#117 Grant Butteriss | How to Test Your Business idea Before Taking the Leap

So you've got a business idea, how do you know if it's good enough to take the leap? In this episode you'll learn a specific process for answering that question. Repeat founder Grant Butteriss shares one of the most valuable lessons he ever got in business (and the cost). Then, he shares a simple framework you can use to stress test your idea before taking the big bet. If you've ever wanted to do your own thing, but don't know where to start - this episode is for you.

Also in this ep:

01:30 Introducing Grant and His Background

03:08 Grant's Journey in Business

04:57 Challenges and Strategies in Business Growth

06:58 The Reform Story

19:19 Lessons from Business Failures

30:13 Validating Business Ideas

40:37 The Importance of Targeting Specific Groups

42:17 The Role of Connections in Problem Solving

45:12 Avoiding Common Mistakes in Customer Development

46:29 Balancing Passion and Pragmatism

50:38 Building a Business Model Hypothesis

55:57 Vitamin vs. Painkiller Solutions

01:07:13 Testing Customer Interest and Commitment

01:11:38 Overcoming the Fear of Failure

👉 Grants' Linkedin profile
👉 Grants' website 

Find out your financial skill score
Do you have the money skills to fund your goals? Take the 4 minute quiz here
🔗 https://financialskill.scoreapp.com/

Join our podcast community
Get live updates, talk shop with us and meet like minded legends in our digital treehouse. Click here to get access now.
🔗 https://www.facebook.com/groups/4609737389252111

Other links 👇

Money mentorship:
Click here to start putting what you've been learning into practice.
🔗 https://www.cashflowco.com.au/mentorship

Transcript

Tex: 0:29

Welcome back to the Wealth Time Freedom podcast. You're here with Terry, your host. I've got a very special guest for you today. And before I introduce Grant, I will give you a little bit more context into this episode. So late last year in the program, we ran a meetup for our guys and it was around the topic of business as a vehicle for wealth. I just kind of threw it out there and said, who would want to discuss this? Who would want to jump in a room and sort of workshop ideas and talk through, you know, what we've learned. Cause there's a lot of folks in the program are actually quite accomplished business people. of their own right. And my kind of selfish little perverse thing was like, how do I get these people in a room and see what comes out of it, right? And, uh, what happened was we had a massive turnout, huge turnout, probably the biggest turnout we've ever had. for one of our meetups. And in the end I had to shut it down. It was like three hours, it was three hours the thing was going for. It was 11 o'clock at night and we still had people asking questions and we still had folks really engaged, staying on the line. And I'm, I was like, guys, I don't want to be the reason you're all turning up to work tomorrow, half, the half version of yourselves. And it's, it's kind of interesting. So it just gave me a little bit of a signal. And I, when I think about it and I reflect upon it, I'd say, One in every three sessions, we sit down and we do these first sessions and really just kind of map out people's goals. And one in every three of those sessions, I would hear, One day I want to do my own thing. I just don't quite know what that thing is. That's super common and makes sense, right? Because we've talked about it before, but business is a great way for you to get a lot of control, creativity, and have the contribution that you want. But it does come with risks. And so I really wanted to delve into this with Grant, bringing you on, mate, just to give you a bit of an explanation. Because when you joined the program a few months ago I thought to myself, I'm definitely going to have some sort of conversation about this with you. Because we met, you might remember, way back, I can't remember when this was, maybe 2017, was it?

Grant: 2:18

Yep. Those pre COVID days.

Tex: 2:20

Yeah, pre COVID. So, so I did a bit of consulting and you were the CEO of a company called Reform, which we'll delve more into in a second. And the thing that stood out for me when I went into that organization, I was coming out of sport at the time and I was still pretty green when it came to consulting, but it was super obvious when I walked into that business. That it was a high performance team, very close knit, very committed and super productive. And I kind of just always wondered like, how did you do that? How do you get it to that point? And where did you come from to get it to there? So when you joined a couple of months ago, I sort of said to myself, we're going to have a conversation about this. And we ended up on the phone a week or so ago. We started discussing this. I said, stop talking. Can we just talk about this on the podcast? So, so mate, I haven't given you that much warning, but what I want to delve into this with you today is how do we know if our ideas are worth betting on? We see a lot of very highly accomplished, very experienced people very highly credentialed people who really battle to, you Make that step and have it with confidence. And your background, I think, leans itself really nicely to this conversation. I don't want to do any more talking for you. I'd rather you tell a bit more of your story so that we can understand where you're all coming from. And then what I'd like to do is jump into that question. How do we know if our idea is worth betting on and having that conviction when we do? So mate, tell us a little bit more about, I guess, your background in business and where you're coming from.

Grant: 3:43

Yeah, it's a fantastic Terry, and thank you very much for having me on. And it's good to normally get told to stop talking on the phone. It's not often it's followed with

Tex: 3:52

Before,

Grant: 3:57

had an intrinsic interest in business as just the vehicle of the way that people make things happen in the world. so when I was a kid and I was deciding what to do school, I knew I wanted to be in that space in some description, but had no idea. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to go learn the language of business, which is accounting. Not my passion, but a step in the direction I knew I wanted to go and opened up a lot of options for me. from there I got exposure to a lot of entrepreneurs. And that led me to where did I want to work? And I ended up doing, working at a consulting firm doing business advisory based on accounting and finance. With a firm called Pitcher Partners and I picked them because they're specialists in the SME market and the implication of that is I got to work really closely with some pretty epic founders quite early on in my career that I probably wouldn't have at the bigger end of town.

Tex: 4:46

before you go on, I just want to double click on what you said there. So business advisory, there'll be folks in the room or there'll be folks in the audience who don't know exactly what that means. So on a day to day level, what does this actually mean? You're jumping in, you're getting involved in day to day decisions, like what does it look like?

Grant: 5:01

Yeah, most people tend not to involve their accountant in that space, but some do.

Tex: 5:07

Hmm.

Grant: 5:07

over time, just through passion and gravitating towards. Those types of clients. I developed a specialty in founders who you get to a point as a founder where you're doing everything yourself. You're super hands on. But if you're good at that, what happens is your business grows to the extent that it exceeds your capacity to be hands on because you can't make more time. And so as a founder or an entrepreneur, what you need to do is you need to start transitioning to a system based way of working and delivering for your customers. And I

Tex: 5:34

Hmm.

Grant: 5:35

a niche in that space. of

Tex: 5:37

Hmm.

Grant: 5:38

do that because it's completely different skill set to just go in and drive everything to yourself to driving a group of people and building systems that deliver something greater volume. You know, a lot more customers becomes a lot, a lot more complex, different skill set. So I just love doing that piece.

Tex: 5:54

Yeah. Love it. And so, so that was a consulting part. And then you, we, we kind of mentioned as well that you, how long did you do that for? Yeah.

Grant: 6:03

Six and a bit years. Yeah.

Tex: 6:04

16 bit years? How many companies do you reckon across that time?

Grant: 6:08

Oh, geez. There's a question. Probably about 500. I would have thought I would have seen it in some capacity. Obviously not all of them at some depth. You know, some of them I just would have gone out and done some reporting for.

Tex: 6:18

Yeah,

Grant: 6:19

but there's probably a good core dozen where I really dived in depth and went through this, this transition with them and actually reform was one of them.

Tex: 6:26

yeah, right. And so that's how you got sort of linked up with them later on. Was there any step in between this or was it just straight from consulting into straight into reform? Yeah,

Grant: 6:37

and thought I really love this strategy bit. I think I'm done with accounting. And so I thought I was decent at strategy, but I'm like, let's go test that out. So I wanted to move over somewhere that wasn't Australia. So I did the typical thing and moved to London and started a strategy practice over there, just doing pure strategy.

Tex: 6:54

yeah,

Grant: 6:55

and I just wanted to see if I could sell it. And I got results. And did I actually enjoy what I thought I was going to? And it turns out I did. I absolutely loved it. I love the strategic puzzle and then turning that into something that makes change that you intend to make. And I also sat on, when I left pitches, there's all these non competes and all this boring stuff. When you work for a firm like that. When I left Reform were allowed to ask me to come on to the board. And at that stage, I joined the board while I was over there and discussions happened over a period of time that ended up with me becoming their CEO and coming back to Australia.

Tex: 7:26

beautiful. So that takes us to, to reform. Just explain what, what reform was as a company and what it did.

Grant: 7:32

Yeah. So when I joined reform was at that stage where the founders were starting to become stretched. They started doing school leavers for year 12. So if you see the year 12 walking around With a nickname on their back and wearing a varsity or some sort of school top.

Tex: 7:45

Yeah,

Grant: 7:46

the chances are very high that Reform does that. Reform dominates that market in Australia. So they had really great founders who were just high integrity, good people who looked after their customers, who knew how to get a design, a group of people to design something that looked really cool and really important, deliver it reliably.

Tex: 8:03

yeah,

Grant: 8:04

the client's buying something that doesn't yet exist. And you think about what it's like for a teacher if that doesn't get delivered to the school. So they had a really great set of IP, but super manual, non scalable processes,

Tex: 8:14

yeah.

Grant: 8:14

when I came on board. So there was a really good strategic puzzle there. I was like, there's something there, there's really good founders, great people, but where they're going isn't going to get them to where they want to be. And that was sort of the start of that journey and I'm picking that and then that, you know, that ended up with the technology transition and bringing on board investors and growing internationally and building out the supply chain and all those sorts of challenges that we took on to be able to execute on a different strategy.

Tex: 8:39

I'm pretty sure I was, I was either kind of smack bang at the start of that or as that's going on because the, the consulting, the project that we did was all about getting your guys to think really differently, getting them to think outside of their normal roles and specifically around innovation. And I saw the end result of this a couple of years later when the tech was actually rolled out. I was on Reform's website and I was like, that is slick. And it was, it was so cool to see. And I know what that did for the company in terms of its size and its growth and those sorts of things. But do you want to just give us a bit of a, a sense of what that ride was like taking it from like, Hey, small business, got a niche market to all of a sudden international business, multiple markets. What does that look like?

Grant: 9:16

It looks like a lot more gray hair than when you started. What it looks like, I mean, it's absolutely thrilling because you're stressed well beyond what you think you might be

Tex: 9:25

Yeah.

Grant: 9:26

of. But your piece in that was really the thinking of if we want to go down this path, we need people who are really thinking from first principles. And can create things that go well beyond the founding and the leadership team. Because

Tex: 9:38

Yeah.

Grant: 9:38

one of my theories is that the people who are really close to your customers, there's so many great ideas locked in them that people at the top of the organization think they're too smart to listen to. And so part of what you were doing was how do we really unlock that? Because we're going into a strategy where, like, we know where we want to get to, but how the hell we get there is

Tex: 9:56

Hmm.

Grant: 9:56

guess,

Tex: 9:57

Hmm.

Grant: 9:58

Really smart people that have the shackles taken off them that can try their ideas. have a fear of failure and getting punished. And that's where you start to see the really great stuff bubble up in the organization. So when we were doing it, we realized that we needed money to do what we were doing and we weren't able to generate that cash fast enough because it was a

Tex: 10:14

Yep.

Grant: 10:15

intensive strategy. So the core of it, where we got to from the strategy is fashion is just an incredibly wasteful industry, right? There's

Tex: 10:23

Hmm.

Grant: 10:24

what gets manufactured doesn't, it goes directly to landfill, like 40%. Like the environmental and financial costs of that are

Tex: 10:32

Wow. Mmm, Mmm, Mmm. This is

Grant: 10:38

poor. And the reason demand predictions are really poor is because they have to do really long production runs. And the reason they're really long production runs is because the cost of designing each product and the cost of setting up each item in the factory is really high. So you've got really high batch costs that you need to make a lot of product. So each individual unit is affordable at the cost that we're used to paying in retail stores. And so if you can build technology that someone who doesn't know how to design can input it into whatever it is, in our case, it was a website, and then that automatically creates the files that go directly into the machines. You cut the manufacturing time down to days and you can produce single units almost at the cost that you mass produce them for the same price there. So that was a real technology play and that important IP that I spoke about that they had was how do you get someone who doesn't know how to design something to save themselves to create something that looks really cool. And without that IP we wouldn't have been able to build the design tool that we did.

Tex: 11:35

So how big did this get, mate? Like, at its peak, where did, where did reform get to as a business, its size?

Grant: 11:42

Uh, I think the highest headcount we had was Around 110.

Tex: 11:47

Yeah,

Grant: 11:47

I got

Tex: 11:47

solid.

Grant: 11:48

size. It wasn't like, you know, unbelievable. And that

Tex: 11:51

Yeah.

Grant: 11:51

sort of made the transition in COVID had a huge impact on

Tex: 11:55

mm.

Grant: 11:56

certainly from a headcount perspective, a much smaller, um, business today, but when we're really executing on that strategy, they were fueled by the, I don't have any, I've still invested in it, but I don't have any part in the day to day.

Tex: 12:07

Yeah.

Grant: 12:07

but yeah, it's a very different business to the one that is today. It's really cool from a technology perspective. But it's just reliable, brilliant at delivering for customers, but not really trying to change the world in the way that we once were.

Tex: 12:19

Yeah, got it. Got it. And so you kind of just alluded to it there, but there was an exit opportunity for you to move out to your current thing. So talk us through that transition. Yep. Yep.

Grant: 12:36

of where the business was going, and that was largely driven by personal stuff. So COVID had pretty big personal impacts on the three of us, um, and Dan and Rob's personal considerations, which then meant, like, I'm a wartime CEO. I like going in and going. There's huge uncertainty. How do we put this puzzle together and grow that? And they wanted to move to a more efficiency, certainty based business because that's where they're at in their lives. And you have to respect that. And I wasn't the right man going forward. So I got an exit opportunity after we, as we're having those discussions. My wife and I were separated from COVID. So she's American. And we didn't get to see much of it. She was going through a pretty rough time with some family health issues. And so just the world's aligned. So I'm like, I'll take this opportunity to exit. I'm going to take some time off. I was pretty burnt out from the COVID experience, having a young team in Melbourne that was pretty dramatically affected by the restrictions, trying to make a huge transition with an international business. I'm starting to get triggered talking about it now. Yeah, just all the world's aligned for me and I was just like, I don't think I've got much more value to add here. The founder, we've got this in the newbies in the way they want to take it forward. I'm going to take some R& R and then we'll see, take some time to think about what I want to do and where I want to go next.

Tex: 13:45

Yeah, so let's talk about that next part. So this is where we sort of picked up our conversation and more specifically where we lead to with this conversation around validating ideas and your biggest lessons in this space. So where did you get to with it?

Grant: 14:00

Yeah. So, a lot of reflection and where where I really wanted to, uh, I guess, Take or, or what, what I was passionate about, I guess. So I, I landed on, um, I love the entrepreneurial space, but I'm prioritizing, the personal side of it. And I, I reflected a lot on, particularly my consulting days, but a lot of discussions that once you're part of the entrepreneurial, um, world that you have,

Tex: 14:25

Hmm.

Grant: 14:26

the things that really puzzled me was the success of like the people who were really passionate and had great vision for their product and who had started a business. There didn't seem to be a lot of correlation between those compared to people who are just, I would call them more, it's probably a harsh word, but mercenaries,

Tex: 14:44

Hmm. Hmm.

Grant: 14:48

by the metrics and creating growth and are often multi entrepreneurs in different spaces. And, I naively thought that it would be the product people. This is the start of my career. I naively thought that these product people and their passion would be the thing that would drive a business forward. And that was the really critical thing. And I guess the realization I had was, you know, had a couple of levels. But one of the major ones was, That it is, there's this two part skill set that is really required to build a substantial business. It's not just the product and the passion solving the problem. That's a really core skill that is at the essence of a lot of great companies. But then there's also this completely different skill set, which is how do you do all the stuff around that to be able to deliver that and grow that to a larger and larger group of customers and keep improving your offering and stay ahead of the market. And all this business stuff that it still smacks me in the face. How much of what a business does is not the actual thing that it delivered to customers. Like, since I've been doing this for a while, it's still insane to me how much stuff you have to do around it to make it all work. Like, I don't know how you find it, Terry, but to me it's nuts.

Tex: 15:52

And none of it involves meetings today, but all of it has to, has to happen. And it has to happen when it has to happen or else nothing works. So it's, yeah, it's crazy. Like we were laughing yesterday about like a, you know, you're a baker and you want to be a baker. Guess what? Less than 20 percent of what you'll be doing from now on will be baking.

Grant: 16:10

yeah. Which is, uh, I mean, it's

Tex: 16:13

Yeah.

Grant: 16:14

like when you're, you know, if you're an

Tex: 16:15

Yeah.

Grant: 16:16

like you obviously expect them to care about your career and value you and demonstrate that in ways that you care about, you know, an appropriate salary, develop me in the way that I want, um, you know, experiences and exposures to areas that I care about. But if you're thinking about starting a business, that's not what you think about. You see, I can solve this problem. And so it's incredibly obvious when you think about in other areas of life. But when you're focused on thinking about the business piece, certainly, maybe I'm just a little bit, uh, slower than your average Joe, but it certainly didn't occur to me,

Tex: 16:45

It's fine. I reckon,

Grant: 16:46

career. Yeah,

Tex: 16:51

that, that you feel, definitely that I felt, you feel completely inadequate because you're like, what is this business thing and how complicated is it? And, and, and like what, what, I feel like this is a big stumbling block for the person who's like, I do want to do my own thing, but I don't know what I don't know. And there's this massive chasm between there and the business. It's filling that chasm, isn't it?

Grant: 17:14

yeah. And you, you jump on the internet and you start reading articles about how to do it. You'll get all this, you know, completely insanely complex about how to do it because anyone that's been on in business wants to be a guru. And so they're therefore putting out all these hard opinions about stuff. And it's just you get often get more confused than less confused and it's just made to be so over complicated than what it necessarily needs to be. It's hard but it doesn't need to be over complicated and there are ways you can decrease your risk and increase your chances of success before you start really committing to what you're doing.

Tex: 17:51

This is just an observation as you were saying that. I think the biggest thing that I would have had to unlearn is like, as you go through life, you kind of get conditioned to be like, cool, you know, I do the thing. I figure out the puzzle and I find the answer, the answer, as in like, as if there's that one answer. But then you go into this space, There isn't one answer. There's many answers, there's many approaches, there's many things that could work. And your job isn't to find the answer, it's to find one. One that's good enough for you. And it's, probably just looking back on it now, I reckon that's the, so it's the feeling insecure, but then also looking for one answer. Like, that's just never gonna happen. There is no, there is no one answer.

Grant: 18:30

And it's also like if you're not, if you don't get really clear about what you're doing, so many things come at you to take your time that aren't necessarily related to what you want to be doing. But you can't see that if you're not really clear on what you're trying to do.

Tex: 18:43

Yep.

Grant: 18:43

I guess that's one of the things that I see a lot and have experienced myself is just you like, well, my God, how do I do this? If I had 300 hours in a week, I couldn't get this done. it seems like they're the things that you have to do to run a business, which is just, you know, it does take that, um, realization that most of the stuff is just not important. And having that clarity to be able to decide that really takes a lot of the stress away as well as helping you be more successful. But, like everything that I've said so far, so much easier said than done.

Tex: 19:14

I just, I was about to say I feel really exposed by what you just said. That's, that's, you've actually just described our last three months.

Grant: 19:21

Dude, this is going well. I'm triggered and you're exposed. This is, we're in trouble here, Terry.

Tex: 19:27

The one thing I want to get across though is like, Everyone's figuring it out and they're all figuring it out day by day. So it's, yeah, you don't, thinking that, thinking that you're going to have it all, it's like golf I reckon, business, you just, you're never going to get it nailed. It's just you're trying to get better all the time.

Grant: 19:45

Yeah, and I've shanked plenty in golf and I've shanked plenty in business. That's a bad analogy.

Tex: 19:49

Let's delve into this concept of being really important to validate your ideas. And how are you going to deliver on these ideas before you make these big leaps? Because I think this would really help the person who's feeling like they're at the edge of that chasm and they don't know where to go from here. Can you give us a, an example of your time in business from any of what we just talked about before that would, explain why this is so important?

Grant: 20:15

Uh, yeah. I mean, there's probably one. I mean, there's a few speaking of shanking something. That comes to mind that I can probably talk about from my time at Reform because there was some really good examples of what we did and some really, uh, Average examples. I

Tex: 20:32

Mm.

Grant: 20:32

What, so here's an average of, I guess I'll pick this, I'll pick what's a company called Herff Jones. And this is in America and I'll pick this one because on the face of it, this looked like an, like a, just an insanely good, no brain idea that we should just, absolutely pile, um, into. And it turned out to be, Not so much.

Tex: 20:53

Yeah.

Grant: 20:53

I spoke about what we're doing with the platform. And that technology piece.

Tex: 20:57

Yeah.

Grant: 20:57

happened as we're in the process of building that. So Herff is like part of this wider group of three companies called Varsity Brands, and they reached out to us to discuss a partnership. I don't know if you've seen the Netflix documentary Cheer.

Tex: 21:12

Oh, my, my, my wife's been watching it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Grant: 21:21

poms, all the shenanigans that go on with that. They're an enormous company that dominate the market, right?

Tex: 21:26

Yep.

Grant: 21:26

high school and college in the U. S. is insane to Aussies. Like the amount of business that is done in the apparel and cheer space. And school spirit space is just on a level that you would never get close to seeing in Australia.

Tex: 21:38

Yep.

Grant: 21:39

you go to a, you go to one of these places on game day, the atmosphere is just like electric. Like, it's like grand final day outside the MCG. It's just crazy.

Tex: 21:46

Yep.

Grant: 21:47

Herff Jones have been around for over a hundred years. And for them to reach out to like a tiny, certainly in comparison, Australian based company for a

Tex: 21:54

It's like,

Grant: 21:55

Yeah, 100%. You

Tex: 21:58

Yeah.

Grant: 21:59

You're like, hang on a second. And so they've got

Tex: 22:02

You're like, you're like, break out the credit cards. We're going to take a

Grant: 22:06

you sit there going, gee, I must be a genius to make this happen.

Tex: 22:09

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Grant: 22:11

they've got like 700 reps just with tentacles everywhere in the US and

Tex: 22:16

Yeah.

Grant: 22:16

out stuff in their hands. And so that doing that successfully would have minimum 10x our business in a year just for them alone without growth in any other area. And their strategic priority was to grow in the apparel space, right? they're interested in us because we've got a really great product.

Tex: 22:32

Mm

Grant: 22:33

we sell premium, highly customable garments including varsity jackets, which is what, what they did. We sold for groups of 25 or more.

Tex: 22:41

mm.

Grant: 22:41

at quite an affordable price. So to give you a ballpark, if you bought a fully customized varsity jacket off us, um, in a group of 25, it cost you about 100 bucks.

Tex: 22:51

Yep.

Grant: 22:51

what Herff Jones would sell them in the US is somewhere between 450 and 800 bucks.

Tex: 22:57

Whoa.

Grant: 22:58

so huge price difference, but they sell them individually. And that's large. You know how I spoke about like the setup costs and those

Tex: 23:04

Yeah. Yeah.

Grant: 23:05

we don't need to get into it. But it's like largely driven by that. so their view

Tex: 23:10

Oh, they're looking, they're looking at you going, oh, man. You guys can massively expand our margins here.

Grant: 23:15

well, and they just didn't have that. They thought our product was better than what

Tex: 23:19

Yep.

Grant: 23:20

selling. And I agree.

Tex: 23:21

Mm.

Grant: 23:21

boys,

Tex: 23:22

Yep.

Grant: 23:23

but that like we went out to all the reps. They're like, yeah, this is actually, um, Yeah. Better. And it's a huge part of the tradition over there for people to get varsity jackets and add achievements with badges all over them as they do things as they go through school or college.

Tex: 23:35

Mm,

Grant: 23:36

Herff Jones, they got like quite a unique model. So their sales force is 700 people. They're independent reps. So they get a territory, they get support from corporate head office, but they can only sell certain things through Herff Jones. But, and then they prioritize their time and if they sell nothing, they earn something and earn nothing and vice versa.

Tex: 23:54

mm

Grant: 23:55

So we're like, all right, let's understand this opportunity. So we spoke to several reps who in hindsight were pretty forward thinking out of the group. And they all said some variety of I'm getting killed in apparel. I'm dominating everywhere else. Our product isn't as good and it's not part of these graduation packages that we sell. I can get your product, And I have a killer product in that space. I can nail this and we're

Tex: 24:19

mm.

Grant: 24:20

looking really good. So we went through a competitive process. Herff chose us as their exclusive varsity vendor, signed an agreement. We're like, you beauty.

Tex: 24:30

we're in.

Grant: 24:31

We are in the game here.

Tex: 24:32

Yeah.

Grant: 24:33

that agreement didn't guarantee any volume. It just guaranteed exclusivity. So the vendors had to come to us for their varsity jackets, right? So deep pocketed corporate backer, hungry sales network, um, reached throughout the U. S., really want to sell to our product. There's existing demand for this thing. Dream scenario, Terry. Herff pushed the process at speed went over, um, to their head office in Indianapolis and we just, myself and one of my co founders, we knocked it out in a week. So

Tex: 25:00

Mm

Grant: 25:01

in our time frame of really working out Um, if this was going to work,

Tex: 25:05

mm-Hmm.

Grant: 25:06

And so what ended up happening was we sold crickets. I reckon we would have sold over two years, maybe 50, 000 worth of

Tex: 25:15

Oh.

Grant: 25:15

When we were talking, you know, we were talking many, many millions, um, per year just to start. so we're like, why isn't this working? And it was incredible. Like just everything on the surface of it just looks phenomenal to us. And

Tex: 25:30

Yeah.

Grant: 25:31

the benefit of hindsight gives you a really clear vision. And I was reflecting on this not too long ago, actually. And so there was a few things. Herff Jones and these reps have a rocky relationship. Unsurprisingly, they rolled out the ones who have a less rocky relationship in front of us.

Tex: 25:45

Yeah.

Grant: 25:46

there's a history of failed partnerships where Herff have bought on vendors. And so us thinking it's an endorsement and getting marketing support from Herff to many of the reps was like, that's another one of these guys that isn't going to go well, and I haven't thought about it from our perspective.

Tex: 26:00

Yep.

Grant: 26:01

that was what we thought was for us was actually against us.

Tex: 26:03

Yeah.

Grant: 26:04

the biggest takeaway, which is relevant to that is not putting ourselves in the reps shoes and really testing their assumptions from their perspective. this, the process that they go through is so manual and so high touch. It is exactly the same basically as it was 100 years ago. Yeah. They sit with every single student individually, they fill out meticulously, hundreds of pages of forms, while the student sits there to get every detail right about their class rings, about their cap and gowns, about their yearbooks, about their announcements, about their diploma frames, right? You've got to make these custom, so the details have to be right.

Tex: 26:41

Yeah.

Grant: 26:41

and it's always sold in packages that ours weren't in and you can't get in for another 15 months to go through a cycle. And so we have this technology platform where we're like, we'll sell through this and the reps will save a ton of time. You can just sit there, we'll be done in two or three minutes and the order goes directly through to us. You don't even need to post it and you can see where all your orders are at. the reps saw the manual process as a core part of their offering because that's how they built relationships with schools and students were able to get exclusive access to the students by running events and stop the Amazons or the reforms of the world from disrupting them, even if they had a cheaper product,

Tex: 27:17

Right.

Grant: 27:18

or a better product because they're like, I will just look after everything for you and we'll make sure it's right. And they're on campus and they really own that space in front of the students. and I guess on top of that, because they did it that way, they also, the reps also expected really high levels of customer service,

Tex: 27:33

Yep.

Grant: 27:35

but we're like, well, our technology overcomes all the issues that you guys need customer service for. you, what we don't need to build a team that we don't have the resources to build for 700 reps so just the confluence of those things coming together from a reps perspective, what made complete sense on the surface. If we'd gone below and go, how does this look from a reps perspective? And actually work with them pre signing this deal, pre pouring enormous amounts of investment and time into it. We either would have not gone ahead, or we would have done it really differently in a way that made a lot more sense to the reps, even though it looked fantastic on the surface and it didn't work out. And that's largely what the process of going through and validating your idea before you overcommit does, is you bring out these risks and you either change what you're doing or you don't go forward because you're going to waste your time, your money, your effort. which you've only got so much of.

Tex: 28:25

That size, that's, that's like a 10 million plus mistake.

Grant: 28:32

Yeah, well, I mean, you've also got your, um, you know, you've What's your next best option? Like,

Tex: 28:38

Yeah.

Grant: 28:39

up to do that? And we have, like, quite a few opportunities in front of us and we're like, this is the highest

Tex: 28:44

the one. Yeah.

Grant: 28:45

these guys want our technology. They act like a over 100 year old company. Like it is really, really old school. And so they're trying to modernize. We've built the thing that they're looking for. They were talking about investment and acquisition, all these sorts of stuff as well. And we're like, no, no, we've got other plans for this stuff so it looked phenomenal, but that was on me for not doing the work to really, I got too excited, like, I'll

Tex: 29:10

Yeah.

Grant: 29:10

you, like, I

Tex: 29:12

It'd be hard not,

Grant: 29:13

emotional

Tex: 29:14

Like, it'd be really hard.

Grant: 29:16

component into my decision making that, um, I have prided myself on not doing, um, and it just again reinforces how hard it is when it's your own thing. The

Tex: 29:26

Yeah.

Grant: 29:26

take over and the excitement can take over and you've worked so hard for something and look at, you know, this is all about to happen and all this, it's, you know, it's, it's a real reality check that doesn't matter what you think in your head, the world will bite you in the arse if it thinks something different.

Tex: 29:40

And that's probably what you're getting at here, isn't it? The quality of your idea. It's measured in the actual marketplace, not in, not in your head, is that right?

Grant: 29:48

Yeah, you got to get out and see what the real world thinks about what you're doing. Um, and that is, and not afraid, not be afraid to a little silly. doing that, because the amount of time that you save and the credible information that you get is far better than just sitting there brainstorming and coming up with ideas within your own four walls.

Tex: 30:07

Ah mate, that's, this is such a powerful, I hope if you're listening to this, that you can appreciate the value of this lesson. Because it's huge. You can save yourself a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of heartache, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears by just really internalizing what you just heard. Because that mistake there is classic when you are moving out doing your own thing. It never turns out, it absolutely never turns out how you think it's going to. Because you cannot predict reality. Just you can't predict how people are going to react to what you're doing. so mate, thank you so much for sharing that with us. And I would love to make this as practical as possible now, because that concept there, the quality of your idea is measured in the real world, not in your own head. How do we make this, like, how do we act on this wisdom? How do we make this insight useful for somebody who's like, okay, cool, I reckon I've got an idea. What do we do? What are the steps?

Grant: 31:02

Yep. first step is write your idea down. it is amazing how we can justify what we think we thought before when something new happens and you move, the sands move from under you. So by writing it down. What you do is you give yourself the opportunity to learn what's right and what's not. the thing that you should write down generally has three parts to start with at a very basic level. So, who's the customer? what problem do they have and what solution are you going to provide just being as specific as possible. So right written down in a really specific way allows you to test that idea in reality and get information. They'll either say, Hey, awesome idea or in the process of testing it. The most likely scenario is you will get better ideas by finding out what's wrong with that and then coming back and improving on it and iterating it. but writing it down and just those three things to start with. Who is the person that I'm talking about a group of people? What problem do they have that I'm going to solve? And what solution do I think would solve that problem? And that's just a really solid starting point and might sound easy, but when you have to write it down and really put you, you know, your thumb on it and say, this is what I think it can be a little more challenging than you think.

Tex: 32:19

Oh, 100%. You don't have any runs on the board. You don't have any confidence because you have no evidence at that point. So it's really easy to try to be really broad. And this is, this is the most classic mistake you can make. Be like, it's for everybody. Um, everybody needs this thing that I've got. Everybody's going to care about it. Um, the solution that I'm going to put forward solves it for everybody, every one of those people.

Grant: 32:41

Yeah, like you

Tex: 32:42

And that's, that's coming from insecurity because you just don't, you're trying to get as many people as possible because you don't know if you can get one.

Grant: 32:48

But you, you see it on like any social, you jump on Facebook, right? And I'll say Facebook because I'm aging myself a little bit. Um, but you could jump on and there's ads everywhere for stuff. People who make those ads think it's the best idea ever.

Tex: 33:02

Yep.

Grant: 33:03

think they're doing something awesome. But you look at it and you just scroll past. You're like, piss off. I want to just see what's on my feed or whatever like that. That's how people, that's how the world sees your idea as well.

Tex: 33:12

Yep.

Grant: 33:12

that realization about, you know, it's important to me, but that's not what determines the success in the real world is a pretty important one, and one that I learned. Again, the Herff Jones example is a good example of me doing that, that didn't work, that caused it not to work, or blinded me to the fact that it wasn't going to work the way we were doing it.

Tex: 33:29

Yeah. The opportunity is coming to you there. But it's interesting. Um, I was just sort of thinking through while you were saying this, uh, the problem, right? And this is where I think your passion, if you pair the passion with some pragmatism here, you will be unstoppable and you'll beat the business person. You'll beat the purely business person. If you are thinking and you're applying or adapting that lens and putting it on top of what you're doing, because the business person, as you say, that mercenary mentality there, If it doesn't turn out, they'll probably cut their losses. But if you do have a commitment to the problem that you're solving and you can think in this way, automatically I think you differentiate yourself and you give yourself a better shot. What do you think about it? Do you agree or disagree?

Grant: 34:10

Yeah, and I think that people are just you know, you know, when you get around people who are really passionate about what they're doing like

Tex: 34:15

Yep.

Grant: 34:16

about it is infectious. So not only does it help you with your drive to go through the obstacles that you're going to hit, you also attract a tribe.

Tex: 34:24

Yep.

Grant: 34:24

and that tribe, you will need to be successful. You need other people spreading your ideas and you need early adopters and evangelists to really help you get off the ground and get some momentum.

Tex: 34:35

Yep. Execution time.

Grant: 34:43

talking all night. Terry, we've been on the phone for an hour, mate. We're at the stage where we're just talking shit. I think we need to move on with our lives. Yeah. The

Tex: 34:51

Yeah.

Grant: 34:52

guys are doing and you can just, you know, you've been doing it for a while now. You could get to the point where you're like, I've just, um, it's mundane day to day stuff, cool. A new couple 500 times before. But you've, you know, you get excited about it still because it's that you're driven by. The impact that you see people can go through, and you just have a general, you know, an inherent interest in helping them succeed at what they do, and that attracts a tribe. I

Tex: 35:17

Yeah, for sure. So, so let's, um, so, so writing this down, when you say write it down, do you mean get out a piece of paper, write down the problem is X, or is there a, a way that you kind of can drag this out of yourself that makes it easier?

Grant: 35:34

I mean, yes, you have to, it either has to be paper or something, you have to type it into a keyboard, it has to be written word, because you can't go back and change it later, there is no other way, you must write this down.

Tex: 35:45

Hmm.

Grant: 35:45

but I've been customer centric language will really help you explain it to people. Um, so if you, you have to think about it from their perspective because you're, when you're getting out and talking to people, like if you explain it more in the way that works in their language, you're going to get better evidence and you're probably going to get traction quicker because they're like, yeah, that's, that's how it is. And what do you know, by doing that and validating it, you've got a really good sales pitch already. You know,

Tex: 36:09

Yep.

Grant: 36:10

customer. see you have this problem. Here's my solution for you. You can just explain it like that. And people like, well, yeah, actually, I do have that problem. Is this solution the right solution for me? Explain it to me. And if you've already had those conversations, you get your sales pitch as well. So just the really customer centric specific way, but just use your own words like this is your idea. There's no like massively right way to do it. Just specific customer centric.

Tex: 36:33

I um, just thinking while you're doing that, obviously, obviously we've sort of, we've got more of a technology bent to what we're doing now and made some big investments in that space. user stories is actually quite helpful when you think about it. Um, as a X, I want to Y and behind the want is the problem they're trying to solve for. So for, if you think about it from our point of view, as a young couple who's ambitious and growth orientated, we want to. figure out how to make our money work best for us at this pivotal time in our life. Um, so that we don't look backwards with regret. Right.

Grant: 37:06

Yep.

Tex: 37:07

and underneath that we want to is the problem, which is like how to work, how to work well together with our money. What's the opposite of that? Not working well together with our money. What's the problem? And that's, that's where you can start to really learn, don't you?

Grant: 37:20

Have you heard of the jobs to be done theory?

Tex: 37:23

Yep. Yep.

Grant: 37:24

one of my favorites.

Tex: 37:25

Yep.

Grant: 37:25

for anyone that hasn't heard of it, it's basically any product or service. A customer is hiring it to do a job.

Tex: 37:32

Yep.

Grant: 37:33

so why does someone buy Gucci handbag? Well, it's probably not because I want a bag to put things in

Tex: 37:39

Yep.

Grant: 37:39

to be done is I want to feel important. I want to show society my status. It's like, and so by doing that, you can really actually look at problems in different ways

Tex: 37:48

love that. Yeah.

Grant: 37:49

remove things that aren't necessary, which is you want to be doing that in business. You want to simplify and only give the customer what they genuinely need, which makes the whole thing delivering whatever you're delivering simpler and also reduces your cost and the customer gets exactly what they need. Like that's the sort of Nirvana space. And

Tex: 38:05

Well, it cut, that cuts, it cuts down on time and effort to result. Whatever result is, doesn't it? Mm. Mm.

Grant: 38:14

structured in like verticals, like, you know, hardware or whatever. Um, so if you, it allows you to think about things in a way that markets don't exist, which often identifies opportunities that other people haven't thought of. So a bit of an aside, but it's a really good way to crack open, like the way things work in the world and think about how they could work really well for this customer who has, you know, We're trying to do this job like what would enable them to do that job really well and nothing else.

Tex: 38:40

Mm. Um, just to give a little bit of context into jobs to be done. So Clayton Christensen was the guy, correct? Pretty sure it was. Um, yeah. And so the research done was done um, McDonald's milkshakes, wasn't it? Like why do people buy milkshakes? And so all these different assumptions and essentially what they ended up with was people buy milkshakes to make the drive to work a little bit nicer. That's, that was it, right?

Grant: 39:09

People know. So they people in the morning that they're having really different sales at different parts of the day. So people

Tex: 39:14

Yeah,

Grant: 39:15

wanted it to be thicker and have chunks in it because they wanted to relieve the boredom of driving.

Tex: 39:19

that's it.

Grant: 39:19

people in the afternoon were often I just want something to give my kids to

Tex: 39:23

Yeah,

Grant: 39:24

so I can get

Tex: 39:25

there you go. Yep.

Grant: 39:26

selling different milkshakes at different times a day, and it really helped their sales because

Tex: 39:30

Yeah.

Grant: 39:30

were doing different jobs.

Tex: 39:32

Yeah, yeah. So I think I, I really like that idea. Like it's, it's getting away from you. And what is, what's the job they're trying to get done? and you can only observe that in the real world and you just have to be in the marketplace to see it, don't you? Um, yeah. So you've got a solution hypothesis. Your last point here, be really specific. Give, give me some more information on that. Like what, what does vague look like? What does a super vague look like?

Grant: 39:57

Let's, I'll come back to reform because it's one of the most, I guess I'm talking about it can continue on with it. so you could say so brief background. The guy started, I wasn't one of the founders, but the guy started it because they had a horrible experience going through as year 12 and were delivered just an absolute piece of junk that they didn't want to wear. Incredibly late. And so what you could say is specific version of it was, I'm going to work with year 12 students, and they, they bought an aesthetic where they're like, want to make it cool to wear as cool, cool enough for them to wear at parties after school, as well as to wear at school, so we can make it really proud to wear and just deliver it on time.

Tex: 40:38

Yep.

Grant: 40:39

problems, right? One of them was a teacher. Who makes a decision, who

Tex: 40:43

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Grant: 40:51

you imagine when it goes wrong and you've organized this and you have 300 parents busting your butt, like, where the hell is this? You know, you've organized this. Why did you choose this company? It's an absolute nightmare. And so there's a problem there, um, to be sold about. I just want it reliably, on time, fair price. And then there's a problem for the students, is. We wanna look better than everyone else. Um, so like really high quality street aesthetic, um, that that's you, you've got a two layer thing there. And so your solution is, you know, uh, it's customer apparel that's got a really cool party friendly aesthetic on time at a

Tex: 41:27

Time. Yep. Yeah, love it.

Grant: 41:29

so it's a really, these guys didn't articulate it in that way, but that's the way that they talked about it, right? They didn't go through this process specifically, but in. through instinct, they've largely followed it.

Tex: 41:39

Yep.

Grant: 41:39

that back and you're just like, well, what if I have a more generic view that it doesn't allow you to test? And you're just like, is it school students? Is it just people of a certain age? The more you zoom out, the less you can try it because there's so many of those people and they'll all act differently because they don't have a thing in common that you can really target.

Tex: 41:58

Mm.

Grant: 41:58

don't allow yourself to be wrong and test it. So those guys were able to really narrow on that well defined people, well defined group, and start really small and testing if that, their experience was similar to others in that group. But they wouldn't have had that opportunity if they just went so broad and just said, we're going to deliver customer power on time.

Tex: 42:15

Yep.

Grant: 42:16

Or, you know, we're going to make this look better. So they chose, Year 12s is a fairly small group. niche in the context of wider Australia. And by targeting that and said, we're gonna do these two things really specifically. Well, they're able to start really small and go, are these adding like, is this resonating with this customer? Are we gaining traction? Are they responding to it? Well, before committing to real the things that you need to be able to deliver that on a larger scale that if you didn't test and you just went through it, your chances of being wrong far too high to be spending that in time.

Tex: 42:47

This is something I'm, I've sort of learned or learning as well I'd say over time is that that person that you're solving it for, it's really important, I think, that they care enough about the problem. They care enough about it to be able to, spend time, energy, money, attention to get it solved. That's the first part, I reckon. The second part is also, are they, like, how well connected are they to other people with the same problem? that, that to me is probably one of the most underrated bits of, if I could go back to my previous self, I'd be um, Who's connected? Like, where are they connected? What are the groups they're connected in? Because if you're solving a problem for people that are never connected, never talk to each other about the problem ever at all, it's just so much harder to grow, right?

Grant: 43:31

It's a different market. I think of that as a different mark. If you don't have

Tex: 43:34

Yeah.

Grant: 43:35

Who can reference it? Like if you

Tex: 43:37

Yeah.

Grant: 43:38

front of a customer and said, Hey, this, this person this, we worked with them, went really well. If that doesn't carry credibility with this person that you're talking to, then they're not, like, they're not referencing each other. So it's not the same market.

Tex: 43:51

They're different segments completely. You got way too many segments. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Yep.

Grant: 43:59

You're almost having to grow in the same way as day one all the time, because you have complete inertia if they don't reference each other. Whereas if you start to get a critical mass of people who are saying, hey, this is really good, I'm going to start telling other people about it. That's when your growth starts happening for you, rather than you just feeling like you've got to push a boulder uphill to get anywhere. And so you

Tex: 44:20

I

Grant: 44:22

dealing with people who just aren't referencing each other, I mean, you are increasing your degree of difficulty, um, an enormous amount.

Tex: 44:31

reckon we've found that the hardest because money is such a taboo topic. And so finding and serving the people who do not give a shit, are um, and are more growth orientated, more, more sort of interested in success, achievement, and those kinds of things. And they are some sort of comparison game or whatever it is. That's actually been the big, you know, Big thing for us as well because it is money. It money just makes people think more independently So that's actually probably been one of our toughest things and I'd say we're still solving for that still solving for it as we go

Grant: 45:05

Yeah, well, I don't um, life insurance salesman. Okay. Like trying to establish urgency and then getting people to reference each other, like, how many

Tex: 45:15

Yeah

Grant: 45:15

up to you and said, Terry, you're not going to believe this,

Tex: 45:18

You've got to talk to this guy.

Grant: 45:19

policy that I just signed up for, you've got to talk to him. And if that's happening to you, Terry, you got to go to different parties, mate.

Tex: 45:28

You gotta go somewhere else. Yeah, exactly. Um, no, I think, so yeah, those, those points are key. So if you're talking to that person, they've got to show enough care in the problem and they've got to be connected to people that, as you say, they can reference. Um,

Grant: 45:42

I mean, that's, and it sort of comes to, mean, I don't mean to jump ahead a little bit, but anyone who goes through the, particularly for people who are doing it the first time, the most common place to go is family and friends. Yeah.

Tex: 45:52

yeah,

Grant: 45:53

Horrible

Tex: 45:54

yeah,

Grant: 45:54

You

Tex: 45:55

yep,

Grant: 45:57

your success because they're not going to give you the answers that the market's going to give you because they want to tell you yes, because I just kept they want you to be successful and contribute to it. and so that's a huge, I've seen quite a few people get burned by that. They're like, I did customer development.

Tex: 46:10

yep.

Grant: 46:11

from everyone. Everyone was fantastic.

Tex: 46:13

Yeah.

Grant: 46:13

do you talk you know, my cousin out there is in this space and you meet to my customer definition. We get on pretty well. So I thought I would just be, it's hard to talk to these people. So I thought I had an easy in there. Cousin does want you to be successful and do well. And so,

Tex: 46:27

Yeah.

Grant: 46:27

a, it's a pretty common, it's harder not to talk to people that um, don't know, which is you can understand why people do it, but you won't get the truth.

Tex: 46:34

You're like the ugly king asking his servants, how do I look today? They're like, you look so good. You look amazing.

Grant: 46:43

didn't think you could get more beautiful, but here we are.

Tex: 46:47

Massive one, I reckon. That's just a huge So there's probably two, there's probably two big mistakes, right? Going to the wrong people or not going to any people. Um, just thinking that the idea stands on its own. And I've seen this too. You actually over index on the value of the idea instead of its execution. And so you hold the idea close to your chest and you say, I'm not even going to tell you what the idea is. It's so good that as soon as I launch it, it's going to be massive. That is a huge warning sign that you're way too identified, you're way too far on that passion end, and you need to move towards the pragmatism side of the spectrum, right?

Grant: 47:21

Yeah, I mean, that was one of the reasons we had the transfer like we wanted the value from a transparency promise, but we just didn't care if the strategy got out

Tex: 47:27

Yeah.

Grant: 47:28

like, I can sit down with a competitor and talk them through it. It's the execution and it's really hard to execute. And that's where the value is.

Tex: 47:33

Yeah.

Grant: 47:34

the from doing having transparency and getting your ideas out and validated and testing the world any risk of someone stealing your idea by a massive magnitude.

Tex: 47:47

Oh, it's just, it's a risk that isn't there, honestly. Like, it's just, it's a huge red herring, distracts um, deludes you, and ultimately just wastes your time. Um, yeah. Mmm. Yep.

Grant: 48:01

to your listeners. Terry is it's the, uh, I call it um, white collar hubris where it's, you know, you get really established professional people who have worked for big brands who have a really sharp skill set and a deep Rolodex and just say, I'm going to go out on my own and just expect everyone to follow. And they're often shocked. is to how much the, um, the client was attached to the brand rather than the personal relationship.

Tex: 48:29

Yeah.

Grant: 48:30

and that I see, I've seen quite a few errors in that space as well. Just go and you can understand why, because these people are really well paid. They do a great job of what they're doing. Their clients keep coming back to them. Why wouldn't you make that assumption? but it is often far more loyal to the brand and the processes and the team that they've got. Even though they have the relationship with them, it is hard to move out on your own or harder to move out on your own. It just won't automatically happen.

Tex: 48:54

I mean, it's career risk, isn't it? Hey, we're moving away from Pitcher Partners. Um, you know, these guys have all this big track record and all the resources and the runs on the board and that sort of thing. We're going to go with um, one man band. It's just a hard, that's a hard thing to be able to get across to people. Um,

Grant: 49:09

it's not the

Tex: 49:09

and people. Yep.

Grant: 49:13

but there's all these other potential sources of advice that if something comes up like a really specific tax issue or we get an insolvency trouble or, you know, we've just exited and we want to know how do we invest our money? Like all these sort of stuff. like a really. One place where everything happens that you can't replicate going out on your own. So you're just gonna be really, doesn't mean don't do it. I'd really encourage people to do it, but it means you've got

Tex: 49:34

Yeah.

Grant: 49:34

lot more conscious and understand, like test what you're actually doing before you go out and do it to de risk it.

Tex: 49:42

Yeah, 100%. Um, one thing I'll just add to this just with the money bent is like, give yourself a runway. Give yourself a runway. So, cause ultimately, you're trying to learn. So you said something yesterday, um, I'd love you to say it again. Scientists think like a, could you say it again? Think like a scientist.

Grant: 50:02

this process, and I went salesman with Herff Jones. So I'm like, are you a scientist or you're a salesman?

Tex: 50:06

Yeah.

Grant: 50:07

Um, and when you're, when you're doing customer development, you want to be complete

Tex: 50:12

Scientist. Yeah.

Grant: 50:13

are testing a hypothesis. You are not trying to convince anyone of any of your gathering information. Am I accurate

Tex: 50:20

Yep,

Grant: 50:20

a business? You're are a salesperson

Tex: 50:22

yep.

Grant: 50:23

am convincing you that this is a great thing for you to buy. Come on board.

Tex: 50:26

Yep. Why this matters is because the scientist part of this process is a learning process and a stress brain doesn't learn. So if you just take the leap and go out with any, without any financial runaway, without any margin for error, no, no safety buffer in that sense, it's a very stressful process. Very hard way for you to learn. You're not actually going to be paying attention to the information or the buying signals that you need to be seeing. Um, I just thought I'd add that in there because you could be like, yeah, there's a lot of that messaging out there that I can just like burn the boats and just, you've got to commit and this sort of thing. And, and you're like, yeah, commit, but do it in a really smart way.

Grant: 51:05

100%. Yep.

Tex: 51:07

let's go to the next step, mate. So you said write down your customer problem solution hypothesis, be really specific. What are you going to do after this?

Grant: 51:15

Uh, a very similar thing. Um, but it's a business model hypothesis.

Tex: 51:20

Yep.

Grant: 51:21

what that you write down. How you believe you would deliver the solution from your customer problem solution. Again, there's going to be huge guesses at this stage. It's not about being right. It's about putting yourself in a position to learn.

Tex: 51:34

Yep.

Grant: 51:35

being really specific. Is incredibly important. So who has to supply you with things for you to deliver your solution? Are there key partners or key relationships? You need to get access to customers or get some sort of I. Um, how will you find customers? What is the minimum number of features or the minimum product that is still valuable to a customer? Like, where does money have to flow and just this? If I had to go back and go back in time before Herb Jones. What are your assumptions for each party? And I would be sitting myself down and giving myself a stern talking to and saying, what am I assuming for these reps that will motivate them to sell this product and make this deal work? Um, and I would list down those assumptions and I would have tested them and I wouldn't be sitting on your podcast today, still kicking myself under the desk. Um, just how you get your

Tex: 52:26

Have you ever, have you ever heard of convict You I'm pretty sure you'll say yes to this. Conviction bias. Have you heard of it?

Grant: 52:32

Yeah, I'm a, you know, I'm a massive, uh, Daniel Kahneman and all the biases. I love. Yeah, it's fascinating.

Tex: 52:38

So the idea is, the cooler the outcome, The better the outcome feels to you, it looks to you, seems to you, the more likely you think it's actually the case. Which means, the cooler it is, the more cautious, the more you have to actually delve in and do exactly what you said, sitting yourself down, going, what assumptions am I making here? Because yes, that outcome is unbelievable, could be life changing, but now you've got to actually go, what I'm, I'm 100 percent going to be missing something just because of, I'm jumping all these guns, aren't I?

Grant: 53:09

Yeah, and you can bring in planning fallacy.

Tex: 53:12

Yep.

Grant: 53:12

we, we can, it's very easy for us to see how it's going to go right.

Tex: 53:17

Yep.

Grant: 53:17

and not all the different things, um, that would go wrong.

Tex: 53:21

Yep.

Grant: 53:21

so just getting that on paper allows you to learn when you're hearing things in the real world. That challenge what you've written down

Tex: 53:30

Yeah.

Grant: 53:31

you a better idea

Tex: 53:32

Yep.

Grant: 53:33

You don't need to overcomplicate it,

Tex: 53:35

Yep.

Grant: 53:35

a who are the key players in this? It could be I need an employee with this really hard to get skill set to execute on this.

Tex: 53:42

Mm.

Grant: 53:42

need a co founder that can do this.

Tex: 53:44

Mm.

Grant: 53:45

these sorts of things that you're obviously gonna have to make those things happen. So how hard are they realistic

Tex: 53:51

Mm.

Grant: 53:51

You're probably not going to know at this stage. in fact, you don't know at this stage, but to get out there and go, well, if this business doesn't work without this thing, I better make sure this thing is possible, and within, you know, a reasonable probability that I can actually get it done.

Tex: 54:06

Yep. Okay. so you're kind of thinking about what's the machine that I need to build around this? Because it's the 80, it's what's the 80 percent? Not the 20, you said before, like if you're the baker. What's all the other stuff that's the 80? That's what you're really trying to figure out, is that right?

Grant: 54:19

Yeah, it's, it's the really core, it's the core stuff that you

Tex: 54:24

Yeah.

Grant: 54:24

make the thing work.

Tex: 54:26

Yep.

Grant: 54:27

after, like, after writing these things down, you, you've got to go out and find people who can test what you're saying. Mm hmm. Um, and you always start with the customer. And do you have this problem?

Tex: 54:37

Yeah.

Grant: 54:37

though, if that conversation is going well, you can start asking them about, you know, how would you expect this to be delivered? You can start questioning about the assumptions that you've made. And if they actually care about that, and that's relevant, that having those two things up front allows you to learn much faster. Um, and it just forces you to clarify your thinking.

Tex: 54:57

Yeah.

Grant: 54:58

just look at the paper too and go, that doesn't make sense. I just need to change a few things around to make this more workable. Um,

Tex: 55:05

that business model canvas is helpful here where you can just kind of look into it and go give yourself a really rough sketch just because you haven't done this before you don't like I know for me first time you kind of when you say all this stuff that has to go around I'm like And that stuff is. But Business Model Canvas is helpful because I feel like it's a good sort of set of training wheels where it's like, well, what are the key partners? And what are the key channels? Um, where's the revenue going to be coming in from? Is it going to be this type of revenue or this type of revenue? It helps, gives you easy, nice prompts. Like, what's your view on that? Or are you not, not too formulaic in that sense?

Grant: 55:38

No, no. I think you want to write down the way it works in your head and then sense check it against. Am I missing anything? And the business model canvas is one of the good ways of doing that. so most of the stuff that I'm talking about in some way comes from Blank, and

Tex: 55:56

Yep.

Grant: 55:56

can put on the show notes. The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development is a really practical step by step. Now, I'm talking about it in a way that's not necessarily specific to technology companies, and that was,

Tex: 56:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Grant: 56:08

companies. But he uses a similar thing, um, in some of his templates. The value of that in this context is to go, have I thought about all the important things? And the business model canvas is a good way to do that.

Tex: 56:21

Awesome. Um, something else we talked about yesterday too was, and it's not necessarily tied into. business model here, and it may step backwards a little bit, but vitamin versus painkiller when you're talking about solving a problem. Do you want to just say a little bit more about that?

Grant: 56:36

Yeah, so it's this will, mean, pricing is one of the hardest things to get really right

Tex: 56:41

Hmm.

Grant: 56:42

understanding this part of it in the early stages, you can get some information on pricing to understand if the business is really likely to work because here's an insight, Terry, that you might smack you in the face. If you want a business that works, you got to sell the thing for more than it costs you to get it to the customer. And it's easy to forget that. Um, so vitamins are something that will make a customer's life better. And they're like, cool, that's good. A painkiller will stop something that's really pissing them off, that they really want to get solved.

Tex: 57:12

Yeah.

Grant: 57:12

you can go towards, it's not like either or, there's generally a spectrum.

Tex: 57:17

Yeah.

Grant: 57:17

you can go towards, Painkiller, the more you're going to be able to charge and the more important you are going to be to the customer in terms of stickiness, in terms of your solution, being a really important part of their lives, which drives retention and drives value to the customer.

Tex: 57:32

All right. So coach me here for a second because financial education is a hundred percent a vitamin.

Grant: 57:40

And still it becomes a painkiller.

Tex: 57:42

That's right. So, so how would you, how would you advise me to position, frame, package this in a way that makes it more of a painkiller than a vitamin?

Grant: 57:55

That is an excellent question. there's this is not necessarily the way to go about it, but there is probably going to be certain points in people's lives. Okay. that are identifiable from the outside

Tex: 58:10

Yeah.

Grant: 58:11

you're like, is very painful for me and I want to solve this. Um, now whether that aligns with where you think the education component really helps, because I think the earlier in life that someone engages with you, the more value they're going to get from your product and they're probably going to more spruik from the rooftops for longer, which again, that helps your, that positively reinforcing evangelist, right? Growth cycle or a way of growing. Um, so I don't necessarily think that you want to go down that path because you've got of younger ish

Tex: 58:45

Mm

Grant: 58:45

what I've seen that are really jump on it early because they're just inclined that way. So

Tex: 58:50

mm

Grant: 58:50

flip the question on you because you've got a business already up and running and go, what are the common elements? the group, the people that come to you that you've noticed where you're like, Oh, that this is really resonating with people because of like this attribute or that attribute. I'd start exploring there. So have you got a few where you like that? We see this a lot for customers that are like really loving what we're doing.

Tex: 59:12

Yeah. I think, you know, our most successful customers, I think are, it's a worldview. The worldview is, I can get better. I want to get better. I, I wanna, um, remove or resolve constraints to the things that I want to achieve and experience and explore, um, so it's a worldview is, is probably one of the key attributes. The second part of it is, you can't get away from it, but it is, there are kind of inflection points, transitions in people's lives that make them think more in this space, and some of them are more lean towards painkiller, But it's still proactive, if that makes sense. So we're about to get married or about to have our first kid. And we want to just make sure that money isn't a stressor during this period of time. We don't really have a structure or a system for the way we're doing this now. we reckon we can get one and we reckon would help a lot. so that would be a key one, or we want to buy our first home. We just haven't quite figured out, you know, how to sort of structure things out to be able to make that happen. We don't even know what we don't know yet. I'd say in those scenarios, it's, it's a, it's a, like a proactive want. And it's also kind of looking ahead saying, this is what, this was what may change in the future. And we want to make sure that we're not going to be reactive in that scenario. We want to be proactive, get ahead of um, and make the most of, I guess, the time we have in this window of life versus set ourselves up for the next as well. Does that answer the question? I'm not sure.

Grant: 1:00:35

Some of what you when you're talking, you made me think so from I don't know your market in depth, but from

Tex: 1:00:41

Yep.

Grant: 1:00:41

of my budget, they are largely a painkiller because people go to them when they've got a really massive problem. Yeah. And don't know what the hell to do about it,

Tex: 1:00:50

Yep.

Grant: 1:00:51

their methods don't seem to be sustainable or really drive growth. It just gets you out of the problem. Is there something to be learned from the way that my budget find their customers? That then you can go, well, instead of just getting you out of a terrible situation, why don't we grow you into a fantastic situation that sustains over time? Oh,

Tex: 1:01:10

percent. Yeah, yeah, MyBudget's a very big business because I think the way they've framed it is as a painkiller. Um, and it's sort of an interesting one too though. So you've got the quality of your prospect, the quality of your customer, um, and it is a, it's a different solution because like I could speak to the same person and I could give them, I could sell them a better outcome in that way. But. The process is very different. My budget will take all everything away from you. Actually, they treat you like, they treat you like a patient at a fat farm. We control all your caloric intake now. You, you will eat what I tell you to eat. That's literally what they do. They take your money in trust and then they basically just feed it to you and you're like, that's what you get, mate. You get what you get. You don't be upset. Um, so from that scenario, we could probably speak to the same people. I think our success rate would be very different if we're attracting the person who doesn't want to do anything. It doesn't actually want to take control, doesn't want to learn anything, doesn't want to grow or improve. I think we could, we could grow our, grow our leads, but we might hurt our reputation. Does that make sense?

Grant: 1:02:21

But I, I, they would have a spectrum of people that's, I think they, I would guess, um, and again, you don't guess in your own head, you go and validate and see if this is the case, but you've got to start with like your intuition and what you think is

Tex: 1:02:34

Yeah.

Grant: 1:02:34

I would hazard a guess that there's a subset of people who are exactly as you have described, and there is a subset of people who, um, More minded to what you guys do, but don't have a view of the market and just have an immediate problem. And my budget's easier to find than the mentorship and cashflow co because they've got a bigger brand and a bigger marketing budget.

Tex: 1:02:54

Yep. Yep. 100%. Yep.

Grant: 1:02:56

that's where you like their customer is not homogeneous. They're not. Everyone's

Tex: 1:03:01

yeah, we've, we've actually had, Oh, there might be five to ten people come out of that. And actually, it's almost like a, uh, it's like getting out of a cult. And they're like, hey, you'll be back. You can't work without us. And that's, they make it really hard. Um, but we've helped people to get out of that and start building the skills for themselves because it actually paradoxically works the other way. People feel more stressed about their money because they don't know anything about it. Like, where is it? What's happening to it? I don't even know. But apparently I'm saving, but I don't feel any better about my money. A

Grant: 1:03:32

in the space. And you have such, I mean, I would vouch for, I haven't been through my budget, but it sounds like a horrendous experience. There's people who have been through that process. The contrast of the two approaches to living a better financial life would be fairly stark. So,

Tex: 1:03:48

hundred percent, yeah.

Grant: 1:03:49

I'm just throw, throwing out ideas about how you would find sources where to this person, looks like a real painkiller rather than, I A vitamin and you talk, you've got the same product, but you can talk to people in, um, different languages. And that's just what segmentation is,

Tex: 1:04:05

Yep.

Grant: 1:04:05

to different customers in a way that's very customer centric for them.

Tex: 1:04:09

Yep.

Grant: 1:04:10

customer centric for your, I'm really financially ambitious. Um, you know, I'm really driven by improvement. I want to maximize life. The way that you would talk to someone like that is far different. To the way that you would talk to someone about, Hey, there's a better way than being starved and having someone take control of your life. You can retake control and, you know, create a better future where finances become a positive rather than a stressor. Right? The

Tex: 1:04:33

Yep.

Grant: 1:04:33

can do it with the same product, but the combination that you would have with those two people is insanely different to position it as a painkiller. Um, because the pain is different. Like if your worldviews challenge is one of these ambitious people and I don't quite know how to get there. Like that's pain. Because your world view is really important. You've got goals that that's like to not be able to know to get or to not be able to get to the goals or not know how to,

Tex: 1:04:58

Yeah.

Grant: 1:04:59

are incredibly important to who you are. That's pain.

Tex: 1:05:01

Yep. Yeah. And that's what I always say, it's like, you know what you want, it's just the how we actually make it happen. That's the big gap. And you know, that's, that's the majority, right? Like 57 percent of working adults, like say, no one ever sat me down and taught me how to do this.

Grant: 1:05:17

Yeah,

Tex: 1:05:17

So everybody's, everybody's crawling around in the dark trying to figure it out on their own. Yeah.

Grant: 1:05:22

got, I'm an accountant and

Tex: 1:05:24

Yeah.

Grant: 1:05:24

I've got the finance background. I've been dealing with finance all my life. I've built like really complicated financial models for large businesses. And I'm like, this is like the admin and overhead and just having a, a, a principled structure that works with life. I'm like, I can't even get my head around where I would find the time to be able to think through that properly and make it happen. And so it started um, you know, I had a, the best view of money. Like I always thought that, you know, I can, whatever the financial problem I have doesn't matter because I'll just go and earn some more money.

Tex: 1:05:53

Yeah.

Grant: 1:05:54

but as

Tex: 1:05:54

Yeah.

Grant: 1:05:54

older, that starts to become, uh, well, that's not necessarily sustainable in the context of getting me to where I want to go.

Tex: 1:06:00

Mm.

Grant: 1:06:01

it starts, I transition personally from that vitamin to, oh, hang on a second, this is really starting to become, You know, a challenge for us, you know, marriage, our marriage was a part of that. We were like, okay, we

Tex: 1:06:10

Yeah.

Grant: 1:06:10

everything together and get on the same page.

Tex: 1:06:13

Yeah.

Grant: 1:06:13

is, you know, that coming back to some of the life moments that you spoke about,

Tex: 1:06:17

Yeah.

Grant: 1:06:18

one that you didn't mention, not so positive, divorce.

Tex: 1:06:20

Yeah.

Grant: 1:06:21

that there's people in that situation where your financial world's been turned upside down. Um, you may be having to pay extra support. You may be having to earn an income for the first time or like, there's all these, whatever it might be, it might be a fundamental change. Right. Where

Tex: 1:06:34

Yeah.

Grant: 1:06:34

I need to manage this and they're probably older and wiser at the time that that happens where they're like, this is important.

Tex: 1:06:40

It's a growing cohort, actually. So, it's the other side of divorce coming into a new relationship, wanting to actually go, hey, we fucked this up the first time, we're not going to let it happen this time. That is the kind of person, that person's becoming a little bit more at the moment, which is quite interesting.

Grant: 1:06:56

You know where I'm not sure about the ethical implications of this marriage counselors

Tex: 1:07:01

Yeah,

Grant: 1:07:01

many marriage, how many marriage arguments are

Tex: 1:07:04

yeah, yeah, so many. Oh, yeah, don't. I've had the thought, but, uh,

Grant: 1:07:08

You need to get marriage counselors on the payroll.

Tex: 1:07:12

No, I, hopefully this is helpful for you if you're listening, um, I just wanted to give like a practical example, right? Because, you know, Yeah, we're solving this problem all the time, and we're working it out as we go, all the time as well, hopefully that helps in terms of the vitamin versus painkiller. Is there anything else, mate, that you feel like is really important to touch on when you're trying to validate your ideas and make sure that you're just not in your own head thinking, I've got the solution, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be minted? Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Grant: 1:07:43

the customer that you talk. And what I mean by that is there has to be some cost to them giving you affirmation. So whether that be attention can be money, but often in the earlier stages, it's hard to justify that. But it has to be because that's, going to be a trade off and a cost when you come out with a product that a customer is going to have to buy. So how can you, to the greatest extent possible, imitate that environment before you launch to test how willing a customer is to make that trade off? so two examples, one of them, if you've got a B2B and a larger sale, can be asking people to sign a letter of intent, um, doesn't legally oblige them to do anything, but they're like, people won't sign them unless they have a level of belief and interest in your product. They have to really think about, they've got to read the letter that they're signing. It's generally busy professionals that are doing it. If they sign that, that's some pretty good evidence they're at least having a strong level of interest. another one for like a direct customer marketing driven product might be what's called smoke bombing, where you can just put a small amount of money to like Google and say, describe the problem or say, you've got a solution to that problem and then just have it linked to a one page website that just says, Hey, we're working on it, sign up with your email. And so I have the dual effect of going, well, are you getting traction with that? And if you are, you're starting to build an email list already. You have interested parties that when you go to market, you're like, Hey guys, that thing that you said you were interested in come by. And so there's millions of different ways that you can do that is unique to each context. But the core thing is they have to give up something that they care about in order to express interest in your product, because that's the dichotomy that's going to happen in the real world. And that's what you want to test.

Tex: 1:09:23

I got a question to ask you. What do you think is more valuable to Noah's a signal? Would they be willing to give up time or money? Mm

Grant: 1:09:32

Well, time and money have very different value to, or very different utility, um, to different people. So, if you're talking about like a B2B significant um, to a purchaser in that space, it's not their money. So they're probably, for small amounts of money, they've probably got it to dispose of. It doesn't really impose that much of a cost on them, but they're really busy.

Tex: 1:09:54

hmm. Mm

Grant: 1:09:55

time is the thing that they can't make more of, particularly if they've got really profitable businesses. You know, those people, their mentality is generally, I can always make more money. I cannot make more time.

Tex: 1:10:04

hmm. Yeah.

Grant: 1:10:06

but I would say that that flips if you're like a more of a mass market or you're going into the lower end of the market.

Tex: 1:10:12

Mm hmm.

Grant: 1:10:12

people are generally more thrifty and really focused on where they're spending, they're not necessarily focused, but really conscious when they spend money that it's more painful than someone who is quite wealthy as a general rule,

Tex: 1:10:24

Yeah.

Grant: 1:10:24

but may have more time.

Tex: 1:10:27

Mm hmm. That's interesting too, isn't it? Yeah.

Grant: 1:10:29

think it's just context dependent

Tex: 1:10:32

Yep. Hey, I agree with that. Yeah, like Yeah It might even be that it's like if they're willing to spend a lot of time They might not have as much money. If they're willing to spend a heap of money. They probably don't have the time Um Yeah.

Grant: 1:10:47

can get it to and people are getting to that point, you also got the talking about this. You've got your sunk cost fallacy there. If

Tex: 1:10:53

Yep.

Grant: 1:10:53

invested this amount of whatever they have to give up into your product, they don't want that to go to waste. They want the

Tex: 1:10:59

Hmm.

Grant: 1:11:00

succeed.

Tex: 1:11:01

Hmm.

Grant: 1:11:01

ingraining these things in a process where you're gradually getting people on board, if you validate your idea, you've already got a series of evangelists and people that are bought into what you're doing, that you make that initial sales process much easier, because it's bloody hard at the start.

Tex: 1:11:16

What about the psychology of this? I know we need to wrap this up here in a second, but you know, you've got the protection, you've got the credibility that comes with the big shingle that you're working for, the big brand, whatever it is, the big consultancy, the big business, whatever it is. And so you gotta, you kind of get used that as a bit of a shield and you're like, hey, I do this and I work for this and whatever. And then you go out and you do your own thing. You just feel super different about that. And I know that that's a huge blocker for people. So, how do you win the mental game of this first interaction? Because for me, I feel like all you've got to do is get off zero and realize, The world's fine, like the sun's going to come up tomorrow, the world's going to keep turning, and nothing happened, and nobody cares, and everybody's just living their lives. Once you've experienced that a few times, you get over the idea that like, what are people going to think, and what are people going to say, and am I credible enough? Any advice for the person who's feeling stuck in that place?

Grant: 1:12:08

Yeah, I mean, it's It generally comes from a couple of is one of them is just the genuine risk that going into business. Um, and one of them is the fear of failure. You can always, you've never failed if you've never had a crack at um, and so there are 10 from a financial risk perspective, people can have genuine concerns about the impact this could have on their lives.

Tex: 1:12:29

Mm hmm.

Grant: 1:12:30

and part of the beauty of the process that we've talked about in part. Um, and that attachment that will be in the show notes has lays out like a pretty comprehensive set of steps. Um, is that you can go and you um, try that and it's not like a full time job to be able to try that. So you can be still be working. you can even, I know entrepreneurs that hustle in the gig economy, they keep part time jobs. Um, if you're part of a couple, you know, you can really hedge your risk. One person gets a stable salary while the other person does it, does this. And you get to a point where you're like, okay, I've got enough runway. And confidence in what we're doing that we can do this without it just being an insanely stressful, experience. And we've got a high probability of success because we've worked out the key things that have to go right.

Tex: 1:13:15

Mm.

Grant: 1:13:16

and then we can dive in and you can have a detailed, a much deeper understanding of what you're going, what you need to do by going through that process. If, on the other hand, you're coming from the perspective of, I don't want to fail. Well, what this process like. There's so many things you could do and so many places you can start. What starting with a process like this does is just allows you to dip your toe in the water. And you can always jump out of the pool if you don't like the temperature that's on your toe.

Tex: 1:13:42

Mm.

Grant: 1:13:43

once you get it, it's amazing how you just break the ice and take one step. How much easier step two is and once you've taken two steps step three becomes even easier and then before you know it you start to go well I'm already in this and now I can make a decision like do I commit to this with the new information that I have or do I go back to a place that I'm more comfortable with and you've you're always able to walk it back

Tex: 1:14:05

Yeah.

Grant: 1:14:05

I find that that fear of failure starts to melt away when people like actually this um you know I've done something I didn't know I could do you start to get more confident hey I can actually make this thing happen Um, and it's if you just dive in the deep end, you know, it can be a horrible experience, but just incrementally getting there and gaining confidence can often be a really good approach for someone that's just held back by that fear of failure.

Tex: 1:14:28

I think we got super lucky in our early days, hey. So I made the cardinal mistake that you talked about before. Like, who are you asking? You're asking the people that are going to say that you're awesome. So we put together a bit of a workshop webinar and we're like, well, people want to watch this. Is this any good? Is like, can we add any value? Are we saying anything different? Can we teach anything of merit? so I, we kind of put it together and we just emailed a few people and we're like, we just love your thoughts. We're going to put this together. just, just come in. We'll put, we'll um, lunch on and I'd just love, love to know what you think. And, um. Our first, our first, uh, client, our first member, Helen, who's been on this podcast before, Helen and Chase. Helen just turned up. We didn't know her. And so I was thinking I was presenting to friendlies and I'm like, who's that? Who's that person over there? she got interested enough to have a conversation with us about it. We continued that conversation and then we turned that into an opportunity. We're like, well, she's invested the time and now she's willing to invest the money. Maybe we could do something here. And that's, that was just the luck. That was just the luck of the show, that's it. So yeah,

Grant: 1:15:39

how much luck you have if you put yourself in the position to get lucky

Tex: 1:15:42

yeah, yeah, yeah,

Grant: 1:15:43

the work and putting yourself out there. Um, there's luck to be had.

Tex: 1:15:47

That's it. You just gotta, I think it's just keep acting, keep acting, keep acting. And you get, you get lucky and sometimes you get smarter and you get lucky and you get smarter and it just, it keeps going your way. Mate, is there anything you would want to leave people with? I think the big point that I'm getting here from you is, You may be really smart, you may be super accomplished, and you may think you have an awesome idea, but if you do not go into the real world and get this idea collided with reality, you may get smacked in the face. And there's ways and means around that so that you can know that when you do make the leap, your idea is worth betting on. Is there anything you've left out of this conversation before we wrap it up?

Grant: 1:16:23

No, I don't think I mean, I know being smart is associated with being a great entrepreneur, but Outside of the few stories you get in the papers, it's generally not smarts that determines his success. It's that passion and that's discipline to process and customer focus.

Tex: 1:16:39

Hmm.

Grant: 1:16:40

and if you are delivering something that people really care about, it's amazing how you can just work everything else out.

Tex: 1:16:45

Yeah.

Grant: 1:16:46

the capacity to adapt is far beyond what you think you have. Um, and it's, I just see it time and time again. Um, so the amount of times that entrepreneurs have received so called business ending news on the face of it and have just found a way to completely adapt and build out of it and be stronger afterwards, it's insane. Um, and so there's that human capacity to be able to adapt and deal with circumstances far better than you think you can. There's a process out there that dramatically increases your chances of success. And I guarantee if you have a swing, um, you regret the things that you don't do far more than the things that you um, as someone who's had a, had a crack at this a few times, I can tell you the fulfillment is like else that I've experienced in, in professional life.

Tex: 1:17:26

No one can take those memories, experiences, achievements from you. No one can take them from you. And to me, that's, that's what I'm trying to accumulate, those memories, those experiences, that confidence, that, that sort of level of pride as well. And like we say, success is dying with the least regrets. Mate, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for coming along. I've just got one more question for you. You know, that we make a clear distinction between wealth and money. We talk about money as a measure of value and a mechanism for moving it. And we talk about wealth as having more of what you value. So. What is wealth to you?

Grant: 1:17:58

It's, uh, wealth to, um, I mean, it's, COVID has changed this definition. If you asked me a few years ago, it'd be very different. Um, but wealth is the ability to do work that I love and spend time with family and friends anywhere in the world. Um,

Tex: 1:18:11

Simple.

Grant: 1:18:12

that's, yeah, it's just, yeah, learning from experience and having those things taken away that we had in Melbourne in COVID. Um, I've certainly changed the perspective on, on what wealth um, so that's wealth to me.

Tex: 1:18:22

Awesome, mate. Where can folks learn a little bit more about you, if they wanted to connect and learn more?

Grant: 1:18:27

Yep, I'm on LinkedIn. Um, or I have a business called Butterfly Affect, um, which you can look up at butterflyaffect. net. But just, I would have three, four conversations a week just with, entrepreneurs or people that just want to learn a little bit more about business. And if you just want to have a chat about how the stuff that we've applied to you, uh, how the stuff that we've spoken about applies to you, or just throw some ideas about, like, I genuinely just love it. Like, I just, you know, some stuff gives you energy when you do it, and some stuff takes it away. So admin kills me talking about helping people who are really passionate about bringing something to life that could benefit the world. Like, I just love it. I could do it for 10 hours a day and feel like I've got all the energy in the world. So.

Tex: 1:19:08

The irony of an ex accountant saying, saying that, it's hilarious. It's crazy.

Grant: 1:19:13

accountant. Let's really put the on the X. I'm not sure I was ever really an accountant. I might have had a piece of paper, but that might have been the extent of it.

Tex: 1:19:22

Awesome, mate. Thank you so much for coming along. If you are part of our program at the moment and you're listening to this, we're going to be publishing this episode a few weeks out. We're actually going to be running another one of these meetups and Grant's going to be coming along and we're going to be discussing, debriefing this conversation and helping you action it. So, if this is something that's of interest and of relevance to you right now, make sure you register for that session and love to see you there.

Grant: 1:19:43

Looking forward to it. Thanks very much, Terry.

Tex: 1:19:45

Thanks, mate.