Get ready for an inspiring and insightful conversation with Tobi Pearce, Co-Founder of SWEAT, on our latest podcast episode.
In this episode, Tobi shares his personal and professional journey from his early musical career to becoming a successful entrepreneur and building a $400m empire.
Join us as we dive deep into topics such as work-life balance, managing emotions, leading with compassion, and using metrics to your advantage.
Key takeaways from this episode:
Tobi also shares practical tips on how to improve your decision-making skills and become a better leader.
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or an established business leader, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in now and discover how Tobi built his empire through resilience, hard work, and leadership.
Where to find Tobi Pearce
Books mentioned in this episode:
Join the conversation on Synergy IQ on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram (@synergyiq).
Access SynergyIQ Website to get to know more about us.
Say hello to our host Daniel Franco on LinkedIn.
Get ready for an inspiring and insightful conversation with Tobi Pearce, Co-Founder of SWEAT, on our latest podcast episode.
In this episode, Tobi shares his personal and professional journey from his early musical career to becoming a successful entrepreneur and building a $400m empire.
Join us as we dive deep into topics such as work-life balance, managing emotions, leading with compassion, and using metrics to your advantage.
Key takeaways from this episode:
Tobi also shares practical tips on how to improve your decision-making skills and become a better leader.
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or an established business leader, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in now and discover how Tobi built his empire through resilience, hard work, and leadership.
Where to find Tobi Pearce
Books mentioned in this episode:
Join the conversation on Synergy IQ on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram (@synergyiq).
Access SynergyIQ Website to get to know more about us.
Say hello to our host Daniel Franco on LinkedIn.
00;00;00;24 - 00;00;13;29
Daniel Franco
So welcome back to the Creating Synergy Podcast. Today on the show, we have a great man. I've actually been super keen to do this podcast for a very long time. Tobi Pearce, welcome to the show.
00;00;14;00 - 00;00;14;26
Tobi Pearce
Thanks for having me, man.
00;00;15;13 - 00;00;22;29
Daniel Franco
So obviously known for being the founder of Sweat before building an empire. Load on and kudos on your journey there. Thank you.
00;00;22;29 - 00;00;23;13
Tobi Pearce
Very much.
00;00;25;01 - 00;00;54;25
Daniel Franco
I have raced in the world. I have had someone that you know very, very well on this show. Cyrus Yummy back in the day. I think we interviewed her back in the middle of covered days and she was talking to us about your growth and journey. So we know a little bit about the sweat story. But before we jump into any of that, I'd be really open if you could share with us your earliest contacts so we can get to know who was Tobi and where did you come from and how did you become the man you are today?
00;00;55;11 - 00;01;10;24
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, yeah, sure. So. Well, I guess as adults, we're really just a kind of growing reflection of ourselves as children. Right? So I grew up in a very small town. I went to a primary school with 20 or 30 people, I think. And at one point I was quite little.
00;01;10;24 - 00;01;11;14
Daniel Franco
In South Australia.
00;01;11;16 - 00;01;26;13
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, yeah, in South Australia, in the one region which we're famous for, obviously. Yeah. I was your typical sort of very skinny high school music nerd. That was me. But I had a.
00;01;26;19 - 00;01;27;18
Daniel Franco
Piano player and.
00;01;27;19 - 00;01;35;21
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, you know, I probably studied for probably 15, 17 years. I still play now, but yeah, I've been playing since I'm nine, three, four years old.
00;01;37;25 - 00;01;55;09
Tobi Pearce
And, but yeah, so I was that sort of like the music nerd, but a bit of a rebel. So I did get expelled from one school, mostly for not showing up like that often. Mostly, yeah. Mostly.
00;01;55;10 - 00;01;57;20
Daniel Franco
I used to go going at night.
00;01;58;17 - 00;02;21;21
Tobi Pearce
But yeah, so I was always a little bit of a ratbag. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't find the traditional education system sort of very stimulating. You very late in high school, I think early to middle of year 12. I left time this year sort of either by myself sort of on the streets or with friends or whatever for for a portion there eventually in for those.
00;02;21;26 - 00;02;42;10
Tobi Pearce
Anyone listening from overseas, we have a thing called i-Stat test which you can see in Australia to get into uni if you didn't do very well in high school was only just passed. I was brought on the brink of failure for year 12 and I got to school on off that. Let me get into a double degree in law of law and commerce, which I subsequently dropped out of several years later.
00;02;42;10 - 00;02;51;24
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do or what I really knew was that, you know, sort of from probably 12 or 13 years old, I really liked business. I really like numbers.
00;02;53;09 - 00;02;56;28
Daniel Franco
Is there an entrepreneur flair there? Did you start anything in your early years?
00;02;56;29 - 00;03;20;12
Tobi Pearce
Not, not, not very young, but like, yeah, I sort of. So I started working in a music shop when I was 13. Yeah, I that was a sort of family on, you know, small business and, you know, I worked in, you know, music, so I was piano sales, stock ordering, debt collection rentals. I cleaned the showroom floor, I delivered pianos, I had a truck license.
00;03;20;12 - 00;03;36;05
Tobi Pearce
You I did. So I was probably to be I was quite fortunate like that. I landed there because that was actually off the back of like a school work experience program. And I went there just because I played piano. There was no other no other logic to it. And so I got quite a lot of experience there. I kind of worked.
00;03;36;08 - 00;03;55;27
Tobi Pearce
I mean, we didn't even have a sort of proper reporting structures, but, you know, I effectively reported to the owner, you know, who at the time was sort of in his early to mid thirties and, you know, was running a very successful business. So I kind of got exposure and probably maybe a better word than exposure, the freedom, you know, to kind of explore a variety of different work.
00;03;56;04 - 00;03;57;22
Daniel Franco
And learn the hustle a little bit.
00;03;58;04 - 00;04;11;21
Tobi Pearce
Well, yeah, I mean, like I was I don't I maybe 15 or 16 and I was, you know, on a plane with him sort of going to Japan and China, flying pianos and wheeling and dealing things over there, which at that time I didn't really understand that that was quite cool.
00;04;12;13 - 00;04;17;13
Daniel Franco
And quite unique in a way, like from your parents letting you head overseas and.
00;04;17;14 - 00;04;17;26
Tobi Pearce
Yeah.
00;04;18;04 - 00;04;19;16
Daniel Franco
With someone that I don't really know.
00;04;19;25 - 00;04;48;08
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. Yeah, true, true. But yes, and I learned a lot about that. I mean, I mean, you learn a lot just traveling generically, but doing a business and kind of going to regional Japan and China, you learn. You learn quite a lot. So yeah, I mean, I eventually left there and got into personal training. The personal training thing was one I liked working out because I started going to the gym after high school and to I couldn't sort of work full time hours, 9 to 5, which is what I ended up doing at the music shop when I left school.
00;04;48;16 - 00;05;06;06
Tobi Pearce
I couldn't keep working there and do a full time double degree, and I was sort of like against this notion of being at uni for ten years because I was like, That just doesn't really make sense to me. So yeah, I ended up going into personal training and that was sort of where my first, I would say like truthfully independent, you know, entrepreneur experience began.
00;05;06;06 - 00;05;21;12
Tobi Pearce
But I mean, even before that, like I would work at the music shop in the morning, I would do after hours work at, you know, a restaurant as a DG. I would do after hours work, you know, the light on shopping and clothing store. Like I was working like 800 hour weeks just straight out of school and even sort of at the end of school as well.
00;05;22;22 - 00;05;23;23
Tobi Pearce
I just love I just love to.
00;05;23;23 - 00;05;33;13
Daniel Franco
Is that because and I've read that you I think you've mentioned that you were homeless at one point. Is that just so you could make ends meet? Is that why you just decide needed to anymore?
00;05;34;01 - 00;05;49;20
Tobi Pearce
I think so. I mean, I really so yeah, I like towards the end of high school, I had a couple of stints where I was sort of in between, you know, places. I spent the majority of year 12 sort of living. Yeah, friends, houses and that and even shortly after I spent the majority of that sort of first couple of years living at friends houses.
00;05;51;03 - 00;06;05;05
Tobi Pearce
And so towards the end of school and I honestly, I can't even really understand why, but I decided to stay and finish, so I didn't really have a lot of time to work. So I just had to find work. And then as soon as I finished, I like all of the hours that otherwise would have been scored as try to directly for work and kind.
00;06;05;05 - 00;06;18;01
Tobi Pearce
I got quite deeply into it and that was really like, I think the money thing was was certainly a part of it. I mean, to be frank, I wasn't exactly shooting the lights out. Yeah, I was making a couple of hundred bucks a week. Yeah, but, but it, it was more so.
00;06;18;01 - 00;06;19;12
Daniel Franco
I mean, that's not too bad.
00;06;19;12 - 00;06;35;28
Tobi Pearce
Not too bad. Yeah, but I had a massive chip on my shoulder. Yeah, like full transparency. Got a huge chip on my shoulder. Yeah. Like I got to prove to the world and. Yeah, yeah. So all this sort of stuff. And so at that point in time, yeah, when you're that age, not really thinking that much about intelligence work, it's just work more.
00;06;35;28 - 00;06;40;29
Tobi Pearce
Make more. What you have is very fundamental and basic understanding of what trade time for money.
00;06;41;00 - 00;06;42;16
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Expensive transaction. Yeah.
00;06;42;22 - 00;06;45;00
Tobi Pearce
Yeah.
00;06;45;00 - 00;07;06;04
Daniel Franco
So where when you're working all these hours, how did you get interested and how did you find yourself? I mean, I've read that you, you were living out of a car and. Yeah. How did you find yourself in that position and then what was the transition to. Yeah. Um, you know, moving into a home that you actually owned or rented.
00;07;06;20 - 00;07;32;10
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So, um, I think about the, the exact sequence, but I mean, ultimately, like after school and, you know, working a lot of the hours and whatever, I eventually, you know, went through and did a page qualification, which then allowed me to transition from, you know, sort of working three or four jobs to bridge all the hours that I wanted to work into, sort of working one job, which was just mine and my own sort of little business at this point.
00;07;32;10 - 00;07;48;22
Tobi Pearce
You know, I said it's not a renting a place. And, you know, I'm doing all the sort of more, I guess like conventional, you know, teenage. Yeah. You know, person stuff. Yeah. And because I was able to kind of set my, you know, my own price and my own hours and sort of run my own business at that point, I was able to then go to uni.
00;07;48;22 - 00;08;14;08
Tobi Pearce
So I was doing a full time double degree whilst, you know, running my pasty business. And the the issue that that presented me was, you know, cash in hand was a much larger incentive than like some delayed certificate. Yeah, I'm at uni but the, and that, that was my issue early on. But instead of after about six or 12 months of doing personal training, I was already making a few hundred thousand dollars a year on a run rate basis.
00;08;14;08 - 00;08;15;00
Tobi Pearce
And so just.
00;08;15;00 - 00;08;16;11
Daniel Franco
Purely from the hours that you were putting in.
00;08;16;11 - 00;08;41;23
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. Yeah. And so like my that's cool. Yeah. But the, the issue that it presented me was that the more the more money that I made and the more independence I generated, the less interest I had in going to uni and waiting around because I kind of went from doing individual person, I'm trying to small groups in a gym and then I set up my own a couple of my own franchises doing female only group fitness.
00;08;41;23 - 00;08;42;00
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
00;08;43;03 - 00;08;59;04
Tobi Pearce
And you had a couple of people working for me and, you know, doing all that sort of stuff. And so yeah, the combination of those things, you know, sort of started to push me closer towards seven figures. And then so it was at that point in time that I really sort of set aside, Oh, you know, I do, I really do.
00;08;59;04 - 00;09;24;10
Tobi Pearce
I really want to, you know, do this whole uni thing. Of course. Then I stumbled across the internet and social media and about at about this time I'd put together a couple of, you know, books or e-books, which I would sell to my clients and sold to some corporates and whatnot to kind of educate on healthy eating and training and all this sort of stuff, which was the super simple logic was like, Well, I can't fit any more people in.
00;09;24;29 - 00;09;49;03
Tobi Pearce
Here's how I'm trying if you want to follow it, yeah, it's 50 bucks or whatever. And that was kind of the origin of what ended up becoming the first version of the e-book business online, which ultimately then became Sweat. The issue that I had to kind of with, you know, making a little bit of money and then sort of questioning university then got completely blown out of the water because I went from making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to millions overnight.
00;09;49;03 - 00;09;49;25
Tobi Pearce
And so it was off.
00;09;49;25 - 00;09;50;18
Daniel Franco
The back of the e-book.
00;09;50;26 - 00;10;07;16
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. And so, you know, I then I recruited more people to take over all the trainings. A lot of have to do it so I could focus on the online stuff. It was actually my my birthday that year. I caught up with my parents for a birthday dinner. And at the dinner I sort of, you know, partway through wedding, I sat down.
00;10;07;16 - 00;10;23;17
Tobi Pearce
I was like, Oh, look, I'm probably going to disappoint you when I say this, but I've decided to leave university. And that was a there was a lot of silence. There's a lot of signs that table was my the way I was raised out, if I'm going to get this all right. But I think I think my dad has two degrees or degree and a master's.
00;10;23;29 - 00;10;43;10
Tobi Pearce
My mom has about an hour like three or four or five. You know, education, psychology, nursing, you know, the list kind of goes on. And the mentality was very much traditional. I always go, it's even if you never use the certificate, you get just go and get it just in case because you can fall back onto it. That was always the mentality and there's some practicality in that.
00;10;43;13 - 00;10;47;11
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, I just didn't agree. Yeah, at the time I did.
00;10;47;11 - 00;10;51;11
Daniel Franco
My family had a different thought process. It was get a government job and then Yeah.
00;10;51;25 - 00;11;00;15
Tobi Pearce
And that's like really, you know. Yeah. In a lot of sort of English speaking Western countries, that's quite conventional. Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah, that was so nice.
00;11;01;16 - 00;11;27;03
Daniel Franco
You've met, you know, Vin Jang, have you met Vijay? Vince? He's a South Australian. He's communication expert, Been on the show for over a million followers on. I can't believe you don't know him. He's fantastic. I should connect you both. He. He's the same thing. So he's a magician. That turned keynote speakers flying all around the world. Yeah, and his parents is Asian background, and he said my parents thought I was a failure because I wasn't a doctor or a lawyer.
00;11;27;03 - 00;11;47;16
Daniel Franco
And he's pretty open about is quite funny. And he said when he told them that he was moving out of quitting university. Yeah. To follow his magic career because he started off as a magician, his parents were quite upset. Yeah, but then when he showed them the pay check for one Kate one magic act that he did, which was ten grand, they're like, Hacken, I'll be your manager.
00;11;47;16 - 00;11;53;19
Daniel Franco
Right. Did that did your parents did they flip their decision when they understood? Not not that was so yeah. Wow.
00;11;54;08 - 00;12;10;16
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So that yeah that I guess like perspective is pretty much been maintained. Yeah. Yeah. And it's worth noting as well like, you know, for the first 3 to 5 years of my more serious professional career, everything was incredibly private. So my parents had no idea.
00;12;10;16 - 00;12;11;01
Daniel Franco
Yeah, okay.
00;12;11;01 - 00;12;16;06
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, I like that. All I knew was that it, you know, it was more money than peasant training. Yeah, and I'm not jealous.
00;12;16;29 - 00;12;21;03
Daniel Franco
But isn't that why you go to you need so you can earn an income that can pay for you. Yeah.
00;12;21;09 - 00;12;42;09
Tobi Pearce
Well, I mean in these sort of scenarios, especially with sort of young traditionalist mindsets, ultimately it's a flawed ideology. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so if that's something that's been instilled in them and or something they've lived with for a long time. Yeah. Who's the silly person? The one who's telling someone to do something? Well, the one who's arguing with someone who's living.
00;12;42;10 - 00;12;43;07
Daniel Franco
Yeah, that's true.
00;12;43;07 - 00;12;43;15
Tobi Pearce
Yeah.
00;12;43;26 - 00;12;45;24
Daniel Franco
So stop banging yet against the wall. Yeah.
00;12;45;24 - 00;13;03;07
Tobi Pearce
I never really engaged in the in the arguments and I think as well, like I at that point in time in my life and there's something about me which is probably quite different to most people at that point in their life. I was fully comfortable with the accountability, you know, So if I completely fail or lost everything, like I was totally cool with that.
00;13;03;07 - 00;13;04;08
Tobi Pearce
MM Yeah, which is.
00;13;04;08 - 00;13;06;04
Daniel Franco
Probably half the reason why you succeeded.
00;13;06;06 - 00;13;18;00
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. Because, you know, a lot of people will go, Oh, like, I hate uni and I don't want to be here and this and that and the other, but then they don't really considering. Well, okay, well if you had done better and they go oh well I was too accountable. Yeah. Yeah. But, but then what. This, what that.
00;13;18;00 - 00;13;28;10
Tobi Pearce
And I'm like well okay, yeah that's, that's your prerogative. And one was I'm like, oh well you have everything screws up. I have faith in my intelligence. I'll, I'll go and get a degree and do something.
00;13;28;13 - 00;13;33;29
Daniel Franco
Well, I can always fall back to go back to personal training. Right. Like correct at the very least. Yeah. Had advice there.
00;13;34;07 - 00;13;56;04
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. And I think a lot of people I mean, like most things, most things in life. But, you know, in this particular context in business, most things get ruined by people was inability to regulate emotions. Yeah. And in this particular case, fear, you know, it's that fear of failure or the fear of the unknown, the uncertainty or, or, you know, public demise or whatever that people want to kind of avoid.
00;13;57;21 - 00;14;01;18
Tobi Pearce
But, you know, on a practical basis, it's highly irrational.
00;14;01;18 - 00;14;05;00
Daniel Franco
How do you regulate your fear or your emotion?
00;14;05;09 - 00;14;06;16
Tobi Pearce
All a lot of practice.
00;14;06;26 - 00;14;34;00
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Like, have you are you there? Yeah. I mean, I'm definitely not. And, you know, I get told not on a daily basis, but every now and again, yeah, people can see my emotions on my face. Yeah. I'm interested because it is, it's an area I think if you are leading a company or a, or anything sport, whatever it is, the ability to stay calm and provide vision and direction is, is paramount.
00;14;34;04 - 00;14;36;17
Daniel Franco
Yeah. How do you regulate your emotion?
00;14;37;05 - 00;14;56;03
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, well, one look from one of the macro things here. What is that? I think a lot of people make a very unfortunate and flawed assumption about this and they they start from the position that, you know, I'm super emotional and then I get a whole bunch of feedback too. That's not good. For whatever reason, society feeds that back to them.
00;14;57;08 - 00;15;19;23
Tobi Pearce
And then they generate this belief that, well, if I'm hyper emotional or just emotional to any degree, which we all are, myself included, and I get negative feedback about that, well, therefore, the goal must be to be not emotional at all. Mhm. And that's very inaccurate. Right. The reality is that know as human beings we're always going to be emotional.
00;15;19;23 - 00;15;34;03
Tobi Pearce
The variable is not so much do we or do we not feel emotions. It's to what degree do we let the emotion dictate our behavior? Okay. Right. So there's a subtlety distinction between having and not having emotions versus having them, but then not letting them dictate your behavior.
00;15;34;22 - 00;15;38;05
Daniel Franco
And so there's a get right stimulus response in between.
00;15;38;05 - 00;15;55;11
Tobi Pearce
There's, again, Yeah. And a lot of people yeah, I fundamentally understand that. But then the complexity comes guys well all well something ABC happened and now I'm really angry. Oh yeah I'm really sad or, you know, whatever it is, but it takes time. You know, there's a, there's an intellectual component of this, like actually understanding what's happening and why, you know, what are your emotions?
00;15;55;11 - 00;16;13;12
Tobi Pearce
You know, why do we have them? You know, how do you define them? In what context do they present themselves? This is intellectual and educational part. Yeah. And then there's a there's a more kind of, you know, tactile, experiential component of it, which is more like your how do you recognize that and feel that and, you know, captured in real time.
00;16;13;12 - 00;16;34;11
Tobi Pearce
So an equivalent might be, you know, if you look at a sport athlete, Michael Jordan's always a great example. He's not even really like he's he's unconsciously competent. He's so good that he's never really thinking about much. It's kind of just happening. The opposite of the spectrum is unconsciously incompetent, so most people are completely unaware that their emotions are taking control.
00;16;34;11 - 00;16;52;20
Tobi Pearce
So this is a skill acquisition process. No different playing a sport. And you know, a lot of people would conventionally say, Well, yeah, we study the intellectual component. Maybe for the more tactile experiential part, we maybe we meditate, maybe we reflect them, we journal, maybe we have a coach that we talk to to, you know, sort of break down these reflections.
00;16;52;20 - 00;17;14;25
Tobi Pearce
So there's a lot of, you know, practice involved with doing that and a lot of people unfortunately want to simplify to don't have emotions, which in my opinion is probably if we come back to the leadership perspective, leading with no emotions is fundamentally flawed, in my opinion, in the sense that you need to be to make decisions from a financial perspective without your emotions interfering.
00;17;15;07 - 00;17;31;15
Tobi Pearce
But everyone that you're leading has emotions, and by virtue of that, you must be able to understand them. And to understand them, you must be able to understand yourself. Therefore, you must be emotionally driven. So it's a little counterintuitive, but a lot of people get lost in the oversimplification, right? They have a low fidelity view. Yeah.
00;17;31;27 - 00;17;34;03
Daniel Franco
So staying within the spectrum of what an emotion.
00;17;34;12 - 00;17;34;21
Tobi Pearce
Yeah.
00;17;34;21 - 00;17;41;12
Daniel Franco
Should be, right? You know, you don't go over that line, you don't go below that line, you stay in what is a Goldilocks zone, I guess. And.
00;17;41;13 - 00;18;02;18
Tobi Pearce
Oh, you mean you even think about it this way, right? You know, the example used is that there's a stimulus and then there's the response. And then in between the two, there's this space which we call choice. Right? But there's also another way of looking at that. And that is that well, does does the way you feel in business really need to have any link to the decision that you made?
00;18;03;24 - 00;18;29;03
Tobi Pearce
Right. So, for example, you know, you're trying to do a big business deal. I'll use my experience. You know, it's we we went through one and 36 hours before it was meant to come to a close and ended up falling over. It cost me more than $10 million of my own money. It was a massive public failure because I'd guaranteed a whole bunch to, you know, the team, which was, you know, a bit of a a learning from my past in management leadership.
00;18;29;23 - 00;18;49;13
Tobi Pearce
In that particular scenario, I can sit there and be really angry. I can be really angry because something has gotten in our way sad because I've lost out something embarrassed, because I've just, you know, had failure in front of a huge bunch of people. And then the natural response to those combination of emotions would be to recluse. It would be to run away and hard for a lot of people, right?
00;18;49;16 - 00;19;10;26
Tobi Pearce
Correct. That's a terrible decision from a leadership and management perspective. I agree. Yeah. If you want to set a culture that welcomes learning and failure, you have to acknowledge your own right. And so in that case, yeah, you might have stimulus, you know, choice and response, right? But the stimulus, the emotion in this particular case and the choice don't necessarily actually have to have any relation to each other.
00;19;11;07 - 00;19;31;06
Tobi Pearce
That's not necessarily a rule. You know, it's a useful principle to live by. But if you're constantly making decisions with the emotions being the key variable that you consider, well then don't ever expect to make a lot of money in the long term because the commercial transactions, you know, if you're doing a very big deal with a bunch of investment bankers or nine people or acquirers, they're not worried about if you're happy or sad or otherwise.
00;19;31;06 - 00;19;40;07
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, don't worry about it. The transaction makes sense. They need to feel good about it, right? But your decisions have to be quite rational and practical. They can't be emotionally driven.
00;19;41;21 - 00;20;02;10
Daniel Franco
Who the do you think the skill comes from? The continuation of making mistakes in that space where you learn or is it can you go from I mean, I know when you know this, you can't just go from being at one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum in you have you have to get better.
00;20;02;10 - 00;20;22;29
Daniel Franco
And that's why they say recently we did the podcast with Mark Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, and one of his quotes that he said was that you, you know, you learn as much well, saying that you can learn entrepreneurship from a book is the same as you can learn playing golf from a book, right? You have to be able to play golf you to learn.
00;20;23;05 - 00;20;31;16
Daniel Franco
Do you think do you think the same goes with controlling emotions? You just have to be in it. You have to be in amongst it. You have to be overwhelmed, build resilience, all of the above.
00;20;31;16 - 00;20;58;06
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, Yeah, I think to a degree again. So I think that's a great quote. I'd probably yeah, I'd probably suggest you know rather than it being kind of like one or the other. It's just, it's always this combination of both. Right. Like if we look at skill acquisition in general and your leadership as a skill management, as a skill making decisions as a skill, these are all skills that we either we don't have them or not have them, we all have them.
00;20;58;06 - 00;21;19;20
Tobi Pearce
That is somewhere between being not very effective and highly effective, right? So we all sit somewhere hand. The goal is always to move more towards the highly effective. And I think when we look at business, you know, no matter how many shitty situations you put yourself in and how many times you kind of win file or otherwise, that's not actually going to reinforce efficient decision making right?
00;21;19;20 - 00;21;35;22
Tobi Pearce
It's the reflection. Yeah, it's the consideration is the digestion of the feedback that you get. You know, if you're in a boxing match and you constantly go one way and you hit the same way every time, you can get hit ten times 100 or 1000, unless you take that as feedback, yes, I want to reflect and do it, but you're going to get knocked on the head, right?
00;21;35;22 - 00;21;59;20
Tobi Pearce
And so business is very similar. I mean, now, since having exited one of the organizations I founded, Sweat, and I've gone into quite a large amount of like advisory work with founders and in a mentoring on coaching capacity, it is fascinating to me how many people learn the same lesson many times, and that's kind of a that's an ironic statement in itself because if you learn it once, you really shouldn't.
00;22;01;04 - 00;22;27;25
Tobi Pearce
But it's a really interesting thing to observe, you know, from an arm's length perspective, right? That in that case, people's emotions and the ego are blocking them from learning. Right? So yes, you have to have the intellectual component read how to play golf or watch how to play golf. Then go try play some golf, then reflect on the feedback that you're getting from the sport itself, your body, the results, people watching you, whatever, you know, doc environment.
00;22;27;25 - 00;22;47;16
Tobi Pearce
I agree. It's just data. And again, that sounds a little mechanical. When people sometimes find those sorts of like words confronting, it's like every day that you're at work you win, lose or otherwise losing is a strong word. So maybe it's win, learn or otherwise. Yeah, that's all it is. Feedback. If you don't want to accept and digest feedback, well, it doesn't matter how much you play the sport.
00;22;48;02 - 00;23;08;23
Tobi Pearce
Right, Right. So it's a combination of yeah, I do intellectually learn to be experientially learning if you want to think of it this way. But then it very importantly, like the learning is still predicated upon receiving and ingesting and integrating feedback and new information, which unfortunately a lot of people don't do because they get emotionally blocked. They're afraid or they're egotistical or whatever, which we all have to agree.
00;23;09;15 - 00;23;29;21
Tobi Pearce
But again, one of my favorite kind of perspectives or quotes, if you will. Yeah, and I very often ask this to people that I work with. I say to them, like, do you want to be right or do you want to win right? Or and you can change that to a variety of different contexts. Yeah, if someone's doing a do you do, it's like, what would you want to be the smart person in the room?
00;23;29;21 - 00;23;48;00
Tobi Pearce
We you to be rich, you know like, well, what are the kind of polar extremes here that we want to go out and the one that presents itself the founders very often as well, like, do you want to be comfortable or do you want to progress? Because the two are very, very rarely exist together. Yeah. And leadership and management is a great example.
00;23;48;00 - 00;24;08;09
Tobi Pearce
It's so it's really uncomfortable to digest the feedback. If someone says to you you're not good at management or that didn't really work for me, or it's not really effective or whatever it might be, that's quite hard to digest. And people as human beings, we always want to kind of autonomously move towards the path of least resistance and the path of least resistance in many of these environments as well.
00;24;08;10 - 00;24;27;20
Tobi Pearce
Avoid the feedback, avoid the data hard. You know, it's going to head in the sand time and totally. And normally the people that are hyper successful will do that less and not always better normally. Right. And so if that's principle one kind of an anecdote that we believe to be true, it's like, Walden, put your head in the sand less if you want to have more success.
00;24;28;02 - 00;24;58;05
Daniel Franco
Do you think that you talked about sport within that scenario? I as a junior, played, you know, in the elite sport world and with cricket and football, and for me, the lessons learned in that world and I've spoken to a lot of entrepreneurs and successful business people as you depreciate and likewise, I think you have to in sport, let's use this, use football as the example, cricket, whatever it is in football you are it's constant feedback, right?
00;24;58;05 - 00;25;17;14
Daniel Franco
Like the you mark the ball your hand if your hands are in the right position. Yes, the ball goes through your hands as you kick the ball. It's not dropped on your foot properly, it's instant, it's constant instant feedback. Then not to mention that you're the runner will come out and provide you feedback from the coach. You get off the bench and the coach is standing there yelling at you and he or she is giving you feedback.
00;25;17;21 - 00;25;53;03
Daniel Franco
And so it's this, this desire. I've kind of grown up with this desire for instant feedback and yeah, and, and so I think for me it's really helped me shape and move and understand and become a little bit more emotionally regulated when it comes to receiving feedback. Yeah. Do you think that the do you think that that in its own right is something, as you see leaders and business owners as they go through the career, the people who are putting their head in the sand, so to speak, and they are the ones that haven't had the opportunity to learn how to receive feedback through their through their life.
00;25;53;07 - 00;26;08;07
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, maybe. I mean, yeah, I mean, this is kind kind of back to first principles of like nature versus nurture, right? Yeah. You're kind of born that way. You become that way. But yeah, I mean, I'm probably not educated enough to have that degree about, you know, soccer theory.
00;26;08;13 - 00;26;09;19
Daniel Franco
No, I think you.
00;26;09;24 - 00;26;31;09
Tobi Pearce
But I agree with your point that I like I think that a lot of this what we might call openness, you know, to, you know, just life in general. A lot of that does come from the way that we're brought out. But again, that's a that in a concept in a self is almost quite simplistic. It's like there's multiple reasons for why you're open.
00;26;31;09 - 00;26;49;12
Tobi Pearce
You might be open because you were that was a culture of your family. You might be open because an even if it's completely anti the culture of your family, you might have a higher degree of openness because your desire to win is so much higher than your fear of anything else. Your fear of losing is the inverse. So there's a lot of different.
00;26;49;12 - 00;26;51;13
Daniel Franco
Want to need to be different and yeah, yeah.
00;26;51;14 - 00;27;20;02
Tobi Pearce
There's a lot of variables. And even in this, even in this predicament itself, there's a lot of nuance here because there's a different to being open to feedback versus seeking feedback, right? So someone who is open to feedback is reactive. Yes. That they do something. They have proximity to data. Either someone brings it to them or for whatever reason, right.
00;27;20;03 - 00;27;46;29
Tobi Pearce
They get access to it. Right. Which is very different. You know, it's a kind of maybe another level or another approach, which is, well, yes, I have proximity to feedback, but what feedback am I not getting? Mm. Yeah. Because in business, having success in business is highly it's multi-factorial. It's not like all the people want to simplify it, to be super smart or work super hard or right place, right time or, you know, whatever it is and it's, it's algorithmic, right?
00;27;47;08 - 00;28;13;14
Tobi Pearce
And when we look at this stuff, people want to simplify it down to that. One of the categories that is almost always missed is people's desire to become aware of things they're not aware of. Hmm. Right. So if we break our knowledge down into we have known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, right? So things that we know exist and things that we and those things that we also have high knowledge about, then there's things that we also know that exist, but we don't really have a lot of knowledge about.
00;28;13;14 - 00;28;24;06
Tobi Pearce
For most people, that's things like quantum physics, right? Yeah, You know, but then there's also things which we don't. Not only do we not have knowledge about, we're not actually even aware they exist. Yeah, right. Yeah. And from a feedback perspective, you.
00;28;24;09 - 00;28;25;10
Daniel Franco
Know, you don't know, you don't.
00;28;25;10 - 00;28;47;27
Tobi Pearce
Know what you don't know. And so a lot of people will only receive the feedback that is able to come to them from the people that they are around and then they reactively receive as you know. So for example, when my, you know, journey, I didn't know what I didn't know about business, so I spent six months of the year, like five years in America just talking to highly successful people, listening and taking notes and being like, Well, what are you focusing on that I've never heard of before?
00;28;47;27 - 00;28;57;24
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so some really practical examples of this were, well, early on, I didn't even know what ROAS was for advertising. I'd never even heard of it.
00;28;58;08 - 00;29;19;09
Daniel Franco
Do you think do you think in that in your point there, because there's the old saying is you are you are the average of the five people that you're white. Sorry, is the average of the five people that you surround yourself with and that goes to your exact point of your limited by their thinking. Yeah. Do you think and then I've been told recently that I have too many people I listen to.
00;29;19;17 - 00;29;20;15
Daniel Franco
Do you think that's a problem?
00;29;21;24 - 00;29;32;23
Tobi Pearce
I think I think all of it's fully I think having too many and then the sum of five etc. etc. I think all that's a bit folly I think is that I think frankly, I think all of that is just another beautiful way to avoid out accountability.
00;29;32;23 - 00;29;33;22
Daniel Franco
Yeah, well, that's true.
00;29;33;27 - 00;29;48;01
Tobi Pearce
Because if you want to be really blunt about it, it's like, well, whether it's the five people around you or the 500 people around you or whatever, talk to who you need to aim to get, where you need to go. Mm hmm. Like, it's this it's no different to before to do what must be done. Don't do what you want to do.
00;29;48;01 - 00;29;58;16
Tobi Pearce
Do what must be done. Don't hang out with who you want to hang out with. Hang out with the people who have the highest probability of getting you where you want to go. And even in that case, you know their only that is only an assistance.
00;29;58;23 - 00;29;59;02
Daniel Franco
Hmm.
00;29;59;18 - 00;30;20;15
Tobi Pearce
It doesn't, you know, like you could go and talk to hang out with Warren Buffett 24 hours a day, seven days a week for six months if you want to. There's no correlation between that and being a good investor in all. That's a if anything, that's a mindset component. You know how many people have, right? Every one of Warren Buffett's books and I've read most of his minutes for 30 years.
00;30;20;15 - 00;30;41;02
Tobi Pearce
Does that make me a good investor? Absolutely not. I'm still alone as far as I'm concerned. I'm a rookie investor. I'm a decent business person, but I'm a rookie investor, you know, So like a lot of people want to simplify, you know, these things and boil it down to these things. I mean, I'd say something that's probably more accurate is, you know, you will be anchored to the lowest quality of person that you spend regular time with.
00;30;41;02 - 00;30;41;24
Daniel Franco
Yeah, okay.
00;30;42;10 - 00;30;51;01
Tobi Pearce
Because being sort of like hanging around Michael Jordan when you're good at basketball, but hanging around someone who is incredibly negative and toxic all the time will have a negative influence.
00;30;51;01 - 00;30;51;28
Daniel Franco
Yeah, absolutely.
00;30;51;28 - 00;31;03;18
Tobi Pearce
Right. The negatives are far more likely to have a a variable influence on you than positive because the positive is nice to look at, but it requires effort and work. The negative requires less effort and less work. Mm hmm.
00;31;04;12 - 00;31;05;29
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Blaming blame game.
00;31;05;29 - 00;31;09;05
Tobi Pearce
Yes. Yeah.
00;31;09;05 - 00;31;31;29
Daniel Franco
I'm going to just jump around here. Did you were you this knowledgeable early in your career? Like, as I'm listening. Yeah, because I'm listening in. I'm just going, Oh, my God, I'm never going to make it as a CEO with someone like, you know. Well, you know, I mean, like, I'm comparing myself to you now, which is the root of all evil, but when where did this knowledge come from?
00;31;32;16 - 00;32;03;12
Daniel Franco
How did you learn and develop yourself to to get to where you are now that you're you're talking so many truths and have so many different thoughts? And yeah, I mean, you mentioned before feedback. You often talk about habits and building. Building. There are habits within within your in life and but this, this ability to to go back and look and digest and understand and evaluate is something that I I'm feeling as you talk when in all that tell us how your how you learn.
00;32;03;17 - 00;32;11;03
Daniel Franco
I'm really interested in how you learn things and how you how you move forward and you know, you use the word progress. How do you continually progress yourself.
00;32;11;03 - 00;32;27;24
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So I height and height is a very strong word and I'm using it very deliberately. I hate the idea that there is cheat cards to success or hacks or this or that or the other. Like it goes so hard against my values right?
00;32;27;24 - 00;32;29;22
Daniel Franco
So the get rich quick scheme sort of thing. Yeah.
00;32;29;23 - 00;32;36;25
Tobi Pearce
All of that. Yeah. It, it, it, I shouldn't let it but it hurts me. Right. But did you.
00;32;37;02 - 00;32;40;01
Daniel Franco
Did you ever sell. I know it like not get it fast sort of thing.
00;32;40;13 - 00;33;03;26
Tobi Pearce
I never ever know I was just completely opposite of anti it but, but no the the one thing like one really solid cut through thought with all this stuff and the to do this is free of charge right. It will cost you $0. You don't need to learn it at zero it's free. Yeah right and 99.99999% of the world will never do it right.
00;33;04;11 - 00;33;38;18
Tobi Pearce
And it is seek the truth. Right. And to to add, you know some explanation to that. Most people seek knowledge and the issue with that is that not all knowledge or information is true. And so when we seek truth, we build the skill set that is to form our own opinion, which requires digesting multiple sources of information or data going through our own problem solving and rationalization process, and then arriving at a conclusion right.
00;33;38;18 - 00;34;16;15
Tobi Pearce
What most people are doing when they believe that they are studying is let's say they read a book or they listen to a podcast. And one of them, they're not seeking truth, they're seeking a solution, They're seeking a quick fix or an opinion here. Yeah. You know, so out of all of the and this is a very general term, let's call it out of all the business media that is available, podcasts, blogs, you know, published books, magazines, whatever, almost exclusively, you know, like 90% of it, potentially even more is either outright stories or BS.
00;34;16;23 - 00;34;37;20
Tobi Pearce
A, B is A, you know, a case study of a story. Right. And now, you know, from a neurological perspective, like that's great for knowledge retention because stories are very often much easier to retain. Right? But like, that's like you're not even skimming the surface of the information that you actually would be able to learn less if you spent the same units of time.
00;34;37;20 - 00;34;53;03
Tobi Pearce
So great example. I a lot of people I work with, they're like, oh, how do I get good at business and great Peter Drucker? And they're like, Who is that? And I'm like, Exactly, Yeah, that's the guy who invented business. Management pretty much is the father of management. Yeah. And people are like, Oh, okay, no worries. They go and buy his books, whatever they buy, you know?
00;34;53;03 - 00;35;08;11
Tobi Pearce
And then a week or two later they come back and they have 4 minutes. That's hard to read. And what. Well, you said you wanted to be good at management. You know, like in the example is no different to a person that says, Oh, yeah, hey, man, look, I'm going to lose. Thank you. So make less shit food.
00;35;08;12 - 00;35;33;28
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, Presumably like. Yeah, no worries. Two weeks I'd like for Man, that's hard. And I'm like, Whoa, Like, welcome to reality. Like, most stuff is hard, you know? And so this whole notion of, like, seeking the truth is frankly almost anti everything that we are taught our whole lives. If you think about the traditional education system, you know, like it would explode if you went in and I said, I'll write a paper on this, and then you said, I will watch.
00;35;33;28 - 00;36;02;29
Tobi Pearce
You found out that all that's wrong, like it would explode. Yeah, we wouldn't work. We're taught to digest and regurgitate. We're not taught to digest or ingest, analyze, you know, critique and form an opinion. Far less of the education system experience for most people. Again, an English speaking Western society is considerate of that. And as a result of that, this notion of seeking truth is not only a very hard for most people, but b it's an absolutely massive superpower and it's very costly, nothing.
00;36;03;10 - 00;36;23;26
Tobi Pearce
And so to come back to your point of like, oh, did I always have knowledge and whatever, like I still wouldn't consider myself a very knowledgeable person because I respect that there's a lot more to learn. But in the context of business, which I probably know more about than most other things that I have experienced in my life, I feel that I'm I'm more entered than just shallow.
00;36;24;01 - 00;36;40;25
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, Yeah. You know, I suggest that really comes down to seek truth. You know, like most of the business management books or stories or whatever, don't really provide you the tools to do it because it's not really about truth. It's about, well, this is what worked in this situation. But what worked in this situation is not a reflection of what will work the majority all the time.
00;36;41;04 - 00;36;58;04
Tobi Pearce
The truth is what will generally work. It's not what you know. Will this management process work in Facebook, where we had to recruit 20,000 people in four years? Yeah, Yeah. And we went from being nothing to a several hundred billion dollar company in 15 years. Or how how the hell often does that happen? Yeah.
00;36;58;06 - 00;37;00;13
Daniel Franco
Almost never listening to that story.
00;37;00;13 - 00;37;22;23
Tobi Pearce
So yeah it's it's not Yeah it's not that it's fully useless but it's more for motivation and inspiration than it is for education. Yeah. My professional opinion, not a fact, but yeah, if you really want to learn stuff like, well, go read books that are about the theory because that's where the information is. You know, like, as silly as it sounds, you don't, you don't go and watch the documentary about Michael Jordan's career to get go to basketball.
00;37;22;23 - 00;37;23;04
Daniel Franco
No.
00;37;23;21 - 00;37;28;20
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So, so what? Why would you go and read the documentary about Facebook or Netflix to get good at business?
00;37;28;23 - 00;37;29;07
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
00;37;30;11 - 00;37;35;10
Tobi Pearce
Like if there is if there was ever an a rational approach to education, it's.
00;37;35;10 - 00;37;41;09
Daniel Franco
That it's like it's you're right. I mean people are naturally drawn to stories because it's entertainment. It's entertainment.
00;37;41;10 - 00;37;43;15
Tobi Pearce
Like Michael Jordan's story about.
00;37;44;04 - 00;37;44;20
Daniel Franco
In sense.
00;37;45;00 - 00;37;59;18
Tobi Pearce
Which is a phenomenal documentary. I loved it. It was very entertaining to me. But I wouldn't claim that after watching that I'm any better of basketball. Frankly, I'm terrible, right? Yeah. I've barely ever played in my life. I wouldn't want to. My partner Rachel was significantly better than I am, which is an interesting.
00;37;59;28 - 00;38;26;25
Daniel Franco
Talking to experience with someone who comes from a basketball family. So my my children play, but I'll go back to Seeking Truth. I mean, Chuck is Managing Oneself was a book that absolutely changed my life. But the I remember reading it at the time, and it's a small book, very easy to have that review. Right? It's and I remember reading it and going, I actually don't know how to apply this.
00;38;26;25 - 00;38;48;11
Daniel Franco
I don't. I don't. So I think the jump to Drucker was was too great. Where I was at that particular time. So I actually started off on listening to or reading other books. Probably I would moved My Cheese was one of those first ones, which is really basic expensive. Johnson's book of Just How were you reacting to a change in your life?
00;38;48;11 - 00;39;08;13
Daniel Franco
Where I like and it's so simple, and that's kind of how I structured Mylan in growth through the was start off with books that you can actually pick up and it's probably going to get you inspired and reading and and maybe that's is the the storytelling aspect of it Yeah and then you move your way up the ranks and then you get into the drug wars where.
00;39;08;13 - 00;39;35;12
Tobi Pearce
You get to contextualize the information. Right. And and this is a thing as well, right? Came back to the, you know, portion earlier. We were talking about skill acquisition, right? Yeah. Reading the book is the intellectual component, right? Yeah. Attempting to implement that and failing for a very long time is the experiential path. Right? And so whether it's drug or another author, you know, Ginsberg or whoever you want, Collins is not directly management, academia.
00;39;35;12 - 00;39;36;22
Tobi Pearce
It's kind of, you know, theoretical.
00;39;37;00 - 00;39;37;07
Daniel Franco
Great.
00;39;37;19 - 00;40;06;12
Tobi Pearce
But you know, even the Porter books on your market analysis and all that sort of stuff, they're they're my opinion. They're always in for a very long time. People are going to be the best books to understand. First principles are concepts, but you still have to try it and file it, which is where this kind of next component of education, which is the idea of like getting mentors and deliberately use the meant the word mentor as opposed to going to coach or advisor in the sense that, you know, you study this stuff to gain the intellectual knowledge.
00;40;06;12 - 00;40;28;15
Tobi Pearce
You know, you try to implement it and you fail and learn, and then you should be sharing those learnings and receiving learnings from someone who has been there and done very specifically what it is that you want do. Yeah, So and this is probably a nuance to the whole seeking truth thing, right? You know, people apply general learning methods to get specific knowledge and that's failed.
00;40;28;15 - 00;40;44;17
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, right. You know, so if you want to go to learning how to be like a really, really, really good people manager, you know, and to be a great leader and to build a great business. So you might go along and talk to these people who built great businesses. There's not a correlation between making a lot of money and being a great leader.
00;40;44;20 - 00;40;54;04
Tobi Pearce
Mm hmm. Almost none. And as a matter of fact, there is a lot of terrible leaders who are worth billions of dollars, correct? Right. Depending on the way that you score. Terrible.
00;40;54;04 - 00;40;59;19
Daniel Franco
Well, that that's the part that I hate, which is the terrible leader making billions.
00;40;59;27 - 00;41;07;11
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, well, and this is an interesting topic in itself, right? Like, how would you define good leadership?
00;41;07;11 - 00;41;09;12
Daniel Franco
Right. It depends on the person who's receiving it.
00;41;10;03 - 00;41;27;12
Tobi Pearce
Well, maybe. Right. Yeah, because a lot of people would say, oh, well, you know, like as a leader, you have to be liked. It's like, Well, was that true? That's a very generic response to a specific problem, right? Yeah, I don't have a perfectly articulate answer, but, you know, conceptually, like, categorically a good leader is someone who gets results.
00;41;27;18 - 00;41;55;10
Tobi Pearce
And I have to get results right. Results were today thing right. A good leader also has to be someone who is not going to run the business off a cliff. So they have to be setting up the business for future results. And so if you looked at it that you know, simplistically it's okay. Well, more often than not, like you can get results that by saying and also you want to but eventually being an asshole won't get you where you want to be in the long term, which then comes back to, oh well, you must need to be long.
00;41;55;10 - 00;42;22;21
Tobi Pearce
It's like, well, but you don't need to be like to get results, right? So like you have to be respected. Mm. Yeah. Like you need to be able to engage people being engaged. If people are engaging with you, they have to love you, right? Yeah. And so again, you're, this is another like this is a topic in general is sort of where people like try to apply very generalized terminology or definitions or truths, you know, to a very general place to a very, very specific problem.
00;42;22;22 - 00;42;44;23
Tobi Pearce
Right. Yeah. I don't get I don't get entertainment content to learn theory in the same way. You know, you can't make a generic phrase about leadership and leadership is X, Y, Z. You know, when it's a very specific contextual topic that needs to be explored, basically, right? And you in this, what are all the what's the common theme in all of these things?
00;42;44;23 - 00;43;08;28
Tobi Pearce
Why do we seek a general over specific? What do we say, entertainment over theory? Well, because it's more comfortable. It's the path of least resistance. It's easy to have a low fidelity V because there's less accountability. You know, it's easier to watch entertainment and consume that content than it is a great theory, because that requires this requires focus that doesn't you know, focus requires intellectual effort, like watching an entertainment, you know, doco or whatever.
00;43;08;28 - 00;43;24;12
Tobi Pearce
It doesn't you can binge it. MM Exactly. Yeah. So like there's a really common theme and a lot of people kind of view this as, you know, borderline stoic, right? You know, if you, if you will, or a part of that, you know, philosophy, you know, not do the things that must be done, not what you want to do or do the hard thing, you know, aligning to discomfort.
00;43;24;12 - 00;43;27;14
Tobi Pearce
There's there's hundreds and thousands of this iterations of this.
00;43;27;14 - 00;43;29;08
Daniel Franco
But meditation is one of my favorite books.
00;43;29;17 - 00;43;45;02
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah, yeah. And again and that's one of his, of what we're trying to do is one of his things and it's basically it's all these concepts around, we'll do the things that need to be done, do the right thing, do the moral thing and that all sounds like super easy. Everyone's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll do that.
00;43;45;02 - 00;44;07;24
Tobi Pearce
It's like, Well, what's moral? And I couldn't tell you because they want to apply a generalized approach because it allows buffer room for them to fail, but then kind of high that, oh, what about I thought this is what moral was, you know, or I thought this is what study was or whatever it is. But really most of us and this is one of the overarching things about self-discipline, learning most of us know what the right thing is to do.
00;44;09;10 - 00;44;22;21
Tobi Pearce
We just pretend that we don't or we're afraid to acknowledge that we do, because when we ultimately don't do it well, then we are bad. We see ourselves as bad, which is this whole self judgment, you know, fear thing again. Mm hmm.
00;44;22;29 - 00;44;25;07
Daniel Franco
Did you want to be liked when you were? See? Yeah.
00;44;25;17 - 00;44;44;07
Tobi Pearce
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was one of my I would suggest was probably one of the most the most painful experience of my career. Uh, in general was trying to work with other people at the beginning of the journey because my philosophy of I wouldn't have even called a management leadership before, didn't even know the words at that point.
00;44;45;04 - 00;45;01;08
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, it would have been all, Well, yeah, I won't be able to be happy. Mm hmm. Yeah. Which I didn't figure this out for many years. Yeah, but that actually came from a point of me wanting to be, you know, valued and, like, on a personal level, more than I really actually cared about the professional relationship. It was.
00;45;01;08 - 00;45;22;19
Tobi Pearce
I was afraid that I wasn't a nice person, you know, more so than I had anything to do with management leadership, which is, again, you know, this whole introspection and feedback collection thing is really important, right? Because as we say, truth, which is what I did later. You know, you realize that, well, being locked is not the single KPI of leadership and management.
00;45;22;19 - 00;45;24;10
Tobi Pearce
Again, it's a multifactorial problem.
00;45;25;23 - 00;45;32;22
Daniel Franco
So. So why did you pay your attention on then as a CEO that built a $400 million business?
00;45;33;17 - 00;45;45;13
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, well, so a combination of things. So yeah, first thing any executive, but especially someone the CEO role or an equivalent role because some people might call a managing director or a general.
00;45;45;25 - 00;45;47;04
Daniel Franco
Leadership role of a business.
00;45;47;09 - 00;46;09;06
Tobi Pearce
Right. Yeah. Ultimately the considerations and normally there's a variety, but you know, you could probably break them down into, well, got to have a strategy you know strategy normally kind of consisting of well yeah what what were you what are you trying to achieve. What work needs to be done to achieve that? What resources need to be done to do the work and why.
00;46;09;28 - 00;46;28;25
Tobi Pearce
Right. Yeah. So as an executive, you need to be able to understand those things. Then if you call it capable, if the resources won't deliver the work and the work as well as the outcomes, well, we've got to make the resources. What resources are normally Money, time, people, Money and time are pretty simplistic. Yeah, what people are not.
00;46;29;05 - 00;46;37;07
Tobi Pearce
So then you have to find a way to work with people. How does that happen? Well, you have to build relationships, which I sucked at for a really, really, really long time. Yeah.
00;46;37;07 - 00;46;39;15
Daniel Franco
I In what regard?
00;46;39;15 - 00;47;06;07
Tobi Pearce
Um, well, so, you know, going back to something we said earlier around here that there's, you know, kind of the commercial logical, practical decisions and then there's people's emotions, right? I struggle to understand, you know, and some people might call this neurodivergent, right? Yeah. But I struggle to understand that if there's a logical option, like a very logical decision, which is clearly to ABC, because to not do it would be bad, or that everybody would just agree to that because it was the most obvious and practical decision.
00;47;06;22 - 00;47;14;13
Tobi Pearce
It didn't occur to me for probably three or four years that not everyone thinks that way, which, you know, like is is quite comical, right?
00;47;14;14 - 00;47;15;10
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Don't look at.
00;47;15;10 - 00;47;35;11
Tobi Pearce
Paula. Yeah. So like, it's a and that's like that sounds like Yeah. I wonder why this realization I was like oh my gosh, what am I for someone who I think has at least, you know, like moderate, tolerant intelligence? I was like the fact that I have never, ever come to that conclusion Like, I was I was embarrassed that I'd never, ever figure that out.
00;47;35;15 - 00;47;39;04
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Because money was one of your drivers and it might not be others. Well, yeah.
00;47;39;04 - 00;47;44;00
Tobi Pearce
I was just like, if the goal was money and business performance and business performance requires these things, or we should do that.
00;47;44;17 - 00;47;44;29
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
00;47;45;10 - 00;47;45;21
Tobi Pearce
Well, yeah.
00;47;46;08 - 00;47;50;28
Daniel Franco
And your and your agenda is to scale and scale quickly in their agenda is to enjoy their job. Right. Yeah.
00;47;50;28 - 00;48;02;13
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. It's to, you know, it's to Yeah. Be engaged. It's the contrary. Contribute it's to develop is to feel empowered and have autonomy. You know there's a variety of these, you know, sort of engagement factors. So you, you know, you're across it all.
00;48;02;13 - 00;48;03;15
Daniel Franco
Yeah it is.
00;48;03;24 - 00;48;20;25
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So um, yeah. And so from that perspective for me, like you're in the leadership role, like, yeah, I had no problem intellectually understanding things or commercially rationalizing things. It was always, you know, trying to get the team members together on the same page, which then I struggle with because I was like, I want you to like me.
00;48;20;25 - 00;48;37;13
Tobi Pearce
But in order for me to get done what I need to get done, I have to be firm. And so it was this like real big struggle, which eventually I simplified this into the whole firm, but fair management theory, right? It's like, you know, do what needs to be done and do it firmly, but do it really fairly and respectfully, which eventually lead to a conclusion way.
00;48;37;13 - 00;48;56;10
Tobi Pearce
Well, then you start eventually you do that, but you still get some pretty shitty negative feedback. And then that's that creates a bit of inner turmoil, which is like, Oh, well, I'm being firm, but I'm definitely being fair, you know, like, why is this not working? And then you eventually come to a further nuanced conclusion, which is that, well, no matter how good your leadership in management is, you would never win with everyone.
00;48;56;10 - 00;48;58;20
Tobi Pearce
Right? And so the acceptance of that and a few other things are.
00;48;58;20 - 00;48;59;16
Daniel Franco
Not always going to be liked.
00;48;59;18 - 00;49;16;17
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, correct. You won't always be like you went on what you and won't and you won't always win. Yeah, everyone in business knows that you will not always win. And if anything, winning all the time actually is very unfortunate for the person experiencing it for feedback. Yeah, well, yeah. I can only refer to this as the modest bias that people, they win all the time.
00;49;16;17 - 00;49;22;24
Tobi Pearce
They think anything they touch would turn to gold. So they start all these businesses and do all this stuff and then eventually bang. Yeah, it doesn't work.
00;49;22;24 - 00;49;23;17
Daniel Franco
It's really painful.
00;49;23;29 - 00;49;48;16
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, but, but yeah, coming back to the management thing, like the easily the most painful experience for me was going through that learning journey of realizing, okay, well, you're not going to be liked by everybody. You still have to find a way to get results ultimately. Yeah. So and that's for most people and definitely me, because I at this point in my life, you know, I hadn't even discovered that I had insecurity about, like, self-worth issues and self-esteem.
00;49;48;16 - 00;50;10;13
Tobi Pearce
I had no idea that that I didn't even know that I had those problems. I was like, Oh, I'm confident, yeah, I'm good. But, you know, when you're like 21 years old running your business like that, you're not really considering all this other stuff. You know, you're effectively in many regards and most of us at that age are almost exclusive, blind to the existence of any of them, any of this other stuff, either intentionally or otherwise.
00;50;11;03 - 00;50;25;12
Daniel Franco
MM. I reckon that's a human nature design that right. So it sounds to me that, you know, you went through a bit of pain through your learning. What would you people say about you?
00;50;26;10 - 00;50;26;29
Tobi Pearce
It depends which ones to.
00;50;27;00 - 00;50;30;07
Daniel Franco
Talk to him. Yeah. Yeah. And which ones do you care about.
00;50;31;28 - 00;50;35;29
Tobi Pearce
Well yeah, I think like from a lot of a manager it is. But you should care about everyone.
00;50;35;29 - 00;50;37;13
Daniel Franco
Yeah, right. No doubt.
00;50;37;13 - 00;50;49;14
Tobi Pearce
But yeah, I think the ones that would be most like the if people were, if a whole bunch of people were to give me feedback, the ones that I would care about most would be the ones that are actually, you know, in all the rooms with me, in all the decisions, in all the debates.
00;50;49;14 - 00;50;50;13
Daniel Franco
So have the context.
00;50;50;14 - 00;51;09;12
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, they had all the context. But in saying that. Yeah, and something that I developed much more towards the end of my journey was that I think like leading from a position of compassion and empathy for people. But making decisions commercially is kind of the that's the ultimate joy, right? And so, yeah, I cared very much about, you know, how everyone felt.
00;51;09;12 - 00;51;20;14
Tobi Pearce
And I know something I prided myself on of my time sweat. And, you know, for most of the journey, I could walk into any part of our building and know everyone there, all the names now at work that were doing and all that. And that was quite important to me.
00;51;21;12 - 00;51;23;06
Daniel Franco
Did you know about their personal lives?
00;51;23;16 - 00;51;38;03
Tobi Pearce
No, I didn't need to that to me, like, you know, I thought, you know, I thought, like what? You know, that's an incredibly good experience. You know, if the person who owns the company runs a company or you've never even been in a meeting with, you know, can you at your quarterly staff party can catch up and say, oh, how's your kids name.
00;51;38;16 - 00;52;06;08
Tobi Pearce
Mm Yeah, like that sort of stuff. Like to me was pretty important. And you know, ultimately the goal was to came back to, you know, trying to lead from a position of compassion and empathy. Like people want to know that you want to up people and people want to know that you actually give a shit. Yeah, right. But yeah, if, if you spoke with them, you know, some of my more senior employees, the ones that I worked in close proximity with, you know, I think the, the headlines would probably be I'm pretty direct.
00;52;06;08 - 00;52;26;00
Tobi Pearce
Uh, that can very often be interpreted as blunt, but I think they reply also say that I'm pretty fair and practical and that more often than not uncommon definitely have some very and we used to have an internal joke that I would have acute negative emotional responses and then it became a joke because it'd be like, look, look and then go on.
00;52;27;16 - 00;52;30;15
Tobi Pearce
But yeah, I think people would say that you're more of a male. I'm pretty, pretty sensitive.
00;52;32;18 - 00;52;47;03
Daniel Franco
How did you deal with being firm like, you're running your business, right? You started this business. Ultimately, it was 50% ownership, wasn't it? Yeah. And the. Was there a board in place?
00;52;47;04 - 00;52;48;25
Tobi Pearce
No, no, no, No boards, no mentors.
00;52;48;25 - 00;53;11;02
Daniel Franco
Not so. So ultimately, every dollar we make goes to your pocket in a sense. How did you how did you navigate through the waters of I need to push and I want to earn revenue whilst knowing that potentially in the background people are like, Well, you're pushing us because you want more dollars in your pocket, right? Like, how did you how did you navigate that?
00;53;11;02 - 00;53;15;25
Daniel Franco
Well, and again, this comes back to the being like thing, but I'm interested in your thoughts there.
00;53;16;03 - 00;53;21;04
Tobi Pearce
Oh, I think almost the answer has nothing to do with the question in the sense it's like, well, a lot of people are gonna go.
00;53;21;20 - 00;53;22;10
Daniel Franco
Yeah, okay.
00;53;22;15 - 00;53;41;17
Tobi Pearce
So like, wait, you know, one of the things that I think that we did and I used the word way very deliberately because I think it would be I think it would be arrogant and just out a falsehood that it was me when it wasn't I only yes, I might have been the CEO, but really I only contributed a very small portion of the greatness that we actually made during my time as well.
00;53;41;21 - 00;53;45;24
Daniel Franco
Your I mean, the number one role of a CEO is to assemble the team.
00;53;46;01 - 00;53;53;04
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So that they can win, correct? Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, going back to the Drucker thing, right. You know, all results in business are generated by people.
00;53;53;04 - 00;53;53;14
Daniel Franco
Mm.
00;53;53;29 - 00;54;18;10
Tobi Pearce
Mm hmm. Not the people. Yeah. So, but yeah, like, I think, I think aligning people around as a single thing was something that we did very well. Yeah. We had people who wanted to join our business just because they wanted to come and contribute to female fitness. Yeah, because we'd gotten so effective in recruitment, marketing and culture and, and whatnot that there was, and there was so many people that really wanted to contribute to that.
00;54;18;20 - 00;54;34;09
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. And then we had so many people that wanted to contribute to core growing technology. And so we made that known. And when they came in, we tried to allow them to do that. And again, depending on who you talk to, at what point in time a company journey, everyone will have different opinions, of course, But I truly think the way we did a really good job of that.
00;54;35;06 - 00;55;03;01
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. And we you know, you couldn't you couldn't go more than about half a day without having someone kind of scream at you. Our purpose, you know, our vision and our values, like, you know, Yeah. Through the recruitment process, there are not position descriptions, right? Like through onboarding documents. They're in every single onboarding, you're onboarding presentation, they're in your onboarding presentation, all the learning material, they're annual and every company strategy document, they're in there, every single town hall that we have there are in every MBA, they're in there.
00;55;03;13 - 00;55;30;26
Tobi Pearce
You couldn't you couldn't escape what we were trying to create and what we put around. And I think people were highly, highly aligned to that. And then on a more kind of like practical, you know, less qualitative basis, you know, over time we implemented incredibly strong and well-structured management frameworks. Most of the results in our organization and most of the management decisions were driven by.
00;55;30;26 - 00;55;43;17
Tobi Pearce
Our monthly business review, which is, you know, just a part of a broader, you know, management system that a lot of organizations used. And we always made that very much about the team or multiple teams performance. It wasn't so much about individual.
00;55;43;17 - 00;55;43;27
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
00;55;44;04 - 00;56;07;04
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. As a matter of fact, many times we tried to avoid that. But I think a great example of trying to like lead in a way that is, you know, firm but fair and that whole compassion and empathy mindset, you know, a great example. I worked with this particular individual who was in quite a senior role and they had been brought on to set up a new function for us.
00;56;07;28 - 00;56;38;01
Tobi Pearce
And they were being paid about a quarter of $1,000,000 a year, which in Australian money is the you know, top 1% salary is probably a great individual, really charismatic. You know, on a personal level, I love spending time with this person. We got along, in my opinion, quite well, and over sort of nine or 12 months, they generated zero business results, like literally zero like in this new fangled like not not we couldn't attribute or measure it like had zero.
00;56;38;04 - 00;56;59;15
Tobi Pearce
Right. And you know for for the last 2 to 3 or four months, this particular person had effectively been on a performance improvement plan. You and we'd gone through all that sort of stuff and obviously eventually got to the point where I to have a conversation and say, Oh yeah, you're out. And so to contextualize, you know, this person's I think you had recently been married, had a couple of young boys, they had just bought a new house, a massive mortgage.
00;56;59;15 - 00;57;02;11
Tobi Pearce
And they just, you know, a lot of times put their kids in private school.
00;57;03;05 - 00;57;04;22
Daniel Franco
It's painful. Yeah.
00;57;04;22 - 00;57;24;16
Tobi Pearce
So I'm sitting down having a conversation with this person, literally being like, I'm about to bring your life temporarily to a house. And so a lot of people would say like, oh, well, in that context, like you're an asshole or that's rude or that's mean or whatever on a practical basis, coming back to that separation of emotions and commerciality, it's like, well, every every decision in business is an investment decision.
00;57;24;16 - 00;57;47;17
Tobi Pearce
The decision to recruit someone is investment. You're investing in the results that they will get. You like it's, you know, you buy petrol so you can drive a car like it's super practical, right? So in a scenario where the results are not being generated, well then the investment is no longer viable. So in people management, we normally say, well, we'd put them on performance plans to try to help them become viable, and if they can't, well then they need to go.
00;57;47;19 - 00;58;10;10
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, yeah. So that's the practical component of the decision making process, right? From a compassion and empathy perspective, you know, you could just say nothing and then get to the end of the period immersing himself or you could get a part way through and you could put them on a performance plan and learn about their life, understand why they're not performing and isn't that the other and see if it's a is it an attitude issue or is it a competency issue?
00;58;10;28 - 00;58;30;07
Tobi Pearce
And then you might try to work with them really closely for a couple of months. And if they can't succeed, then you might decide to step in, let them go, or you might decide to say, Hey, look, this is not going to work. That's really sad for me. And I understand it's probably sad for you, too. I really want to find a way where we can kind of give you a smooth landing here on the way out of the business.
00;58;30;07 - 00;58;46;01
Tobi Pearce
So, yeah, I was thinking that maybe you could have a think about what that transition might look like for you, because we value you as an individual and as an employee of our business, regardless of whether or not we've been able to achieve all the results. One Yeah. And so for that person receiving that conversation, that's a hell of a lot nicer than, you know.
00;58;46;01 - 00;59;05;11
Tobi Pearce
Hey, Mom, you didn't hear you keep yourself somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. And so culturally and again, you know something that we tried to do, we actually tried to like exiting employees was something that we put a lot of effort into because we wanted them to leave and positively talk about the business. Yeah. Which is, again, really quite counterintuitive. Most businesses are just worried about, oh, snap.
00;59;05;11 - 00;59;27;22
Tobi Pearce
Say you were done. Yeah, Yeah. But if you're leading from a position of compassion and empathy, well, you know, you'll ask yourself that question. If this person is going to leave the business, you know what? What should either as later a manager and as a company, what should we do for them and what supports should we provide so that when they do leave and they talk about their experience, even though they got fired, what do we have to do to increase the probability that they say positive things?
00;59;27;22 - 00;59;50;15
Daniel Franco
Yes. They fired gracefully. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you did you come up with this? I mean, was this something that you as a team, you all decided what what role did you play as the CEO in the culture of the business? Because you surround yourself with a great team. We all and I saw a lot of people, simply a lot of people listening.
00;59;50;15 - 01;00;08;08
Daniel Franco
You know, Sara, she's fantastic. She was your head of people and culture. Yeah, not they had not, not the culture sits with people and culture cultures, you know everyone's job the what did you do as a CEO to really drum in this is the culture that we're working for. How did you lead by example.
01;00;09;00 - 01;00;31;25
Tobi Pearce
Look I think to to state it and this a kind very anticlimactic but to to state it in the most honest and kind of factually true manner. The only thing that I did was have an openness to. It, you know, so like, it would be false for me to say, hey, I was you know, that I was an epic leader or epic manager because I was terrible for the majority of the journey.
01;00;32;05 - 01;00;52;03
Tobi Pearce
And what I said terrible was not that I didn't try, it's just that the learning curve is just so big. Yeah, I would say that I got pretty good, you know, towards the end. But I, you know, I was just incredibly lucky to be able to get access to and eventually become surrounded by people that were just absolutely incredibly good at their jobs.
01;00;52;03 - 01;01;30;19
Tobi Pearce
You know, we had obviously, you know, Sara was very good. My CIO, Adam, who ended up becoming CEO, he succeeded me when I left. Yeah. You know, I, I consider myself blessed to have been able to work with him. You know, the amount that I learned off of him is just absolutely, you know, it's hard to quantify. You know, we had a variety of other great people in business, which, you know, and they all had kind of strengths and weaknesses, but specifically in the lens of, you know, people and culture and your leadership and management with a variety of them that were just absolutely outstanding at their jobs, but just absolutely outstanding.
01;01;30;19 - 01;01;47;05
Tobi Pearce
And this is, you know, people always talk about the value of people in the business, etc., etc., But it's a hard thing for them to understand because not only have most people never seen great they've almost never even seen good. And I mean that in a respectful way, in the sense that, you know, even in professional services. Right.
01;01;47;05 - 01;02;06;17
Tobi Pearce
You know, out of over 100 accountants, how many of them are any good? Maybe 15 out of those 50 And how many of them are great? Maybe three. So that means that the remaining 85, a moderate or worse, and that's not being blunt or an opinion, that's just the law of numbers in any given discipline, most of the people go to be pretty terrible.
01;02;06;29 - 01;02;23;10
Tobi Pearce
So for most organizations, most of the people that recruit will actually be not high performance. Yeah, it's your job to try to make them become that, but the base level that they start with is not great. And so for those individuals and I was one of them, you know, who is able find great people and we can call that luck fortune and maybe a little bit of skill.
01;02;23;23 - 01;02;35;08
Tobi Pearce
Yeah it is truly game changing to the level success you have. There's a lot of people, and especially in small businesses, you know, for like 150 guy for a salary, maybe I'll get a mid-level person for 100.
01;02;35;08 - 01;02;35;17
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
01;02;36;14 - 01;02;53;08
Tobi Pearce
I was like, man, that $50,000 that you just saved cost you 5 million like it in the market is literally something like that. I mean, I remember recruiting for my first executive and I was like, Oh my God, a salary like over 150 grand. It was like 300 or something at the time. I was like, That's just eye watering.
01;02;53;09 - 01;03;11;27
Tobi Pearce
I couldn't believe it. I mean, I don't I don't think I recorded someone worth over $80,000 for the first $325 million, because I just did. I didn't understand. Yeah. You know, the spectrum of competence, scope of salary, restaurant. But it's that's not to say that more money means better because there's definitely that relationship is not true. Yeah yeah.
01;03;11;27 - 01;03;17;10
Tobi Pearce
But you know to get really high level of competency, especially in leadership and management, you know, we will need to pay more money.
01;03;17;10 - 01;03;39;00
Daniel Franco
Yeah, well those people know their worth right. And they're not going to accept the 80 idea are they. So I'm in amongst all this. You are a lover of metrics as well. What were some of your key focuses on as, as a leader of this business? And you know what was a non-negotiable for you?
01;03;39;12 - 01;04;00;18
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. Um, so maybe when we look at like, metrics and data in business, I'd probably maybe go just like up one level macro. Yes, I would say that. I think so. You know, we use and collect information or metrics or whatever to kind of make decisions. But ultimately all of those decisions that you make or any decision that any business is, is it has a context.
01;04;00;19 - 01;04;16;10
Tobi Pearce
Right? And the context in any business is ultimately the business model, right? So you answer your questions like, oh, what did I look at and what are the uses like? Well, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what actually are the right metrics for this particular business model that actually make sense.
01;04;16;10 - 01;04;17;06
Daniel Franco
It's going to move the dial.
01;04;17;06 - 01;04;42;23
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, what do we care about? You know, and so most people will, uh, you know, and again, even people who make lots of money, right? Most people will oversimplify it. You guys are going to call me like, Ah, yep, awesome, bro, bro. As traffic conversion, right? I have a LTV and that's like, that's some metrics and that I have some utility, but they're definitely not all of it.
01;04;42;23 - 01;04;48;14
Tobi Pearce
You know, you look at subscription, which is what we were for a large part in our opera. Yeah. Acquisition attention, right?
01;04;49;09 - 01;04;51;00
Daniel Franco
Kat Dunn Mm.
01;04;51;23 - 01;05;28;01
Tobi Pearce
But that's like again this, it's very low fidelity. Yeah. You know, it's not that and I always kind of use this phrase when talking about new metrics and data and all this stuff is that the metrics or lenses that you choose to look through ultimately show. Yeah, a part of a particular picture. So like for example, if you, yeah, if you want to look at financial performance or you could probably look as simple as you know, revenue cogs OpEx if it are, if you try to do that every time you get a decent picture of a business's financial performance.
01;05;29;02 - 01;05;39;04
Tobi Pearce
Oh okay. And well but but where is the money going? And then you got lines down again, lines down again, lines and again, you know, so am I. A specificity matters.
01;05;39;17 - 01;05;39;25
Daniel Franco
Mm.
01;05;40;09 - 01;06;01;04
Tobi Pearce
If you have a specific goal. I was no different to learn anything. If you want to learn specific things, you have to ask specific questions and read specific content. If you want to get specific insights and business, you have to look at specific metrics and specific context to get specific insight, right? So for most of my role, I really looked at this in two ways am I want to get what I kind of call wet finger in the area, like how are we going?
01;06;01;04 - 01;06;22;21
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, we had a pretty generic scorecard dashboard, you know, looked at that had a small collection of metrics which we called MTM, which stood for metrics that matter, you know, and then there's kind of your hotline. And underneath that, then there was a whole bunch of like, you know, more tactical drivers. You have those things that we would use to learn because we wouldn't really use these metrics to learn other than are we winning or losing the macro level.
01;06;23;07 - 01;06;39;24
Tobi Pearce
We would then use this stuff to figure out why are we winning or losing. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people kind of blend them and that's where they get stuck out and or they don't measure them properly. And so yeah, for me, like the subscription model, sure, you know, largely is, you know like what's your recurring revenue, what's the split of that?
01;06;40;17 - 01;06;54;19
Tobi Pearce
You know, what are your COGS and OpEx? What's the beat arm? If you have a beat on your end, what are the trend of those ratios over time? But, you know, we I mentioned earlier we had a very sophisticated monthly business review, which we broke down functionally and each found each function in the business had a scorecard. Yeah.
01;06;54;23 - 01;07;14;08
Tobi Pearce
So each owner normally ahead of all of some set of functions, they would have their own scorecard. So the same way I looked at this level, then I would have their level, then they would have team and channel on their level. So this is that cascading business management framework again, if you will. But yeah, like we could talk about no data for a long time.
01;07;14;08 - 01;07;24;27
Daniel Franco
So data is a specific conversation that not everyone loves. But for me it's one that I think Fuller and I are actually exploring right now. So she's listening intently.
01;07;24;27 - 01;07;33;13
Tobi Pearce
But your business, an interesting one, right? Again, like how do you how do you understand the business model of a professional services firm? Yeah, we spoke broadly about it. Well.
01;07;33;23 - 01;07;52;09
Daniel Franco
It's really interesting because earlier you actually said you should seek advice of those who have done it right. And, you know, the big businesses in the world that have have done this, you know, the big Four and the McKinsey's and whatnot. But the people who built that from zero and they're not available to speak to.
01;07;52;09 - 01;07;58;26
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, exactly. Right. So that's the even using the phrase who's done it is low fidelity. Yeah right. It's because of who'd done what.
01;07;58;27 - 01;07;59;24
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Correct.
01;07;59;24 - 01;08;09;29
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So like and again Yeah. So if you want to find the people who understand how businesses make money and generate revenue, one of the better than anyone else. We've talked to people who do financial modeling.
01;08;09;29 - 01;08;10;09
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
01;08;10;22 - 01;08;24;21
Tobi Pearce
Because their job is to financially articulate how the business generates money. And so you know, in services industry is everyone wants to pretend that they're different and complicated and this and that and the other and will ultimately more often than not, it's people selling time because most things are still time based.
01;08;24;22 - 01;08;24;27
Daniel Franco
On.
01;08;25;22 - 01;08;46;20
Tobi Pearce
Value based. Yeah. And for that, well therefore you have X number of employees and employees have a certain amount of billable hours knowing there's a range of, you know, minimum and maximum stretch hours whatever will utilization rate of those hours. Yeah. Your average billable right, Right. There's some possible cost depending on the industry that the professional services firm is existing, but they're really the case.
01;08;46;20 - 01;08;48;22
Tobi Pearce
Internal metrics if you want to. What fingernails?
01;08;48;25 - 01;08;49;14
Daniel Franco
Yeah, correct.
01;08;49;15 - 01;08;57;06
Tobi Pearce
You know, if you want to go more specific, it's like, well, you know, per service or personnel per function, what's the billable right? What's the utilization geographically, industry wise, etc., etc..
01;08;57;06 - 01;09;14;29
Daniel Franco
But you still throw TV in there and everything is well and you know, and all of the above. So yeah, yeah. It's just it's a, it's but having then not like you could go out into the world right now and from a tech point of view you could get so much information on how to build and start a tech firm, an online firm.
01;09;14;29 - 01;09;32;15
Daniel Franco
But when you look at services, the it's actually very limited information out there from from what you can do to build a services based company. And it's funny, difficult, right, Because you're actually selling skill sets, you're selling people, you're selling ideas, you're selling methodologies as opposed to a widget, Right. Which is a bit different, Correct?
01;09;32;15 - 01;09;40;10
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. And again, with that, you're like trying to identify the appropriate individual to learn the specific thing from is is interesting.
01;09;40;10 - 01;09;41;19
Daniel Franco
Yes, absolutely.
01;09;42;19 - 01;10;00;04
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. I mean, in Australia we have a whole bunch of like great professional service entrepreneurs, you know, like there's a lot of great marketing agency people that are doing, you know, 50 to $100 a year aggregating agencies. Like I said, when you look at professional services as a category, well, how do most of the businesses grow almost exclusively?
01;10;00;05 - 01;10;17;23
Tobi Pearce
All of the large organizations grow through acquisition almost exclusively. And the reason for that is to your point, because the challenges as well, scaling people as hard and acquiring clients is hard, especially in professional services, because the clients are sticky. Yeah, correct. They're very sticky. So you can't poach a client. You can buy them, but you then you have to buy the business.
01;10;18;07 - 01;10;35;29
Tobi Pearce
And then the notion of like buying professional service firms and growing them over the long term is a completely talking about skill set. So it's a completely different skill set, you know, to running one, correct? Yeah. And this is why far less people end up buying and aggregating, starting and running. Because starting or running is one skill set.
01;10;35;29 - 01;10;48;28
Tobi Pearce
That is, you have respectfully slightly easier to acquire because there's much more publicly available information, you know, than buying and aggregating them, you know, over a period years because it's high risk. Much of your information about.
01;10;50;16 - 01;11;17;24
Daniel Franco
Oh, all of the above. Yeah, absolutely. I'm I'm interested in like I ask a lot of questions about family on on the show because of a young family. Two young girls. Yeah absolutely love them. And one thing that I always grapple with, you know, and especially of the case in point, the past two days of waking up when it's dark, I've gone to work when it's dark and I've gotten home when it's dark and you know what I mean?
01;11;17;24 - 01;11;47;20
Daniel Franco
So there's a there's a level of sacrifice that goes into running a business building it, scaling it, managing it, all of the above, and then also spending quality time with family. How did you manage that concoction? How did you manage the this world of I mean, your beautiful young daughter? On Yeah. Managing relationships while growing like of loved with loved ones whilst trying to realize on your visions in amongst that as well.
01;11;47;24 - 01;12;19;25
Tobi Pearce
Yeah I think at the end of the day yeah a lot of this really boils down to the quality of communication between people, right? You know, and, and I always, I even mean that like, of quality of communication with yourself. And what I mean by that is that most people are live passively and unconsciously. And so what I mean by that is, you know, so the experience, I like having the dog going to work in the dog at home, the dog, etc., etc., etc., they see that that's a negative stimulus or negative perception, right?
01;12;20;09 - 01;12;37;07
Tobi Pearce
And then they start from the position that this is bad, it's a bad role, but it is what it is. That's normally the circle. Yeah. You know, and there's never or in very limited occasions there's there's not necessarily a Well hold on, let's put all that paws and step back and go like what What you want from my life.
01;12;37;26 - 01;13;10;09
Tobi Pearce
And what I mean by that is that a lot of people use an autonomous prioritization hierarchy in their minds and normally prioritizes like things like survival and status and power more than it prioritizes things like, you know, sanity and love and affection and whatever, which arguably you actually need those to do these in in some regard. And so what I mean by that is, you know, most people have a work calendar, right?
01;13;10;19 - 01;13;19;22
Tobi Pearce
They have a work schedule. And I call you, I'm in any given month, I'm going to have, you know, one time, one monthly team meeting, you know, one weekly sales meeting.
01;13;19;22 - 01;13;20;19
Daniel Franco
Whatever, all the above.
01;13;20;26 - 01;13;40;28
Tobi Pearce
Blah, blah, blah, blah. And some people wouldn't even go so far as saying, Oh, yeah, but then I'll do gym three times a week and I've got it wrong. Almost nothing ever makes it into the counter. And then so people have this predicament. They're like, Oh, well, yeah, I'm struggling to like balances things in my life, you know, I'm like, you're balancing the things you want to balance perfectly won't work and maybe your health then occasionally a social thing.
01;13;42;08 - 01;13;55;13
Tobi Pearce
So it's not an issue actually balancing and making decisions that, you know, actually starting with the whole picture. You know, people are very often starting with a portion picture and then a lot of people will argue back with that and go, oh, well, yeah, but, you know, if I include that, like one thing is going to sacrifice all this out the other end might.
01;13;55;13 - 01;14;24;28
Tobi Pearce
Well, yeah, but not, not normally in the way that I think because again people's kind of myopic approach is always hours work less hours or make less money and blah blah blah like, well, that's a very general solution to a very specific problem. Yeah, we keep coming back to the recurring thing. It's like, Well, I have a client mine that I work with, you know, runs a very, very healthy business and has multiple seven figures and every dollar.
01;14;24;28 - 01;14;46;17
Tobi Pearce
And they're like, Oh yeah, I mean, like my life is just hectic, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm, you know, kids, same scenario. This is their craft. I'm like, Oh, okay. And like all you about a lot of my work, I'm like, Yeah, yeah, you bought it. Why don't you spend, I don't know, ten or 20% of the profit that you make on recruiting a couple of really expensive executives who are really highly competent and see if they can free up five or 10 hours of your life away.
01;14;48;04 - 01;15;05;12
Tobi Pearce
And that's a completely different mentality. If you just go, Well, what's it worth? Yeah, what's having a good family with you? Do you want about, Oh, I hit $2 million Navy and have nothing else? I'm like, oh, I hit $1.7 million in the middle. But like, I've got a great family. Yeah. Like, you know, so that's a more specific to a more specific problem, right?
01;15;05;13 - 01;15;17;26
Tobi Pearce
Correct. Yeah. And so like a lot of people, you know, kind of back to the mentality I mentioned earlier that everything in business is an investment decision. Everything. Your life is an investment decision. You invest in your relationship, you're going to grow out. Are a lot.
01;15;18;28 - 01;15;19;26
Daniel Franco
Curious. Yeah.
01;15;20;07 - 01;15;40;08
Tobi Pearce
If you don't invest in that, you don't you know, don't service it, if you will, and don't maintain it. And all these sort of things where you go to less aisle or y you know, with your children and the relationship with your children. If you invest more resources, one of those resources are and however you choose to do them, more likely than not, you'll probably get a better answer.
01;15;40;08 - 01;16;01;27
Tobi Pearce
One, you know. But at work, people are exclusively thinking about financial reward. They're not thinking about life are y. Yeah, and that's a real big problem. I mean, like when we were I'm trying to think like going through that kind of like last part of the deal, you know, I was like, living in a house by myself. I think like part of part time, kind of like single dad, because we were doing, you know, 5050.
01;16;02;01 - 01;16;10;25
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. I share with my daughter, you know, it's like, well, like, what's it worth to me to still put her to bed every night?
01;16;10;25 - 01;16;11;05
Daniel Franco
Mm hmm.
01;16;11;16 - 01;16;18;04
Tobi Pearce
And that was worth a huge amount of money. So I was like, Okay, well, well then I'll try. And during the day, I always work hours.
01;16;18;23 - 01;16;19;02
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
01;16;19;13 - 01;16;31;03
Tobi Pearce
Because it's worth more to me to put it in bed every night and spend some time with, you know, then I can pay someone 30, 40 bucks now to put it a bit. Mm. Like and that's not the right role for everybody. Right. Everyone needs to figure out.
01;16;31;05 - 01;16;47;24
Daniel Franco
I mean, but you would know this better than anyone, right. Especially especially in start phase. And you said in those first three or four years you didn't employ anyone and sort of 80 grand, whatever. Yeah. In those first three or four years, you know, you're always three months away from going bankrupt. The cash flow is, is a behind.
01;16;47;26 - 01;16;57;09
Daniel Franco
Yeah. How do you you know the idea and being I just flip the switch and go well I'm just going to hire someone to do that. Yeah. Is one that most people would grapple with. Right.
01;16;57;15 - 01;17;04;02
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. Well I mean I do a lot of stuff here, but yeah, the headline here is like, how do we differentiate between objective and subjective risk?
01;17;04;21 - 01;17;07;08
Daniel Franco
Well, that's a good question. Yeah, I'm doing.
01;17;07;19 - 01;17;21;28
Tobi Pearce
So let's just because the example which is a services business. Yeah. Services businesses normally don't grow linearly because the ability to deliver services lumpy in the sense that you can't recruit 1/10 of an employee. More often than not, companies do outsourcing or whatever.
01;17;21;28 - 01;17;23;11
Daniel Franco
But yeah, you know, you're right.
01;17;24;22 - 01;17;52;17
Tobi Pearce
Okay. So, you know, you know, mathematically there is an efficient and an inefficient way to do that. And that comes back to the level of understanding that you have about the quality of your business and the way that the economics work. Right? So yeah, in in that scenario there, if you if you're looking at growing, it's like there is a mathematical way to determine the level of objective risk by the reason that most people get afraid about making decisions because they perceive it as subjective, right?
01;17;52;25 - 01;18;09;12
Tobi Pearce
In terms in essence that they can't calculate at all, that it's out of their control, etc., etc.. Right? So let's use an example where you're three months away from. So you're running a business, but you've only got three months of, you know, cash flow, slim margins, right? And you bring someone in, you employ them at whatever salary and then all of a sudden they start losing money, right?
01;18;09;23 - 01;18;15;21
Tobi Pearce
Well, objectively, the maximum risk is how many months of salary you get the month of underperforming.
01;18;16;06 - 01;18;16;15
Daniel Franco
Mm.
01;18;17;05 - 01;18;34;07
Tobi Pearce
No, because if you get three months in and they haven't deliver any results, well then you terminate the employment arrangement with them and you go back to having slim margins. That is objectively the situation. Right. People don't look at it that way. What, Because ego. Oh well I'm afraid if I do that that'll be hard. Or if I'm afraid I'll do that, that I'll fail is like.
01;18;34;07 - 01;19;01;17
Tobi Pearce
But that's not objective. Mm. The objective is well what's the cost, What's your time. And, and this is the discussion before, how do we perceive the situation with all of these variables, How do we move our emotions to the side and then make a commercial decision. Right. But again, most people either have not yet built the skill set and the tactile capability to do that, or alternatively, even if they can intellectually rationalize that they can't emotionally achieve the outcome.
01;19;02;00 - 01;19;22;18
Daniel Franco
Yeah, and the emotional part is the toughest part, right? Because then it's always comes back to whatever it was. What are people going to say if I bring on that person, then, you know, cash flow is a conversation that's always a hot topic within especially within small business. So if I employ someone that it was going to hire you or not you short of cash flow.
01;19;22;18 - 01;19;27;10
Daniel Franco
But I say to solve a problem that's objective. All the above, right? So it's just this constant, the emotional part.
01;19;27;10 - 01;19;41;06
Tobi Pearce
Lately with compassion and empathy. Like I say, if I, if I was in that position running a business now, I'm not I'm, I'm running other businesses. Yeah. On this question. But if I was in that situation, I'd be like, okay, cool town hall. Hey guys, we have growth targets. We're struggling to hit them. I think we need another resource to do that.
01;19;41;28 - 01;19;50;04
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, really, really love your opinion and feedback. As you know, cash is tight, so I'm going to present show how this is going to go. Yes. So we're going to treat this as a learning opportunity. Mm.
01;19;52;00 - 01;19;53;24
Daniel Franco
Do people get scared if cash is tight?
01;19;54;01 - 01;19;54;18
Tobi Pearce
Absolutely.
01;19;54;19 - 01;20;01;11
Daniel Franco
Do is to the is it, does it sit only with the leadership team. This is the rest of the business sense.
01;20;01;11 - 01;20;03;04
Tobi Pearce
How much information you want to share to the company.
01;20;03;05 - 01;20;06;19
Daniel Franco
Do you would you share that information. Everything is completely open and.
01;20;06;19 - 01;20;20;04
Tobi Pearce
Transparent literally other than perhaps giving them access to a legitimate shot of accounts. Right. You know, people had access to either static or dynamically updated, you know, metrics and data for pretty much everything in their business.
01;20;21;12 - 01;20;29;25
Daniel Franco
Yeah, because there's always this, you know, we interview we speak with a lot of CEOs and some are like, don't show any fire. And some of them like, might open the books.
01;20;29;28 - 01;20;47;18
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. So that's a that's a you know, that's a choice, right? Correct. And there's not again, like a lot of these things and even all of the stuff we've spoken about today, it's not about right or wrong. Like even just use the example like general versus specific solutions or subject to versus objective. You can think about these things and use them or not use them to make decisions.
01;20;47;18 - 01;21;06;12
Tobi Pearce
How are we like it's not that one is right or wrong, it's that very often one is more useful or less useful, right? And in business life as well. But in business, what's the name of the game? Well, make good quality decisions more often than you make bad ones for a really long time.
01;21;07;01 - 01;21;25;27
Daniel Franco
But you like me. We were a young CEO, right? And and and I'm. Look, anyone that's in, you know lot 14 over there doing these you know beautiful start and fantastic techs out of intel All of the above right Yeah they're not sure if they're making the right decision you know you come to a fork in the road, you go shit left or right, which way do I go?
01;21;25;27 - 01;21;29;18
Daniel Franco
I'm going to choose Left. Yeah. Is that the right decision? And you go in there with.
01;21;29;18 - 01;21;32;20
Tobi Pearce
Respect to point one, they're afraid of accountability.
01;21;32;20 - 01;21;33;10
Daniel Franco
Yeah, well.
01;21;33;12 - 01;21;34;15
Tobi Pearce
At the end of day, like you to choose.
01;21;35;00 - 01;21;36;10
Daniel Franco
You circle back and go around the other.
01;21;36;15 - 01;21;40;10
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, because the worst choice is to passively make no choice.
01;21;40;18 - 01;21;40;29
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
01;21;41;12 - 01;21;59;03
Tobi Pearce
But the biggest risk to most businesses, especially early on. Right? When I start figuring all the, the basic junk out. Right. The biggest risk is no decision. And the reason for that is because I don't have unlimited cash or time. A lot of people think that's like all I'm saying is I don't want to show you anything. My idea is special, bespoke, rah rah.
01;21;59;07 - 01;22;08;24
Tobi Pearce
That's all crap and all that's crap and all that waste time. Yeah, right. Like, the important thing is, like, how am I determining progress and what am I even trying progress towards?
01;22;08;24 - 01;22;09;06
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
01;22;09;18 - 01;22;24;25
Tobi Pearce
But most people are not even clear on those two things. Why? Because that's bloody scary. Yeah, So I'm building some super cool piece of tech. Okay, well, how are you objectively measuring if it does what you think it needs to do and is what you think it needs to do, even what the customer wants to do. And if they want to do that, will they even pay for it?
01;22;24;25 - 01;22;34;05
Tobi Pearce
And if they will, how much will impact? Look, this is really simple conversation. Most people will never, ever get to it because like, Oh, I'm building cool tech and build it and they will.
01;22;34;05 - 01;22;36;11
Daniel Franco
Come will they're emotionally attached to their tech.
01;22;36;11 - 01;22;54;03
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, yeah. Correct. It's not an objective world And again, yeah, every human behavior is a reflection of an emotional need. Yeah, right. So emotions are very important. Often, very often they're fuel. They certainly were and still are for me in a variety of different ways. But again, this comes back to the like let the emotions do their thing.
01;22;54;03 - 01;22;56;05
Tobi Pearce
Do not let them make all your decisions.
01;22;57;05 - 01;23;19;18
Daniel Franco
You seem very, very good at being able to do that. And this is a question I asked earlier in this conversation is how do you do that? And we can go down that rabbit hole again, which I don't want to, but it for me, it's a is is there a brain type? Is there a personality type, easier behavior type?
01;23;19;18 - 01;23;42;19
Daniel Franco
I'm connected to human beings, right? So therefore and I'm not connected to process, right? My brain just doesn't work in a process type way. It works in a way which is what's best for the human and what's actually logical for the human right. Like, that's kind of how it works. Yeah, and I make decisions on on that. And sometimes those two worlds just clash because the logic stacks up.
01;23;42;19 - 01;23;53;19
Daniel Franco
The what's best for the human doesn't actually make make sense. So yeah it is You think it's based on the type of person and their upbringing and.
01;23;53;24 - 01;23;55;06
Tobi Pearce
There's a lot of variables here on but.
01;23;55;06 - 01;23;55;28
Daniel Franco
Absolutely.
01;23;55;29 - 01;24;03;06
Tobi Pearce
If you you know one of the biggest things that I learned about trying to improve decision making is if you're really having a tough time making a decision, write it all down.
01;24;04;06 - 01;24;04;24
Daniel Franco
Yeah Okay?
01;24;04;26 - 01;24;08;25
Tobi Pearce
So whether it's by hand or computer or. Yeah, but rather than.
01;24;08;25 - 01;24;10;00
Daniel Franco
Just get it all that brainpower.
01;24;10;12 - 01;24;31;08
Tobi Pearce
Or whatever it is, you know, like I like you're trying to do, I do. I raised more money doing non do I break up with my partner. I do I choose to pick up the phone, you know, whatever it is. Right. Because when you write it down and you know, Shakara, what is writing it down to, well, it makes us accountable to our thoughts because they have real now, right.
01;24;31;15 - 01;24;59;08
Tobi Pearce
A lot of the time when people are trying to make decisions in their mind, you know, on the fly and ones that they, for whatever reason, fun, challenging, but doing it exclusively internally. Right, is a wonderful way to avoid accountability. When you write it down, you are now accountable. I was I was yeah. I do think that I'm for you know and you start to get a bit of reflection and reality and a lot of the time where these things an exercise I would do is I'd write it down, leave it for a day, I'll think about it.
01;24;59;09 - 01;25;11;07
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, come back, review it again, see if I would change anything. Labor and they come and then I would make my decision because you get a bit of fresh perspective. And also when it's written down, you no longer need to think about it y because you go, Oh yeah, I've already written all that down because.
01;25;11;07 - 01;25;12;18
Daniel Franco
It's a physical object. Now Yeah.
01;25;12;21 - 01;25;17;22
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. And so like, as by virtue of that, I mean it's great for clearing your mind firstly, but like.
01;25;17;24 - 01;25;21;10
Daniel Franco
It's why I bought this. Remarkable, right? Yeah. For that exact reason. Yeah.
01;25;21;10 - 01;25;39;12
Tobi Pearce
And so once written down that you can go and you can review it, you can review your thoughts the same way that you would review a piece of copywriting or review a contract or review a financials. You can review it and analyze it and you effectively then become almost a third person, then your own first person.
01;25;39;22 - 01;26;06;23
Daniel Franco
Well, yeah, you become an advisor to your thoughts. Yes, I love that we started this conversation asking you about, you know, we've digressed a lot. Yeah, I do want to touch back on the family thing because for me it seems like that the answer to the question is that you have to you have to really understand your what are your priorities and actually design your life with family included in it.
01;26;06;23 - 01;26;26;27
Daniel Franco
Right. It's not one or the other. It is all the above. But you are and big B being philosophy. You mentioned stoicism before. Yeah, an area which I like to I like to sort of delve into as well. Um, I don't want to get into your life philosophy or what you think you know from, from where the human race is going or anything like that.
01;26;26;27 - 01;26;41;12
Daniel Franco
But I do, I do really want to understand your as a father and what it means to be means to bring in a human into this world and how you raised them and how you nurture and cultivate mind.
01;26;41;16 - 01;27;01;21
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, well, look, I think it's first and foremost, I think the biggest responsibility you want to have in your life is child. And I don't mean that like a lot of people, you know, could potentially interpret that line negatively. I don't mean that like, oh, you know, you've got a warped about it. Yeah, yeah. I mean I think that's I perceive that as an opportunity.
01;27;01;21 - 01;27;23;29
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. It's a blessing that we get to take care of our children. But when I say it's a bigger responsibility in a sense that you know, yeah, your job in simple terms is to set them up, to integrate well with society and succeed and live a healthy, happy life. And you want variably define those words, of course, but generally speaking, that's the goal.
01;27;25;03 - 01;27;40;27
Tobi Pearce
And then what you realize is that that's an incredibly scary process because you realize all the shit that you do wrong, that if you were totally, perfectly in control of everything that you do, which you in essence are, but to a degree are not. Yeah, you realize, Oh shit. Well, I don't know. I don't want to train that behavior to you.
01;27;41;07 - 01;27;59;27
Tobi Pearce
I don't want to train that behavior to you. And, you know, it becomes quite a intensely reflective process. But but yeah, from from my perspective, you know, I'm ultimately. How do you set them up for success and integration with society. Right. And, you know, there's a variety of those things. You know, how do you teach them to take care of themselves?
01;27;59;27 - 01;28;29;14
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. How do you teach them to independently make good decisions? How do you teach them to have good quality relationships? Yeah, I like this. The list goes on. Right? Right. Yeah. So, like, all things that I do in my life, I yeah, I have an I'm continuing to seek to find specific knowledge to these specific problems because, yeah, again, it's sort of like I find this incredibly fascinating that you know, if you said to a friend, how are you going to come with me?
01;28;29;14 - 01;28;44;02
Tobi Pearce
We're going to the sports and art and the sport you never played before. And they go, Yeah, And I was that'd be pretty humble and pretty quiet and pretty respectful. And you know, all of this sort of stuff, Right? And I have no opinions, right? Yeah. See this all the time. I do a lot of jujitsu. I see this all the time.
01;28;44;02 - 01;28;57;27
Tobi Pearce
People come in and, you know, you bring a friend and they know they're pretty quiet a lot because they want to learn and they respect that. They don't know a lot. Or at least. Yeah, or at least if they're not, if they're quite egotistical in only one or two classes in that's going Yeah, because I've been beaten up by a whole bunch of people, Right.
01;28;57;27 - 01;29;15;25
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. Which is, you know, kind of the indoctrination that's been. Yeah. Why is that relevant. Right. Well, parenting has this fascinating anomaly that for people more often than not who have not done so with their first child, they have a whole lot of lot of opinions. Yeah, they think they're really good or that they think they know a whole bunch of shit.
01;29;15;25 - 01;29;31;25
Tobi Pearce
They think that they know what they're doing and they don't. And that's incredibly scary. But it's also the wonderful part of it, right? It's incredibly massive challenge. And yeah, like I said before, responsibility. So, you know, for me, like I'm sort of in a position that I know nothing and then try to figure out how to actually make that work.
01;29;31;25 - 01;29;49;07
Tobi Pearce
And then ultimately from my own, you know, philosophy, a lot of like things that I believe to be true and that I believe to be moral or, you know, the virtues of values. And I drop out of my well, if that's my belief, I'm what is going to help my children successfully integrate with society? Well, my job is exclusively helping to transfer that knowledge.
01;29;49;11 - 01;30;04;23
Tobi Pearce
Right. Which is, you know, hard like one of the great examples that, you know, I always I always joke about with with my partner Rachel, and a lot of men joke about is that, you know, girl dads, right? Like, oh, I don't ever want my girl to have a boyfriend and all these things and borderline. I'm like, Yo, I'm excited for that.
01;30;04;23 - 01;30;13;03
Tobi Pearce
And then I say this people like, Oh, what the hell do you mean? I'm like, Whoa, My job is to make sure that I said the male role figure in her life that the standard is so high.
01;30;13;06 - 01;30;13;15
Daniel Franco
Yeah.
01;30;13;27 - 01;30;34;24
Tobi Pearce
That she would choose a tremendously good partner. And one of the best reflections of my success, hopefully as not only a male role figure, but her, you know, father and friend and yeah, two other children. And I'll likely have, you know that they'll choose a great partner in the they would choose great friends and that they'll have a great job where great is defined as something that supports them and stimulates them.
01;30;35;09 - 01;30;45;21
Tobi Pearce
So that leads them towards their own joy, happiness and peace. Right. But a lot of people, as we've already mentioned, kind of they're trying to find it very like a general view to a specific problem.
01;30;46;02 - 01;30;59;10
Daniel Franco
The greatest compliment I've ever received was probably about two or three weeks ago from my daughter, my oldest daughter. She's 11 years old. And she said, Dad, I want to find if when I get married, I want that person to be like you. And I was just like, Yeah, you know.
01;30;59;11 - 01;31;01;06
Tobi Pearce
That's a ten out of ten.
01;31;01;06 - 01;31;21;04
Daniel Franco
See? Yeah, I, I was speechless to the point. I was like, you know, almost tears running out of the eyes because it's just like, well, it's it's nice because throughout life you go through these emotions and you present, you know, present you making choices. You're doing your best, right? We're doing the very best with what we've got. But to have someone come back and go that 11 respect, Yeah.
01;31;21;06 - 01;31;33;07
Daniel Franco
To the point where I want to find someone who resembles your characteristics is just probably the greatest compliment that you can get now. We can probably go on forever, but I am conscious of your time.
01;31;33;17 - 01;31;35;16
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, like couple of minutes. Yeah.
01;31;35;19 - 01;31;44;13
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Great. Sorry. I can jump straight into quickfire questions now. Happy to do that. Yeah. And then because you're going to be when in.
01;31;44;14 - 01;31;45;14
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, about 5 minutes.
01;31;45;14 - 01;32;04;14
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Cool. All right. So be conscious of your time. I we're going to jump starting. I think we've got on for long enough that we've lost track of time. So what I want to do is just throw in some quick questions before we. We close up. Yeah. Given what you know, if you could do it all again, would you do it differently.
01;32;06;25 - 01;32;24;14
Tobi Pearce
To answer that one. Yes, because I would do it much better. But in this time I kind of know I have no regrets about it in the sense that you, you know, all of the, you know, challenges and learnings and success and failure that I had ultimately has helped me to bring me to the point that I'm in my life now, which I'm quite happy in my life.
01;32;24;14 - 01;32;29;26
Tobi Pearce
So commercially, I would do it better. Yeah, but I wish my nan glad. I'm glad it was.
01;32;30;01 - 01;32;31;24
Daniel Franco
What excites you about the future?
01;32;33;04 - 01;32;33;25
Tobi Pearce
Building more stuff.
01;32;34;03 - 01;32;36;02
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Yeah So you would do it again?
01;32;36;12 - 01;32;37;23
Tobi Pearce
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm already.
01;32;37;24 - 01;32;45;13
Daniel Franco
You're already doing it. And you got to do it better. Yeah. Does it scare you or excite you?
01;32;45;13 - 01;32;53;13
Tobi Pearce
Oh, I don't. At this point in time, I do not believe that I have a reason to fear it, you know, in the sense that I don't think it's at this point going to come and attack me.
01;32;53;26 - 01;32;56;21
Daniel Franco
No, it's not Terminator two, just not there anything.
01;32;57;02 - 01;33;14;22
Tobi Pearce
I think like from a you know, a career standpoint, at least at this particular point in time, I think, you know, I have very high self in my abilities to add value to people and businesses. So I think for now that that makes me still. So I mean, I look at it as a bit of an amplifier or a force multiplier.
01;33;14;22 - 01;33;23;04
Tobi Pearce
Yeah Yeah, if you will. You should be outraged if a whole lot of things much, much more for more efficiently. It's sort of like, you know, pauses the car. Yeah, I agree. Yes.
01;33;23;04 - 01;33;29;29
Daniel Franco
And I think Vaynerchuk came out and said, if you're not introducing an end to your business, you're going to be left behind.
01;33;30;14 - 01;33;30;23
Tobi Pearce
Yeah.
01;33;31;03 - 01;33;39;22
Daniel Franco
They're going to be what they're talking about. From your perspective right now is the same as when the Internet came out like this is this is the point in time. Yeah.
01;33;39;22 - 01;34;03;10
Tobi Pearce
And it's very, very poorly understood because people look at it as a little bit of a black box. It's largely your interpretive and mathematical, right, Which basically means that in simple terms, yeah, it's a system that can make y y better decisions than you will ever be. And if not, yes. And that's already like it's already sitting Harvard Business School tests and all this sort of stuff.
01;34;03;10 - 01;34;15;20
Tobi Pearce
So it's already largely there. Yeah, but yeah. How many iterations in the future its ability to make judgment calls, you know, recall information, etc., etc. a calculator is going to be drastically than any human will ever be.
01;34;16;15 - 01;34;20;04
Daniel Franco
Yeah, I think it's exciting. What are you reading right now?
01;34;21;25 - 01;34;26;23
Tobi Pearce
I'm actually, funnily enough, writing a book on professional services. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.
01;34;27;21 - 01;34;29;06
Daniel Franco
Off the cuff. You knew a fair bit. But.
01;34;29;27 - 01;34;32;23
Tobi Pearce
You know, I started I started studying the business model about three weeks ago.
01;34;32;27 - 01;34;40;21
Daniel Franco
Oh, beautiful. Well, there's a board position open if you want one. What self-development book do you feel that stands out? Actually, sorry. Jump on back to that book. What book is it?
01;34;41;18 - 01;34;54;03
Tobi Pearce
It's the marketing agency blueprint, I think that says it's a it's a I've reading a whole bunch. I'm learning about every professional you can imagine you a large categorized resource. But at the moment I just happened to be on a marketing one, which has been interesting. Okay.
01;34;54;14 - 01;34;59;07
Daniel Franco
Beautiful self-development book that stands out from the crowd. Um.
01;35;00;17 - 01;35;24;22
Tobi Pearce
I maybe give to one that's a bit easier and more challenging so there's, and I've said this like a lot of times I think the courage to be disliked, which is like an Adlerian psychology philosophy book, which is told in a story funnily enough, is in my opinion, one of the most, you know, broadly digestible, high value. Yeah, like self-help development books available.
01;35;26;02 - 01;35;41;06
Tobi Pearce
And when I read more of the times, I think, you know, if you were if you were someone who enjoys things a little bit more abstract and you're like a bit more complex, more of a there's a book called Objectivism, which is about Objectivist philosophy by and rand, which is it's very interesting.
01;35;41;06 - 01;35;42;12
Daniel Franco
That you were reading that recently.
01;35;42;19 - 01;36;00;08
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, that, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's so like from a yeah, we went to about self development, understanding self and developing self as opposed to kind of professional development. Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty insane book, but it's, you know, it's like 500 pages, tiny font, hyper complicated know So it's not for everyone. Yeah. Yeah.
01;36;00;09 - 01;36;01;11
Daniel Franco
Read that letter and yeah.
01;36;01;11 - 01;36;03;02
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, yeah.
01;36;03;02 - 01;36;08;15
Daniel Franco
What's one lesson that's taking the longest to learn?
01;36;08;15 - 01;36;22;19
Tobi Pearce
I think we've spoken a lot today about kind of understanding yourself. I think the we go through these milestones and learning. Oh, I had a breakthrough. I learned this, I get it now. And the thing that's taken me a long time to learn is that you will never get it.
01;36;22;20 - 01;36;23;09
Daniel Franco
Yeah, yeah.
01;36;23;09 - 01;36;31;06
Tobi Pearce
Like, and that's really hard, a really hard thing to kind of accept it as truth, but it's highly accurate. Yeah. Yeah.
01;36;31;19 - 01;36;33;08
Daniel Franco
It's always a work in progress.
01;36;33;08 - 01;36;34;04
Tobi Pearce
Yes, Correct. Yeah.
01;36;35;03 - 01;36;37;16
Daniel Franco
What's your biggest pet peeve? I think we've answered that one.
01;36;38;28 - 01;36;43;10
Tobi Pearce
Oh. Oh, no. It's emails. I don't even know if I have any like, conscious or that.
01;36;43;10 - 01;36;45;11
Daniel Franco
Patients get rich quick scheme either.
01;36;45;11 - 01;36;55;12
Tobi Pearce
Yeah, I very much don't like that. But, but yeah. Like you know, but more broadly I think I, I probably work myself to a point where I compassionate that people have their views.
01;36;55;12 - 01;36;56;02
Daniel Franco
And yeah.
01;36;56;02 - 01;36;57;01
Tobi Pearce
The views of the views.
01;36;57;04 - 01;37;01;06
Daniel Franco
So what's the best advice you've ever received uh.
01;37;02;06 - 01;37;27;07
Tobi Pearce
For. That's a very good question. I don't actually know how some of the best advice I've received, as silly as it may sound. Yeah. Um, I the generic phrase, would it be like what is going to be will be like you can't materially affect the outcome and as a the extension of that as well, if you can't materially affect the outcome, do the things you can do within your skill set and then let it be.
01;37;27;25 - 01;37;50;23
Tobi Pearce
And that's a very general, a very, very general response. But that particular remark was made to me a much more articulate manner. I'm someone when I was right on the cusp of closing this, went to and I was absolutely confident it was going to fail. Yeah, yeah. And so in moments of like extreme fear. Yeah. Ultimately, whether you're afraid alone is irrelevant.
01;37;50;23 - 01;37;57;04
Tobi Pearce
Like you can only do what you can do. What will be will ultimately be. Yeah. Do the absolute best thing that you can do and then move on.
01;37;58;10 - 01;38;01;17
Daniel Franco
If you can have a coffee with a historical figure who to be.
01;38;02;15 - 01;38;03;11
Tobi Pearce
A historical figure.
01;38;04;13 - 01;38;06;26
Daniel Franco
Or current for you. Uh.
01;38;08;27 - 01;38;35;07
Tobi Pearce
I don't actually know if there's anyone that I would like, and there's lots of people around to chat to. Yeah. Yeah. One of my things, you know, my life is a lot of people, like, have there's like, heroes and there's always it's like, don't hear anything. Yeah. But I've always Yeah. And this is not going to come across Margaret whenever like I've always strived to be my own hero here in the sense that like accepting that I'm currently not the future version of myself is what I'm striving to be.
01;38;35;07 - 01;38;56;12
Tobi Pearce
So the whole like, who would I want to have coffee with? Well, I would actually like to know in 30 years time, like what am I like and not about what I've achieved? It's like, who am I? Yeah, that that would that would be more important because other people are minor influences, but you still decide that. So I've always like looked at myself in five or ten years as being that's what I'm striving towards and that's how I want to learn from a stranger that might sound.
01;38;56;13 - 01;39;10;23
Daniel Franco
MM Now that's great. Been interesting conversation on the podcast with Toby in 30 years time. Given the I'm going to jump a few through, I'm going to go straight to the end. What's the most useless talent that you have?
01;39;10;23 - 01;39;22;06
Tobi Pearce
Useless talent. Yeah, well, again, it depends on the context, but I reckon I make decent pizzas. Oh, really? Yeah, I might do so.
01;39;22;07 - 01;39;23;00
Daniel Franco
That's not useless.
01;39;23;00 - 01;39;33;21
Tobi Pearce
Okay, well, that's what I'm saying. If you want to eat and you like pizza, then that's useful. But otherwise, like it's. Yeah, I'm full intense with it. Yeah. Oh really? Yeah, yeah. Like just get down to like, what's the right type of wood.
01;39;34;14 - 01;39;35;05
Daniel Franco
If you got a couple of wood.
01;39;35;21 - 01;39;37;05
Tobi Pearce
Yeah. Yeah. I've got one at home. Yeah.
01;39;37;21 - 01;39;40;04
Daniel Franco
So you tell me what you leave early I'll be around for. Yeah.
01;39;40;26 - 01;39;41;03
Tobi Pearce
Yeah.
01;39;42;11 - 01;39;48;24
Daniel Franco
I'm Italian. My pizza's in my blood. Yeah. Your father. So you've got to have a dad jokes. Really? Yeah.
01;39;49;00 - 01;40;08;21
Tobi Pearce
Oh, God. My. This is a good one's Prudence. Well, you need to. If You want the best dad jokes, right? It needs to be like. Yeah, in the moment. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah. And so yesterday I was doing a strategic planning outside of business for a business and was coded for one whole bunch of drinks came out, some of them orange juices.
01;40;08;21 - 01;40;20;23
Tobi Pearce
And this was one of the first times I remember saying is actually that the orange juice is bought out in like, clubs. Oh, really? I was not upset about the, you know, the cap of the bottle was the bit that you would normally screw into.
01;40;20;26 - 01;40;21;29
Daniel Franco
Oh that's pretty sure a lot.
01;40;22;01 - 01;40;36;00
Tobi Pearce
Anyway. So obviously that then led to a whole bunch of incredibly good puns. Yeah. You know, things like say, oh, you know, like, this is giving me a bright idea. This juice is really lighting me up the vibe in here and electric like, so yeah, all of that.
01;40;36;00 - 01;40;39;27
Daniel Franco
So was that overview you That was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you worked out what they had. Yeah.
01;40;39;27 - 01;40;45;13
Tobi Pearce
Well that was I was smiling ear to ear and everyone else in the room was not. Yeah.
01;40;45;13 - 01;41;09;18
Daniel Franco
Oh shit. I would have our loved it out. My beautiful look. Thank you so much for your time, Tommy. It's. It's been amazing having you on. Someone like, look, it's not really affecting you, but someone, you know, as useful as you and experienced so much with so much knowledge is is definitely a testament to you and and all the hard work that you've put in over your career.
01;41;09;18 - 01;41;16;01
Daniel Franco
So kudos to everything that you've done and everything that you going to do. And thank you for sharing your knowledge on the show today.
01;41;16;09 - 01;41;18;16
Tobi Pearce
Thanks for having me and I really appreciate it. Some questions.
01;41;18;16 - 01;41;26;25
Daniel Franco
Beautiful. Thanks, guys. We'll catch you next time. Thanks. Beautiful.
01;41;26;25 - 01;41;29;16
Tobi Pearce
Paul, we can digress. One minute. I can digress.