S2 E7. Relationships Over Profit : The Entrepreneur's Journey With Tom McCarthy

What if the biggest issues in your business aren't the immediate crises you see, but the procedural errors that happened five steps prior? In this episode of Origin to Ambition, Sean Dunne sits down with Tom McCarthy, co-founder and director of Husset HR.

With a background forged in the high-energy world of hospitality and 15 years in business consulting, Tom shares the realistic, unvarnished story of building Husset HR. He discusses taking the leap of faith in his mid-20s, the "rude awakening" of the early years, and celebrating their first major client contract with champagne at Siglo while quietly wondering how they would pay for it.

Tom explains the core philosophy behind Husset—the human asset—and why they chose an implementation-focused, fixed-fee partnership model over traditional, hourly consulting. He breaks down the importance of root cause analysis, why "relationships over profit" is a sustainable business values framework, and the challenges of transitioning from a hands-on "operator" to an "owner" while trying to balance the high highs and low lows of what he describes as a "wild" entrepreneurial journey.

Connect with our guest, Tom McCarthy:

Website: Husset HR

In This Episode, We Discuss:

• [01:00] – Tom's hospitality background and how the service mentality translates to professional consulting.
• [02:24] – The winery dream and his early paper round at age 12.
• [05:38] – Shifting from Greek literature to economics and finance at university.
• [07:09] – The birth of Husset HR: Partnering with small businesses through fixed-fee, active implementation.
• [09:28] – The "Five Steps Prior" Framework: Addressing the root causes of business problems rather than just treating the symptoms.
• [12:37] – Taking the leap into self-employment in his mid-20s.
• [15:00] – Celebrating the first win: Champagne at Siglo and the importance of recognizing milestones.
• [18:25] – Sales is not a dirty word: Relentless prospecting and learning from different clients in the early days.
• [22:00] – The power of a peer-to-peer founder support network for navigating the tough days.
• [25:59] – What motivates Tom: Staying out of the 9-to-5 desk and building something tangible.
• [27:41] – Core values: Relationships over profit, and supporting clients through crises like COVID-19.
• [33:32] – The next 5-10 years: Solidifying Husset HR as the mid-market leader for people issues.
• [35:56] – Transitioning to "owner" mode: Reclaiming time and the reality of slowing down (the "440" concept).

Key Takeaways from the Conversation:

1. Analyze the Root Cause (Go Back Five Steps): True operational improvement doesn't just address immediate crises (like unfair dismissals); it analyzes the systemic breakdowns (poor training, lack of communication) that allowed the crisis to happen.
2. Focus on the "Human Asset": A successful business must balance profitability with the genuine care and support of the people who build it.
3. Prioritize Relationships Over Profit: Choosing long-term partnerships over short-term transactional gains builds resilience and loyalty during market challenges.
4. The "Operator" to "Owner" Transition is Hard: Reclaiming your time requires implementing scalable systems and delegating responsibility, even if the transition is challenging.
5. Leverage Peer Networks: Surrounding yourself with other founders who understand the high highs and low lows is vital for navigating the isolating moments of business.

Connect with Sean Dunne & Origin to Ambition:

Website: https://dominiumcapital.com.au/dominium/

LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/sean-dunne-76067429

Thank you for tuning in to Origin to Ambition!

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. It helps us reach more aspiring entrepreneurs just like you. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, I'm Sean Dunn, and welcome to this episode of Origin to Ambition: The Entrepreneur's Journey. In this episode, I speak with Tom McCarthy, owner of Husset HR, a human resources consultancy firm. Being a people first person, Tom adds an interesting perspective to entrepreneurship, and I'm sure you'll take away a lot of nuggets of wisdom from this episode. So I invite you to sit back and enjoy this episode of Origin to Ambition. Welcome to Origin to Ambition, the show where we explore the small business entrepreneurs' journey in business. I'm your host, Sean Dunn. Let's get into it. Tom McCarthy, welcome to Origin to Ambition, and I really appreciate you making the time for this episode. Thanks for having me, Sean. Yeah, thank you. I'm quite excited and interested to hear your tale. So on that note, let's kick off. Can you take me back in time? Go back as far as you like. Yeah. Give me a bit of your background. I mean, this is pre-your business, which I will ask you to talk about that as well. But go back in time, take us through your background a little bit, please. Yeah, perfect.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So long time ago, I actually grew up in hospitality, as a lot of people do. So coming out of school, going into uni, bouncing around and got heavily into hospo and loved it. Loved everything about restaurants and bars and the back of house and the front of house and the hotels and all those sort of things. And did that for a while and got to a point I'd finished my degree. I'd bounced around with my degree to actually start in arts. And then I was sitting there and moved into business and then some management and human resources. And it got into my degree, and I was a bit late finishing that. And all my friends were starting to get jobs, and I was still working nights and living the dream, doing the hosp thing, and had to make a decision. So a mate of mine um tapped me on the shoulder and said he'd just got this job in this um consulting firm. Come over. And so I had to make this really big call because I was going to be a career hospitals. I said, no, I'll try the corporate, I'll try, you know, use this degree. I had these grand plans of being some captain of industry. And yeah, so I was hospo for many years and then made the jump into a um a small business consulting style business. And that was about 15 years ago. So that's yeah, loved it ever since. Still love the hospital, but yeah, my background was hospo and then coming into business, and there's a lot of the carries overs, which is why I still really enjoy it. And yeah, now being with Husset for about 12 years now, so it's been some time. Yes. And yeah, continuing to grow and learn new things, and yeah, just that's me.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, I'm just gonna backpedal a fracture. Um when you talk about hospitality and loving it, was it part of your thinking even back at that time? Because you run your own business now. Yes. Did you have it in your mind at some point that you wanted to be, you know, self-employed in hospitality?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, it was. As I said, I loved hospital, but I always had these ideas of it's very hard to become quite successful in hospitality unless you own it. And it's very hard to be in a position to own hospitality by working in hospitality. So when I went in and when we started this business, my secret plan was to actually start the business to make enough money to buy a winery and a restaurant in a winery and become like this mad farmer or a winemaker running a cool restaurant. And maybe that's the plan. Well, you know, just yeah, put up with hard work. This is a good training ground in what we're doing for that. But yeah, that was a grand plan is to buy a winery and have a restaurant and have this thing where you come to Tom's restaurant and everyone just loves it, and we have a great time and drink great wine and eat great food. So that was a grand plan. It's still sitting there somewhere in the back of my mind. It might have been a little bit larger than I initially thought uh when I did it. But yeah, that was the goal ultimately to have my own sort of vineyard sell d'or restaurant estate fun. We might circle back to that later in this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Perfect. That's very interesting. And the reason I asked that question is because oftentimes in these conversations I find that my guests had an entrepreneurial itch of some description for, you know, even so far as being back in high school and that sort of thing. I mean, would you even go back that far? And I'm not trying to dig into your high school years necessarily, but like, is there a point in time way back where you were just always looking for, you know, I'll I'll use a term which I'm not really fond of, but you know, always having a bit of a side hustle or something like that. Did you have that even as a teenager or kid or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've worked since I was about 12 years old. Yeah. Classic story. I used to do a paper round in the eastern suburbs and the little post box, and you go down. We're quite young and it was very dark, and um mum wasn't too happy about me running, riding my bike around. So me being a hustle, I used to wake dad up and get dad to drive me around. So he'd drive me down on my paper round, and I'd sit out at his sunroof and throw the papers out and get kick get the money. So we got through that quickly, and mum was happy because I wasn't, you know, 12 or 13 riding my bike around at five in the morning, and dad loved it because I was out there working. And yeah, so did that, and I've always worked and I always loved it and always done it through high school. I was working a lot whilst doing my studies and then through uni. Always the one who was just working and looking at other things, and it wasn't so much hustling, it was just being like usefully or gainfully employed, creating something or getting something. Yeah. I look, I love to party and have a good time like everyone does, but at the same time, I've always thought you can do whatever you want as long as you get up to work the next day. And that's probably something that's stuck with me for a long time. So I did that, and as I said, I was quite interested in the arts and literature, and I always thought I was going to be a lawyer. I used to read like law journals, and then I thought I wanted to be a stockbroker or a merchant banker. And so trying to work through that. And I do, you know, one of those key points. I remember I was studying at La Trobe and Bendigo, and I was up there staying on campus, and uh, I was in this arts agree and we're learning about the Iliad or something, and I'm just like, what's going on? Like, I can't work, I'm away from my mates, I'm learning about Greek history, which I really enjoy. Like, I quite enjoy it. But I was just sitting there and I had this moment, I saw this blue 9-11 Porsche drive up, and I'm like, I want one. And literally that point, I then went in and transferred straight into business. Yeah, okay. And transferred my courses and then went into economics and finance and trade, and then really found I love that, probably more so than studying what happened, but more so what you can do.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah, yeah, I understand. Yeah, that's interesting. Now, look, I'm a bit older than you, but you definitely uh put a smile on my face when you talked about sticking yourself out of the sunroof of the car. I don't think you get away with that too often anymore these days. No. No, I don't think we could then, but you know, like I think that were different times, mate. Yeah, I think even the law would sort of let you go if you were doing a paper round, you know what I mean? You're being useful and productive. Oh fun. No, it's fun times. Good stuff. So can you please take me through Husset and just explain what you do and just take me through even, you know, how did that evolve? How did that come to be?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, great. So as I said, we went and got a job with a friend at this small business, and we learned an enormous amount at that business. Like, and hats off, I still respect the guy who started that. Um we're there for a couple of years, and being young and probably a bit naive, thought we could do this better, we've got other ways of doing it. Um so we left, uh, myself and and my friend or my business partner at the time. And we were very young, but we came up with this idea, and it still holds true to us now, where we were both quite entrepreneurial, but we believed that businesses should make money, but as long as they look after their employees. And so then we would think about how do we do it. And Husset actually means a human asset. And we believe that humans are the asset of any organization. And they still, even in this day, you know, it's great to have all these bots and apps and agents and things, but the humans are the ones who think about it and create it and do those sort of things. Yeah. So we started Husset and we wanted to go in with one, we didn't want to take the traditional consulting route. So we started as fixed fee straight away because we didn't want people scared of getting the right advice, looking after their team because they're scared of these lumpy bills working in a small business. But then also truly partnering with people, really becoming involved in these businesses. It wasn't just an advice line of here's a pinpoint or here's a very small problem. We looked at what's the entire picture. Because often it's not that's not the problem, it's five steps beforehand to cause the problem. So taking that partnership route, and that's what we're really about. And so Hasset really provides the resources of a large corporation, but to small businesses. And so you get that support, you get that advice. But the other main thing that we do is we implement. There's a lot of um consultants who tell you what to do. There's a lot of advisors who go, Here you go, do this. Where we really made a difference is we actually came in, gave the advice, but then implemented the works.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

And that came from we used to many, many years ago go and sell a policy or put in an employment contract. And yeah, it's eight months later I get a call going, Hey, I've got these problems. Well, where's all this stuff? Well, in the shelf that you left it on when you left.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

So yeah, so Hustler really comes in and acts as that HR department, acts as that HR resource for both the employers and the employees to try and get that medium where the businesses can be profitable, but the employees are looked after as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah, yeah, I love it. You just said something, and this is me going off on a bit of a tangent, but I think it's a really important point for anyone listening who's either in small business or an entrepreneur or thinking about doing those things. You said something about the problem being five steps prior. And it's interesting. Now I'm relating this kind of to sports. Sure. Well, I think it's interesting because I I actually just did this in a client meeting yesterday where there was an issue for the client, but the the issue itself wasn't the issue, it was the step before. You know, and I find the same in so I'm talking about sorry, this is a tangent. I'm talking about so you know, if I'm doing kendo, my martial art, and a student says, Oh, this isn't working for me, you can invariably go back to what they did in the step prior to the technique and find their art. It's not the technique, it's the step prior. And I found that in my practice with dealing with clients, and you've just said exactly you've gone back five steps. You know, that holds true across even like a lot of businesses. You deal with a lot of businesses. I think this is where we'll get a lot of insight today. Do you see that in a lot of businesses that it is that you know, you can become fixated on the problem, but not thinking more broadly about well, what's happening prior or what's happening around that problem? Is that a fair call?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah, absolutely. And look, I'll give you a classic example. And we've seen it not too much anymore because we're good at what we do, but but you know, we've all heard of unfair dismissal.

unknown 10:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

And so the employee's terminated or has left the business for whatever reason, they're unfairly dismissed. And they put in a claim. And so we jump on, okay, how do we fix this unfair dismissal? What do we do? People are scrambling to get documentation, the support that they're doing. But afterwards, you can deal with that unfair dismissal, but if you just deal with that, you haven't actually fixed it, you're gonna have another one. And it comes back to, well, how did we get there? And then what was the situation before that? And was the manager providing correct advice? And even before that, is the manager trained on how to give or communicate with the team member? And even before that, are the structures set up so they're empowered to actually make decisions. So even in the case of an unfair dismissal, you're gonna go all the way back and go, actually, this is where it started. We didn't empower them properly, they weren't confident in their ability, they weren't trained in what to do, they didn't have structured processes around it to give feedback. And it gets to the end where someone goes, This person needs to go for whatever reason, we've got this big problem because we didn't follow the process and set the structures up properly in at the start.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah, I'm not sure I've really explored this discussion in previous discussions on this podcast, to tell you the truth. But what you're really talking about is going back to the root cause and root cause analysis to sort of prevent future issues. I think that's a really good lesson for anyone. So sorry, I did go down a bit of a rabbit hole there. That's right. Which I tend to do. So when Husset's evolved, sure. Was there a pivotal moment that it was like I have to do this? Like there was a light bulb moment, or was it something that percolated over time?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

I think it probably percolated over time. As I said, I always wanted to do my own thing. Yeah. To be honest, I'm never really good at sort of the authority of working under other people. I had this bit of, I think I'm I'm settling down. I'm settling down a bit, but it's always when I was a bit younger, I always thought I knew better. I've got the right one. You learn your lessons very quickly when you go into business for yourself. So I don't know the right always better, but but I always wanted something more, and I think I always wanted to be something more. And the idea of sitting in a desk working for someone, just going through the tasks, it just really didn't fit well for me. And I think going back to that hospital is that it's we're saying you're doing a service and you're in this shift and you've got this three-hour period of absolute manic craziness, which is people are happy, people are sad, and you've got to be creative and find ways to fix problems and move quickly and go hard and just give everyone or make sure everyone walks out the best experience. And sometimes shit goes wrong. And sometimes it doesn't. But most of the time, as long as you get most right, everyone walks out with a good experience. And taking that to business to where I want to be is I love the m the that chaos. And often me as a manager myself now, that chaos is hard to manage.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

So I think I never really wanted to work for someone else. I always wanted to do my own thing. Yeah. I quite like being or doing my own thing, but I'm also I love the creativity of business. Yeah. And people think, and this is through my whole life, people think uh, you know, the HR is pretty rigid. Well, it's not, it's extremely creative, and you've got to think about different ways and look at things different ways. And I just found I just couldn't do that working for someone else. And so then coming into business, it was more of an opportunity. I think we're, as I said, we're a bit young, a bit naive, but we, you know, with no families, no big mortgages. If we're gonna do it, let's have a crack. What's the worst? We can end up living with mum and dad again. Yeah, we're in our mid-20s, why not? And so we took the leap and it was a slog, like it was a slap in the face really quickly.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Well, I was gonna ask about the early days, so I think you I think you're already sort of going into that thread. So, yeah, uh, what what what was it like early days?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Yeah, look, it was so much fun, but it was an enormous amount of fun, but it was a reawakening. You think you've got to come out, you got your chest out, we've just done this for someone else, and then you step out on your own, you realise, oh wow, there's so much that we didn't think of. There's so much infrastructure and process and system, and then also like insight of how what step to take. So it was tough. We were lucky. We we went out and uh myself and my partner at the time went out and we called on relationships that we had. We weren't big marketers, but we we sort of focused on a couple of key areas and went quite well in those areas, which gave us some funding to actually get going, which was quite good. And like I still remember the first deal that we did was for a quite large, prestigious institution that was rural, and we signed this agreement with them, and the agreement was for an annual agreement that might have been fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. So it's an enormous amount of money, but in the scheme of business, it's not this huge contract. And I still remember we went out to celebrate, so we went to this place called Siglo, which is a you know, the great wine bar at the top of the city.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yes, I know Siglo.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

So we just thought we're gonna go have a drink. We ordered the champagne and we had a glass bottle of champagne. Well, how the hell are we gonna pay for this? So I still remember that quite vividly.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

It was an amazing time, but and I know that at the time maybe you were thinking, How are we gonna pay for this? But I think there is a lesson as well that I mean, I hope you continue to do it to this day, and and we definitely try to do it here, that you know, you have to celebrate your wins. Yeah, we and that's the thing about self-employed, there's no one clapping you on the back either, you know. So it's got the benefit of not sitting at a desk answering to somebody else, but there's also often no external recognition per se, if that makes sense. So you have to celebrate your wins internally.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah, it is. Look, uh it's probably something I've started doing more now. I'm getting a little bit older. We're more established, and it's hard to do, but just taking the time to sit back and reflect, going, actually, look at what we have actually achieved.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

You know, it's it might not be Google. Yeah, you're not flying in a private jet, but if you actually look at it, you know, we've created these jobs and there's families who rely on this business, and you can take time to step away for a week and just really enjoy yourself. And you know, it might not be sipping champagne anymore, it might just be go away for the weekend with family and just hang out and do that. But yeah, you have to take the time to celebrate or just recognise.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yeah, I want to circle back to where we were, so I interjected there. But um, I think too, there's a lesson in what you just said and around sometimes when you're self-employed and you're an entrepreneur, you're often looking forwards all the time. Like, what's the next challenge? What's the next goal? But I think you have to look backwards sometimes to understand how far you've come and sort of not, you know, and and celebrate that, not beat yourself up that you're not already at the next goal, if that makes sense. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So now listen, let's get back to Siglo and the champagne and how we're gonna consider this. So what came what came next there? Hustle. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

When I first started with this other gentleman, and he instilled in us with salespeople first and consultants or professionals second. And I didn't understand it at the time. Like I didn't get it. And then I thought sales are a dirty word. But coming out of that environment, we just put our head down and just like called people and got out there and met people and spoke to people and did the networking and just took everything and took every meeting. And you know, we were talking earlier about you know choosing your clients, but we take any client and you learn and you just it's just it's always just like, what can we do better? What can we do next time? And we were quite quick to go, great, how can I fix that? How can I improve this? How can I get the next client? And it's always very much been about how do we get more people on into our cycle. And we did that for a few years, and it we grew quite quickly into a small business, but it was a business and successful. Uh allowed us to employ a couple of people, which was great. So yeah, just you just can't sit still. I think if you do sit still, it can fade away quite quickly until you're at a certain point.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

So, you know, how do we pay for it? It's burn the ships. Like, as I said earlier, there's no going back. So you may as well go now and keep trying because you know, there's no there's no retreat.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah. I like what you just said around just always learning how to do something better, how do we get the next clients or whatever. And again, I risk being repetitive on this podcast, but I find the people I speak to here and my guests invariably have this mindset of continually learning, continually growing. And I don't mean just growing the business, but growing as a person, again, without trying to be cliched, but always learning and even taking failures as learnings, not failures as, oh geez, I will, I'll give up, is sort of like, and I just said this, I recorded another episode of this the other day. And in our household, we say to our kids all the time, my wife coined this actually, or not coined it, but she uses it, you know, you're winning or you're learning. Yeah. Love it. And I find that all of my guests have got that kind of mindset. Is that I mean, that's resonates.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I think one of the things I learned, look, I used to take the hits pretty hard, but what I learned quite early was look, own it, move on. How do we keep things moving? Yes. It's very easy, particularly when you're running it by yourself, just look get in your own head and just it just it's not going to give you the outcomes you want. So you just sort of own the problem, acknowledge it. What can we learn? How do we move on? You know, one of the things I with my team, parental guides, is you know, we make mistakes, but we make them once.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

And we own that. But you make it once because you don't do it again. Yeah. And I think that mentality of, okay, cool, what did I learn? How do I move on? How do I bring that into the next thing? It's almost a compound.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

And you end up with all this information or know-how of how to do things or how not to do things, probably more importantly, uh, because you know what the outcome will be.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

So yeah, yeah, learning is very important.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

I'm sort of gonna jump to a thought that I had just listening to you speak there, around you know, you are doing it on your own often when you start, you know. You know, my definition of an entrepreneur is somebody, and spoke about this the other day as well, but it's a person who's running a business and started something. You know, I I'm not suggesting that it's the person who's, you know, founded the next Google or Apple or Microsoft or whatever it may be. You know, if you're self-employed and running your own business, you're an entrepreneur by definition. So oftentimes you are just on your own. Yeah. So the question I have is around getting advice. And I say this every time I have this chat. I'm not saying it from the perspective of a financial advisor such as myself necessarily, although I think there is a value there. Um but I'm talking in the sense of um, or in terms of, you know, having a mentor, having a peer network that you can lean into. Because at the end of the day, when you start a business, often you haven't got the capital to employ a financial advisor, employee, you know, a solicitor, a high-end accountant, whatever it might be. So is that something that you did at the start of your business, or is it something you were like, I wish I had done that at the start of my business? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Look, great point. I think I was very lucky in the sense that I really enjoy being around people. I enjoy learning. I enjoy finding out about people. I just really enjoy conversing with people, understanding them more. Um, some people can say I might be a bit nosy at times, but it's just I truly get genuine satisfaction about understanding what you do and who you are. And doing what I did, I was lucky enough quite early to surround myself with business owners or or people who were doing it themselves. And we've all now, you know, my group of best mates, we're all own our own businesses. And I have been part of a number of groups and they've got value. Um, we've had a couple of business advisors throughout the year. And again, at the time that they added value, but the probably the biggest thing or the biggest asset that I have is my close mates are all. Business owners and the conversations and the WhatsApp chats are aren't about who won the footy. It's like I've got this problem or Jay's, I'm facing this. And has anyone ever seen anything like this before? And when we get around, you know, you go out for dinner, sit around the pub, the war stories and the learnings are like, whoa, that's a great idea. And someone's always trying something new and someone's trying something different or someone had a learning. And you pick up on these things. And so I don't know how I'd do it if I didn't have that sort of network around me. Yes. Even just to call and go, Mo, it's a bad day. Like it's it's a bad day. And they get it and they understand it. So in terms of like professional advice, I think I probably I should have gotten advice earlier to what you said. I didn't, both personally and professionally. That's something I didn't do, and I probably wish I had on the professional side, even just as a mentor or a guide to just bounce things off, however that is. And then I was thinking about this the other day, but you know, now I've got a young family, and I'm like, I wish I got some financial advice early as well. Let's not give you a plug, it's just what I think, you know. So I wish I could have set myself up better because I wasn't raised with a lot of that sort of information about financial advice and finances, and I had to learn it. So yeah, definitely I think it's very important to get it early in some form and then grow on that. Because as I said earlier, everything's just compounds.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah, absolutely. Sean Dunn here, and thank you for watching this episode of Origin to Ambition, The Entrepreneur's Journey. I'm a financial advisor who specializes in working with small business entrepreneurs and high-income earning executives. We analyse cash flow, build assets, and protect those assets to help our clients do what they want when they want with the people that they want to do it with. So if that's of interest to you, head over to our website and book an initial discovery call, and I'd look forward to speaking with you. What motivates you to do everything you do every day at work?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

I've thought about this for a while. I have thought about this. I actually love being part of things, businesses that grow. I love being part of the challenge and I love being part of the successes. Also part of the learnings or the things that haven't worked. But just being part of it, I really get a lot out of. I enjoy building something. And also the thought of sitting in that desk nine to five is pretty scary to me.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

You just gave us the classic carrot and stick analogy. The carrot of enjoying being around people and growing businesses and the stick of having to work for somebody.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Oh, it was funny. I was with Hazam and my team members, Bianca, she's been with me for years, and we were a bit busy a little while ago. I'm like, Oh, I just wish that I could just have a sit there in an office and just do my work and go home. And she starts chuckling. She's like, You would hate that. Like, what are you talking about?

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Quiet moment of delusion.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Correct, correct. It's good. It's good fun though. I mean, look, it's all hard. It is hard. No one's gonna deny it, but it's so much fun. And if you're the type of person who gets satisfaction out of it, you'll thrive.

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. What do you see is the most important values to have in business?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, again, interesting. Values is an interesting word because people in my industry, people throw it around a lot and they say integrity and trust and those sort of things. And look, my opinion is if you have to state them, you're probably not worth doing business with. Yeah. I look at values as a framework of decision making. And so in that framework, I always think what's going to get the best outcome for the situation. Um, I think the other value I have is you know we have a lot of fun if you do the hard work.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

So if you do the work, you can have fun, but if you're not doing the work, don't expect the fun to come.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

And then another value I try and instill is how do I keep things moving? So they're probably the cool things. I mean, our overarching one, I've got this documented and it goes out in the handbook and whatnot, is relationships over profit. Yeah. Now I've had a lot of maids tell me, like, that is so stupid. What are you here to make business? It's not. It's we're here for the relationship. And as I said at the start, we really want to partner with people. And you're not going to drive for the profit if you can't maintain that relationship. And sometimes it's up and sometimes it's down. But relationships over profit's probably a really big one for us as well. Yeah, that's an interesting one.

SPEAKER_01 26:17

Touch on that. And I want to circle back to your always-moving comic, because I think there's something in that that we should explore a little bit further. But we often say, you know, you hear people say money isn't everything. You know, but I also counter that with uh you also can't do anything without it. So great. So but with that being said, I find invariably the people I'm talking to on this podcast is that if you put value first, and everyone's got a different spin on what values they're bringing to the table or what they put first. But it's interesting that having that sort of core and solid group, solid set of values. You know, the money follows. You know, I don't think we should and I'm not suggesting you were saying this, I don't think we should shy away from being profitable. I mean, if you're not profitable, you won't be there for your customers and or clients in the next five, ten, fifteen years. You'll fade away. So you have to be profitable. We have to turn a profit. But I think the profit comes if you know, do put those core values first and foremost. I mean, is that kind of where you're going with that?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Yeah, it's exactly right. Like, uh as I said, when we start the business, it's businesses should make money and be profitable, but not at the expense of the employees. And it's the same as the values. I say this sometimes is businesses don't run on rainbow and unicorn farts. Like I would heard that. But it it is like you've got to make money. But where I see it is look, sometimes you know you might take a hit, or sometimes our model is we do extra work. The traditional model will be great, here's your fixed fee. Oh, we've done extra work, here's a correction invoice. Yes. Well, that's not the shared relationship that we want. Our thing is, hey, we've done the extra work. We know that there will times it will slow down and we'll be more profitable. But over the long term, you get what you need, we get what we need, and our relationship remains intact. You know, there was this time I remember in COVID and everyone's been really tough, and I blurted something out because someone was trying to sell me something. I can't remember what it was. I'm like, look, it's not the time. I don't have time, and I got the classic well, if you don't have time for your business, you know, you're not in business. And I remember the only reason I remember it was because it stopped this salesperson that wow. And I just said, Look, our clients have been there for a long time. Right now, we need to be there for them.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

So it's not the time for this. We just need to tighten up and get everyone through this.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

And that's the sort of mentality that we always take. And the relationship over the profit is look, let's get through this together and then we'll look at it. Don't get scared that you're in a tough spot and then you get smashed with bills. Let's just get through it and then we'll look at it in the long run. Yeah, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 28:46

And and I wanted to touch on your comment around you're always moving. Now that just stuck out to me there. I had a conversation recently with Cameron Schwab and he said something to a similar effect about always moving, and he said, and even to the point of moving where the result might not be the result you wanted, but it you can't sit still. Yes. And so how does that resonate with what you were just talking about, that always moving constant motion?

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah, look, it I think it's this cyclical process of you learn a bit and then you implement, and you learn a bit and you implement, and but you get a new idea and you try and implement it, and it might not work, but then okay, what didn't work? Now how do we do an iteration of that?

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

And in the industry and the space we work, and if you're not evolving and you're not moving and you're not being creative and coming up with new ways to fix things or better ways, or it could be efficiencies. It doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, but how do we make a better wheel? You know, so as long as we keep going, we keep moving that way, that's really important to me. And I think you have to. If not, you will be left behind because there are people who will.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:49

And the rate of information at the minute and the rate of change and how rapidly things are changing. So look, personally, we have to keep moving, we have to keep going. How do we keep things moving? Really important. And yeah, it's the old saying, like, if you're not growing, you're dying. Now, growing might not be profitability or it might not be headcount, it just might be growth personally, or how you do things. But if you don't, you'll be left behind.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

I totally agree with that. Tom, where do you see Hussett over the next five to ten years? Yeah, it's funny. I've got a client, he's a mate of mine now, and he's been with me for many years, and he's been in business a long time. And he told me his story a few years ago, I didn't get it, and I really get it now. Is every five years the business will reinvent itself? And we've just sort of gone through that cycle. So I've been thinking about what the next five-year plan is. And our plan is to really solidify ourselves as the go-to advisors for people issues. The accountants have done very well for many years, and no disrespect to them, and they're great, but we sort of say, hey, you focus on the accounts and we'll focus on the people. And so we want to really become that sort of that small to mid-level market go-to resource for people issues. We want to definitely grow, but smart growth. I'm not in the race to have the biggest headcounts. We're in the race to have the best impact.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

And how do we impact these businesses the most with taking the least amount of time out of what they need to do to run their businesses? So look, our thing is definitely growth, but it is it's smart growth, and it's becoming that really respected and go-to firm, business, in that um small and medium, and medium-sized markets.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Yeah, love it. What about yourself, Tom? Personally and professionally, what are you working towards right now?

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Working towards a few things. I'm still working towards that 9-11. Are you getting closer every day? That I think personally, what I'm working towards is actually just trying to slow down a bit. It might sound small, but it's actually very hard to just sort of take a step back and breathe and put a bit of structure into my life now. Obviously, on top of that, you want to set your family up financially and all those sort of things. But yeah, personally, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm really just enjoying what we're doing. Going back to what we said earlier about you know celebrating those successes more. Yeah, so that's sort of the personal growth I'm going through over the next couple of years. And then shifting into more of a fully management role rather than just uh also being internal. So that's something you want to work on. You'll always have the clients that you're you're working with as an acting advisor, but really stepping up into that role, which will be good.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Oh, can I touch on that then, if you don't mind? A lot of the small business clients I work with, so one goal I didn't invent this target either way, but it's one that I use. We call it 440. So business owners trying to get them to get to a point where they work four days a week for 40 weeks of the year. Love it. Which is, you know, ambitious. I think the four days a week is more achievable than the 40 weeks a year. I think taking 12 weeks a year off is fairly tricky to do. But the principle is to give them the space to get their business to a point where they could take 12 weeks off because the business will continue to operate. Yes. So and then that feeds into I speak to all of my clients, and this isn't actually about me, I'm trying to talk about the point you just made, but speak to all of our clients around being a business cliche, business owner, not business operator. Yes. Sort of being able to step yourself up and out to a degree and make your business a more a saleable asset, so to speak. So you're something you could exit at some point in the future if you wanted to. Is that kind of where you're going? So that was a completely winded way to sort of say, is that kind of that path that you're talking about now? Like you're always going to have a relationship with certain clients and all the rest of it, but really to sort of be owner mode, not operator mode.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah, exactly right. And it's such a hard look, ultimately, we're a service-based business. Like that's what we are. You can put any marketing spin around it, but but at the end of the day, we provide a service to clients to allow them to do what they need to do.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Service-based businesses are inherently tied to the owners or the principals of the firms. So moving that is, I don't think people are quite understand how big a shift it is. It's great for Instagram to go do this and do this, but actually doing that is extremely challenging. And um, I sort of underestimated how hard it would be about two years ago. Um but it's great if that's what I'm talking to. And I think the point of that isn't to try and get it to a point where you can you know go online and boat out and Saint Tropez or something. It's the point of that is to f free yourself up to do the next one.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

And the 440, I mean, my wife hates it because we go on holidays and it takes me five days to slow down. We get about three days of just numb nothingness, and then I've wound back up again. They have to come home and get back to work. Yeah. So it's but I love the concept.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And as I say, it's a goal that we were towards. Um it might be slightly aspirational, but you know, if you aim for it, even if you got halfway there, you'd probably be pretty happy, you know, sort of thing. Yeah. So yeah, so that's how we work with it. So, what advice would you give someone, you know, to starting out? So someone listening to this now and they're thinking, I I think this is for me, not your business or my business, but you know, I want to start a business, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to be self-employed, I don't want to sit at the desk and work for someone else. If you could just give them a piece of advice before starting out, what would that look like?

SPEAKER_00 35:12

I think the first thing would be ask more questions. Okay. Just ask more questions and then get involved in things that you don't think you should. And so where I'm going with that is, you know, one of my biggest takeaways is you know, if someone's chatting to me, is first thing I say is learn to do your own bookkeeping. Because you might be a lawyer, but learn to do your bookkeeping because that's going to give you so much insight into how a legal practice runs. Or if you want to go and do it by yourself, go and be uncomfortable and jump on a podcast. Or ask more questions to the a guy who's driving a taxi because he's got heaps of stories as well. And so it's just ask more questions and just get as much knowledge as you can. I'll probably from self-reflection slow it down a bit. Maybe get a little bit more experience under the belt first before you go. But at the same time, yeah, just have a crack.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I like that. Ask more questions. So that feeds into what do you think uh is a critical mindset? I won't talk about skill set because I think you've just sort of touched on that, to be perfectly honest. Uh sort of talk about mindset. What do you think is a critical mindset for an entrepreneurial endeavor?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Good question. I think the mindset is you have to be able to take the hits. You just have to be able to get up and keep going. And you have to be able to back yourself. Yeah, okay. There's this bit of just pushing through the fear and just taking a step, and somehow it's not gonna work out. If you're gonna get frozen by the oh, what if it doesn't work out, or oh what if they don't like it, or oh, what if this doesn't work, you're just not gonna get anywhere. And so I think being able to get back up, take the hips, back yourself, and just sort of keep pushing forward is what you're gonna do. If you just want to sort of hang out and think it's all gonna come and you're gonna be Mark Zuckerberg, well, I'd you're probably in for a bit of a rude shock. Yeah, yeah, that's um interesting.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Do you think that feeds into again? I didn't coin this phrase, but I call this the rules of the game. So when you decide to set out on this endeavor, you have to understand the rules of the game before you set out. And the rules will be different for everyone, you know, depending on which game you've decided to play, to use that analogy. But one of the rules you're saying is then you're gonna take the hits. So if you don't like the idea of taking the hits, maybe it ain't for you.

SPEAKER_00 37:26

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

Yeah. I think probably one of the reasons we've gotten to where we've gotten to is there's no other department to handle this to.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

You get this bad thing. You can't handle it, it's illegal. You've got to sort it out.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

And it's hard, and you and yeah, sometimes it it might take an hour, it might take a week, it might take a month. But it's exactly right. You have to back yourself to get through it. So I ask every guest this question. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Is entrepreneurship for everybody? No. And that's okay. Yeah, it is okay. It absolutely is okay, yeah, yeah. But and that is generally the response that I get. Yeah, it's good for everybody. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

I think one of the big things I'd say the highs are so high, but the lows are so low. So you have to keep going. It it's great, it can be very rewarding, but also you've got to understand the delayed satisfaction is far greater than anyone understands as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yeah, that's interesting, yes.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

And so it's not for everybody, but if you want to have a go, it's great, it's probably the best time to do it is now with the amount of resources and support and people around. But yeah, there is something to be said to have a nice, comfortable, stable job where you can go to work, you do what you do, and you go home. You know, one of the big things we say with our teams and when we're dealing with the st the team members for clients, yeah, I don't know why they're acting like this. I'm like, you don't know what's going on in people's world. Their whole world could be falling apart, and the one thing that they know that they have to come to is their job. And they come to work and they do their job and they go home, and that is the one stable that they've got in their life. They could be sick kids, going through divorce, having financial pressures, all these sort of things, but that's what they've got. And a lot of people really want that, and that's good and that's fine. So I'm not talking down to that at all, but yeah, is it for everyone? I'd probably say no.

SPEAKER_01 39:11

And I always hasten to add that it potentially is a loaded question when I ask that question, but I don't come from a position of that, you know, entrepreneurs are better type thing. You know, it's it's a case of it's horses for courses. And yeah, I I don't know that it is for everyone. And I think, yeah, I think the mindset plays a large part in wanting to go down that path. Absolutely. So if you look back on the journey of Husset H so far, pin it down to one thing or maybe two things, what are you proud of most?

SPEAKER_00 39:42

Probably one of the things I don't talk about it very much, but I find great personally is I've actually hired a lot of young people through the years.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

And then what I always say to them is when you work in my team, I'm gonna ask a lot of you, I want you to work hard, but the one thing I will promise you is you'll be better when you leave than when you came in.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

That's that's you're gonna be better. It's not easy, but you'll be better when you leave. And so we've had some people go through the business and they've been with you for a while, and they've gone out, and when they leave, and it is time to leave. Like it's there's no hard feelings, it's everything's got its time. And they've gone and gotten picked up in these absolutely amazing, high-powered, amazing jobs where they're dealing with executive team members, and these are people in their twenties, you know, doing amazing things. And I get a lot of pride out of that knowing that they can come through. I sort of upheld my promise, and they've gone out and they've got these amazing jobs. So I'm quite proud of that. I think that's which is good. Awesome thing to be proud of, to be perfect.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yeah, so that's pretty that's probably the main thing.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Uh yeah, I I love it. Okay, so here's the tough one. We'll finish up on this one. Sure. I appreciate your time today. Great. And I've enjoyed the conversation. It's been uh new things myself here. But if I could ask you to try and sum up your entrepreneurial journey in one sentence, what would that sentence be? I'll give you one word, wild. I mate, I one word's even that mate, that is as succinct as you can make it. Wild. No, it's been a lot of fun. It's been a lot of hard work, but a lot of fun. I think ending on a one-word answer being wild is a fantastic way to finish this conversation, Tom. I love it. Tom McCarthy, I want to thank you very much for making the time for me. And it's been great to uh we haven't spoken for a while, but it's been good to uh reconnect and uh get onto this uh chat. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, so I really do appreciate your time. Thanks for having me, Sean. Thank you. Got it, mate. And that's all for this episode of Origin to Ambition. Thanks for tuning in. To make sure you don't miss our next conversation, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen in. For more information, you can visit us at dominiumcapital.com.au and we'll see you next time.