mostly ended up, as I grew up, working for the telephone company on the switchboard. So that's back in the day where at night, so my dad would come home, she'd go off to work at night. And when you did an international call or a call from city to city then, you had to have an operator connect you. So that's what my mom did. I can imagine the younger generation listening to this going, what the world switchboard you got to connect i mean that's that's just so cool what was that what was the name of that company it well it turned out to be a british telecom in the end it became british telecom yeah yeah okay it was the post office which then became british telecom got it what what brought you guys to the states then so um So we, 1986, well, go back a step. I went to college and did an HNC in accounting, which is like a... What's the degree they call it here? Not the full degree, it's like a two-year degree. Okay, two-year, associate. Associate degree. And I was working as a management accountant for an oil services company. We took on a computer software company, and this is back in 1981. We took on a computer software company where you basically could dial in and get access to really powerful computing software resources and that you could almost write English language commands to do reports and analysis. So that was my, at early 20s, that was my, if you like, aha moment. I fell in love. I loved data and the use of data. But the ability to go in and actually develop reports and analysis that you could use got me. I ended up joining that software company a week before we got married on March 27th of 1982. And as the software market moved from using these large, what they call timesharing bureaus, moved from there to Bill Gates coming out with the first 16-bit computer, the use of spreadsheets, et cetera, it was clear that I had to move or we'd have to move to London if I wanted to continue growing in the software market. So we moved to London. I actually started in August of 1986. My wife was pregnant with our second child, Craig, who was born in November of 86. So she moved down and we moved down in February of 1987. I worked for an American software company in sales, running sales across London. across the UK and then Europe. And so that took us to London. So our daughter, who's now 40, Sarah, was like... Two and a half years old at the time. Craig was just born. Rachel, our baby, was born in September 89 in St. Albans, just outside London. That's the area that we stayed in. Really, really great time there. Kids were young, met similar families, and had a lovely time there. I had a hankering to have my own business. And so... 1991-92 timeframe, you know, there were two consultants in the reporting software industry that I worked with and we put together a business plan and actually had a large corporate just outside London, Nestle. The Nestle that we know? Yeah, the Nestle that we know. Took the system on and that was really the catalyst to sale and we've got something here so I remember talking to Fiona my wife and you know we had two car payments we had a fairly big mortgage and the interest rates then were about eight or nine percent and she was obviously a homemaker we kind of decided that years earlier so we ended up she said to me If you want to go do this, how much do we have liquid kind of in the bank? I said, we've got about 100,000 pounds. Okay. 1992-ish, right? And she said, okay, I'll support this. But when it gets down to 10,000 pounds, go back and get a real job. Oh, so that's your… But the message of that is that when I talk… Today, to budding entrepreneurs and people, everyone thinks it's going to be stars and it's all going to be wonderful, right? Oh, yeah. 99% of companies don't get beyond 5 to 10 million of revenue or turnover, as they say in UK, a year. So it got close. Yeah. Got really, really close. A lot of hard work over a couple of years, but we expanded our customer base. And I remember... You know, we were getting really tight, really tight. A couple of my developers, there was only eight or nine of us in the company, hadn't taken salary for two or three months, but wanted to stick by it. And I remember, vividly remember driving down the M1 motorway, nice day. And it was maybe the spring of 1995. And I remember just, you know, with my eyes open driving down there, I remember saying, God, if you're there, I don't know what to do with this. You know, we've given everything that's here. You know, I need your help. And not a person that was going to church then, et cetera, et cetera. But we were bidding for three projects. And we were going in with Oracle on these projects because they're much bigger than us and they've got a name. Clients don't even know who we are to a degree. But we worked every weekend over the next few weeks and we won two of those three deals. And that gave us the platform. Wow. What size were they back then? Oh, these deals were probably worth between them over a few years, probably worth about a million pounds, which is a lot for us to cash flow the business and continue to develop the product. So that allowed us... the opportunity for me then to look to the states where I wanted somebody to distribute our product in the states. And this was in the summer of 1995, myself and one of my software sales engineers, long-term friend, John Drakes, and I went over to Atlanta. I had to look at the map. Where's Atlanta? Yeah. First place you visited was Atlanta. Is it Atlanta or is it Atlantic City? Oh, that's right. So it's Atlanta.

UNKNOWN: 13:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:17

And there's a company called IQ Software on the NASDAQ exchange that we were introduced to through the folks we know and their company in the UK. We came out, demonstrated our platform, and long story short, over the weekend, Rick Chitty was a founder, chairman, CEO, still great friends today. In fact, we're headed to his, actually to him and Mary, his wife's 50th wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks. Oh, wonderful. And so Rick became a mentor for me. So we came out and he said, look, we can't distribute your product. It's so important for us to have our own intellectual property and own solution, but we'd love to buy the business and have you come out and help us run this business for the next three years. So I get back from that trip to sit down with Fiona and She's been unbelievable over the years. I think I look back on it and maybe I was a bit over, kind of selfish for me running and gunning in the UK and Europe and coming over. But she's the type of person that if World War III is about to arrive, I'm hanging from the chandeliers and she's off making a cup of coffee or tea and telling everyone to relax. So she's a good balance. So anyway, that was... We'd been, for the first time, in the States with our kids in 1994. We came out just after Christmas for two weeks and went to Orlando, went to Disney World, did all of that. And unbeknownst to us, 12 months later, we were flying out to live here permanently for at least three years. So that was a catalyst to come out to the States. And... and get the experience as well. Yeah. So I always remember saying to Fiona, don't worry, we'll be out here for three years, then we'll be back in London. And of course, it's the end of this year, 1995 to 2025, it's 30 years at the end of this year. Right. We've been here and, you know, in the States. So, you know, from that perspective, yeah, It's been a wonderful experience for us, but given technology today with Zoom and everything, you're not far away from anyone in the world. So we were the only ones to leave, Fiona and I and all our family. All of her family, 30, 40 direct family members still live within three or four miles of each other in Aberdeen. Oh, wow. Including her mom who was 95. Just had the birthday. Had her 95th birthday. And she still goes to all the football games. Oh, it's so awesome. She doesn't know much about football, but she enjoys her sandwiches and her coffee. Oh, that's wonderful. So what happened? And you did sell the company. Yeah, so we sold the company. I didn't take any cash in the deal. I took stock in the public company here. I put it all in on here. IQ software. IQ software, okay. So you roll it in. And then so fast forward, we grew that business, merged that with another public company around about 2000. Yeah. We then had an e-recruiting business called MiracleWorkers.com that we funded in– December of 1999, think about it, because the dot-com or the dot-bomb era, right? Right. So we launched an e-recruiting site for healthcare, very specific for healthcare. And, you know, the NASDAQ is tanking. And actually, I think one of its lowest points was the 18th of August, 2000. 2000. Was it 2000? Yeah, 2000. Yeah. And... That was the day we actually sold the business to what is today CareerBuilder. Right. Back then, there were three general sites. There was Hot Jobs out of New York, now Yahoo Jobs. Yeah. There was Monster. Right. And there was Headhunter. Right. Here in Atlanta. Yeah. In Peachtree Corners. Sure. And all three were bidding to get our business because we'd built up the largest real jobs from real healthcare employers, database and environment over a short period of time. Yeah. We launched. So... That was very fortunate because with the NASDAQ collapsing, we were pre-revenue as well. But we sold the business to Headhunter and my team went over there. I took a bit of a sabbatical looking for another... I did some consulting work. Then we found what became the Bright Tree business, the cloud platform we had for home care and home medical equipment that we found in 2004 to go over January of 2005, which was just an incredible success. Was that the huge one? That's the big one. That's your big one. We'll get into that. Was Matt Ferguson the CEO? Yeah. He was? So you worked with? Well, Matt wasn't the CEO. Bob Montgomery was. Oh, okay. Matt was up in Chicago in sales and that, and then Matt took over. And so a number of my team went to work, obviously, with Matt. That's so cool. So you got to work with Matt in some capacity. All right, you get into this next business. It's cloud software. Was that before cloud software was a big thing? Were you on a front edge, or what was the business? Well, in healthcare… It's probably the last area to adopt technology, right? I mean, even today, with the dental software business we have, still 90% of dental practices don't have their practice management system on the cloud. Yeah. A lot of them are still writing notes. And using typewriters. I just ran into two practices that still use typewriters. So anyway, we came across what became the Bright Tree business, and it had burned about 6 million investors came from a home medical equipment company they had sold and wanted to build a software platform. So when we were talking with the guy, we knew them because their kids also went to Great Rolando Christian School, tried to give them a bit of advice. We got involved at the end of 2004. It was doing 600,000 in revenue and losing an awful lot of money. So I came in as CEO of the business. Rick Chitty from the IQ Software days. Right. Rick wanted to retire, but he became chairman. And... So we made a small investment in that business, but mainly sweat equity. And so we took that business from 600,000 in revenue in 2004, losing a lot of money. And in 2016, we sold it for 800 million in cash. How many years? What was the year again? 12 years. Okay, 12 years. Okay, got it. And it's a long time in software. Sure. Right. Dog ears. Yeah. Right. Normal industry. What was the first thing you did? Cause that's fascinating. Like you get in there, you own the company. What did you look at? And what was the first time? Well, it's, it's a number of things. First of all, it was looking at the reverse. Where were we spending money? Right. And, and, They were spending an inordinate amount of money on technology and services that we didn't need to spend as a company. So you chop it. You look at that. So we brought the company back down to a manageable group of people, more importantly, that were on board. I like to say to people, listen, we're going to be on a real... growth track from monday morning this might be the friday and that's what i said the train's leaving at nine o'clock on monday it's okay if you don't want to be on it let me know yeah because i we will know anyway yeah if you want to be on the train right and um so we we set the train off on that monday and within two weeks two or three guys were just taken to our lunches and stuff it's like so That's it. Goodbye. You know, and it's, you know, it's difficult at times to live by this adage of, you know, say what you mean, but don't be mean about it. Sometimes that's tough depending on the character you're dealing with, but you're out. Yeah. Wow. And so, but, you know, the main focus then was, we're selling five or six deals a month to small home care companies at this cloud platform, right? Why can't we sell 20? So we had some salespeople. We ended up with one sales, only one sales guy. And how he was compensated was, And you almost needed a degree in statistics analysis to work it out, right? So anyway, Mac was his name. And I said to Mac, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to pay you for five deals a month. But if you do 10 deals a month, I'll pay you this. And he's like, okay, carrot and stick, I'm in. I'm up for it. And it worked? Yeah. And then so what we did was I brought on a guy called Mark Blunt and marketing to help me with this. And Mark is just retiring. He's the guy retiring at Curve. He's been with you. There's that loyalty theme. Yeah. Just with you a long, long time. And we had our ups and downs, as you always do. Sure. But we basically… Paired it back, got motivated people, tried to work out a track for investment in product. And I see this a lot in technology companies. And the same was true of Curve. the curved dental business that we bought eight years ago or seven years ago, right? Was that whatever they were spending on R&D technology in the platform, that they were spending 75% of it on infrastructure and only 25% on developing code, actually developing the application when it should be the reverse. Oh. Right? My experience or experience anyway. So we, long story short, we got it cashflow positive. Wow. Okay. So, for example, we would have the old legacy software vendors. We'd have them, for example, the image you might use on an email might be they'd be on a tugboat just chugging along. And then we'd have Captain Bright Tree with his speedboat next to it. That's cool. The analogy. And we'd do other things around that as well. But we've sent an email out. twice a month of that, we'd get like 25 to 28 calls, sales calls. And who are you sending them to? Like sending them out to who coldly, cold calls? Yeah, well, there would be people that we had built up database that we did a partnership with a purchasing company with a purchasing organization, group purchasing organization, but like the MedAssets guys, right? But for our industry. And that gave us a platform to get some credibility. So what we did was we would email, we would get the database from them and start building our own CRM system with Salesforce within it. So you put an email and maybe get 25 responses. I'd answer the phone, right? Because- In terms of marketing, in terms of today, people are looking for instant gratification. If you send out a request on a website, like to the Curve website today, and somebody calls you three days later, it's gone. It's gone. Right? It's gone. Early bird gets the worm. Well, back in the 90s, before any of this stuff, we'd put an ad at IQ Software in Computing Magazine. Someone would cut it out. Right? Fill it out. And they would send it in. So groceries to garbage, so to speak, on the lead back then was two days. Now it's two minutes. 15, yeah. So what we do is you have to answer that phone. You have to respond to that email. online request immediately because if you do that most buyers don't really know exactly what they should be looking for you get an opportunity to what i call bend the survey which is to address things they might not have thought about in that first call oh yeah you know and and then the goal obviously is to get them on to a demonstration so we back to the bright tree we we went from We went from 600,000 over 11 years, 12 years, to about 130 million in revenue and producing about 45% real EBITDA, what I call Scottish EBITDA. Scottish EBITDA. Not adjusted EBITDA profitability. The reason I say that is because people talk about Scots people being cheap. We like to say frugal. Some people say we have deep arms. We have short arms and deep pockets because we never get to our wallets. And actually, a little gem for you is that Aberdeen, our Aberdonians are supposed to be the Scots within Scotland. So we've got a main street in Aberdeen called Union Street, a mile long, right? Right. Big shopping thoroughfare where it used to be. And there are postcards of Aberdeen on Flag Day is empty. Flag Day is where people collect charitable contributions. Okay. So it's empty. Yeah. Anyway, I digress. That's great. But that was an incredible event. incredible journey and it blessed an awful lot of people, you know, as well. You know, I remember my investors and they're still investors today at Curve and I invested in their funds as well, Battery Ventures. I remember they were telling me I was too generous with stock options, you know, but when it came to selling the business, about 60 million or the 800 million went to regular employees, which I was really I was really proud of. And it made incredible differences to some people. You know, one of our founding engineers actually died one Sunday in the office of a heart attack. He'd been to see the doctor on Friday. The doctor said he just had heartburn, came to the office on Sunday, passed away. That was a real challenge for us as a business at the time. But what I didn't tell... his wife and family was that we kept his stock options going. And when we sold the business, she was the first call that I made and was able to tell her it was worth half a million dollars to her. And she said, you won't believe this, but Kids are just going to college now. We were going to have to sell the house to pay for their college fees. I don't need to sell a house now. I could give you five or eight stories like that. I called every single, 94 people, I called them all. And it was so good to be able to reward or help these people along. Yeah, that goes back to the beginning of what I said. That's why I thought it's going to be an incredible episode Not because of, there's plenty of successful people out there. It's the way you've conducted business across the years that really stood out to me. So that's really impressive. No, make no mistake. My expectations are high of people. Sure. I've fallen out with a lot of people over time. I look back on some of that and think, well, I could maybe have been less mean about some things. And even I look at the football club just now and we have some challenges there. On the field, it's very competitive. Off the field, incredible increase in revenues with a club based on people focusing on the things that matter. Actually, there was a guy I worked with in the 80s in London when I was down there. And He said to me, this is a true story. He said to me, Dave, there are two types of people I meet. And I was running and gunning the day I was in my mid-20s, right? And I didn't take any prisoners, right? And he said to me, there are two types of people you meet. There are people that if you were in the ditch and they had a gun, they'd shoot you. And there are other people that would jump into the ditch with you. And I said to him, which ones would you hire? He said, only the ones in the ditch with you. So I took that as a bit of a compliment. That's awesome. Wow. That's great. I was 26 at the time. That was my excuse for... Yeah. But, you know, I like to say... Being 66 now, I'm a bit of a recovering perfectionist. And I'll never retire. I love what I do. I'm able, Fiona and I are able to wake up, you know, we're Florida. We could be up in Atlanta with our kids, be in Scotland. You can work from kind of wherever. But the key thing I learned over the years is hiring and retaining people that are better than me round about me. Yeah. Which is why I'm able to chair the dental software business and have Jana run it. Yeah, yeah. And that's like your formula. That's the Dave formula. Surround myself with high integrity people that know way more than I do. Yeah. If I had to assess it, that's what I see. Yeah. Because I've now met with some of your team members. Right. And that's how I would assess what I see of you. So that's impressive. Yeah, and many of us have worked together now for 25 years. Yeah, how many years now with Jana? 20? Plus years? Yeah. Well, she joined IQ Software in 1996 just after I sold the business in London there. She was actually leaving that summer. Yeah. And the story is that I kind of caught her almost literally at the elevator. about to leave. And I said, you come to my office, can I spend a few minutes with you? And that's when I said, she was doing consulting work for the company at the time. I said, look, we need to do a better job of our customers implementing the system. I need somebody to lead sales of our training and consulting business. And I'd love for you to stay and do it. And 25 years or 23, 24 years later, she's the president of Curved Dental. Right. So cool. Remarkable. And we've gone through the whole Jana. She was married at the time having kids or kids now being adults. Yeah. But, you know, for me, I don't. Trying to treat people, whether you work with them for five days or five years, everybody gets treated the same. Transparency is important. Everybody needs to understand the mission, right? I mean, for example, with the football club, there's only, yes, a lot of things matter, but the two things that really matter, right, with the investments we're making in our academy are players making it to the first team. Winning tournaments, yeah, it's nice, but we do that to bring players to the first team. That is the key indicator for our academy. And then with the first team, it's the first team achieving the goals we set for the year in terms of how we do in cups and league. So, you know, I'm not... Being a data guy and a financial guy, I'm not big into people getting bonuses on... Fluffy stuff, right? Personal goals, right? It's like, hold on a minute. You're going to get 100% of your bonus for the year, yet we missed our revenue number. We missed our profitability number. We were nuts. We didn't make our league position. So everything has to be tied into one or two key kind of indicators that are there. Then everybody gets aligned, right? Yeah. Yeah. You're really competitive, and I'm interested to know, did that start as a child? Well, no, it's interesting. I really didn't know what I wanted to do as a kid. I was pretty lazy at school. You know, back in the day in Scotland, education was great, certainly then. A culmination of four years worth of going to school came down to a number of two-hour exams you sit on all these subjects, you know, and all these kind of GPAs as you go along. Right. And I was into football and playing around. I'm talking about when I was 16, up to 16. Sure. And... I never knew whether I wanted to play football or go and watch Aberdeen, right? So I was never going to make it as a player because you need to be really dedicated. Right. So about two weeks before setting these final exams, I crammed in two weeks study and I passed all of the exams. You did? That's great. And much to the surprise of some of my teachers, you know? So... So from that perspective, it really came down, what did I really want to do? So I didn't go straight. I worked my way through college, right? So I actually worked for the local authority and got the accounting experience. Mm-hmm. And as I say, when I left there and went to one of the all-service companies as a management accountant, that's when I fell in love with data, the use of data to inform and improve businesses. But it's in getting into that... That's where I really kicked in wanting to be competitive to really push as hard as I could, which led to the shift in technology, having to move to London. Yeah. And then eventually move to the States because most software companies that do well in the UK, for example, or across Europe, get acquired by US corporations. They do. Yeah. So you're in your 20s, and that's where it popped up for you. Some people will say that they were born, maybe they were a third child, so in their DNA was competitiveness, and that was maybe sometimes just to get a meal because you had older siblings. Okay, so this pops up in your 20s. Looking back at your life, what would you say if you had to say the most important one or two attributes for being a successful entrepreneur? That's a really good question, maybe a loaded question. I like curiosity. I just think if you're not curious. So, yeah, I mean, for me, I'm still, as people that work with me today say, I'm obviously chairing the dental software business. It's growing fantastically well. We've gone from 5 million a year seven years ago to almost 60 million a year of a run rate. Congratulations. The team's done it. I've just been there to help and guide these guys, which I like. You're like an encourager. You're an encourager as much as anything else. But people have to want to... You can take a horse to water. Right. But if they don't want to drink. That's right. Right. Yeah. So for me, and it's the same at the, you know, the football club, we've got some incredible people there that just needed some guidance, bit of guidance and motivation. And, you know, but they'll all tell you, I'm still curious. I mean, behind the scenes, I've gone to Scandinavia. Yeah. How do they do player trading there? much, much better than we do in Scotland. What have they done? Why are their players at 16 years old better mentally and physically more ready to play men's football than they are in Scotland? And so through that, I met a lot of really good people and been just intrigued. So we've got a Swedish player coaching team that's come in. And, you know, we've signed some players from across Europe and particularly recently from Scandinavia as well. So that curiosity, I don't think curiosity kills the cat. I think curiosity is important. And it's the other thing. It's not about money, right? It's about loving what you do.

UNKNOWN: 40:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 40:06

You know, you have to love what you do. If you don't love what you do and you're working for a business or a football club that is striving to be way better than it is or to keep up, for example, then you have to love what you do. Now, you can come into work once or twice a month and go, oh, I want to be here. But if that's a consistent theme, it will tell in the business as I run because we run– by key indicators and about outcomes. I don't care these days where people wake up or the hours they naturally put in. We're going to judge you on outcomes. So it takes all the emotion out of hours people work. These are the outcomes we agreed, right? We all sat down and agreed these outcomes. Now listen, there may be reasons for not achieving these outcomes and that's fine, right? But there are also reasons for not achieving outcomes because We didn't do A, B, and C. Yeah, yeah. When did you know in your life that you wanted to own a soccer team? Oh, well, so I had a sabbatical after the We sold Miracle Workers, the recruiting business, to Headhunter, which is now Career Builder. And the chairman who's still on the board at the club then, Stuart Milne, I went over there and it turned out to be for a nine-month period to help the club through a challenging time. It was back then when the TV money was becoming a lot in the UK, so in England. And in Scotland... they wrongly kind of thought they might get pro rata what England were getting, size of country, et cetera. Yeah, yeah. That led to a number of teams in Scotland going bust. And it led to a really challenging situation for Aberdeen, who were at that stage about six or seven million pounds in the hole. But the thing I'm proud of the club and being a fan of the club as well is that we took our medicine over the next 10 to 15 years and paid it all off. We didn't go, we didn't, some people, you could have taken the easy route and gone into administration and re-emerged, but we didn't done that. So we've been a going concern for now for 122 years. And what year did you buy it? Well, I say buy, I, I, I, I own 50% or just over the club today with some friends between us. We own about 86% of the club. So we made investments along the way. Right. So, so, What happened was we sold Bright Tree in 2016. I had no intention of, you know, I love the club, go back and, you know, Stuart would kindly invite me and Fiona that to the boardroom. But what got us back involved was the charitable trust. And we made a donation. So the trust today employs 30 to 40 people that implement social programs in the community, in schools in particular, that the council couldn't do themselves, the local council. local county council right yeah so um we made a donation there and then conversation after conversation they wanted to build a training ground but it then was going to be about 10 million pounds or so it ended up being nearer 15 million and that was when you know conversations took place and I made some initial investments and also an investment in the trust as well to help them use the training ground as a free lease, which ended up being for 22 years. So it wasn't one thing I would own. At the end of the day, I don't own the club, even though I've got with my friends about 80%. The city owns a club. I don't own the club. I'm a fan of the club. My wife and I are not pretentious people. We don't have boats and planes and all that stuff. We spend all our time with our family here and our family in Scotland. That's what we enjoy doing. And the club is really just a vehicle for me in particular to try and give something back to our home city where... to remind our kids and grandkids, and when we're long gone, that Aberdeen is home and the Dons, our club, is a football team. So for me, this is about trying to put a smile on the city's face and all our fans globally as well. And it's as simple as that. I'm not looking to make... money. I'm also not looking to lose my ass as well, so to speak. But it's been an incredible turnaround there since you got involved, right? So let's talk a little bit about the business of soccer and how does it work. Let's start at the top, high level, because I was blown away when we did the pre-interview. I had no idea. I thought you put on a jersey, you go on the field, you get some endorsements, you're making money, and the Best player makes the most and off you go with your career. But you're focused on a different part of the business of soccer, and that's recruiting. And then, like, walk us through that process. How do you– there's an exit point. You're selling players. Well, you know, listen, 10 years ago when the club won the League Cup, right, then Rangers– Rangers and Celtic, the two biggest clubs in Scotland. Rangers had gone bust and were coming back up the leagues. Real competition today from Hearts and Hibs in Edinburgh. They got relegated that year. So, you know, what we face today, which is good for Scottish football, is a much more competitive landscape and investment that people are making. Dundee United, arguably, The fifth club in Scotland, Dundee United, the Dundee fans would argue differently, were gone for five years as well. So in these last few years, the stakes have kind of been raised, which is good for Scottish football. What I focused on during that period in time was how can we drive fan experience forward? and affinity in the city. How can we drive that so that we can increase our season ticket holder base, increase our attendances in games by about 30%? And we've done that. And so this football itself... has been kind of up and down, up and down. We've played in the group stages of Europe for the first time in 15 years. Great experience for all of our fans. But in the last four years, we've been in the top six twice and the bottom six twice. And so being through a number of changes with coaches, which you kind of hate to do, but the football side has taken longer. Mm-hmm. Because the model we're trying to put in place, and I'll come to that, but on the business side, some of the initiatives we've put in place there have helped us more than double, let's say, our commercial income and membership income. And most of that has been focused on the younger people. the younger generation because these are the fans of the future. If you get them when they're young, you get them for life. Yeah. How young are you talking right here? Oh, we're talking about five. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Listen, we've got this Abra DNA. So the club is in your blood and under 12 free initiative. So anybody, so we've got people registering kids hours after they're born. Whoa, no way. Yeah. That's so cool. And what is it called again? It's called AberDNA. So the club is in your blood. One of our marketing guys came up with that. So this is a free initiative. Today we have 11,000 primary school children under 12 that are members of the club. And that has been a real catalyst for driving change. So when we... Think about average crowds coming to games going up by 30, 35%. It's not the older people that are going away. It's the younger people. The reason I can say that is because in both our season ticket holder base and people that walk up to games, pay by game or for a group of games, our average age of a supporter has gone down by, what, 25%. So, for example, from 2017... to this year on people that walk up to games, the average age has dropped from 48 to 35. Incredible. And attendances are up. I think the team, and listen, I've got some great people in there. I've got a really good chief executive in Alan Burrows now. The marketing team led by Scott Gormel. These guys all bought in early on. Some people didn't and they didn't last long. So back to that train journey. Yeah, for sure. That will never work here. So one initiative, we have this unpaid Aberdeen initiative for the young people to get the mindset of them to be. So these guys come into the club. let's say at seven years old, through the front door, into the changing rooms to see where all their heroes change, go into the media room for a photo shoot, and they actually sign for the club. That's incredible. And so their parents, their siblings, their grandparents can come in and experience that. Wow. And so we only launched that about four years ago. We had zero experience. And every year, about 1,500 to 1,800 of them migrate into being teenagers. But we replenish it every year. Yeah, right. It always drops down maybe for$11,000 to$9,500, then back up to$11,000. Yeah, yeah. But we have a paid AberDNA initiative, which goes 100% towards developing or acquiring young talent to the club, to help the club. Got it. And so we launched this back in 2018. Right. The first year I got back involved and we were playing in Europe that year and we actually played Burnley in England who were in the Premier League in England at the time. And we launched this initiative for which you get for the premium, for the premium membership, you get one of those shirts. Yeah. Right. And you get discounts off season tickets, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. So the margins about 60%. So for every hundred pounds, 60 pounds goes towards, and we've got people that audit it towards acquiring or developing our own youth talent to come into the first team. So when we did that, I told everybody, some people said that'll never work. You might get 500 people doing it. I said, well, if it fails, let's fail fast and learn quickly.

UNKNOWN: 51:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 51:50

I'll be in there and I'll be part of it. But I think we should do this. I believe I've thought about this for the last 10 years. So we launched it and everyone's like, I said we get about 5,000 or 4,500. We launched with 6,486. People paying an average of 18 pounds a month. Right? Now, over the last X years, five years or so, it's vacillated between 6,400 and... 6,000 up and down. We've never gone above. Well, we put in a dedicated sales team a year ago, just over a year. And we've gone from what was then 6,100 to closing in on 9,000 in 15 months by having a dedicated team call out the supporters. And all of that money, all of it goes towards... the club. But in return, the fans get discounts off of season tickets. The premium version gets you one of those free shirts. And at the back of it, it's got this Aberdeen logo. They're members of it as well. What's the number? What number do they get on their jersey? They can choose. They choose? Yeah. That's so cool. They can all choose. But on top of that, commercially, we felt we needed to improve the hospitality side of things. And so in doing so, we needed to bring up what we were charging because hospitality, when you're providing food, drink, et cetera, is expensive. The margins aren't as great as somebody walking up to a game, right? So what we did was we... We improved the quality and what we put in prices that we believe could be justified and we stood behind. And that has almost doubled our income there. We sell about 30,000 to 35,000 shirts a year. So our retail is doing exceptionally well. Our club sponsorships, not just the front of shirt, but the sleeves, et cetera, they have gone up dramatically too. So I would give the team... an A plus for the commercial side. You know, you ask some of the fans, they might say it's a D on the football side. But we're probably at, you know, I would say a C plus, a B minus on that. But it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. Right. And, you know, we're in a good place. There's no bank debt in the club. You know, myself and my friend have I've been prepared to stand behind losing money operationally each year so that the player trading model would balance out. So, yeah. So that's where we are really... got involved because of the community trust involvement of it. Aberdeen, we look upon ourselves as being different to the rest of Scotland because four out of the five million people, or over four million, live in what we call the central belt between Glasgow and Edinburgh, which is 40 miles between them or so. And we like to think of ourselves as being different. And historically... It's because there were two teams in each of the major cities. And, you know, so even today, Celtic and Rangers have an affiliation to back to Catholic versus Protestant, the same in Edinburgh. Oh, yeah. With Hearts and Hibs being Protestant and even down to Dundee. Wow. Two teams back to that. But in Aberdeen, we've had one team. So we have this... We have this kind of statement, if you like, where we talk about being, we stand free. We stand free at Aberdeen because we're one team. We don't care about your background, et cetera. We all support Aberdeen. I love that. And so, yeah, we kind of think of ourselves as being different to Edinburgh and Glasgow and elsewhere in Scotland. Yeah. And some people see that as maybe being a bit arrogant. And I'm glad they do. I'm glad they do. Do you track what percentage of fans are out of the country? Maybe they lived there before, like yourself, and then they moved. Is that a very, very small percentage? Yeah, it's probably. Aberdeen's been a very transient community because of the oil industry. I mean, black gold struck Aberdeen in the 1970s, and it's been wonderful for Aberdeen. Therein lies a challenge from Aberdeen from here as the fossil fuel oil industry oil and gas goes down over the next 10, 20, 30 years, is building back up as a city with renewable energy. Because we've got all the infrastructure to do it. Then I forgot what I was saying. Yeah, no worries. Just looking at the percentage of fans in different countries. I would say maybe my gut would be maybe 10% to 15% of people have transitioned to people over families that have ended up staying there. We've got fans all over the world. But as far as our season ticket holder base is concerned, 50% are within the city boundary and 50% are in the country. Around Aberdeen. Wow. And inside of maybe, is that 50 miles? Yeah, 50 to 70 miles. 50 to 70 miles. Now, because of our success in the 1980s with Sir Alec Ferguson, Aberdeen still has a significant core of supporters in the central belt from Glasgow to Edinburgh that have buses come up to Aberdeen every game we play a home game. Oh, wow. Every game. Yeah. Bussing them in. Yeah. They've hired their own buses and come in. Yeah. Oh, that's neat. What's the future for the team and what does that look like? What do you have in mind? Well, there are headwinds in football, particularly for clubs like Aberdeen and others around Europe where the top, you know, 30, 50 clubs in Europe are taking all the money generated by the European competitions. I mean, back in the day, the Champions League... was whoever won the league in Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, Germany, France. And now there are five teams next season in England going to be in the Champions League. And so in the 1990s, you had the Bosman ruling about players' freedom of contract, being able to leave. And now with the... I mean, there's over 4 billion euros generated a year now in European competition. So we're in a situation now in Scotland where Celtic, who have dominated the league the last 15, 20 years, they make more money in Europe than Scottish football distributes to the rest of the clubs, including them. So there's that. Yeah. There's that to deal with. And... But on the upside, there is a real demand. There's a real– I mean, Scotland has more people per head of population by subscription licenses to watch football than anywhere almost in the world. Very interesting. So we love our football. Yeah. So we just have to figure through because– not unlike other leagues where– Real Madrid, Barcelona, you know, and in England, Man City and Liverpool, et cetera, as one or two clubs win it every year. And as the European money gets more and more, you know, that imbalance gets worse. So that's a challenge of that competitive issue there. But for us, you know, at Aberdeen, you know, we haven't, won the Scottish Cup since 1990, which is way, way, way too long. Yeah. We're still in the Scottish Cup this year, so you obviously have to hope and dream. We aspire to consistently play in Europe each year and ideally the kind of group stages where the real kind of money, real money is. So, yeah, it's... kind of ongoing journey. I feel that in a European sense, I would love to see... They created this third European competition called the Europa Conference League. And it was meant to be for clubs like Aberdeen. But lo and behold, you still have clubs in the top five leagues, like Roma, for example, in Italy, winning it. And so we need to... to gather clubs, like-minded clubs like ourselves, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them in Europe, to push for competition that is a fair fight in Europe and for the money to go with it. That's one of the things I'd like to see. What do you feel is the biggest difference owning a company, so use any one of them, use Curve or anything from Bass, and... your involvement with the team? Or is it like the same thing? It's just like people, recruit people? No, it's... Listen... In a business sense, there's a lot of common dynamics how you go about things. But, you know, as Bill Shankly, former Liverpool Scottish manager from the 60s, early 70s said, football is not about life or death. It's more important than that. And so if you think about that, I mean, you're in the public eye all the time. I am. went on social media, Twitter, X, for about seven years, really to try and champion the club and be an advocate. And when you have these ups and downs and changing managers and stuff, you know, you get a wee bit of abuse. Said lightly, probably. And so, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, people look upon success as being... what you win as opposed to what it took necessarily to get there financially. And I'm okay with that because I'm not doing this to make money, right? I do this because I've got a passion for our home city, for our football club, and I... I want to give us the best platform within reason, right? Because the last thing I want to do is when I'm, you know, a couple of years ago, you know, if I hadn't caught it, I might have had a massive heart attack by now. That if I go or leave, I want to leave the club in a good position. Sure. Financially as well. So in many ways, it has to have a responsible business plan. Yeah. Are your kids interested in it? Yeah. It was really funny because my son is a big supporter of the club, that as well, and daughter Sarah. Sarah's a bit like me. She gets quite emotional. But the kids all love to involve him. particularly my older two, but my grandson was at our house recently. And Peter, who is almost 12, and he said to my wife, when granddad dies or is interested, I'd like to run Aberdeen Football Club. Oh. That's an 11-year-old, you know, trying to put me in the grave already. Oh. So. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. So we'll see. Obviously, they've got their own lives. Yeah. But, you know, for me, I'll continue to do it and drive it. The good news now is that I've got a really good chief exec. He's been there two years now. And we have people in place that are managing the club day by day, which is a big help for me. I come off of social media as well because I've got a life too. Oh, yeah. Sure. And so, yeah. Yeah. What happened? What was the medical event? Let's go to that day. Routine exam or what was happening? Yeah, so 2023, 24th of February, I had the operation. November before, I went to see my doctor and I was concerned about having high cholesterol for many years. I couldn't take these statin drugs by mouth. because of the side effects, aches, pains, cramps, you know. And a lot of people get those, no matter which one I try. Yeah, common, very common. So she suggested I get a calcium score, which is about 30 seconds or a one-minute scan. And it kind of showed whether the widowmaker, the left ventricular, showed that it was– That was a bit of an issue there. So I went to my, I got a cardiologist then, who was my son-in-law's brother, who's a top cardiologist. And he, he said, well, listen, you've no symptoms. I said, this is November of 22. He said, why don't you come back from your trips and stuff and come see me in middle of January? So I went to see him middle of January. Long story short, they, put a camera scope up and maybe expected to put a stint in or something and came out of that and said, you need a triple heart bypass immediately. So, um, bit of a shock to the system. And, um, but they said, um, we can see there's no damage to the heart. We've caught it in time. Yeah. So, um, To get the right surgeon to do it was about nine days later. And each day before that, I had been going on a three-mile walk, going up a flight of stairs. No symptoms? No. No shortness of breath? They basically said, we don't want you doing anything. We want you taking four baby aspirins a day until this happens, and we want you doing nothing. So anyway, I had the operation and success. In fact... They didn't use veins up my legs. They used arteries. So they took an artery, the radial out of my left arm and rerouted the two mammary arteries there. So I got the gold standard, which is artery to artery as opposed to vein to artery. And said that the heart was in great shape, but no damage. Incredible. And I dodged a bullet. Here in the States? You did the surgery, I'm assuming? Yeah. yeah Georgia yeah and I had a I had a guy out of trained and research for many years at John Hopkins did it and yeah I I walked out the hospital four days later two days after that and I walked two miles it was slow but I managed to walk two miles then okay so you recover you get home sort of slowly back into life? Yeah, basically don't do any, don't lift more than five or 10 pounds for a couple of months. I said, when can I fly back to Scotland? The day I got a hospital, they said, anytime you want. My wife put a limit on it. She said, no, you're not going back for a couple of months. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, it was... You know, it was, so I've obviously got the big scar to prove it. The biggest issue, as anybody listening to this has had a bypass surgery and been opened up, was coughing or sneezing, right? Particularly coming into allergy season in the South, in Florida. Oh, I never thought of that. Yeah. So that was the biggest thing. And he coughed till it healed. Yeah. Which is how long? Two months. Two months? Two to three months. So what, you had to like not cough? You mean? Well, you had to cough when you had to cough. It hurt to cough. Oh, yeah. So I got a big cushion, squeezed it in there just to try and minimize the coughing or sneezing. I couldn't imagine sneezing. It's got to be worse. Yeah. Oh. But I was very fortunate. You're back in now. Yeah. It's only two years. Oh, yeah. Yeah, two years. So I've only been to the doctor twice since then. Yeah. Everything's fine now. You know, I've got clean arteries. Congratulations. What's personal life look like now for you? You still walking? Yeah. Yeah. So probably five times a week, do three miles. It's a power walk. Or if we are away as well, you know, and doesn't matter where we are, we kind of walk. Just got back from Aberdeen and didn't get many walks in but we we last day if you and I did a formal walk down at the beach Boulevard and But yeah, and I do some some toning exercises as well I've never smoked up albeit passively with a family back in the day. Yeah, never smoked and I quit drinking about 15 years ago and so Yeah, so I've got some good habits. Yeah, like zero. Obviously, yeah. No drink, like you're saying, like zero, like no drink. No, not at all. Great. And just enjoy life, feel really blessed, enjoy life. We live for our family, whether it's here or back in Scotland. Kids are close to you? Yeah, so our main residence is in, In Florida. Oh, it is? Okay, got it. But we have a home here beside our kids in Atlanta. Outside of Atlanta, yeah. Yeah, and kids and grandkids. And we had a sixth grandchild born on Christmas Day. Oh, congratulations. Good Scottish name, Callum. Oh. Beautiful. Yeah, so I'm kind of very fortunate, you know, that one of my friends back in, in Scotland, always said to Fiona, what on earth did you do ending up with a guy like Dave? And her answer to that was, well, he is work in progress, but I've no desire to train anybody else, especially you. To train anybody else. That's so awesome. Listen, life doesn't promise you a bed of roses at all. And money doesn't buy you happiness at all. But I've been blessed to got to know some really good people. as mentors and as good examples. And, you know, we love our life here in the States. That's where our family is. That's where we are. But we get the best of both worlds. We love spending time with our family back home as well. I still call it back home, being here 30 years. Right, yeah. Well, you've certainly figured out what I would say is like the– I don't know. Your story is like the key to life. It's easy to fall off and just work 100 hours a week and go build something, and that's cool. But you've figured out how to make it all work. And this episode here is going to be one that my kids, 2, 4, 6, and 8, they're ages 2, 4, 6, and 8 now, this one will be pinned up at the top for them to absolutely– I want them to hear this. That it is possible to have– Yeah, but I would also say as well, Jeff, that I did put in those long hours for many, many, many years. I look back and, you know, but again, life is a journey. We're not promised a bed of roses. I love that. You know, and, you know, listen, when I was a kid, if I wanted extra, I delivered milk. You know, I went out in a milk float and delivered milk five in the morning, Saturday, Sunday, paper rounds to get extra money. But, you know, and so I like the term because we've got our own foundation, our own charity as well. I like the term. I like to give a hand up, not a handout. There's a difference. Because with a hand up, it's a responsibility to use it. in the right way. So we've got students at Aberdeen University, for example, medical students that come from poor areas, people that couldn't otherwise afford to go to university. And they're small stipends. It might be four or five thousand pounds a year. But it makes a difference from them being able to go to university because of their background. We just had our first cohort after five years of these doctors graduate. And the look of joy in their faces. Oh, wow. And that's an example of a hand up as opposed to hand out because there's a responsibility to keep your grades up and to go through it. Love that. Hand up versus hand out. Incredible. Okay. Looking back at your life, what's something you would do differently? Gosh. Yeah. I think that when our kids were young, I was at all of my kids' events. I really didn't miss any of their events. But there are times where I probably look back and think I could have been a more present parent or husband when I was 20s to late 30s. For me, it was all about the chase, the dream of building a business, growing a business, creating, you know, a platform for us to retire eventually. For sure. And, you know, I've been, listen, I've just been blessed by Fiona. She is the matriarch of our family. And she's, you know, she's gone through all of that. And so, hopefully, at this stage of our lives now, we spend all of our time together. But you look back, you think maybe a bit selfish, chasing the dream of business when you could have been maybe a wee bit more present. Yeah. It's incredible. What great wisdom here today. thank you so I want to say thanks for your time and man that was just very helpful helpful to me helpful to me personally as a as a young younger not a younger parent as a parent with younger kids I want to be careful I don't say young 47 I've been saying I'm young for way too many years now well the next thing you'll know you'll be 66 incredible all right we're gonna get all sort of people reaching out here I know that so you're off social channel and where can they see your business as you have Curved Dental what else are you involved in the soccer team those are the two main things I'm non-exec director of a compliance software company called MediSpend and I'm on the board of Greater Atlanta Christian School where our children and our grandchildren go as well Fiona and I, through our charity, are big supporters of Children International. She's coming on, actually. Susanna, the CEO, is coming on. She's incredible. Next week. incredible work that they do we in particular are involved in a lovely city called Cartagena in Colombia where we support the centres there and also an advocate and on the advisory board of a charity called Grassroots Soccer which started out effectively as an aid charity in Africa and now it's Adolescent Health and they do a tremendous amount of good in particular in Africa So, yeah, as they say in Scotland or certainly Aberdeen, we're never off the top of the road, which always means you're going somewhere. Oh, I love it. And Scottish profit. I love that one. That was a great one. Scottish profit. Scottish EBITDA. That's right. So, all right. Thanks for taking the time here. This was incredible. It's going to live on for a long time. And like I said, when we did our pre-interview, what I'm ultimately hoping here is that your grandkids, their kids, as the story continues to, as the family story continues to unfold, they'll always be able to listen to this, watch this and really get a feel for like, what makes you under the hood of Dave, what makes you go? Cause you're, Definitely, you're definitely unique and you're interesting. And again, thank you for coming. Yeah, one last thing. My dad always said to me, if you want to live a long life, go out with your boots on, not your carpet slippers. In other words, stay active and stay busy. Thanks a million. Thank you. Great.