From IT to Consulting: Matthew Brown on AI & Pharma Challenges

0:00Welcome to IT Mastermind Talks, your access to insights and experiences from thought leaders in the IT services industry and those that support the industry. Our podcast features not only the seasoned professionals charting their start to exit journey, but also the key contributors who help ensure the success. We delve into the diverse challenges encountered within the IT services realm, encompassing both professional hurdles and personal obstacles. Join us. Be part of our growing community and engage in the conversation hosted by Ian Markram of Loading Growth. Hi, good morning. I've got Matthew Brown from Datal Link and he's been working with with me for a while. I enjoy his company. he challenges me and he's got a great position in the market. and we're going to have a great conversation today. I know it. So, welcome aboard, Matthew. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

0:56Yeah, thanks Ian. It's been great working with you since we we first met for steak, mate. It's steak and wine in Melbourne and Yeah. Yeah. Steak and wine and and we've been sort of chatting ever since. So, great. Great. Well, we're going to have we're going to go through your journey today and we're going to see where you're at with things. And then what we want to do is over the next year or two, we'll call you back on the podcast and you can give us an update on your journey. And this is what's really about this podcast is to show people and how easy it is to become an an IT services business owner or a software owner company and with different tips and tricks how to get there and we're going to take that that journey with you through that process. So I'm quite excited when we start with our guests we start really at the background right at the beginning of their journey. And you know it's amazing when you go through this Matt because so many people have had different journeys to start their entrepreneurship and started out earning their stripes doing different things. Can you go back to right at the beginning you know you're finishing high school where you know where from there?

1:57Yeah well that's quite a way back now. it is probably doesn't look it but it's definitely definitely a while few decades. yeah. So, look for me, I I finished high school and literally when I was doing the exams, I was applying for jobs, I knew that university was going to be a delayed one for me. and I sort of postponed it for a year because a gap year say was probably what I was looking at doing. That obviously never really happened in the end. But, I ended up literally finding a job the week I finished my last exam. I started at Repco the next week and ultimately ended up in in her head office there just ordering stock. So, it wasn't a particularly fun or challenging job, you know, it was quite quite mundane and and probably quite quite boring, but it definitely it definitely it got me starting in my first of the journey of my career. So, you know, I'm definitely thankful for that.

2:48Brilliant. I was told back then, you know, like a lot of people who were applying for the job they turned up in a t-shirt and shorts and they just assumed it was it was Repco, you know, and being a car place and and I think I was the only one that turned up in a tire, I think. But so it wasn't a particularly hard job to get either if I'm being honest. All right. So first job you you didn't go and study. You decided to jump straight into earning cash and nothing wrong with that. Cash is king. So talk us a bit about after Repco what happened

3:17Yeah. So so during my time at Repco one of the things that I did manage to do there was there were this is back in the fax machine days. Email had just started penetrating the market and a lot of orders that were placing weren't always being received by suppliers. So they'd either have these dodgy printouts, couldn't read them, and no one would tell us at that point. So you'd wait two weeks for these these these orders to rock up at the DC and and nothing would happen. So one of the things I did when I was there was build an order confirmation system. So I was doing like data extraction processes from old AS400 environment and an access database back then and and that really sort of like started to earn my in peak my interest in databases and analytics. So then eventually my next role that I landed went to to Sigma pharmaceuticals. So I ended up becoming a merchandise analyst and started doing a whole bunch of reporting and code and and started learning Cognos back in the day. Yeah. So it was a bit of a bit of a journey there.

4:12Yeah. Look Cognos pharmaceuticals I did some work at pharmaceuticals Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Cognos we used to compete with Cognos. I know it really really well. was a great tool at it at its peak a weapon of a a planning and reporting solution. So yeah but anyway let's carry on. So you got you got involved in those tools. Yeah, got involved in the tools got involved in sort of cubes and VBA macros and things like that. I got a lot more heavily involved in in the database sort of design and development and ultimately ended up becoming the group BI manager. So probably within about three years from merchandise analyst role to group BI manager or a billion dollar company at sort of age 25 26 just sort of worked my way through the tools and and and I was really really dedicated to learning. And so whilst I didn't do uni at that point, I I'd done five or six different courses in Cognos and admin and and visual basic macro writing and things like that, SQL server, SQL running SQL queries, things like that. I do a lot of training in that space to the point where then I get really good and I started doing data modeling.

5:15Sort of progressed up to be a manager at that at that team and and leading a four or five people at that point in time across a two different sites there. So they had a a manufacturing team and a sort of I guess you say retail wholesale team and and sort of doing analytics across those two environments. So Yeah. Just learned on the job basically learning on the job. You know it's it's a big trait with a lot of the owners that I've coached over the last sort of 10 years is that they've you know they've actually had to re-educate and keep on educating themselves. There's so many things have changed not even the technology side of it but running a business things have changed quite a bit. you know, legislation around staff, you know, cross boundaries with, you know, other states or countries have changed quite a bit and I know you keep on on, you know, on updating yourself as you go through. Is there a point in time, Matt, that you think you you know enough that you don't have to learn anymore? What do you think he's going to carry on learning your whole

6:09No, I I honestly don't think there is. You know, I spend a lot of time these days. I actually physically pay for mentoring and things like that because I I value it so highly. I think you need to do these things. There's there's always weak spots in in everyone's you know careers career career path and also their own personalities and so forth. I think there's always things you can work on and improve and get better at you know and when you master something then there's always something else to go and master.

6:34And get better at and learn more about. Sure. For sure. I think it's it's journey and the older I get the I realize, you know, there's still a lot of things you can still learn in practice, not just around the tech side, but actually managing and being a leader within a business. So that's great that you're paying for mentorship. It's great that you keep on improving yourself and it's important to do so. So let's go back to Sigma. You're finishing off in Sigma. You're sort of the BI manager. It's a pharmaceutical. A lot of challenges, a lot of regulations around pharmaceuticals. Could you can you just give people a bit of insight into that if you can remember? That's quite quite a way back. Yeah. No, I can certainly remember parts of it, that's for sure. But, there's a lot of there's a lot of things in in farmer that, you need to really be careful of. You know, there's there's schedule like drugs and and there's different things, the way you got to store them and and, you transport them and so forth. Obviously, theft and and those sorts of things are very sought after, I guess, by criminals and so forth. The acquiring drugs that can be cut and used on the on the black market there. So, there's definitely certain controls and regulations around this stuff. and there are some of those things that are very quite you know toxic sort of drugs as well. So you got to be very careful with all those sorts of processes. So definitely an element of that being wholesaler. well probably one of the the challenges was was really keeping up with the volume of different systems back then. It was bespoke systems for everything.

7:54There wasn't really a clear ERP system. There was six different statebased ERPs that were being used. So you can imagine and they also had a lot of limitations around them. So six character limits on invoices, numbers and things like that. We certainly had to loop around some things and you had to consider time not just the document identifier but time as well to be part of the identification process and and the state. So there was there was things like that that definitely added added to the challenge back then.

8:20Yeah. Yeah. It's good. So, so, so you learned, you know, it sounds like the challenge kept you, you know, involved, kept you sort of ingrained and and learning and and what you can do with BI or analytics, in those days. I've forgotten what exactly you called It's changed slightly. so how did it go from Sigma into the next next role?

8:41Yeah, good question. Interesting because I hadn't finished uni at that point. I hadn't even started really uni at that point, you know. So I decided that I probably around that sort of age maybe about a year before I left Sigma give or take. I actually decided to go back to uni and I had the privilege of doing four days a week. So I I managed to the first year of uni doing part-time only. So I was taught two subjects a semester. I got really lucky and and the actual courses are lined up on the same day. So I was able to take a day off on like a Friday or something it was I can't remember exactly what day but let's say a Friday and I had four days where I'd work extra hard or do sort of 40 plus hours you know in those four days be available for support if I needed it but ultimately having a day just dedicated to going to uni and and being in the workforce at that point you know four or five years I found it quite simple you know a lot of uni guys I think and girls going into that that that sort of environment the workload increases a lot more than than high school you know they probably weren't used to it was already I was used to doing a full 40 plus hours a week and therefore I just felt quite quite straightforward to go to uni for a day straight and just learn, you know.

9:48So I did that for a year and it worked out really well. But then unfortunately the second year heading into it, I was I was in a meeting and and missed the the allocation of of of courses courses. I couldn't pick the courses that I wanted. I had a time here and a day another day and it was really quite messy. So I had to completely separate down to one subject and I knew that at that point it was going to be almost impossible to finish in any reasonable time, you know. so at that same time I decided, okay, I'm going to do something a little bit different. I and I and I started doing some consulting

10:17I really wanted to experiment if I could actually do some consulting. So I I I I asked and and got the blessing of doing that consulting work for that day a week that I was already doing the with and ultimately started doing some consulting. in the background I also learned a I did a diploma in in in screen. So basically I'm a digital artist by qualification I guess you'd say in in the end but that was also because you know back in the day those those Shrek movies and things like that I was quite interested in in how they all sort of hung together. Did a bit of that just for for some fun.

10:49Yeah. Yeah. And then yeah so ultimately the consulting started becoming like okay Matt you're doing a day a week with us. the the customers I was working with were like, "Matt, you can't do one day a week if you we're just not getting the output done and and would you be interested in coming over full-time took the leap and left the the stability of a full-time role to go out and consult?" That was on an hourly rate. So, you can imagine going from a stable position where way up to to something where it's

11:13Were you married at the stage, Matt, or were you still? I wasn't. No. Yeah. So, so the not not a family to to worry about the overheads and expenses. Yeah. Yeah. I was still quite long mid20 sort of thing and and still able to pivot if I needed to. So it was sort of my thought process and I thought if hey if I can do three or four days a week and and get roughly the same amount of cash then I'll probably be in a safe spot. So that's sort of where I did it and and left and then for the next probably 20 years ultimately ended up there quite for quite some time and and consulted a whole different range of business probably you know 30 or 40 businesses over that time. did all sorts of projects. I really just led one thing led to another. got more exposure. I kept on doing the training. I got to lead more of a team and so I learned realistically on the job more than I did anything. So from managing staff at 24, 25, 26, having to let them go, having to bring them on you know, so it was quite a young age when I was doing that and then and then just progressed from there. So

12:11Great, great. So when you're at the four days a week at Sigma and you're moving into the consulting world, what gave you the thought that you could do that? What is you know did you see someone else consulting at Sigma and you went that guy's doing that why can't I do something similar or did you have a friend or how did you know about consulting or contracting or whatever you want to call it at that stage? How did you actually you know gave you the idea and then wanted to copy them I presume? Is that what happened?

12:37Yeah that's exactly what happened. I saw some people consulting with us building warehouses and using incognance and so forth. I thought, well, I'm already doing this alongside them more or less and and I'm learning and I'm constantly improving. I thought to myself, I can I can certainly do this. And then seeing them do that and having that slow that that transition phase where I had a day a week where it didn't fully jump, but I could actually then deliver to other customers, not just in a role that I'd been, you know, working with for a little while. I didn't know the company and it was in a completely different industry and and getting some real wings where the where the customers practically begging me to come over. I thought, okay, this is something I I feel quite drawn to and knew that at that point that I had probably the skill sets and the acumen and the the drive to do it, so why not give it a crack? And I'm probably young enough that it's it's worth taking the risk.

13:20Yeah, you normally got to see someone do it actually to believe it. It's quite interesting. I mean I the same as me you know a lot of the things I've learned or to do or not to do is through watching other people do them on a project or on a client site or in an engagement whatever it is over the last 20 25 years and and then the first sort of 10 years are very informative of consulting you know I worked at Deoites I saw what was good not good and then I went to a company called Axon and then I came over from UK into into Australia and it's it is quite interesting with those consultancy firms when you're working alongside them often you think well hang on I can do this

13:57Better you know what I mean and and off you go and and that just gives you the permission to become a consultant so that's that's awesome that that happened so did you learn were you just focused at that stage at the early stage just in the cognos world or did you branch into other sort of data warehousing technologies yeah so the back end of cognos if you remember it wasn't it wasn't great you know you had to have a really well supported data warehouse in the background to make it performance and and so I really got heavily into SQL Server at that at that time. Way back in high school I'd done a whole bunch of database work and I done the database work in in rep code but not to the degree that was enterprise level you know database and modeling and so forth and I got into got into that through the Cognos environment ended up becoming quite good at at the data modeling and per database tuning and development in in a database and yeah just progressed from there. So it was really in in conjunction with starting through an analytical background first, but then as I as it progressed knowing that the back end needed to be was really where the power was, learning SQL, learning how to tune things, learning how to model things correctly, leaning on the consultants, leaning on additional training outside. YouTube wasn't really much of a thing, you know, back then. It was all massive 600 700 page textbooks you have to read and training courses and that was the whole premise. There was no real free content. It was a lot harder to to learn and you have to really watch a lot of people watch different people do things.

15:19Yeah. I remember I remember when I was learning those days or right at the beginning of of my sort of time is I would actually take some some of the literature to work and work through the problems and go through the literature with actually it helped me learn forced me to learn to solve a problem where I didn't want to sit sit on the weekend and just read stuff. I wanted to actually put it into practice and then it forces you and that's I think is the best way to this day. So I think that's where I got accelerated learning was the force of trying to solve problems all the time. So it sounds like you did the same thing. Only wish if we had YouTube back then how life would be so different and so much easier.

15:57I look back on my career and there's two or three things that I wish like you know if we had today back then one is access to YouTube for for content obviously technically to learn things quicker. Chat GBT obviously another one you know those concepts didn't even weren't even on the horizon at that at that point but and and then I think three again YouTube but probably from the context of mentorship and business yeah the the sheer access you have to information way beyond your sphere of in influence now is is so is so vast that that's something I I really wish I

16:29You know through that journey because the only way you could get more experience was to physically work with the people if you got really lucky and work with some amazing people or some really amazing clients that would would happy to take you on a journey for some new technology and take the risk along with you to to deploy these technologies. You know, if you didn't get lucky enough for that, you were kind of it's stuck really, you know, it was definitely a different environment. So,

16:51Yeah. Yeah. So, when you started at you know your consultancy environment is as a basically as a contractor I think by the sounds of things. Did you have a vision for the company or where you wanted to go or you said hang on I just want to get billable three four days a week as you said and make some cash and then potentially study or just keep on learning. Did you have a vision at that stage or just jump into it?

17:11Early on I didn't. I always knew I wanted to do bigger and better things. Like I was always a background. I feel like I had this calling to do something really amazing. But when I first started it was more just like I'm young. I'm riding dirt bikes on the weekend. I didn't I didn't go and party really much, but I definitely did risky things like dirt bike riding on tracks and and those sort of things. I was enjoying that sort of life and then basketball and sort of things. And then it really just it just just work. So I I end up going in there and thinking that hey, this could be something I can do. It's going to give me a lifestyle I'm going to be quite happy with. Then probably within about oh five years, I just got a natural tendency to start to seeing chaos in a process or a or or a environment and wanting to to build systems around it and fix it and and really lead through doing and showing others how to how to do that exact thing or re rebuild something. So naturally started to lean into taking on bigger and bigger projects, starting to lead those projects, you help the scope of works and so forth, help project management and you got to a point where obviously I must have been not too bad at it because I got invited to become a partner and and and so forth in the company and and sort of work through that. Yeah, it did ultimately lead to that way, but it wasn't like strategically I was thinking well 25, this is where I want to be in in in 10 years time and let's go for this path.

18:29It was just sort of just sort of happened, I guess you'd say. For sure. For sure. No, it's all good. a lot of people don't really think those things through, you know, when they start. I think it's later on in life, you actually think about why you want to do things and and what's the purpose behind everything and, you know, because it becomes energy focused and how much energy and family involvement and you got to weigh up, you know, what do you want to really do? because you only got so much time limited per week and then, you know, you got all these different priorities. you got clients, you got staff, and you got family potentially. So it gets quite difficult as you go and then then you trying to think about the purpose and the vision. Yeah. When you're young at that age, it's just getting on and and and and making sure you got enough money to pay the bills. Now you've just mentioned that you you finished up you know you've just moved on to at the stage onto a company and you you know you did some amazing things there and then you decided at some stage to jump back into running your own business again. Can you just go through that at a high level? What thoughts there?

19:28Definitely. It was interesting you mentioned about you know vision and not really thinking about where you're going to be but obviously the transition. And so the transition really came for me so a couple of years back. This is when I actively started seeking mentorship. I was already at that point watching you know those YouTube videos, watching the people that I thought I' I'd really inspire to be and they were inspiring me to do better things with my life beyond just working even in a consulting role. I was still managing people and and and and running part of a business but it wasn't really my own. And two things two things I really struggled with. One, I always felt like I was pushing other people along rather than or dragging them along with a with a chain, you know, behind me. And it was a bit bit of an anchor. there was definitely part of that. But two would be I went on a thing called Vision Quest. So Rick Cowie runs a thing called Vision Quest and he's run about 60 or 70 of these things up in Queensland and Bali and and various other places. and fundamentally for me, that little retreat, it was a four or maybe five day retreat, and you go away, there's there's 12 other people in there with you as well. And I'm never I'm not much of a a spiritual or or God or this sort of person, right? But but you and and and certainly not a tree hugger type person I guess you'd say but ultimately went away on this on this vision quest and through that journey basically those five days eating vegetarian food and you know doing doing yoga and all this sort of stuff formed where I saw my life heading and and that ultimately changed the direction as soon as I left that that vision quest. I said this is I want to build this company. I want to build

21:00To this sort of size and it was quite an ambitious target from where the company that I've been working at was. Mhm. It certainly is for the new company I've started now. But ultimately what this is where I wanted to go. This is who I wanted to be able to help. This is how I wanted to be able to do it and and left that that vision quest sort of with a bit more of a an actual direction, a northstar, I guess you'd say. So that was sort of a turning point for me to be

21:23That's very good. You know, it's interesting. So I do a thing called the pre-loaded calendar every every year with my clients. You'll do that towards November and that sets us up for the following year. Okay. and it tries to organize us as much as possible and when I get out of I get out of whack I I I just get everything becomes more of a pressure cooker and I'm trying to do a lot of different things and I'm trying to make sure I get the best out of everything I do. So the the pre-loaded calendar approach was taught to me by my coach and basically it is a way I've been you know running with it for the last five six years probably longer now and and it helps me take the pressure off but one of those things I always do in early February is I do a retreat myself okay I go away on a a retreat and I go away with the last two years I've been with my coach and he's actually in Bali as well and we do a three-day event with him on what we want to do. And he's a he's a Kiwi, so don't hold hold it against him. But he's a hell of a good guy. But he's I do a day by myself beforehand to set my own expectations, what I want to do, what I want to get out of the three days. We do the three days with him and then I spend a day at the end with basically, you know, just trying to work out, you know, of those actions over those three days, how to set myself up for the the rest of the year and how to execute. And then what I do is I have a few of my clients fly in on the fifth and sixth day and we do some activities with them and then I actually fly off there to the team in Philippines to get them set for the year with the objectives and the goals and

22:56Everything else. And I like that it just sets me up for the year to be more coordinated and get into a rhythm with the people around me that I work with and the the clients I coach with. So I think it's a good really good thing to take a break like that once a year to down tools to think about what the purpose is for the following year. and I I really believe in the fact that if you don't have that purpose aligned with you and your personal goals, then it's really really hard to achieve that. Okay. So it's it's great to hear that you went on a retreat. I'm a big believer in it. and I think it's something I should probably get a lot of my clients to come on next year and and actually get together and and do a retreat. and we did at the last retreat or last couple of times we did a a deep breathing exercise for for like you know, an hour and a half, two hour session and it was you know it's really brings you back to the core of what you really want to be. and and it's great. So that was fantastic. So that is a bit vision quest was a bit of a turning point for you. When was that?

23:59A couple years back. This would have been yeah a couple years back. I don't exactly remember exactly the day it was number 63. Whatever that vision quest number 63 I think was was the number. I think he's from about 80 now. I don't know what he's up to, but you know he's done quite a few of these things now. He runs them very well. Everyone comes out of there just just with a very clear vision. You know, everyone's who's I've been have highly recommended it. So, I still do to be to be brutally honest. But yeah, came out of there with a with a goal and then ultimately I did end up starting my own company. So I wanted to be a caring leader and and really have a solid team behind me and really deliver some good work to to customers. So that's ultimately why I

24:40Nice. Nice. Did you have a you know you talked a bit about those some of the values I suppose that you just mentioned Did you go through a process to create a value values? Did you come up with five or six values for example like a lot of people do or and then did you come up with a goal and a vision at that stage? Yeah, definitely definitely. So different people there's sort of like a a big big process you went through you know so each day you would work on different aspects and and you didn't really know how it would hang together at the end. I don't want to spoil the experience because if someone wants to do it, I I I really want them to go in with that, you know, with open eyes and and and and not understand how it's the process is going to work. But ultimately without giving too much away, yes, you did go through the the process. Yes, there was some really deep dark things that you were going to be confronted with and that definitely made you really think about things in a certain way. Once you went through that process, you ultimately came out with with a who you are as a as a person, but also as a as a life goal, an overarching life goal. and and and so forth. And then you did have a bunch of values that you would have aligned with your vision ultimately. It chokes me up almost thinking about it.

25:48Yeah, good. It's good. It's got to be like that. It's got to be that emotional It's got to be that tied to that emotional inner self-belief because that's what's going to keep you driving forward. You know, at the end of the day, running an IT services business like yours, which I've done in the past, is very difficult. It's not easy. It goes up and down all day long. And it's a bit of a roller coaster. you know that is emotional itself. So you've got to have that inner drive the belief that keeps you motivated keeps you going otherwise you know you will give in at some point you know.

26:18Yeah. No I I wholeheartedly agree on that to be honest. Good. Good. You've got to be very very much a believer in yourself that you can do it before any hospitals. For sure. Now let's talk about how do you got your first client because one of the things people do I mean you can you can ref reference back to when you contracting right at the beginning you know when you're at Sigma leaving you know on the fifth day but one of the one of the concerns a lot of people do when they want to go and start an IT services business like you've done is how do I get my first client and I get that question all the time and or how do I go from you know a full-time job to a contracting stroke consultancy firm. So, how did you get your first client?

26:59Yeah. Yeah. It's to be honest, it's it's probably more just talking to people. I really feel like in this in the services space, trust is is probably the hardest thing you've got to overcome. And and as a technical person, many technical people aren't really good or don't want to speak to people. They want to work on the tech. They want to just work on the the new technology, the shiny toy. But you've really got to understand the business problems and and be able to talk to people. like I I quite like walking into a room and 30 people, you know, I guess you say I'm extroverted because I do like to go and speak to all those 30 people if they're there and and try to have a bit of a yarn with them and just, you know, see what they're all about, right? And make new connections and other people, I guess, if you're a bit more introverted, I I can imagine that being a lot harder if you if you don't really feel good about being in a a bigger place with people and and so forth. But I'd say referrals and really the more you you speak to people, the more you start to form relationships and then over time those relationships I've had people come back 20 years later when I posted on LinkedIn and and and and put a little thumbs up on a post that I might have put and I re engaged and connect with that person again. It's something that you you wouldn't have expected

28:06For such a long long difference in gap and and I guess the expectation for me is not to think that everyone's going to be a customer either. like every time I meet people, there may be some things that I can help with and you just give the information for free and and you you try and help them as much as possible. At some point, that I guess that karma, I guess you'd say, comes back to me. So, I guess that's probably how I've done it. I'm not saying it's the best way.

28:27And there certainly there's paid avenues and so forth. I think you need to supplement a few of these things But I'd say probably if if you're a technical person, then I'd probably say get comfortable talking to people and get comfortable that you're going to be doing an abnormal amount of work probably than you used to just picking up the phone, talking to people, making conversations, making connections, and that's going to be 20, 30, 40% of your of your day, particularly early on, maybe even more. Sure,

28:55If you're doing a really good job at it. until the point where you can start doing the delivery side of things and you know help have help have other people that are probably maybe even better than you are to make those calls. But early on that was certainly my Yeah. No, look it's it's you know amazing points there. you have to put the effort into it. You have to pick up the phone. You have to have conversations and as you said you have to build trust otherwise you know no one's going to buy from you cuz people buy from people you know in the services worlds the people are and your team are your product so you know and what I always I hear when I talk to people I say look you know if you try and you made that point there you can't be so pushy that people every person you talk to has to buy from you because people have to go through their own process themselves to actually buy from you as well and their process sometimes times is like as basic as this is, hey, I've got to trust, you know, Matthew and his team to come on into my into my division at this company where I'm employed and they've got to deliver something and I'm held accountable on how they deliver because if they fail then I fail and then I'm impacted, you know, and I think a lot of people don't even think about that and I think it's like it is that basic people worry about their jobs sometimes. So they got to make sure they hire the right person and make sure that person has the same values as what they have as well. Otherwise they they don't feel comfortable in hiring it. And when you actually do have a conversation with people, it's a mirror image. You know, you're having a conversation with someone and they they're back and forth.

30:27You thinking, they thinking, and they're reflecting on exactly what you thinking and talking about at the same time. So it's really really important, Matthew, as you said, is to learn those skills of holding a conversation, knowing when to pause, when to ask the right questions. So yeah, that's that's a really good thing. Any anything on on that that you can think of that's is there a book or something that you've read or any collateral that you've seen that could actually help someone that is a technical focused person to to talk more and ask the right questions?

30:58Mate, great question. I've read so many books now, it's not funny. I've forgotten which I've forgotten which book gave me what information to be brutally honest but I quite like Alexi to be honest you his his straightforward approach to sales and marketing and and conversation I think it depends on what your weaknesses are to be honest if you're someone who

31:20Has very weak language and what I mean by that a lot of a lot of IT people they're very technical and they're because they're experts already they kind of know all the problems that can occur. But because they know the problems, they don't want to be as committed to the outcome or they don't want to give the impression that, hey, this is going to take six weeks. They want to go, I think it's going to be about six weeks. They're quite unsure of themselves. And I guess as an expert, what they sort of fail to realize is that if you come across as the expert, you're meant to be the expert, but you're giving me this fuzzy sort of language that I believe I think it might be this long. That doesn't give a really strong impression to a business owner that you actually really know what you're talking about. Even though you're probably the best person in that industry, you'll be better off saying it's going to take six weeks.

32:02Rather than saying I believe it's going to take that that weak language can be a real barrier for a lot of technical That's probably some tips. Great. Great. So you you're saying there for example the confusion or not explaining to the client in in layman's terms so they understand exactly what they need to understand so they can make the decision basically. Yeah. But also be very being being very certain of the outcome. Like if you're the expert and you want someone to lead you in that journey.

32:29They don't leaders leaders tend to have a certainty about them that you're going to follow them. You know you're going to have a certainty of outcome. If you're talking to a business leader and you're sort of being wishy-washy about things, wishy-washy about time frames and outcomes. As you said before, they're risking their career potentially to go with you and particularly if they've never worked with you before and they haven't been recommended that there's a massive risk there. you better be certain that you can deliver that outcome. And so therefore, the language and the certainty and the way you present yourself can make a massive difference just from that one thing alone, you know.

32:57Yeah. Yeah. It's good good. It's good to get that clarity on that. All right. So, you've done your first client and and we talked a bit about, you know, the communication and and some of the things that some people that start those comfort consultancy firms, you know, IT services generally are fairly technical people because that's what they've been doing for a long time. and they got to have the business acumen. and I think that's really important. What were the challenges, the biggest challenges you've had starting your business at the early stages of your business?

33:27Yeah, is a that is a great question. Be knowing what to work on at any given time. There's so many things you can be doing. There's so many things that, you know, you need to do today to bring cash in the door. You need to be able to work on how does your messaging and your servicesing need to work. You need to work on marketing and sales. you kind of have to work on 15 different things at the same time and trying to pick the one that has the most leverage of your time and effort and resource that you have. You know, if you're VC funded, as an example, you're going to have a very different approach to sales and marketing than if you're completely bootstrapped and you're by yourself. You know, it's a complete different ballpark, right? So, understanding what you can do with the resources you have and whether your time is best spent is probably the the single biggest challenge getting things off the ground

34:07Because it's just you can do everything and there's so many things to do, you could be wasting a lot of time. Yeah, I'd probably say that one. Yeah. Yeah. And then starting to trust experts in those other areas. So, you know, for example, most technical staff or most technical people, I should say, aren't necessarily the best sales people, aren't necessarily the best, you know, commercial guys. You know, they're not going to necessarily write the best contract. So, you got to you got to lean on expertise really and then and if they ask you to do something, you probably should go and at least attempt it once, twice, three times before you reject that as the the way to do something, you know? That's what I think anyway.

34:39No, it's good. It's good. some really good points there and I suppose as you grow your team and everything else those are the things that you've got to basically you know grow out otherwise you don't have a team and you can't leverage and one of the biggest things as a business owner is you got to be able to leverage correctly and people and software and tools and all those things are really good and then going back to the first point you mentioned there is about the focus you you only have the energy and the time to execute on so much what is the right thing the right next thing R&T as I call it what's the right next thing to actually execute you know And when I talk to clients myself in the coaching sessions, I go like you doing some this great, that's great, that's great, but like what's the right next thing for you actually at this point in time? That's what you should do. Nothing else, you know, because the chances of actually executing, you know, is is on on all those things is quite difficult, let's be honest. So, I think that's important. People want to be able to go forward the whole time, Matt, is it's interesting because the momentum is key. You know, momentum in your business is one of the most satisfying things for a business owner is when things are positive and and they're going in the right direction. But sometimes if you got too many things happening, you actually don't know what direction to go in and then you don't get that momentum to go forward. And then basically you can't pat yourself on the back and say to yourself, hey, I've done a great job this month or this last couple of weeks.

35:58And often when I speak to clients, I say, hey, how's your week going? Honestly, give me your view out of 10. And they go like, I can't even give you out of 10. it's just been a freaking blur, you know what I mean, of things to go through and I can't actually know what I've even done at the end of the week. And that's bit of a concern, you know what I mean? To be honest, because you got to have that self-gratification. and one of the big tips what I used to do when I hadund, you know, 15 people working for me back in the consulting days is we would run a weekly channel, okay? And it was Slack in those days. Teams wasn't around. And we would actually put in all the objectives that we wanted to achieve for the week on like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And anything we did, we just put those objectives in there. And then at the end of the week, we would have someone just to go through quickly and say, or have a team meeting. We did that, we did that, we did that, we did that. And then what I would do for myself is I have a thing that's automated. It would send it to me on Saturday morning like at 9:00 or 8:30. And I'd wake up in the morning and the first thing I would do is say hi to my wife. And then I would just look straight away at 8:30. And on a Saturday, I go, "Look at all these things the teams have actually achieved." And as the team grew and got bigger, we could leverage more and they could do more things internal. And that list just went longer and longer. And I just look at this and go, "Wow, we're a weapon. Unstoppable. Look at these things we're doing. I'll just be pumped for the whole weekend."

37:17You know, so it's it's one of those things. There's a little tip for you, Matt, is is to probably have a sense check every week, see what you have actually achieved to pat yourself on the back and then you can review that the next day on Saturday and give you some energy for you and the kids and and and it'll be a good thing to do. So, just think about that. Yeah. No, I I actually really like that. I'm going to take you up on that off. One thing I do feel I do quite well of is actually then taking people's advice and actually actioning it quite quickly.

37:43So, I'm going to put that into into the business this week for sure. probably today if I get the the time this evening and and get it ready and set up so we can actually have a a real good like win because I think that's something that that's missed right you feel like you got all this outstanding stuff but if you keep not thinking how you've achieved anything you're just going to get yourself into a definitely because that's human nature you know you just think about all the negative things first up generally you know you're like oh what have I what have I got to do next week oh and you go my gosh look we haven't done much and and before you know it you know you you're really upset with yourself and you put yourself in a in a negative frame rather than having a look at what we actually achieved and you go, "Wow, that's amazing." And then that powers you through to the next week. So that's a really good It's a bit of a mind trick, but it's brilliant. I do it to this day. So,

38:30All right. So, we went moved on from your first client and we spoke a bit about that and that was awesome. can you sort of mention to us what type of client that you actually did and what do you what did you do like a virtual case study or a case study? don't have to mention names because we don't want to mention names industry but can give us an idea of what a project looks like maybe for you

38:52No great I think there's been a few there's actually been a few now driven customers and I think what I might do is give you a more recent one because I think it's going to be a a good story there a use case they're a financial institution they work with various platforms and and a re basically a rewards platform that can can actually do B2B sales or they can pay for you can pay for your bass and your your payroll and things through that platform and and ultimately get points for your business as an example from from doing that and typically you wouldn't normally be able to do that and that these guys there's obviously some small fees involved in that but obviously it means that you can go and get rewarded for your business transactions basically right and in that business they've grown very very fast over the last few years and one of the things that they that they do is they have obviously marketing like everyone else but it's not really target is it's not well targeted. It's not personalized to the individual's business and hobbies and hobbies, but the interest of the of the actual leadership and what they actually might spend their money on. So during that engagement, we've actually used AI and this particular because you talking about banking transactions, it's got to be very secure, very safe,

40:00Very repeatable. So we've actually used offline AI models to categorize data to help build a personalization engine that we can actually use in platform to to to target people with their to to burn down those points to earn the points to give people incentive to keep using the platform but ultimately personalize the their own their own environment for those transactions. And so the good thing about that is as whilst it's been a very technical AI backend, you know, very secure sort of a implementation, it's the actual impact has been a very real tangible front-end personalization

40:32Out of it as an example. So that's one use case. Yeah. How long did it take to put that to get I mean you obviously did a strategy. Can you go through the process to to actually get that done? Yeah. So I've been part of an innovation team I guess you'd say or or a team that's sort of a skunk works type implementation but that that's been very much a productled need we need to have these these particular problems. How can we solve these business cases? How do we get more users on involved? How do we how do we actually make them want to earn more points and continue using the platform? How do you how do you actually make them want to use those points because obviously it's a liability on the balance sheet for that company until they've actually used them. really thought through that and and said well look one thing that the big thing that's missing here as an experiment I guess is is personalization. So it was more of a experiment hypothesis type scenario and then being involved in that sort of small team to help deliver that outcome. That was how that particular one started. There's others that are more far more strategic like we're doing a transformation project that's more a bigger journey. you're talking about, you know, three months type planning processes and and so forth before you get into execution. Those those tend to be a little bit bigger. I've now got a whole bunch of templates and frameworks that we we've developed throughout that engagement to better reuse and and deploy at other companies. A lot of that's also I've done in the past has been in my head, but now I'm actually

41:56Probably taking some of your advice there to be honest. yeah, taking some of that collateral that I've had in my head for so long, all those years of of consulting and actually building productiz offerings that we can go, okay, this is a repeatable process. This is something that's yes, the questions might need to be specific for the industry or the customer, but the overarching way you deliver it, the program of works, the way you interact with the customer, the way that they have to then take things on board, it's all being developed.

42:23Good. That's good. I mean it's great that you know we've been talking about this on our coaching sessions around productizing your offer and making sure you get a better outcome for clients and that's what you know that's what you want and less stress on the team to do it you know so I think I think consulting is in a big shakeup globally at the moment as we know I talk to people in the US and in the UK and and your Europe and and in Australia where I'm based for those people listening in the consulting environment is under is under a sort of a threat at the moment with those AI solutions solutions out there and unfortunately big companies do not want to have big consultancy fees any longer and they want to be able to make sure they get solutions out to their customer base at a cheaper price point and faster. So I think over the next 2 to 3 years, the consultancy firms that will survive and actually do well in this murky, you know, 2 to three year period will be the ones that can leverage as much as possible with AI with their IP and their methods and then execute that at speed and and give clients a better outcome. You know, clients will never ever be able to do what consultants can do. And the reason why is and I say this to all the time to people Matt is for example how many projects have you ever worked on Matt since since including Sigma days right at the beginning how many sort of AI sort of not AI BI projects or analytic projects have you worked on you reckon

43:44Hundreds mate probably I've done six different merger and acquisition leading data integration probably got big ones you know where basically a whole section of a company gets carved off and and and moved away so probably six of those hundreds and hundreds of analytics, integration projects, transformation projects. So I agree with you. I what I've seen out output from an AIBT core, it doesn't matter which one you really use. There's a level of like when you first read, you go, "Wow, this is amazing." And then but then if you really if you're actually good at what you do and you start reading it like this is missing, this is missing that isn't really quite refined very well. How is that going to be physically implemented at a customer? Like how are they going to take what you what this these words are? the change management alone in in the process is probably is twothirds of the problem

44:28Getting people to to to change a business process where their job is going to be in that's a very difficult thing and that that's that's the thing that AI doesn't solve you know it doesn't solve the change management and the thought process around how you're going to actually make it a reality in a business for sure I was just doing some research with on BCG some consulting group and they were just talking a bit about you know 70% of an AI project is basically changing management, education, all that fluffy stuff as we used to say in the IT world and only 30% of it's the technical side. Okay. And and it just shows you goes to show and I think the 70%'s hell of important in this era because when I did the mass ERP implementations way back in the day I'm talking about in 2000 999 and 2000s show you my age 25 26 years ago is you would have maybe in a multinational company in the in Europe about 300 people doing AR and AP accounts receivable accounts payable

45:27And then as we rolled out SAP ERP environment into those areas they'll go from 300 something down to like 35 people over a period of a month and then that 35 will go down to 12. Okay. And we went through this and that was from basically paperbased process to actually into a systemized automated system at some point and and that that process took so long because those people would have to be found new jobs where could they be cross-trained what can they do there's a whole lot of energy that had to be spent around that. And then after that sort of early 2000s, after the big companies went through the ERP implementations, that change management fell away quite a bit, right? Cuz everything became sort of an upgrade. The processes were already there. The process, you know, you might have switched a new system on versus take it, you know, or upgrade it, but really the same core team would still be there and they knew the process anyway. It might be better, faster, there might be a whole lot of a new bells and whistles to it, but fundamentally the process had changed from paperbased to an ERP platform and and there was a big change.

46:33Now I see that change going to happen again, but I don't think people are going to be putting that effort into the change management because they're not used to spending that time and effort on change management, you know. So I think it's a big part. I think you're right. All the research so far over the last year and a half is showing that. So yeah, I think you need to think about that yourself even, you know, in your your implementations.

46:56Yeah, that that's that's certainly I hadn't actually heard those stats by the way, but that's an area where I'm really seeing it in the market, but also definitely pay a lot of attention to. And I feel like the change management, the uptake BI projects have traditionally suffered a lot from uptake issues, right? Where you go and build these tools, it doesn't matter what tool it is, Cognos, PowerBI, Tableau, Click, it's irrelevant. Ultimately there, you build these dashboards. people don't really take ownership of them because they see it's a black box. They can't touch it. They can't feel it, can't edit it, and they don't ultimately own it at the end of the day. So, I've been acutely aware because of these sort of analytics, BI projects that uptake and therefore change management was a was a big part of something you need to focus on. And I've tried to pay a lot of attention to that over the years and I I do I think I think it's accelerating with AI. Yeah. And and if anything people are I want to say not lying but they're definitely not being as forthcoming about changing information or processes because it hasn't they potentially could be losing jobs over this or or or the job could be transforming or or they're worried about the job

47:55Being lost in today's market. Now, the reality is if if if they're a good company, they're going to good people are going to get reallocated and retrained and and and do better and better things with the time than just AR processing as an example, right? I mean, you can do ACR and things like that these days that can do 95% of that quite accurately, but maybe even higher, but it it's definitely an area of concern for a lot of people. And and that's actually where I think some of the challenges are. So, there's sort of in AI two challenges that that I see. One is management and boards want the technology in the in a solution in SAS in their environment so forth but not many people know how to actually implement it in a real life what is it we're implementing how are we going to leverage it that that's a the biggest challenge and the other one is I'm so afraid of AI I don't want to use it or I want to be very resistant to it and fight all the initiatives and make sure they fail so that I don't get threatened sort of the two two things I'm seeing in the market at the moment.

48:51Yeah. Yeah. Look, it's going to be interesting. I mean the smaller consultancy firms have have jumped on the board of the AI and and they want to get involved in it because they know that it's an opportunity to scale their business and the bigger consultancy firms like the big offshore and the big you know multinational consultancy firms they stuck because they've got this body of people where they potentially don't need 20 to 30% of them over the next two years. So what do they do with that team of people and I know that there are certain places in Europe and even in India that the graduation the graduates from some of the best universities are not even being picked up at the moment and the first time in you know five five years or 10 years that they haven't been picked up because of the fact that people are worried do we need these graduates coming through into these consultancy firms you know so it's interesting but let's go back to where and how you think you're going to scale your business so we talked about productizing your offer I'm a big believer that's going to help you scale. and I know that that's something that you want to think about. But let's just talk about are you going to use AI or what tools or what ways are you going to use to actually you know, get that scaling happening?

49:56Yeah. Yeah. So, originally when I first started the company, I thought I'm probably going to need 30, 100, 150 people. You know, there's going to be a a progression of of bodies. I'm feeling like there there's probably less of that. I mean, I'm still going to need a number of people to help leverage time and and and effort and so forth. And I think AI is going to be a big proponent of that mating ultimately the business processes that we create. That's probably our unique proposition. We we're going to we're going to go out to to market in a particular way as a customer in a particular way just like every other customer or consultancy out there or agency out there will will do that, right? They will they'll they'll have certain processes. some some require very expertise or very high levels of expertise to to deliver those and that's traditionally probably where I've lived where I haven't had great documented processes where there've been

50:47You know things that a team of five 20-year-old veterans have sort of tackled the projects therefore we've worked very closely together and and so forth not but not well not well productized and I think actually the shift for me right now is productizing that using AI to help automate the things that would be very time consuming for me to deliver and then spending like the last 10 20% refining what the AI has helped generate to help deliver the content and outcomes to to clients.

51:14Yeah. Yeah. It's great. It's great. You know, some people, you know, that I've been working with, we've been helping them set up teams and offshore land and and I know a lot of clients have teams in, you know, India, Pakistan, Philippines, AL, Colomb, and and Indonesia. you know, because they are really at a a right price point. It's going to be a bit of a challenge between people setting up those teams and you know really thinking about do we need to if we've got an AI solution that can do parts of the job and have or have less of them you know because in Australia the challenge in the small business in Australia is the cost of people it's too it's too expensive because companies don't want to pay for it you know what I mean and and so you're stuck between a hard place and and it's a really hard thing because you know you want you want to hire people in your own country all the time as your first point of of call But if the customer in your customer won't won't pay for it, then what do you do? I think it's

52:07That's a real challenge. I think it's a challenge, you know, globally like in America I don't know if you saw the H1B one whatever visa that changed that's going to impact a lot of people over the globe you know and and they're having those sort of discussions now in Europe as well. So it's quite a you know going from a globalized IT work remote scenario to to help any company to you know I think is going to be a bit of a clash between that expectation for customers regarding AI and and and the mix and how the IT consulting services companies actually change their model. It's going to be very interesting to see that over the next two to three. I'm actually looking forward to see how it all plays out to be honest.

52:47Yeah, this this could have some real impacts in the industry, right? Because I guess like that restriction of the trade I guess in in a lot of ways. I mean for big companies that that's a that's millions of dollars that have just been added to the the bottom line in terms of the or the expense line I should say taking off that bottom line because of the H1B visa changes in the US. Now with that I guess you could argue then that the local economy might pick up some of that slack and some of the the people that might be missing out opportunities might take that up. Yeah. or it can drive, you know, pricing straight sky high because it's so little competition and therefore it's very hard to get resourcing or you have to pay the the big premium for the the H1B visa.

53:25Yeah. To be used. So, I think you're right. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out. The globalization of it, I I agree. We're seeing at a global scale a lot of selfworkforce like going back into a decentralized approach, a de Yeah, decentralized approach for each in economy sort of trying to stand on their own two feet a bit more rather than having a reliance on external parties and that's definitely I think going to play a big role over the next three four five years. So going to be interesting.

53:54Yeah, going to be very interesting to see what happens. Now, one of the questions that I always, you know, I like to ask because it's I think it's hell of important is, do you have any strategies in the past, it doesn't have to be current, it could be in the past that you've worked with, how to attract or to retain sort of clients? Do you, you know, do have you gone, you know, we spoke about, you know, you got to pick up the phone and have a conversation without that, but how do you attract and how do you retain clients? Have you got any thoughts around that, Tim?

54:20Yeah, I think I I'll probably start the retaining. M the retaining for me is all about making sure that the customer is ultimately happy. Like the I think when you do a bad job, you'll get a little bit of negative feedback, but often customers vote with their wallet. They vote with their by you not having any more projects or them not renewing contracts. And that's really where you'll find out whether you've done a bad job. And unfortunately at that point, it's too late in most cases.

54:44So, so for me, constantly being engaged with the customer, constantly, you know, taking the temperature, making sure you've done a good job, but also delivering. When you say you're going to deliver something, make sure you deliver it. Don't be 10, 20, 30% over budget, 10, 20, 30% over time because that's a bad outcome for the for the customer. They thought they were getting getting something for $10,000 and it ended up costing 15 or 20 and three extra weeks. That's not that's not a good experience. So, I think for retention is actually saying what delivering on what you said you're going to do.

55:12Yep. Yep. Personally, I think that's that's the biggest outcome. Yeah. and making sure that the customer is ultimately happy and and and you've also in a lot of consultancies I've seen it time and time again documentation for the customer like you know how you how are they going to hand it over if you aren't there at some point that they're not they don't want to rely on external parties you've got to make sure you you've done the documentation right as well and that they can understand it and manage it and and do something without you because then as you enable them that gives you the opportunity to work on the next thing that they the initiative that they want you to work on otherwise you're going to be maintaining the same old rubbish and at some point that that doesn't I'm not saying it's rubbish but the same old the same old technology that ultimately will become a block in the future and and ultimately be replaced by something else. So you need to be able to be very good to your customers in terms of attraction, building that trust. I think you've just got to just got to engage with customers. You've also got to be constantly learning because the the industry changes so much that if you haven't learn I found particularly in the AI space, a lot of customers are very well educated in the space.

56:12They understand what rag means. They understand what an MCP means. things like terms that you know typically most in in the past technologists would say these threeletter acronyms which I really don't like. I prefer to use the the full terms right but I use a couple there myself just now but but ultimately we use these terms make ourselves feel smarter and so forth but ultimately the the customer wouldn't go really research them very much now with AI the customers are researching really and deeply they're actually really excited by the technology so you're going to have to go a lot deeper than you ever have before.

56:45To make sure your knowledge is on point. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think I think so. Plus, they can, you know, chat should be and they can get a an idea of what they shouldn't use or shouldn't use and and then that's accelerates their learning to have a discussion with the a real good discussion with the services provider like yours. So, yeah, I think it's going to be it's going to, you know, have a lot more discussions and I think having those honest discussions with those people becomes more of a focus point because of GPT. I know a client of mine had dinner with them a couple of weeks back. They were doing a strategy for a big company global company and they said oh you know they've reviewed it with chat and these all the things. So they had to go back in and explain to them that chatbt has some valid points on their strategy but at the end of the day it's missing a whole lot of other information that it didn't know or the context around it did not give it enough information. So it was trying to re-educate the customer to the point where you know they were actually right and their strategy they put forward actually is correct. Okay.

57:47So it's quite interesting. Lucky the client at that stage spoke to my client and said look we have used GPT and we have done this and have done that. So so they actually could re-educate the customer around that. And I think that's going to be really interesting because every time you put a strategy now onto a client, the first thing they're going to do is probably not allowed to because, you know, it's not even sanctioned internally is to put your strategy straight through their GPT and say, "Well, give me the 20 things we should know and where the pitfalls are and where the cost is." And they're going to start to try and analyze your strategy document. And and a lot of that information, as we know, is not really correct. You know, a lot of assumptions. It makes a lot of sense. And I I was talking to an AI leader about two weeks ago and he and he says about hallucinations. This is pretty interesting that hallucinations are really around you know it's like every time you put something into a prompt into an LLM it's asking them to do a test and sometimes what actually happens like any test is you know you know imagine us back in high school HSSE writing HSC this year and you get 70% of it you know the the the gist of the question and you've got a multiple choice and you try and work through and you sort of got it knocked down to two or three out of five or two out of five and then you So all right, I've just got to take a bit of a guess and I think it's educated guess. It's on that and that's exactly what the prompt behavior is doing. It's actually you're putting a test question to the LM the chatbt for example and their answer coming back is the answer that it's trying to deliver through that question and it will make

59:20Assumptions every now and then and that's when people look at it and go who have got the depth and knowledge who are subject matter experts will look at it and go geez that is totally incorrect. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then oh that's a loose nation and the loose face. So it's going to be really interesting throughout process. Really interesting. Yeah. I've seen that a lot in the coding space, a lot of the strategy space. I've asked a lot of questions around governance and things like that. And when you ask the the questions because you know what the answer should be, you can ask the question in a way because to make sure that you get the answer that you want or and it just helps you generate the content better. when you're asking things in a way that legal or you know contracts and so forth. I've seen people try to generate some things around that space and ultimately not get anywhere close to what a lawyer would actually require for that. I had a some business partners that generated some contracts and and they ultimately you know use use Mr. Cord and and it didn't turn out too well in the end and they had to go out to to some lawyers and get and really get the expertise there. I've seen the same thing with code. You know, the first one spits out code. It could be like a it could be like a script rather than a a fullyfledged, you know, class and functions and and really done in a way that doesn't have API secrets and so forth in the code. And you the separation of logic

1:00:34When you know what you're looking for, you can say, oh, actually fix this, fix this, do this. But if you don't know what you're looking for, you can actually get some pretty average solutions out of it, too. So, just give it a quick plug about your business, data link. What services are you currently doing? Yeah. So, so we probably do three things in the data space. So, we've got a I guess as you said advisory and training which covers you know things like data strategy and you know governance. The next one is we look at you know the building of the products as well. So your data lakes, your data warehouses data integration and then obviously the visualization of that as well. So you got your analytics, your visualization tools and so forth. So there's probably a a threepart data services offering and then we also look at AI and embedded in that in a business process. So really focused on the business outcomes and and and physically making the changes like we spoke about before around change management owning the solution end to end and and actually making it real world use cases in that in the AI not just like a chatbot or some sort of repository but but actually making a fundamental business process

1:01:43Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. All right. So thanks for that sharing sharing the services. What we're going to do is we're going to come back to in a bit of you know maybe in a year's time or whatever it is see how the journey of data link is going and we'd love to to hear how you're building your team and what does it look like now with AI you know and innovation that you're currently doing around building your company out more and more and servicing your those clients of yours. So really keen to get you back on the on the on the on the podcast at some stage to do and then talk about your future and your vision and and how that's changing as well and it'll be awesome to get you back. So thanks very much for having you on the show today. and I know you're hell of a busy you know appreciate every every moment that we get from you. Thanks Matt.

1:02:30No, not a problem. It's it's been a I love the chat to be honest. So brilliant. Thanks a lot. Bye. Thanks And thanks for joining us on IT Mastermind Talks. Don't miss out on our next episode. Hit the follow button and stay updated. Want to be our next podcast guest? Contact us and share your expertise with our audience. Visit for more information.