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Daniel Franco:Hi there synergizers and welcome back to another episode of The creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco. And today we have Jindou Lee, CEO and founder of Happy CO on the show. So this was a really fun and enlightening episode and one that I believe all aspiring entrepreneurs and leaders should listen to. So Jindou walked into the podcast wearing shorts, and it was all upwards from there. He's such an unassuming person who has achieved so much. And he puts it down to just being willing to have a go and doing what you say you're going to do. I really love that Jindou shows us that success can come from being vulnerable, and not being afraid to have a go and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. He talks about how every time it happycow he gets a new client or a new team member, that it's actually a milestone for him in the sense that he's now actually managing a bigger company. And he's literally figuring it out as he goes along. For some context Jindou is the CEO and co founder of Happy Co, a software company that builds mobile and cloud solutions to enable real time property operations and recent valuations have the company valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Prior to his current role. Jindou also found that an excellent from two previous tech companies, one of them being mighty kingdom and Adelaide company that builds some really amazing games. Jindou spent most of his adult life growing up in Australia and graduated from the University of South Australia with a Bachelor of visual communications. After that he worked at Midway Games, where he led the user interface team to work on classic titles such as Mortal Kombat gauntlet and Dukes of Hazzard. Besides his love for technology Jindou is also an avid real estate investor and semi pro soccer player and speaks five languages. Jindou and I went down many rabbit holes in this conversation. But some of the topics we explored were how he recently during a recent seed funding Happy Co raised $72 million. He shared his thought process on how to attract investors and how to attract funding. The ups and downs of growing and scaling a business dealing with knockbacks the uncertainty and all the ambiguity of being an entrepreneur. We spoke a lot about the importance of creating a culture where people want to work and how recruiting of people who share the same core values and behaviors as you really shapes the culture of the business and leads to less staff turnover. We touched on time versus energy allocation, meaning how things you love, don't suck up the energy in the white things that you don't like. We also talked about how and why he decided to scale outside of Australia into the US and what the future holds for Happy Co. And much, much more. I know you're absolutely gonna love this episode. And if you'd like to learn more about some of the other amazing ladies that we've had on the creating synergy podcast and be sure to jump on our website at Synergyiq.com.au or check us out at creating synergy podcast on all the podcasts ally. Cheers! Welcome back to the creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco, your host and today we have the one and only Jindou Lee on the show. Thanks for joining us.
Jindou Lee:Thank you. I'm excited.
Daniel Franco:Excellent. I got the name right.
Jindou Lee:Yeah, you're looking at me. Maybe I did I get it. You got it. Right.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, I noticed on your LinkedIn actually, you've got it. You actually have the voice activated thing where you can people can listen to any kind of like, it's gene like gin, drink and dough like playdough. Yeah, cuz everyone gets it wrong. Because what do they say? jindao jindao.
Jindou Lee:I get didn't do jindao. Like growing up in Australia and the 80s you just learned to answer to anything. Just acknowledge me. I'll be fine. I grew up in Darwin. So it was a very different time born in town. I was born in Singapore. Okay. And then I moved there when I was two. Yeah. So living in Australia majority of your life pretty. Yeah, pretty much. And now recently in the US. Yeah. For the last 10 years. I've been the US, really.
Daniel Franco:So let's talk about your journey and where you've come from, obviously CEO at the moment and founder of Happy CO which is doing some wonderful things. You've had articles in the fin review, and it left, right and center about some capital raises and we'll get into that in a sec. But tell us a little about your journey. I'm particularly interested in you with your Midway Games as well.
Jindou Lee:I'm a massive Mortal Kombat fan
Daniel Franco:so let's, can we listen
Jindou Lee:So, so the background is I actually studied graphic design at uni. And I didn't even, like I don't even know what I wanted to do. So in, in high school, I remember taking a design class and, and we're using Photoshop and I'm like, Oh, this is really fun. And then someone said, oh, there's actually a course or degree you can do a uni. Yeah. And also Oh, that's really good. So I looked at the TER score at the entrance score, and it was 55 to get in. So quite low, really. And the crazy part was I did a bunch of year 11 subjects. So you're 12 subjects when I was in Year 11. And two or three subjects I did already got me to 55 Yeah. So that the Asian in me as I work hard, work hard, with the Australians, I take it easy.
Daniel Franco:Which which side one?
Jindou Lee:Yeah, so um, studied graphic design at uni, Uni SA yes, South Australia, graduated and essentially, like, in the course, it's very much designed focus. So like your logo branding. Yeah. I was really excited to work on digital stuff. So anything that had to do with like, websites, you know, this is like, 2019 1999.
Daniel Franco:So can we just go back a step? So you came to Adelaide then from from Darwin from Darwin to do uni, or
Jindou Lee:to the uni and in before Darwin and I grew up. Born in Singapore grew up in Darwin for I was there for like, maybe seven, eight years, moved back to move back to Singapore when I was eight and then back to Australia when I was 15.
Daniel Franco:Okay, well, yeah. Yeah. And then, and then Adelaide to the Uni course. Yeah. To the uni course. Yeah,
Jindou Lee:yeah. So it's definitely travelled. It's a very polarizing Darwin being a small town. I remember when we got there. I think the airport was a I think so. Maybe I've watched God must be crazy. I think I just did that last year. So I think it is. They quote me on it.
Daniel Franco:It was one of the best movies
Jindou Lee:Because most my parents loved it. It was a lot of dialogue. Yeah. Oh, that's funny.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, I'm getting hit.
Jindou Lee:Right. Yeah, so moved to Adelaide when I was about 17. Study Design, graduated with first class honors top of my class. I was like, This is awesome. I'm going to crush the world. Then I started working design and hated it. Yeah. It was just my first job was working for a local design company, a web design company. You're looking at me like, yeah, don't say that. Yeah. horrible time. Yeah, just. And I quickly learned how to how to not manage people. Like yes, yeah, that's quite a important lesson. It is and how not to treat people how How not to treat people probably more than anything. And you know, first first year working you you sort of think, Wow, is this the rest of my life. But I actually left a lot of good skills, and then I ended up working next job was rat bag games. Rat bag games was an Adelaide success story. Greg Segal ran there. And we got to work on amazing cool videogames. Part of that I actually got got sent to the US to work at Midway Games, who acquired us, and Midway built Mortal Kombat gauntlet legends, Blitz, the league boilers, and I got to work on those titles. So that was really fun.
Daniel Franco:I'm Mortal Kombat. Quite literally, one of my all time childhood favorite. Yeah. In the new Have you seen the version geeking out here by the new version is brutal. Like it's disgusting.
Jindou Lee:Yeah, it's not. It's not. Yeah. Well, that's what happens when you have cool graphics. Yeah, I'm sure they tried to do that. Yeah, for like, back in it that bad graphics. But um, yeah, so I enjoyed working. So I was actually running the UI team building pipeline for technology building processes. But what really struck me was my first day at ratbag. I remember my manager, Geico Dan Thorson, who's still in Adelaide. And he, you know, I did this, took a bunch of image files and color corrected them using an automated script, right? Yeah. So press the button, and it was changing all these images made in the right color. And I said, Hey, I finished my my task. And Dan walks and goes, Oh, my god, that's amazing. Wow. And I'm like, Wow, this guy's really energetic. But what it really taught me, what it really told me was like, again, how to treat people. And so in my first business was a successful company got treated pretty poorly, and day one in this new company. I just felt oh my god, like, I just felt I wanted to work longer hours, you know, just so that we had a really big impact on we were congratulated on some wins. Really? Yeah, just until nothing is literally pressing a button. Yeah. And it's just I just felt like wow, you know, there's some good in this world. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:Do you ever catch up with that? What was his name? Sorry
Jindou Lee:Dan Thorson. Then yeah, So he's still around. He had a bit of a stint at mighty kingdom. Okay. And yeah, we did. Yes. I started mighty kingdom with Phil. A digital maze back in the day. Yeah, so
Daniel Franco:the world cool. I've had a chat with him recently not on the podcast. He's been on the podcast, but like in a special episode, I chatted to him for like three minutes or something. Yeah, he's a special person. Yeah, he's a good man.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. So yeah. So Dan worked at mighty kingdom for a little bit. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. I haven't caught up with him recently. But great guy. Excellent. And then so from from there. Oh, yeah. So finish off at Midway came back to Australia. And essentially, I was like, I didn't know what I really quite wanted to do. But I started a web. And I worked for another web design company. Catalyst web design. So did a bunch of us there. So why did you decide to come back to Australia? Wouldn't there have been more opportunity over there? Yeah, I, I didn't really want to work in games anymore. Because when you when you figure out how the sausage is made, yeah, oh, that's not really cool. Yeah. And working in games. There's just a lot of crunch. Crunch time. So meaning like, yeah, like 60 70 hour week? Yeah. When it comes to the end. And I just thought that was
Daniel Franco:just, I saw an article this morning, actually, it's funny that we're talking about games was that the industry itself has quadrupled that of the box office hour. So I think the turnover for 2021 for games was 150 billion, compared to 39 billion for the box office. Right saying yeah, ridiculous.
Jindou Lee:should have stayed in games. Is that what you are saying?
Daniel Franco:Who knows if those games weren't for you.
Jindou Lee:Just had enough I
Daniel Franco:was, it wasn't to say you've made a decision, obviously, don't worry. Well,
Jindou Lee:yeah. So finished up on games. I just thought I'm going to come back. And I really enjoy just did you anything that was digital. So it came back worked at catalyst for a bunch of years. And then I had a friend that just said, Hey, you know, I want you to help me build a website. He was in Singapore. And he said, I don't have a huge budget. I'm like, I can build it for you at night after I finished work? And so he gave me the budget. And it was basically that one project was when I was getting paid a whole year. Oh, wow. And that's your low budget? Yeah. And so I think that's was eye opening from that perspective. So I remember like saying, Hey, tell us I'm gonna quit and do my own thing. And my thought was, if I just did this one project, and it was gonna take me two months, then I'll be fine for the another 10 months of the year. Yeah. And so what that happened was, I just found more and more work through after that project and started a web design agency after that. Brilliant. Yeah. Well done. Yeah. And then from the web design, did you grow that into employees or? Yeah, so we had about 20 20 staff, and that that team was predominantly in Pakistan and Ukraine. Majorly, Pakistan, and we had a bunch of freelance designers locally, because we couldn't find good designers overseas. So we've got about 20 people. We did a lot of work for EFM, the fit health clubs sealink. We did some work for sealink. And so it was it was fine. But then I started to see that web design was becoming a commodity. So you know, Squarespace and Wix weren't quite there yet, but it was starting to come with these like DIY solutions, plug and play. So yeah, and then like WordPress site, and I just thought she didn't go down that track. We started to and I was like, this is really just a bit boring. Yeah, yeah. No, I just wasn't bored. Yeah, yeah. So I sold the business and then just started buying real estate essentially. Yeah, my sold it. I wasn't doing much and my dad's like, Hey, why your home all the time? Go buy real estate. Okay, awesome. That's a good idea. So we started a side buying property like Adelaide and doing subdivisions, renovations, flips and all that. Completely different. Completely different. I really loved it. It was so much fun. Because you get to see what you're building. Yeah,
Daniel Franco:yeah. Bricks and Mortar. Excellent. I I've my backgrounds in the construction industry. And I've done a bit of property investing as well. Yeah. I've always been one of those. I don't know how European is but when you drive past something, right, and yeah, yeah.
Jindou Lee:It is that joy, right? Yeah. You actually have a semi permanent structure. Yeah, that you can go I created value Brilliant. So yeah. Okay, so the question is, if you live in and you know, doing a subdivision and now two families live there instead of one. Yeah. You're taking like an old tired house and making it look fresh. You're like, Oh, that's really cool. Absolutely. So I enjoyed that a lot. So from from that, I started buying properties in the US Investing in 2010 I started buying in Cleveland and Memphis, Tennessee. Cleveland, Ohio. Australia typically, typically, and I'm really going to pigeonhole Australians in, in this scenario typically bounded by the boundaries of Australia, what made you look out like, even with your previous business, you look to Pakistan and and you look to other ways to incorporate what is where does that come from is the simple fact that you've moved around a fair bit and so I can answer the business, the business how I outsource it. So what happened was, I actually had a my first employee in that business was a local Adelaide web developer. And we had this deadline on I think was Friday and 5pm. This deadline, we needed to hit at three o'clock he gets up and he goes, I'm gonna go home. Where you going? Beer o'clock. How do you leave? This is not even like normal human behavior. And so he left and I was like, shit, how do I sorry, how do I get this work done? Yeah, shit how do I get this work done? And I just outsource that on I think was oDesk or something on those outsource marketplaces. What year was this is 2000 like 7 6 7 relatively
Daniel Franco:early and really? Not one to five hours and all that? No, no, yeah. So
Jindou Lee:we outsource that. We found this guy in Vietnam. He finished the job for like, literally 10 bucks. Right? And, and he was like, Oh, my God, thank you so much. I'm so happy that you you gave me this opportunity. And I'm like, wow, there's this guy here. 10 bucks. And he's thanking me for[inaudible audio] It's almost I saved his life. And this other guy. Beer clock. Yeah. So I thought maybe I should just do that. And I just have more fun working people that are appreciated. So that that's that became the model. Yeah, that became the model. So I just started finding other people online. And eventually, one guy was in Pakistan. And I said, Hey, do you have any friends, he has three other friends that can help. And that sort of grew to like a studio. And the great part about that is I didn't think I was paying him a lot of money, hope he doesn't listen to this, but but after three or four years, he actually said, Oh, thank you so much. I'm getting married. I just bought a new house, my family and new car. And I'm like, I should move to Pakistan. But that that was like a really defining moment as well, in my career, where I'm like, wow, what I'm doing actually has an impact on like giving someone else opportunity. So I was excited.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, it's the whole reason we not the whole reason, but it's a big part of the reason why running your own business is exciting is the impact that you can have on others.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And for the real estate side. So I started investing in real estate, because, you know, you're talking about passive income. And I was like, wow, I wanted my dad to retire. Because he he's a blue collar worker, his work as a printer for forever. And I was like, I'm gonna get enough money for him to retire. So I kept doing flips. And I realized I just couldn't have I didn't have enough. In Australia, it's really hard to find positive cash flow problem. So I just couldn't find any. And I was in a Steve McKnight. Everyone knows Steve McKnight. Yeah. Where are they? Right? We're the same age. So we probably followed this conference going, Yeah, that sounds like a good. Zero to 200 properties in here. Yeah. So I'm going to those conferences and think, Wow, this is really cool. But you realize that all the things he was preaching he had already done and the market had moved on? Right? Yeah, it's like really hard. And then someone said to me, who are talking about US market buying in the US? 2010. This is intense stuff of a current financial crisis. So I was like, awesome. So I'm gonna so went around asking people Hey, have you have you invested in the US market? What do you think everyone I met in Adelaide was like, no, no, don't go to US. And I was like, why are you lose your money? And I'm like, Oh, cool. Have you done it? No, I haven't done it. Yeah. And you're like, so how do you know I've got a mate of a mate, can you introduce me? I don't really know him. And so. So I kept asking this question. And finally one guy said, oh, yeah, I invest in. I've invested in the US last couple of years. I just bought a $5 million mobile home park. And I was like, how does that good use? Yeah, it gives me about 20% net cash every year. A million bucks. Back in new India. Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah. I'm like, What do you guys Yeah. So why do people tell me not to go? Because because they haven't done it themselves. Yeah. And so that's that kicked off my journey to start looking sociis
Daniel Franco:such good information. It because that that is the true but what holds people back is people giving them their advice based on nothing
Jindou Lee:well based on their own fears or experiences
Daniel Franco:100% What we see that even when you and I don't want to bring in vaccines into this conversation, but people will have commentary based on that. No, no study or no yeah, that's just what's going on there. So that's really interesting. So you obviously sold the business. Quite a substantial piece of it wasn't that you could go and invest. He actually wasn't a lot. It was okay. Yeah, like, not even a six figure, but this was 2005. Okay, so houses were but for your age at the time, that's Yeah.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And the crazy part was, I remember investing in a property in 20 2006. I think the boom happened. Yeah. bought a property, left it there. And within six months, I sold it and made 60 grand. And I'm like, this, this is my whole year's like, salary wage. And you know, so anyway, I just was exposed to that. But I didn't think too much of I just thought, wow, that was really cool. Yeah, it makes sense. If you buy right. I mean, there's a lot of study, you know, just going buy andom House. Yeah, yeah. Well, but 2007 you could buy anything, because everything just went I was it was going yeah. But I realized, like, I just either timed it well, or I just didn't understand all the pieces. But that's why I went to Steven.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. My first property I bought in 2008. Just before the GFC. Yeah. So actually, like it went down. And then it took three or four years on that farm back, find its way back. And it just that was heartbreaking. Because I've done all this study. Yeah. And then. But yeah,
Jindou Lee:my first first time I invested in shares was September 11. That went when when the Twin Towers Yeah, the day before I bought it, and the next shares went to zero. And I was like, Oh, I'm never buying shares, but I haven't learned my lessons.
Daniel Franco:And then on to the next. So I, on top of all this you've and part of your, your, your growth and your journey to Happy Co. You've, learned five languages as well. And is that yeah, it's semi pro.
Jindou Lee:Yeah, I mean, like, all these debatable, but like I grew up in in Darwin, and my babysitter was actually a Greek lady. So yaya looked after me for six years, and she couldn't speak English. Yes. Yes, I tried to learn Greek. And then Pappu was the priests of the Orthodox Church. And so you know, it's just amazing. Like stories. I would get in trouble with yaya run into the church while he's preaching. And I'll be like, running around naked pretty much as a kid, and I'll go papu papu yaya see Loco and I just bawling my eyes and all these greek people going after. Places kanessa speaking English, like a Greek like this doesn't make sense. So that was like, that
Daniel Franco:So really, so Australian, or English. Sorry, was really, yeah, but I've I've connected a lot of Greek people over the years. It's yeah, yeah. is failing English. American English. I don't know why when can we edit that out? English, Greek, Greek.
Jindou Lee:So, Mandarin, Mandarin. Hokkien, which is like a dialect though. Okay, Mandarin from Singapore in a little bit of Thai. And I was dating a Thai girl years ago, and her mum didn't speak English.
Daniel Franco:This is something that you just pick up, or do actually force yourself to learn that
Jindou Lee:I just pick up I just pick up
Daniel Franco:How do you pick up. I'm Italian and I still struggle to pick it up.
Jindou Lee:Well, I think it's um, if you're forced to speak to someone, yeah. And language, right. And yeah, if otherwise, I can't communicate, although my wife is Vietnamese. And I have trouble picking up Vietnamese because just I can't get the intonations. Yeah. And maybe because I'm getting old and already in there must be something around how you're wired. Because I grew up in Italian family. Everyone's spoke Italian. Yeah, I understood Italian but responded in English. I was too lazy just to. Well, a lot of them. I think like, kids when they're young. They don't want to pick up the second language. This is not cool, right? Because your parents don't want to speak like yeah, possibly. Yeah, I don't know. It's, but I'm having the same. I want my son to have a second language. And it's really hard because my wife speaks Vietnamese I speak all these other things and the common language in English. So yeah, we have to go overseas live like five years in the jungles.
Daniel Franco:One child,
Jindou Lee:yeah, we have a four year old. Excellent. Let's use that. Brooklyn, Brooklyn. Net. It's all done. I knew had a connection. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:So I also read some way talking going back into Korea. I laughed when I read this. And I think you were interviewed once before so do a little bit of research coming on and you said that your first job you had for a day? Oh, yeah. Is that can you tell us
Jindou Lee:was that the one now the kitchen? Kitchen? Oh, man. I was in my first paying paid jobs actually. So family friend ran ran a teppanyaki restaurant. Yeah. In Darwin. And he needed help, right? So I'm okay. I'm going to be the kitchen. So she prepared the food. And Darwin's really hot and I sweat really easily. I just keep sweating. I don't know why I think I started at 630. And by 730 said, Hey, you should go home. Because I was preparing the food. And I was like fumbling around doing what to do. I was just sweating on people's food. Dripping the teppanyaki board, right, so you can hear that. So like, Oh, he's went, Hey, thanks for helping. You should probably go home. This is not your gear. This is not your. Yeah. And he's been a really good family friend. Really? Yeah. So
Daniel Franco:you needed urgent help, and then all of a sudden sending you home?
Jindou Lee:Yeah. You know, you screwed up.
Daniel Franco:And I also read that Rich Dad, Poor Dad was a big, a big impact in your life.
Jindou Lee:Yeah, it was, um, because like growing up, we weren't wealthy. I never felt poor, because my parents gave me as much as they could as a child. But I never felt rich or wealthy. I was I never saw I never knew about how to be rich. And I didn't even know people were rich. Yeah. And I remember sitting in, I think this might be the first place the web design company, they had the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and I used to bring that home and read it. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, my goodness, like, so there's actually ways to get wealthy. Yeah. And there's these four quadrants, you know, like the investor. So that just opened my eyes to this whole new world. Like my parents. We never spoke about money. We weren't financially educated. Yeah, so it was an amazing book.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. The book had a big impact on my life to just to hang on what what the money can work for you is that, you know, that whole philosophy just blew my mind. Yeah,
Jindou Lee:so I, I mean, that was the first of many books that kind of helped me along the journey. But um, that one was one of the first few. I'm like, wow, this is really cool.
Daniel Franco:So let's talk about heavy co headed. So you've, you've started in this real estate, in this real estate world, obviously, at some point seen a market opportunity to create what is now Happy Co. Can you tell us that's yeah.
Jindou Lee:So as I was buying properties in Australia, and in the US, I started to like to have a small portfolio. And one day my property managers came to me and said, hey, the tenants skip town, there's a bunch of damages in the property, but we can't get the rental deposits back. And I'm like, why? And then like, well, we didn't really don't we took photos, but we didn't really it's on the digital camera, we kind of lost the camera. And I didn't think too much about am, I really sucks. And then, you know, my Australian property manager, Tom was like, Hey, we, we can't get the bond back. And same thing we kind of, you know, we can we go to court, and it's going to take you X amount of months. And so within a short period of all these properties that are damages and issues, and I just thought this is really silly. Yeah. What Why can't people solve this? At that stage, I started mighty kingdom with with filmmakers. Yeah. And we were trying to build iPhone apps and iPad apps of people, it wasn't even gaming unless it was just my workflow tools and all activity tools. So anyway, so we are thinking, wonder if we could build an inspection app, alright, that people can use. So I did some research. There wasn't much in the market, there was one product that was horrible interface. So then I made a screenshot on an iPad one, it was an app that you could use to do inspection. So if you think about like the screenshot, it'd be a login screen, you switch the next page, there's a camera button, you take photos. So I built this, these screenshots and I rang 20 companies, I rang like LJ Hooker, Ray White REMAX, and one of my American property managers. And I said, Hey, can I come in show you this idea? And they say, you come into the office? Oh, that's easy. So I 20 meetings. Every meeting I went to that I showed this, every person tried to touch the the iPad app and I'm like, No, these are just screenshots. You know, when you double tap, the screen goes big. Yeah, image goes big. Yes, that's what happened. Touch it. Let me show you how it works out the swipe, and oh my god, this is gonna be so happy. I'm so happy you build this, oh, my God, my inspectors gonna be happy. All the landlord's gonna be so happy mobile and, and I kept kind of this word happy. And so I thought, Oh, this is really cool. And then the next question they asked was, how much is it? And I'm like, this isn't even real. You're not listening to me when I built it. And we just settled on, I think$45 a month unlimited. And then had 19 contracts signed? Well, yeah. So I went back to the office. And I said, I think we need to build this thing, because
Daniel Franco:it's gonna pay for taking money for something I've even got. Yeah. So
Jindou Lee:so that's how we got started. Yeah, brilliant. Yeah. So we that's how we started. And then I'm Happy Co came from he was originally Happy Inspector, okay, right. Because I, because I kept hearing happy and I wanted to, like software to have like, a motive to kind of Elevate software. Yeah. So that was why it's called Happy inspector initially. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:And now it's grown into a company.
Jindou Lee:It's growing the company So Well, it was a company but yeah, yeah, it's Happy Co now. Yeah. So we overtime, we've always wanted to build a suite of range of products. Yeah. And under the happy umbrella, essentially. So now we have a bunch of different tools for property managers.
Daniel Franco:So, congrats again on you and your journey. It's been an amazing one so far. And we didn't dive into the, the mighty kingdom. Actually, we probably should have touched on. Actually we will. Let's go back to the game. So how So you started mighty kingdom? Yeah, based on? Yeah, so
Jindou Lee:we mighty kingdom was building a bunch of different apps. So the way it started was Phil, Phil had a bunch. So he's a he's a programmer, really brilliant programmer. And he said, Hey, you used to work at Midway, ratbag games together. And we're both working on the user interface. So he's like, Hey, do you mind if you helped me build some, like designs for some of the projects I have? So yeah, let's do that. And I was like, This is really fun. Because you only built one single screen, you know, it's iPhone three. Yeah. It's just really easy to build on it. It's alright. So we started doing stuff. And people were like, Hey, can you build me an app, and we started building an app. So that's how we got started, Phil wanted to build games, or all this time, he loves games. It's just his passion. So we started, we started doing other light, work to kind of fun, the video, the games, part of things just took too long. Meantime, this happy inspectors started to take off. And so we had this crossroads where I said, Hey, Phil, I'm going to go move to the US. Do you want to come because Andrew Macros, who's my co founder and happy Happy Co? Yeah. He was working for us at Mighty Kingdom. And he was an employee. So we said, hey, Macros wants to work for for happy inspector, we want to go to the US, do you want to come through? And he said, No, I just want to stay in build games. So what we did was either at that stage 5050, ownership and mighty kingdom, and he had a small percentage or percentage and happy, Happy Co. And we essentially just shook hands, and we just gave each other the shares back. And that's it. It's mad, like, you know, like, this normally ends up with him. Fighting you screaming over. But that was one of those like, wow, that that could have ended badly. But yeah, it didn't. And I think like he followed his passion, I followed my passion. I love real estate love software. Yeah. So that was really lucky.
Daniel Franco:Yes. That's actually a really good story. Yeah, it's is that some also many times a year things happen in teas, and things go down with a blaze of glory? Yeah. So Happy Co took off. Talk to us about that story was the rise of your of your brand? And did you get funding early in your piece? Or did you create and sell how, what was your motto?
Jindou Lee:We I didn't know you could actually raise money to do this, right? So it's a different world. It's very different. And someone in Adelaide said, Hey, did you know you could actually go to Silicon Valley raise money, and people give you money for your products? And I'm like, really, your business people to do that? And they're like, yeah. So I did some research. And then I found like, there's this local place called Innovate SA back in the days and, you know, went through this course. And they kind of taught you how to fundraise. Very some basic stuff about fundraising. And I remember even pitching SA Angels. This is like many years ago, and I pitched them the concept. We tried to raise 100,000 on a $300,000 valuation. Wow, that's amazing. And often passive is not for our screening. We like it. So that gave me my first taste of fundraising, which is just a lot of nose. We got we got into start mate, which is the Australian technology incubator. And so we got into that the really cool part is starting it was our first check into the business. And we just paid them back 100 times their money. This is like a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. Wow. Yes. I saw that. Yeah, it was the fin review articles referring to Yeah, so I was like, oh, man, that felt really good. And yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. SA angels did it. And yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I think the cut. I think the the whole fundraising journey wasn't easy for us. Like because I didn't know how to fundraise. Yeah. I remember our first money outside of start made. I had about 76 meetings before we got our first Yes, yeah, well, no, it's just, it's just painful. You know? No, no, I don't want to invest. Why? Because your company does sucks. Okay, great. I mean, they say that. It's how you feel. That's how I feel. And then the next person will say something very different. Oh, I love the company, but I think you can do it. And then so it's just like rejection after rejection. But we eventually raised about, I think $800,000 In this first seed round. Yeah, so that was great. Are we off to the races? And the company had a bunch of near death? A lot of near death moments where we nearly ran out of cash. And
Daniel Franco:yeah, what does that look like in your first, the first time you're trying to raise money? How do you build the confidence to say, I've got this product, which I believe you can get some return on? And how do you come up with a numbers of the potential scale and return? Yeah,
Jindou Lee:so we went through Start me and Start me really taught us how to pitch and present your business. And even Yeah, I haven't seen it. But it's on my to do list. Yeah, it. today, when I I get a lot of people sending me their, their investment decks and all that, and they pitch their company, and I realize, wow, like the people that don't have the right structure, you can just you just dismiss them. And I was like, Well, that was me. Yes, started, right. Yeah. And so there is a bit of a structured on how to pitch for a technology company, you know, just covering the main points around like the problem, you're solving the solution, the business model, the traction, the team, the market size, so there's like probably 10 or 15. Slides. Yeah. But for me, it was just trial and error. And a lot of fundraising isn't about your pitch deck, it actually is your delivery of delivery of your, your pitch and the timing and how you build that this momentum and FOMO, essentially, which I didn't understand, because I was like, Oh, I'm really good pitching. Now I can read, I'd have to read anything. I can just off off my cuff do things. But then I remember one of my good buddies, he actually raised 5 million bucks. How did you do that? You've got the same traction, you know, same stage as us. And he's like, dude, let me tell you, it's all about how you know the timing how you do it. And then at if you've watched Silicon Valley, the TV series? I mean, it's a lot like in a way dating. Yeah. To some degree. Yeah. And that's what we always say dating is like fundraising. Yeah. If you go to the club, you know, a nightclub. And you go there with a bunch of females as friends. You go there, then the chances of you meeting someone is high. Because otherwise like, wow, what? Who's this guy who's more attract? Yeah, and if you get a bunch of like, mates and you just Yeah. So I think it's about how you position the company. That a lot of it comes
Daniel Franco:That's marketing genius isn't really pretty much. down to that. I think there was a Sigmund Freud's nephew. I can't remember his name. But he was the one that started that from in a mass sort of why I can I can never remember the documentary that I watched, but the cigarette companies Yeah, I'm going off tangent here. I'm using your point, right, the cigarette companies. Back in the day, like in the 50s, there was the Marlboro Man. Yeah, Marlboro was meant it was meant it was only men smoking. And so the Marlboro came, went to went to Mr. Freud. I'm gonna call him I can't remember his full name and said to him, how do we get the the female population we're only getting 50% of the market? Yeah. So essentially, at the Super Bowl, they went they got they had some supermodels to walk around the super bottle. Super Bowl. Yeah. In in bikinis or whatever smoking, you know, those were the longest days with a senior. Yeah. And so what was happening was that all the men were staring. Yeah, and the female want to be her saying what she doing is different. She has a cigarette and, and snowballed from that. Well, yeah, it was
Jindou Lee:it probably should have been because she's got a bikini on. But I guess possibly. Yeah, but I think signaling has a lot to do. Absolutely. Fundraising, which I didn't appreciate early on. Took me a long time to get it.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, it's positioning and timing had it. What? What is your thought process around that? Like, how do you position yourself and then how do you recognize the right time? For fundraising? Fundraising?
Jindou Lee:I mean, it's always the right time.
Daniel Franco:People are always interested.
Jindou Lee:Yeah, I think always interested in a good good company. Good deal. A lot of chat. I think a lot of challenges first time early founders have is because they've very rarely have raised money from other people. So if if I was a first time founder, I always go hey, go goes down, go look at go try to invest in other companies. And then let them pitch you and then you start to realize, oh, man, I'm sounding like a like the other 1000s of people out there. So I think it's like how do you position yourself your company in a unique way so that you don't sound like the other 1000 people? It's it's really hard. Yeah, I don't even have a good answer.
Daniel Franco:I think well, there's there's one there's no one size fits all. Is it? Yeah. There's like golden ticket.
Jindou Lee:Yeah, I don't think there is one. I think it's It just comes down to like, if you're trying to fundraise, go hang out with a bunch of other investors. Don't pitch for money. It's probably one. Like, one of the tips is don't pitch for money. So pitch for advice. Okay? So you go, Hey, I'm not trying to, if I come to you and say, hey, I want your money, you're already going. Okay? Yeah. But if I say, Hey, can you help me? Like, give me some advice on my dabs? And you're like, oh, couldn't you start helping you realize, hey, this guy is actually really good. Yeah. Do you want my money? And that's how a
Daniel Franco:lot of people invest in people. Yeah, right. So that's that that state? Absolutely. So just by merely working with you in seeing a curiosity, though, like actually is actually not a bad business model. And the same, so
Jindou Lee:I'm actually one things I really love is when you give someone advice, and they they do the advice that you've given them, yeah. Or tried it out or whatever, but they try. Oh, he listened to me. Good. The worst ones I you know, you're getting advice, and then they don't do it. Yeah. Or they come up with an excuse. Why that one? Yeah. I haven't tried. I didn't do that. Like, oh, my God. Like, if you can't even do my really easy task, how are you going to run a business? And yeah, so I think that to me, I always try to give advice and then see if they follow it or not. And that shows me I actually this guy's a girl was really fun to work with.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, that's amazing. So Stuart Snyder, who's been on this podcast, yeah, he's, he mentioned I called him yesterday, actually. And I said, James, James, come on tomorrow. And and he's like, Oh, great. And I said, any questions? Have you got any questions? Because nah, nothing, nothing of note. But then you said, but one thing is, Jindo jindao, gender, Jindo Jindo. Sorry, I got that. Right. And then ethnicity, you know that now. He said, one thing that I will say is that he's one of the most remarkable founders that I've ever invested in. And I said, Okay, that's really interesting. And I didn't further question you. You should I should have. Yeah. So what makes you that way? Do you believe that he would be so he would speak so highly of? I don't know, like I? Maybe I should, we should get him on the show.
Jindou Lee:And yeah, we should give him a call. What do you mean? Yeah, I don't really know. Like, I think what I've heard from maybe not from investors, but more from like, our team members, and our leadership team is authenticity. So I am, I don't show up and be a different person. I, because I want to sleep at night. So be like to face so I always come and if I say I'm going to do something, I'll do something if I'm not sure. Yeah, like you see me walking into this podcast wearing shorts. I like dressing this way. It's fine. That's it. I think authenticity plays a big part. And maybe we should, like I said, I was going to go to the US and I went to the US, and I'm going to do this. And I did this. And yeah, even though you delivered on what you said, you're gonna Yeah. And I think that's surprising. Like, I just think it's normal. But I'm surprised by how much people go wow, you just delivered on what you said. I'm like, what do other people do? Yeah, why so many people lying? Oh, just like, and I don't know why. And people always get get, give excuses on why things can't happen. And I'm like, Well, how do we how do we make it happen? How do we make it? I don't think I'm that much more remarkable.
Daniel Franco:But I think that's a really great skill set that if, if you're, you know, people looking to invest into your business, you know, take their advice, right, take their or deliver on the what they bought in for right. So that I think that's the most important thing.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And I've always had this view where, you know, people that have made self made people or people that made some money. And even anyone that hasn't made money, someone always has a lesson to teach you about something, whether it's the right one or the anti left. Yeah. There's always something Yeah, something like and so I always like listen to people and try to figure out like, Hey, what is the lesson of this person? And she would have a lot of good ones like around, you know, he always said, Oh, you communicate really well. And I'm like, really? Yeah. But it's a skill set. But but he's seeing something that may be you know, like that I'm not seeing so I'm like, Thank you Stuart, that's good feedback.
Daniel Franco:Well, that's an interesting comment. I think. Are you connected with Vinh Giang? Yeah. So yeah. So Vinh's been on the show as well, and[inaudible audio] and master communication. And he's basically if I empower anyone who wants to learn about communication, go back and listen to that podcast because it was fantastic. And it was good fun. He recently posted I don't know if you saw it, like it was a snippet of, of LinkedIn, like a screenshot of LinkedIn of someone from an IT Oh, yeah. Saying what do you what do I need communication for if I'm working in the tech industry, if I'm technically great at my job, I don't need to be able to communicate. Yeah. And so he gave me a really long list of reasons why that is incorrect. But I'm asking you being in the tech industry in tech world, how important is your communications?
Jindou Lee:I think being in any industry communication is important, I think it's probably very narrowed sighted to kind of say, Oh, is this this is not useful to me. Even just having if, if you have a spouse, that's important enough to be a good communicator. Correct. And I feel like communication, like the lack lack of the breakdown of communications where disagreements happen, misunderstanding happens. And so I think it's really important and we put a lot of our team people in IT and engineering product, Customer Success roles. We actually put them in Vinh Giang's communication course. And the reasons like well, you if you don't get if you get better at work in communication, great. If you get better at communication in your home life even better. Yeah. Because I feel all these things are connected to that person.
Daniel Franco:I don't know. Yeah, no, no, I'm not singling anyone. It was just like, you should though. Yeah. Well, yeah, that point if you can't, yeah, in the show notes, that's rubbish. Yeah, I really like Vinh's approach towards communication. And like I said, have listened that podcast because it was it was a ripper. I would also like to talk to you about the recent rise. And so congratulations, obviously, the recent rises in the can you tell us again about what does that mean now for Happy Co? Where, what's the next steps? Yeah, so we firstly explain the raise raise? Yeah, so
Jindou Lee:we we recently, I think it was reported that we raise Australian $72 million, that's about 52 US million dollars US. This was our series B round of funding. So you know, for those listeners who don't know as much so what happens is you have your seed round of funding, and your your to be like a Series A and Series B Series C. And each series essentially like the valuation, the company gets bigger, and things get more exciting. So we recently did our series B round. But prior to that, so the company has gone through ups and downs, lots of lots of downs, we've nearly run out of cash hasn't been smooth sailing. But the last three years, we've been profitable. So we we got to the stage, the company got profitable. Thanks for all the amazing work the team had done. And so we were going about our daily business going, alright, we're gonna go do these next things. And we met the lead investor, which is Canva Creek in the US. And I've known camber creek for maybe Casey Berman, specifically for maybe eight years. And so I went to him, I said, Hey, this is the company today, this is what I want to achieve. Without any capital. This is just sort of our own back. And he's like, Oh, my God, that's a great idea. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, cool. Okay. And then, so went from that to let's lead around a financing. And so that's why we, we took the money, but his comments were the exact same thing where he said, every time you've every time I caught up with you, you would say I'm going to do something, right. And then the next time I catch up with you, you you would have done the thing you said you're going to do. Yes. And then and so he's like, wow, there's a lot of that, you know, like relationship building trust. And so that's why we raised this round. There's so many things we want to build our customers want us to build a lot more solutions. And we're looking to build more stuff and maybe do some acquisition by some smaller companies as well.
Daniel Franco:What is what is the valuation right now?
Jindou Lee:Oh, it's it's a Australian or US?
Daniel Franco:Let's talk Australian numbers.
Jindou Lee:It will be high. It's in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. So yeah, thank you. Which, you know, for your listeners out there. I don't have hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes. But people don't know that. Are you rich? might know Yeah.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. Oh, and afford the full length. Yeah.
Jindou Lee:Which I get a bit more money. But but but it is. It is a good signal. Like for the rest of the company. People in the company going wow, we started off two people $0 valuation tried to raise$100,000 on a $300,000 valuation. No one wanted to put money in and now it's a company's worth hundreds of millions of dollars and yeah, so it's been I still don't believe it. Yeah, pinching yourself. I punch I'm punching myself. And to some degree, it's it's a bit of a vanity number. Like it's not real. It's just what someone plays. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. But it but it's a good signal. It's like, oh, I wear something and we've built value for our customers. We're making good revenue. So yeah, we're pretty
Daniel Franco:what does that mean for a founder to be the or the founder slash CEO of a Under$200 million business, what does it mean for you personally in in regards to your career now?
Jindou Lee:Yeah, so. it's good question. I haven't thought about that. So what does it mean? I,
Daniel Franco:like you, I remember, I'm going to take you back. I remember I got a job early in my career, and I landed a job in property, right? And I said, I'm now a project manager. Yeah. And I went, I remember turning to my wife. And I said, we're never going to go hungry. Because now I've got a skill set that I can apply anywhere. Yeah. And and so what does that now mean?
Jindou Lee:It's probably like, yeah, I get your question. I think it's really similar, right? So now I look at, like, if we sold the company today, like, I would never have to work for a very, very, very, very long time. We had offers to buy the company a couple years ago, we wouldn't have to work for a very, very long time. In five years time. It's to me, it's all the same. It. So what I'm doing today isn't about the money. Because I know like, at any stage, I won't have to work. To me, I'm like, I really want to really swing for the fences and change the way the our customers in the sort of the real estate industry works in the US. That's what gets me really excited. And I get to bring on bring along a bunch of people not not just not investors are more like, employees who can share in that upside as well. So one day if we do go public, you know, they're their option. Everyone in the company has options and shares, right? Yeah. And so hopefully, one day all them will get to share in it. There'll be a bunch of millionaires that we made out of they can enjoy likes, sharing love sharing the love and then go spread that happiness.
Daniel Franco:Absolutely. Yeah. Spread the Happy Co. Yeah. What made you it's a really dumb question. But I'm going to ask you anyway, cuz I already know the answer. But yeah. What made you go to the US? Why Why not build it here in Australia first? No, you got actually, no, you got the office here in Adelaide, which is fantastic. You're back here. Sometimes. I'm very happy to catch you. But yeah, market size is that?
Jindou Lee:Yeah, market size. So we launched the product in the app store. And we started to get these downloads random downloads in the US. And then I was like, oh, actually used to live in the US. And it's much bigger than Australia. So what actually decided was, this is before we raise any money, we had that, you know, 19 customers just signed up. And I said to my wife, she was my fiancee at the time, said, Hey, we're going to move to the US right for an adventure. Awesome. So we started selling everything that we had here. Not much we had. Yeah, I 20 New Tiger Essex Tiger. 2020 brand new ones. And she's sold it in a garage sale for 10 bucks each. And I, but But it's fine. We sold everything and they went away, then I just wear my Birkenstocks. But we decided that we wanted to move to the US too, because the market was huge. Yeah. And we did that before we had raised any capital. Before we had anything. We just thought, Let's burn our ships, so to speak, go there, try to make it and don't come back until we did. So I told it'll be two years. It's been 10 years.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. So why? So you're building this business in Adelaide? There's, you've got 120 Odd staff. Yeah. And half of them here in Adelaide? Did you already have a solid foundation here? How did you? How did how did you manage the year.
Jindou Lee:Sowe started off doing everything over there. I mean, we were really small. And then I think about three or four or five years in a comment when it was we had a need to get more software development done. There was a company here that was helping us to do some work. And we thought, oh, maybe we should move back in or at least build a small team here. And that team grew to three or four or five people then we we sort of brought all the engineers into happycow. And then we just kept growing and the idea for us. So macros, my co founder and I were we kind of spent a lot of time in Adelaide, he grew up in Adelaide. So we just thought we wanted to give back to the ecosystem. And I remember when I graduated from uni, it just wasn't any good job. It was really hard to find good work. Yeah. And I really enjoyed rat bag games and they got sold and all that and I thought wow, what if I could create like another amazing South Australian organized company? Right so people don't have to go into state overseas I can be challenged at work. So that's why we thought let's just build a base in Adelaide. That
Daniel Franco:yeah, brilliant. Yeah. And you, which is great. Now you've come back and there's a lot of other companies coming to Adelaide now potentially stealing a lot of your snark. I mean, the tech industry is just crazy at the moment and you're getting good talent. How? How are you managing that with the big names coming?
Jindou Lee:Yeah, so we so have our 60 we have 60 people in Adelaide. In the last five years. I think maybe only five people have six people have left. Okay. All right. So good. Yeah. So yes, I don't know. I think like what we what we do is we just focus on our culture that what we're building, you're developing people focus on the people. Yeah, that's probably invoices are the most important asset, but we actually believe in it. Yeah. Without them. We can't build anything. Yeah. So what does that look like, though? When you say we focus? What are you building? What are you? Yeah, he putting him through forces? He taking it out to lunch? Like what is? What is your ping pong table? Yeah, I mean, I mean, we're business that works with companies on their culture and helping them grow their culture. So I'm really interested in hearing. Yeah, so yeah. So I think first and foremost, is defining the culture, right? Because if you can't define it, then what are you really doing? So we spent a lot of time defining the culture? And it wasn't just me going this is the core values and live it synergy. Oh, yeah.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. As much as you want. Yeah.
Jindou Lee:It was really, like, we sat down at 10 Novell, you know, 10 of the employees, which we felt was the most aligned in cultural values, whatever gonna call it. Yeah. And we actually built the went through like a whole day exercise of coming up with like, what do we want to keep a happy code that we like, what do we aspire to? And what will what do we not want to have? And so we went through exercise and narrowed it down to 20 10 or 20 ideas, and then down to five core values. And we took those core values, and then we insert, operationalize it. And now we hire people based on the core values. So we actually have a part of our interview process, there's a core values interview. And well, and but the crazy part is, the other interviews, there's about six, five or six interviews that every candidate goes through, I feel sorry for everyone. But everyone is actually interviewing for core values, as well. So we have after the interview, we talk about the on the candidate we sit down, we say, how did he score this person score on core values? Oh, you know, two attitudes. It's minus two, two plus two score. Yeah. And everyone around the table will give their opinion. And the hiring manager is the person that decides yes or no. So even if I said, No, a minus one, the hiring manager, I don't have veto rights, the hiring managers one decide, all we're doing is just giving that person perspective. Yeah. Okay. So hiring is very, very important for us, because who lead in and who you keep out as is really important.
Daniel Franco:real extremes, cause number one rule? Yeah, right. The people on the bus? What, what are the questions that you're asking in that process? Like, if you're asking to go I can't Kaizen is one of your values. Right? So what is a question that surrounds kaizen? So I,
Jindou Lee:you know, I don't actually do core values in the views anymore, but I can tell you what one of the questions would be right. So it'll be just like you. So for what I do is I when I talk to someone, I'm like, hey, what, you know, tell me a bit about yourself? Oh, you know, I was, I was actually a property developer. Oh, really good. And then what happened? Then I wanted to learn programming. Cool. How did you do that? I just went online and just did a bunch of courses. Oh, and to me that says Kaizen right, that someone actually took the initiative to try to improve themselves? Yeah. So I'm looking for like, little snippets on like that person just taking initiative improving themselves, or I started off at this level, and I just wanted to get better. And so how did you do that? So really, like trying to find motivation? So I don't have questions. We have a questions. The
Daniel Franco:one thing I really love about that is, is that it definitely makes it easier to shape a culture when you're hiring the right people, right? It's that simple.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And these days, I don't push the culture anymore, right. So we have like, people in the organization pushing that culture. And so I'm doing is just like making sure it doesn't go too far left and right. And then everyone else is pushing it down. Yeah. And really, that's the main thing we do like the culture is the number one thing and then how do you improve people like you put them through courses, but all that doesn't mean much? I think living the core values and pushing, making sure everyone understands how to act with each other. I think that's the cool thing that we've done really well. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:That's brilliant. Obviously, use the word authenticity. Previously, sir, and we've talked Kaizen so values are quite critical. Yeah. Integrity, something you and I have spoken about on the phone and it being like In the CEO role founder role growing raising capital all the above, can you talk to us about the place that integrity has played in your career? And why it is very important?
Jindou Lee:Yeah, I think like, if I wasn't looking to run this company for the long term, I think integrity plays a less important part of it. Yeah. But everyone talks right. And so, and I have to sleep at night. And I think some people don't care about integrity. And that's fine. Like, and some people don't care about it will attract other people. I think it's like who you want to attract. Yeah. You surrounded by Yeah, who those? Yeah. And so I think integrity is important to me. And so I tried to portray that, and then people that don't portray integrity I try not to work with. Yeah. And even in the talk about hiring. One thing that we don't do is we can find the best candidate, the smartest engineer the best, you know, designer, but if the like a douchebag to work with we we don't hire them. Like we I would rather work with someone that's average in their skill, but amazing, a corporate right cultural fit. And I learned that when I was working in a bunch of other web companies. Yeah. Amazing designer. It's amazing. The if you look at your career in that first job, right, proper job. Yeah. Yeah, less than the first
Daniel Franco:job with the graphic, integrated graphic design sphere. Where you were treated poorly. Yeah. And how different the penny that you've created is compared to that original. Is that was that a big driver? And is that something that you've ever looked back at and gone? I'm just doing everything the opposite to what they used to do. And
Jindou Lee:yeah, I think it's a big power. I try not to be like them. Like, I don't have a lot of role models. I don't go oh, I want to be this see or this? I don't actually have that. But I have a lot of like, anger drives me. Like just I just hated that company. So what they stood for so much. Yeah, okay. Everything I tried to do was to not be like them, not like them. Yeah. And then when you know, when bad things happen when we don't raise money from this investor, who was really mean, I'm like, Screw you. I'm gonna prove you wrong. That drives me a lot. In a very weird way. It's like my soccer, you know?
Daniel Franco:Yeah. No, hate losing? I've absolutely. I had a football coach, who told me that I'd never amount to anything. I still remember those exact words. In front of the whole football team. Yeah. And I was captain. And yeah. So all night. I was vice captain. And it was. Yeah, something that's still to this day that has stuck with me and I use I actually use the fuel. Yes, I'll show you. Yes. I didn't know where he is. I can't even remember his name show. Yeah, I only remember. Yeah. I think Mark, maybe I yeah, I don't know. But I remember the look on his face when he said that. That's enough to get me through.
Jindou Lee:It's really interesting how how much words can have such a big impact, both positive and negative on people? Yeah, I? Yes. It's so crazy.
Daniel Franco:Well, that's why and I say this often on the podcast is that you should always check the words that you say before you give advice before you Yeah, you know, before you don't know whether it's with the kids, you tell them off or whatever it is just check the words because they could potentially have an impact. But there's so many conversations with people come to me and said, Did you remember this thing? You said to me two years ago? Like no, I don't remember. But that helped me. Like, wow, okay, I
Jindou Lee:do remember now. I'm
Daniel Franco:not Yeah, I'm absolutely yeah. That's interesting. What has been one of them? Like, what, what has been one of the most difficult lessons that you've learned through this journey of yours? When it when it comes to especially leading, growing and scaling a company?
Jindou Lee:That probably like it's hard? It's really simple, but it's hard. Yeah. You know, like it. In hindsight, everything is so easy. But I think for me, the hardest part about this is just the people. You know, finding the right people, retaining the right people. having hard conversations when people don't meet expectations, and I still struggle with your heart firing is really challenging. How do you get people aligned? How do you like? Yeah, there's just I think people just been, it's just the biggest challenge of this. And it's the part that I get a lot of, for some weird reason, satisfaction, because I actually love people. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:But it's, yeah, it's overactive empathy planners going on. You don't want to let people down.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And I think you just just learn. I don't know. It's probably less data. It's a big, so lesson I keep trying to learn is how do I get better at working with people? And if people don't perform like how do you have that conversation very early, not many and we're not taught to, you know, we were taught To be conflict adverse. And so it's it's always been,
Daniel Franco:yeah, we seem like a very holistic thing. Are you thinking? Three or four steps ahead of most others? Yeah. How do you then translate that when you because you said business is simple. So what I'm hearing is, I can see how simple it is to get to point A and point B. And then to point C, yeah, to me, it's quite, it's chronological here. Here's the way we do it. The issue is getting the right people to be able to execute. Yeah,
Jindou Lee:right. Yeah. And knew exactly if it's just me. Really. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:But but it's not, though, because you need the people to do that.
Jindou Lee:So that's the hard part. Yeah. How do you get everyone rowing in the same direction, and if it's like, three, four, or five, maybe 10 people, it's easy. In a room you go, we're going to do this on goes great. If they're 2030, people will start to get a bit challenging now. 120 is like, oh, man, I can't tell 120 people to do this. Yeah. And so then you start, then I start learning. So this is the funnel there. So I start learning, oh, actually, I need to have systems that do that. And then you realize the systems aren't enough. And I don't have time to build the systems myself. So I need to focus on the the KPIs and the the goals, right. So my, a lot of my time now is spent creating the KPIs and the metrics that drive the systems, and the systems drive the people. But then you can't make it too rigid. Because if it's too rigid, no one wants to go to work anymore, because it's boring. So how do you like empower the people to keep the innovation? Yeah, so that's, that's really fun for me. Yeah, I'm not running the same company.
Daniel Franco:Do you run quarterly sprints? What how do you how do you run your show?
Jindou Lee:Yeah so the best thing that we've done, one of the best things, is we implement a system called EOS entrepreneur operating system by Gino Wickman. Okay, and a lot of my C, E O. E O S, so a lot of my YPO buddies, their companies run on this and they're like, oh, I should run, you should test it out. We implemented last year. And this is just a whole cadence around it. So there's like a, your 10 year planning five year planning, then three year then one year, then quarterly, and then a weekly routine? Yeah. So it's, it's, we're just can run it. We are literally going through this exact scenario right now trying to find the best system which suits us. And this is an amazing system, you follow it to a tee, we follow it to a tee. And it's worked wonders. One of the key things about the system is the first thing is around the accountability chart. Right. So the structure of the organization. Yep. And I just started getting to a stage where I just hated my life. In this company, yeah. Because people asking me, Hey, can I buy Can I go by was an a4 paper or whatever. I don't bloody care. Yeah, if you want, if you need the a4 paper, just get it, just go get it. And, and so I so it got to a stage where I was doing a lot of these my new things. And I really love, you know, the visionary stuff coming out new things. And this system, actually, the EOS framework allows you to have a visionary, which is my role. And then allows you to have an integrator, which is like a CEO. Yeah, project management type person. And we promoted our head of marketing into the integrator role. And my life has just been amazing since, so I don't do I don't, she reports into me, and everyone else reports into her, and allows me to just do the things that I really enjoy. Yeah, that's something great.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. So from an value added point of view, yeah. You're putting all your efforts into the areas in which to generate more return for the business. That's what I tell investors. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, it i but it is true. Yeah. You were running your business. You shouldn't be telling people to come by for paper.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And yeah, I mean, it's much more nuanced than that. But like, No, I Yeah. It's, it's I think it's, um, like, someone was talking about, you know, how do you see you manage your time wisely? Right. And I And people always talk about, Oh, you do? That question. And so I think one of the key was that actual question, possibly.
Daniel Franco:I do talk about time, man. Yeah, well, the best podcast.
Jindou Lee:But the, so I was thinking about this the other day, and I was like, thinking, it's, it's not sure this time, you're gonna spend it wisely. But it's about it's not time allocation. It's about energy allocation for me, right. And so if you had to, you know, if you had to do something, let's say you had to do bookkeeping, alright. And that's really important, because no one else can do it. But you hated doing that. If you spend an hour doing it, it feels like five hours. Yeah. And it kills you know, five points of your energy. Yeah. But if you're doing maybe you're creating new, creating a new product or whatever it is, for me, like looking at real estate. I love looking at real estate, right? So I can go look at a new office space and spend days looking at I feel like I've certainly spent my Five seconds. I agree. And so I think it's about understanding where you get energy from what gives you energy. And then just look matching that with like, what's important, and you kind of try to do the things that overlap. Yeah. And some things I do, which have no value at all, but I love doing it. And I'm like, Screw it. I'm gonna do it. Yeah. Cuz it gives me energy didn't do the other
Daniel Franco:stuff. But yeah, but when you're growing, when you're growing a business and scaling, and you're in that hustle phase, right, you're in the Gary Vaynerchuk. Phase, hustle, hustle, hustle, so to speak. Yeah. How do you do? How do you how do you not do those energies? Right? Yeah, no, it was the thing. I think this is where, at what point? Do you make the call? I do need an operations person. I do need an extra sales person doing it. Like, what?
Jindou Lee:Ideally you want to do that all the time, but you don't have infinite money. And yeah, by the way, that what we did was I just did everything. Yeah. How do you just do it? I don't know. Like, there's no, you know, he was like, Oh, how do I? How do I get motivated? I don't really know. Like, I just did it? I didn't have any
Daniel Franco:need. So yeah, yeah, I've always for you make the call run with it. And then you'll figure it out how to make it work. I think that's generally it takes a bit of guts and is scary. Yeah. And you talk about not sleeping at night. Some of the things that keep me up is those very things. It's like, alright, well, we've made this decision. I'm not worried about the integrity thing. And I everyone, yes, I'm a half decent person, but it's more the well, maybe around gaps is the way to get even nervous over. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it is about Well hang on these decisions. These are the risks. Yeah, how do I manage that and mitigate this? And they're the constant things that keep me up at night?
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And I think like, we interesting, like an issue these days, I make less and less decisions because i The people, closest to the problem making them so the company today is actually much in a much better place and then has been in the past. Yeah. Because I've always wanted people to make their own decisions. Yeah, but I wasn't able to. And so in the in the beginning, you just make everything and just do everything. How do you do it? Just do it? There's no figure it out. Yeah, figure it out. I did you ever seek mentors or coaches or anything? Threw it in? Because you talked about you didn't have you don't aspire to anyone in but did you seek advice? I always seek advice with everyone. Yeah, like it. Like I say, I always learned something from everyone, even if it's the bad thing to do, like, okay, it's a bad thing to do. But I think I'm pretty like, upfront in terms of like, Hey, I don't know what to do. And even like today, and that's, that's one of the probably the reasons why we can't raise more money or whatever. I go to invest in, like, I don't know what I'm doing. And this is the things I don't know. And half the people like, oh my god, you don't know this. You're a horrible person. And the other half go, Oh, my God, this guy. Yeah, he's, he's honest. He tells he's candid, like, I like living that way. Yeah. So they have a message that you want. Yeah. We don't want the ones that know how to live within the ambiguity. Yeah, or the ones that just go You You're, you're bringing your yourself forward, and you're showing everything and I want to live vulnerability vulnerability. And but yeah, I think I just seek advice from as many people as I can I. So what I'll do is if I have a question, let's say for example, I want to know how to build a sales or what's the best sales compensation, I would go on LinkedIn and find, okay, who's the best company has done it Salesforce, go to Salesforce and just search or their head of sales people and just ping them on LinkedIn? Yeah. Hey, you have 10 minutes? Can I absolutely buy you beer, whatever. Coffee,
Daniel Franco:you're able to do that in America in Australia. Australia is horrible. Yeah. And I've, we've, we're bringing you on our first salesperson nationally, you know, next month or so. So I'm very excited. But the amount of research I did to try to get this thing, right, I spoke to every single business that I like their sales process and tried to come up with one for my own. But if you're not getting the Salesforce type numbers, but
Jindou Lee:for me, it's like if I want advice, I'll go to the people that have done have done and just reach out to anyone. Yeah, and like for at least one person that will talk to you. And that's really awesome. So that's how I seek advice is I just find people on it. I don't really care who they are. And yet, maybe they'll respond to the same approach.
Daniel Franco:As you know, what I did do in this, which worked for me was I spoke to directors of and who people who run sales. Yeah, and what they do, and then I spoke to a lot of salespeople and what they enjoy. Yeah, and what they like so went kind of both. Yep. And I thought all right, where do we fall here? Yeah, so that worked. We landed on a spot that worked really, really well. Yes. Have you ever been scared in it talks about vulnerability, but have you ever been fearful? Yeah, in your journey all the time we go
Jindou Lee:all the time. I guess I have no idea what I'm doing. I tell that to the team because we have, we had one of the managers, this is probably three to three years back, one of the managers come up to me first time manager said, Hey, I don't know what I'm doing, you know, like, I don't think I can do this job. How do you do it? I'm like, What do you think? Every every dollar that our sales people close is the biggest company I've ever run? Yeah. And, and it's a subscription business. So it just keeps going on. Yeah, and every new person we bring into the largest mount of people I've ever had manage. So I think it's, um, you know, just you just do it with the fear makes me want to go and be better. Yeah, have Kaizen go learn more, go and figure out go read books, talk to people, and, and then I get a little bit better. And then I sleep at night, and then the company grows again. And I go, Oh, crap. Yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared.
Daniel Franco:Do you ever feel like you're just in a hamster wheel? Or have you managed it to a point now where you're?
Jindou Lee:Yeah, I've managed to a point. Now I feel like in the first five, six years of the company was just amazing. Just because you every day is growing? Yeah. 100 200% Because you're going from $1 to $2. Growth. And then so it's really fun in the beginning, and then by years 6 7 8 Yeah, man, it was a grind. I literally just was wanting to give up. Yeah,
Daniel Franco:cuz you are at a point. Not really, you're questioning whether where you're going to be at one point.
Jindou Lee:Yeah. And I'm like, this sucks. I want to want to do what I want to get out of life. Like, I can retire if I sell it. Yeah. And, and I think just spending time away from the business thinking about like, what I want to do, and I realize, oh, actually, this, these are the parts I want to do. These are the parts I don't want to do. So really define your role defining my role, and I but I still didn't understand it until we got EOS in place. So EOS gave me the framework to go Hey, guys, this is what I want. We need to do. Yeah, I hate my job.
Daniel Franco:What EOS? This is, I'm so glad this got bought into this conversation is we go through this exact scenario, as I mentioned, is it is their size of company is sort of situated towards a smaller and the round,
Jindou Lee:roughly about call it about 30 people in the organization, it starts to get really useful. Yeah. And then maybe around 500 people would start to tap out. That's what I've heard. You've heard Yeah, some people continue growing. Some people start
Daniel Franco:early. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. It's not based on business model.
Jindou Lee:No, it has. It's more like the Vern Harnish track. What's his gazelles? Yeah. Something along those very similar.
Daniel Franco:Okay, brilliant. If you are giving advice to those who are looking to start in the entrepreneur world, what would that advice look like?
Jindou Lee:So I don't give advice I give their opinions. Yeah. Good advice. Sounds like I know more. Yeah. Should opinion is just like, like, do it like what don't waste time.
Daniel Franco:is it is is the idea worth more than the behavior that you bring to the to the show? Oh,
Jindou Lee:so I have a good quote that Philip Mays from mighty kingdom, we used to say a lot. Ideas are like assholes. Everyone has one and they usually stink. Yeah, that's true. So I think it's a lot of it's in the execution of the idea is great. Like a conceptually, there's an idea, but then when you start execute on it, that's where you realize, oh, that's not right.
Daniel Franco:And how easy is it? And how many times do you hear? I had that idea three years ago? Yes. Okay. Well, you know, that person did something about it. Yeah. An idea to like sleep in people's houses. Airbnb. Yeah. Yeah.
Jindou Lee:Make sense? I think the execution is a big chunk of it. Yeah, I mean, it is important, but like, then how do you take the idea and go do I think idea's great, then you need to start doing something and in the moment, like for you, entrepreneur, it's about the momentum and, and being able to iterate those ideas. Yeah. As opposed to this is my only idea. And I'm not gonna, you know, I think for new entrepreneurs, a lot of early like, CEOs or people that find that found the company, I think it's important for them to work on themselves, their own mental health, I agree and or mental health, but also their capacity to learn how to become a better leader, how to become a better like, I don't know how to learn bookkeeping, how to do, like, there's just this non ending quest of like, learning stuff. But I feel I see some of them they just don't want to learn. Yeah, I know better.
Daniel Franco:Speaking of computer games. Yeah. No, because it's funny you say that I have, you would have played FIFA. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And you create your own avatar. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. And you have all the different attributes. You've got speed, strength. Whatever it is, yeah, I literally look at my life like that avatar, you know, I'm floating in doing what doing the turn on. But I look better in the game than what I do. But the I do I have a library of books. I'm a big reader. I'm a big learner. Podcasts, audio, books, books, you name it. I'm always trying to learn something, because I do look at my life like their avatar. Yeah, I think, Oh, hang on, my listening skills are not so great. How do I work on my listening skills? Is there a book? Is there someone I can speak to? Is it generally mean? Or do I just force myself to listen? How do I pick myself in the moment? Is there an area where I can work on and I try to that's really good raise those profiles, or whatever they attribute every single day based on, you know, 1%? Or better than I was yesterday? Yeah. Basically,
Jindou Lee:I think that's a that's a great way to like, look at yourself. And it's hard work, though. Because you it's quite negative sometimes. Because you do. You're looking at shit. I'm here to work. Yeah. But from a self awareness perspective. I think it helps a lot it Yeah. And yeah, I think people, I don't know why people stop trying to learn. But for me, it's all about just growing learning. Because the day which always said the day in which the people that reporting to me think they're better than me, is that they I probably lose the the vote of confidence. Yeah. I always try to try to just get a little bit better. That'd be that much better. Yeah, a little bit better. Just stay relevant. And yeah, like now, I can't even do any design. I I go to my designers. What are you using? Mirror? Cool. Yeah. How do you do that? Yeah. You mean from a leadership point of view and leadership business growth? Not because you hiring people who are better than it's more just like, just staying ahead of as much as anything I can. Yeah. Doesn't have to be leadership. Anything. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I want eventually everyone to become leaders. And, you know, hopefully one day they can either be leaders in the company or go start their own business. Right. I have the confidence go here. I'm going to start my own. Excellent, great. I'll support you. Yeah,
Daniel Franco:I'm with you. I absolutely. Fully that was the was the future. We're gonna round up soon. And we head into some quickfire questions. What is the future for you? Like for you? And happycow? And are you looking to? Obviously, you said, acquisitions and grow is happycow. Where you want to be is there there's a future future that like more startups like, yeah, so I don't Yeah. I don't want your resignation letter. But I Yeah.
Jindou Lee:Did you read? So I think we, so for me, I as part of raising this round. So before I raise it, I had this new boost of energy, I wanted to I know what I'm going to achieve. So as part of raising Israel, I said to investor, I need 10 more years, I'm going to run this another 10 years. And after that book going to be too old, I probably shouldn't be I can be chairman or something. But yeah, so I've given myself another 10 years, nine years now. To just keep running hard at it. I don't have any better ideas than real. I love real estate. And there's just so many problems that I can see in this in this market. And I don't have any better ideas. Like I don't really want to build a game I yeah, I love investing in real estate. I'm starting to get to invest more in real estate now. So yeah,
Daniel Franco:do you do you come back to Australia at any point? You're here now are you here for
Jindou Lee:for another couple more months? Yeah. And then we go back to I live in Carlsbad near San Diego. Yeah. Do you make like Do you work here for three months of the year as part of a routine or is it just sort of settling you've done this time? Just this time? Because we haven't seen like family for a while. The Adelaide office is growing.
Daniel Franco:Where are you guys? In Adelaide? Yeah, I'm in California in California. I live in Carlsbad. Carlsbad. Yeah, in Adelaide in Adelaide. No office but your person I don't know when that's
Jindou Lee:the Edmonds building. I got a place Yeah, but we're looking for new
Daniel Franco:so away maybe we can look together you can take the brunt
Jindou Lee:Yeah, so I'll probably back like every year probably a couple weeks, but this time around. I've been back with three I'll be back for about three or four months. Yes. I'm gonna stay till the fringe ends and I head back when daylight savings takes over. I'm gonna hit back Yes. The meetings are
Daniel Franco:brutal when it when it gets colder. Yeah, back to the Yeah, brilliant. Radio with our who will start these quickfire questions and then we'll round off the podcast. You are obviously be great. It'd be great as what are you reading right now?
Jindou Lee:Right now I'm reading the reading. So I've read multiple
Daniel Franco:Yeah. I think we've talked about this. I'm exactly the same. I read more than one book at a time. Whatever. A couple thing.
Jindou Lee:Oh, one that I really like that I just finished reading is the richest man in Babylon. Yes. So I reread it. Yeah. Because it just has really simple lessons.
Daniel Franco:That was one of the first my original first books that I when I was after Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I was really interested in how to make money work and how to manage it. Here are the above it's a hard read.
Jindou Lee:I do audiobooks. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So but even then I'm like, Oh, my God. This is like reading the King James Bible. But someone in a monitor. It's quite nice, though. It's a it's a nice story. Yeah. A nice fable. Yeah.
Daniel Franco:scrolls. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, anything what actually our next question, what is one book that you would have recommended more so than others?
Jindou Lee:One book that I would have recommended more so than others. I really like the hard thing about things. Yeah. It's a very good book. It just makes you go Hey, is it you're not alone in this journey? Everyone goes through it. Yeah. I think that's a that's a really profound is.
Daniel Franco:Do you listen to any other podcasts? I listened to a lot of podcasts. What are some of your favorites?
Jindou Lee:So How I built this by Gary Ross is one of my favorites. He just did a really good interview style. Yeah. And he gets really good people at the end of their journey to speak and I think that's pretty cool. Grey matters one of them. Open the Pod Bay Doors Australian one, but the one I really liked that. Many people listened to
Daniel Franco:creating synergy podcasts.
Jindou Lee:That that is Top, Top 25 Top one so the besides your podcast, the one that I really like is Dad, I have a question. Oh, wow. It's it's a Spencer Scott. So he's a founder, I think Zillow, Zillow, Trulia, his son, who was when they started was like, five. Yeah, he asks that either question. He asked like things like, how does inflation work? And then see, that explains in very simple terms. Yeah, that's good. I have no idea. Like, I don't know half of these things. How things work?
Daniel Franco:Yeah. This is so good. It's you. Actually, I think you've posted or you've mentioned, Ray Dalio principles, principles. No, but you said there was a video YouTube clip like the 30 minute clip on how everything works. The economic Yeah, that's really fascinating. It is. Yeah. Yeah. And for some reason,
Jindou Lee:I skipped a lot of these basic concepts growing up.
Daniel Franco:We didn't get taught them at school. We don't know. I don't believe we do.
Jindou Lee:Thank God, it was just me know,
Daniel Franco:I'm quite certain I didn't learn this stuff. And I had to go and seek it myself. Okay, good. Oh, we I think we just come to the realization maybe it was, maybe yeah, shit that's very funny. What's one lesson, that is taking you the longest to learn?
Jindou Lee:So probably that concept on the energy, like time allocation energy, so there's people that are things that I'm really that I really love doing. Some people hate it. And the things I hate doing, someone else really loves it. correct. And like appointing our COO, she was she was in marketing. She loves all the things I hate, and I'm really bad at. And as soon as that happened, I just felt like oh, my goodness, this is a fun journey. And yeah, so that was just do things you really love and focus on your strengths.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. And create systems that can allow you to do
Jindou Lee:find the find the people that love doing things that you hate doing.
Daniel Franco:Yeah. And that they love doing. Yeah, absolutely. If you could have dinner, three people for dinner. I'm gonna assume your wife's already there. So three, three people over for dinner. Who would they be?
Jindou Lee:You know, this was a tough question. I couldn't think of anyone like I.
Daniel Franco:Because you mentioned earlier and yeah, really have too many mentors. Well,
Jindou Lee:yeah, I don't have like, oh, I want to listen to this guy. I want to get a bed. Yeah, I'm too old.
Daniel Franco:Man, Ray Dalio
Jindou Lee:just talked about all the things. Yeah. Um, I think um, yeah, I don't really have anyone that I would like to invite to dinner.
Daniel Franco:Okay. That's really interesting. Yeah. Thanks for that. Yeah, I'm good. Well, I would have accepted him right. But no, anyway. All right, we'll skip that one. Then what is some of the best advice you've ever received?
Jindou Lee:Yeah, this one's a good one. So I was trying to think of what is what I like and the one of the best advices from my wife, who doesn't. She gives me a lot of advice. Yeah. Or maybe instructions direction. But the one thing that she said to me once was that you always have a choice. I think we're having an argument that's probably working. Yeah. And you know, I'm too busy to do this. And I'm too busy to do blah, blah. And she's like, you always have a choice. Because I was trying to make it out. Like, I don't have a choice work is pushing, you know, pressuring me. And she's like, you actually have a choice. You just chose to do work over whatever. Yeah. That's really profound. Oh, wise lady. Yeah. So that was a really good, good lesson. Absolutely. We always have a choice, even though you feel like I'm trapped or whatever. Like the choice you made was to stay trapped.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, I agree. Nice. Have you read Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning? No. Do you love that? So it's a is a psychotherapist that was survived the Holocaust. And he wrote about his hate the way he thought within while he was in the concentration camps. Yeah, it's an amazing story. And but it was all based on thinking behaviors as opposed to what actually happened. And he talks about what happened, but it was the way he was analyzed, and PBS thoughts and what they were doing and how they're acting and where it came from. So it's really interesting, but he says, His famous quote, which is, between stimulus and response, there's a gap and in that gap is choice, right? And so the last thing that is, for me is always something that I always refer to as like, what is it? You know, your dad, my dad used to always say, just think before you speak, right? And that is exactly what that is referring to. Okay. If you have access to a time machine, where would you go?
Jindou Lee:So the period of my life, which I loved the most was when I was sort of 10 to that 12 13 10 to 12 13 yeah, and I was in Singapore. And I had this really great group of friends. We used to play soccer. Five, six hours a day, like literally five to six hours a day, it was no stress, you just, you know, after school, go play soccer. Eat dinner with them, then you go play more soccer. Like, that was like a three or four or five year period of my life. I'm still friends with these guys. And we, we want to catch up with them very rarely, but we still will everyone brings their own soccer ball in their tummy. I mean, we all like yes. But that was a period of my life where it really helped me to, I don't know, just let just had no care in the world. And just fun and, and people. No one judged you. They judge me a lot. But you know, me like it was just a great time. And yeah, I would go back there and Singapore and play and then
Daniel Franco:can you not recreate that fun for yourself?
Jindou Lee:Um, I'm trying to I'm trying to deal with, but it's really hard to get to build relationships. You know, like, when you get older, and everyone doesn't have time, and they got their own thing their family? Yeah. But that stage was just friends with the core thing. Yeah, fine. So yeah, I'm trying to create that with some, some like people YPO we have a very strong group of YPO. Yeah. And I my forum buddies are good.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, that's really good. If you had one superhero power, aka choose one superhero power. What would it be?
Jindou Lee:Is it rogue that basically she can steal everyone's powers? I would like to steal everyone's powers. To have everyone's powers. Yeah. I just I think it'd be cool to
Daniel Franco:so other people have powers. Like you're assuming that there are other superheroes running around.
Jindou Lee:They're not. I mean, even if it was just like, everyone has their own, maybe not as pronounced as like Marvel, but everyone has their own shots. You know what I mean? Like, like, I would love to learn how to be better at accounting. Yeah. I'd love to
Daniel Franco:Yeah. Were you talking about your SEO is for example, right now? I need that person. Yeah, I wouldn't still I don't want to enjoy that. But there is a time where even if it's running your own personal finances, like you know what, actually I wouldn't mind that person superpowers right now to deal with this.
Jindou Lee:Or just like being able to like, you know, see the experiences and yeah, like the Holocaust survivor, like being able to yeah, see like, it would just be profound. Yeah. Yeah, I think stealing stealing people's powers and dreams and using Okay, his feet or feet on their dream.
Daniel Franco:Freddy Krueger is a good Nightmare on Elm Street. Very good. And now you built this last question not because I said make did you come with a dad joke and you said not just one I got a few. Yes, you've been That joke. Will you call them just joking?
Jindou Lee:Here my jokes? Well, okay, I'll give you one. What do you call a pig with three eyes?
Daniel Franco:What do you call it? The three R's? P triple I love a good, well done, leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. today. It's been an amazing chat. I've learned a lot. I think there's some stuff that we're going to take away. And congratulations to everything that you've done in your career. And I know it's still a long way to go. But you've obviously on the right track and doing some wonderful things and building a what sounds like a wonderful business to work for. So congrats and kudos.
Jindou Lee:Thank you very much. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Daniel Franco:Where can we find you? Or do you want to be found actually, do you want your home address? Well, LinkedIn? Yeah, if I'm trying to LinkedIn Yeah. So Jindou?
Jindou Lee:Yep. Lee. So Jindou Lee one of the very, I think I'm the only one in the world. So yeah, well, I can't commit crimes or anything bad.
Daniel Franco:Yeah, thanks again. Connect with him on LinkedIn. And yeah, really appreciate your time today.
Jindou Lee:Cool. Thank you very much.
Daniel Franco:Take care, guys. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Or you can check out the show notes if there was anything of interest to you and find out more about us at Synergy iq.com.au. I am going to ask though, if you did like the podcast, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, rate and review. And if you didn't like it, that's alright too. There's no need to do anything. Take care guys. All the best.
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