No Exit Plan? What Most IT Founders Miss

0:00Hi everyone. I've got Daniel Cox on the call today with us at the podcast for it masterminds. I've known Daniel for quite a while. He's actually nearby resident as well. So we have caught up at the brewery a few times in the past. he's American as well. So Dan, would you like to just give yourself a one minute overview, please?

0:20Yeah, sure. Really appreciate you having me on and it's a pleasure to be part of your show and your podcast. yeah, so believe it or not yes it you can still hear my American accent and inte I have had a quite an interesting journey from the farm to hydro to yeah it data and then now yeah sustainability. So

0:50Brilliant brilliant brilliant. So, there's a lot of things that Daniel, I'm going to call him Dan for short, does and has done and awesome and amazing to get him on the on the on the podcast today cuz he's got some experiences that he could talk about and people would love to hear and and and relate to those experiences. Welcome 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 their 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. So as usual we start right at the beginning you know Daniel on our on our sessions here we we talk about you know what happened at high school and how you eventually got into technology or in your case services whatever can you just background from the farm from the farm onwards

2:03Yeah well actually I'll go back even further if you don't mind back to when I was eight years old so yes I did grow up in rural America about three hours east of Seattle if you know where that is and your listeners know where that is but in a lovely town called Lake Chalan and it's the apple capital of the world. So people think that New York is but no 70% of the world's apples come from Washington state and that's that's where I grew up. So my dad is probably the he well he is my my role model. He was my my hero. Still is my hero. He has passed on a couple years ago, but he was the epitome of integrity and transparentness and grit and entrepreneur. And so he was not a farmer. He was not an orchardist. He was a city slicker. And he took my mom away from the farm. And the two things that he promised my mom if she would marry him was one, he would never take her back to scratch in the dirt, as she likes to call it. And number two, he would always shave every single day. And even to the day of his death, I never was able to get up before him and see him unshaven.

3:23That was something that he definitely learned in the military as well. He was an officer in the military. But when we moved back, my dad did end up breaking one of those promises to take us back to the farm. when I was 8 years old, he gave me 12 acres and he said, "This is yours. You have to do whatever you want, but you have to take care of it. I will help you, but you got to organize it. So, from eight years old, I had this entrepreneurial spirit given into me. So, yes, I did plant Granny Smith's and Red Delicious and that I grew it and sold it and that put me through university and yeah, so I had to do the bookkeeping, I had to do all the spray records, I had to do everything, right? So yeah, it was quite a wonderful experience. I wish I would have been able to do something like that for my own son. Yeah. but he's a tech geek. for sure.

4:20So I learned that that grit that just you have to figure out solutions because you've always got obstacles. You always got problems in today's world. Especially if you're an entrepreneur, especially if you're an owner of business. You're always coming up against some sort of obstacle, some sort of thing. And instead of I love what Simon Senic one of one of my most favorite little episodes is where he's got a snow skier ski as well going through you know the the the trees going through the forest and he's talking about you know problems and if you focus on you know don't hit a tree what do you focus on not hitting a tree and really you know that's the way most people lived their lives is looking out for the trees. And what are you doing when you're looking at a tree? You're not finding the path. And he said, you know, skiers, what we do is we actually look for the path. And it may seem in the beginning quite skinny between skis is between trees, but really you're looking at the path and you're looking forward. And all these obstacles are going by. And yes, you need to weave and move and duck and dive and around, but you're looking at the path. You're looking at the way forward.

5:33And I think that's just a phenomenal analogy because it's so true because if you focus on the obstacle, it becomes a mountain. But if you're focing focusing on the on the pathway, you can find that ledge, you can find that solution, you can find the way around. great absolute one. So that so that takes me back to 8th grade. I'll jump all the way through to my first year at university. I I I thought I was going to be a chem chemical engineer until I flunked my stoeometry and I said maybe this isn't the career for me. Luckily, I did get drafted to play baseball. so I played for at the time the Cleveland Indians and I still call them the Indians because I I I just I can't get commanders in my head. and then got traded to the Atlanta Braves, got hurt, quit, and then went back to school and did accounting and finance and also statistics. So all this data orientated stuff, numbers

6:40And yeah, so then out of school I decided instead of going to at the time the big eight accounting firms and most of my colleagues, most of my university grad friends were going into the big eight and I said, "No, I don't want to do that." So, I actually went to work for the Washington State Auditor's Office and I did high-risisk and compliance audit and then I fell into my first fraud. and yeah, that that's an that's a little bit of a thing. So, I was it was yeah, within my first year of auditing and I was trying to reconcile three sets of books at a university government ran university in in Washington states. I can't name names the, but I'm sure it's not too difficult to find out which one because there's only one. And, they had three sets of books. One for student banking, one for their GL, and one for I can't remember what it was now. but, I was trying to reconcile. I just couldn't figure it out. And I just kept going back to the financial manager and saying, "Hey, I I don't get, oh, you got to use this, you got to do this transaction, you got to do this." And I was getting closer and closer, but after like three or four hours of just going back and forth, I said, "Look, I honestly I can't figure this out. What am I doing wrong?" And literally, she looked at me and she just went, "I took

8:11So, she had been pushing you down the line trying to get to do something else or focus on something else, and then she realized she's the one that took it. So, yeah. So, I I went back up to her and I I I asked her again, "I'm just not getting this." And she just threw her hands up and said, "I took it." Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant,

8:32So, I was like, "Okay, right." Yeah. So, yeah, so I had a knack for it. so, I ended up being the fraud investigator for Washington State alongside one other. So, it was two of us. Did that for a couple of years. and started going, you know, into the local areas where my parents and my mother's family all all were. So like the local water district and councils, etc. And I'd always see somebody that I was related to, right? And it was nice because oh, they'd say, "Oh, lovely to see you, Daniel." And then they'd look at me and go, "Why are you here?"

9:14Yeah. So, so yeah, I I I decided then, yeah, time to time to move on and I I went to run a hydroelectric dam. So, actually two for Chelan County PUB in Wanche. so, Wanche is quite famous. you may have never heard of it but it it holds the largest data center for AWS for Azure for Google

9:42And has Alcoa's pot line. So literally manufacturing pot lines pots pots and pans as well as now Amazon's Amazon's largest distribution. It also houses a separate estate for Boeing. so in the 70s they put in an estate there so they could fly in and fly out their employees, the executive community because it's like a 40minute flight to Seattle. so the reason why everything is there is because of the Columbia River, the

10:17So things can be cooled down. So data centers can be easily cooled, cheap water, but also the cheap power. So they can get something like three cents per kilowatt hour for sure. yeah, so I decided yeah that I wanted to go and work for Shaolan County Ped. So I ran I was the financial manager for two hydros Rocky Reach Dam and then the Lake Chalan Dam. So those were you know about a $2 billion asset and I really enjoyed that. one of the biggest projects I had was I was supposed to come up and this is and this is really a precursor to what KPIs are but we started doing KPIs and so I was in charge of the whole thing across the organization and you know this is not just power generation but it was also transmission it was also selling. So we had energy cells etc. So we had guys, you know, that were government employees making well over a million million and a half a year in 1997 selling electricity, right?

11:27And so we had parks, we had fleets, we had maintenance. So I ended up having 275 different KPIs across the all the different departments. Yeah, quite a And this is a good good little anecdote. So I sat down with my CEO And I I started going through all of them. He's like, "Yeah, this is awesome. This is awesome. This is good. This is going to make so much easier for us to manage the entire operation." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then after about 35 minutes, he's like, you know, I'm not seeing a metric.

12:05What? He's like, River temperatures. Okay. What does river temperatures have to do with anything? He said, 'Well, actually, it's about the difference the delta between before the dam and after the dam because if it's a 1% difference between temperature, in other words, after the dam, the water's churned, it it heats up.

12:28It means that it means that the fauna like the like the salmon, the endangered species could actually be disorientated and then predators can come in and take take advantage of that. So that is a significant factor because the Native Americans then have have a possibility breach of our contract with them because that inhibits them from their fishing rights. It also breaches you know the EPA for ecological and issues with with maintaining species all that kind of stuff. so then all right okay that's fine. So we need to then spill water instead of generate. But then we also have to remember well if we don't generate enough we might be in breach for our investors which would be like Alcoa, city of Seattle and so we would be fine. So it's a definite balance. I said well I'm not sure how I'm going to do that because I mean there were there was nothing back then to actually move data like there is now, right? and and really IoT didn't exist. but I put sensors before and after the dam and we use microwaves to send the information to the head office.

13:42So I had a little ticker tape on my outlook today page every six seconds updated of river temperatures. so because it was it was a major thing cuz you could be you could be really millions of dollars. You got you got caught caught up in the in the sort of the moving data from from the senses to to the to the office. Interesting. You seen that?

14:04That's it. Exactly. And because of that project, I really got into data because we needed data more real time. Now that wasn't possible at the time. 24 hours was the best. And we were just starting to dabble and I know that you remember this name starting to dabble with Cognos. Yeah. Yeah. So h for your listeners if they don't know who Cognos is back in the day from 1997 999 to 2004 there was only two real companies right there was business objects who got bought by SAP and then Cognos who by 2004 was bought by IBM and those are two business intelligence or precursors to all of our ideas around

14:48And yeah so we got started working in that and that's where I moved from really being finance orientated to really data orientated because I needed that data. I needed to support all the decisions. And at the time we were doing a monthly book that was coming out every six weeks. So a monthly book coming out every six weeks. So we only get 11 books out of a year, right? And it really was like 300 pages and we used I don't know like 12 pages of that to make real decisions, right? But that Yeah. So out of this project, the data project, I started getting data nearly 24 hours which was real time back then and yeah it was quite quite advanced and then I loved it and I said to I called up the CEO of of Cognos Ron Zambanini and he actually answered the phone and I said hey I want a job. He's like what? I did actually happen to meet him at a user conference down in Anaheim. and he gave me his business card. So, I literally the the next Monday called him up and he answered the phone and he said, "All right, we'll sort you out. We'll put you in touch with this person." And like a month later, I was working for Cognos.

16:05Great. How long were you at Cognos for? from 99 until 2003. So four years. Yeah. Four years. Yeah. It's the hey days of that really. It was it was it was absolutely I mean

16:25They were they were making so much money. So much money and there's so much great innovation. I mean Cognos is still around. So if you look at any of the analytic suites in IBM that still the Cognos name is still there and it's still there. It's obviously new tech, but it's still from the old report days. Reportnet days was the first like browserbased analytics tool back in 99. Phenomenal stuff and it's still around

16:56So, at Cognos, you implementing solutions for clients. Is that what you're doing? Services side? Yeah, I was in the services side. So, I I helped build out all of Western United States. So we really I started doing services initially and then because it was specialized finance implementation. So really working on JD Edwards and integrations with that and then SAP and then because it was so big then I started really gathering consultants and brand building it up. So at the about a took me about 16 months to build up about 300 consultants on the west coast.

17:40Yeah. Yeah. So we did that and was managing the whole western United So you managed the the delivery or the sales delivery the whole No the delivery. Just the delivery. Yeah. Yeah. Just the delivery. However, I mean you're always in sales, right? Yeah. Yeah. You always are. Yeah. Yeah. Especially at those types of levels where we were back then we were $400 to $500 an hour.

18:07For the consultants because they were they were high level because they were they were already like CPAs and and finance people but also tech as well. So they could come in do a lot of the requirements and then implement the actual software and do all the and so talking with the senior executives as well as the IT department. Yeah, I remember those days. Those were great days. You could, you know, one minute you could be running a workshop, the next minute you could actually be, you know, putting some cutting some code and it was into planning solution. It was great fun, you know,

18:41It was and I actually had programs of training too that were five days long. I mean, training, you know, you don't have that these days at all, you know. And like this morning I was on a call with Gartner because with Green Parrot we're we're partners again with Gartner and the the phenomenal you know surpassing of what Claude and a few of the other code cutters can do now. I mean it's it's literally no codew writing to your developers develop the architect of trust right it's all about yeah because

19:20Let's go back so Cognos Cognos you moved into what next was it yeah so from Cognos they actually took me around the world so I stayed with them and it was nove sorry September of September of 2002. So just a year after 9/11, I was picking up and moving to Northern Europe and I was going to do the same thing in Northern Europe that I did for Western Austral Western Australia, Western US. Yeah. And two weeks before I I I was literally moving. I had my house packed up, everything like that. Signed a mortgage in in Youthre, the Netherlands. And I got this email from my COO at Cognos and he's basically said, "Since you're uprooting, why don't you go down to Australia?" Full stop. Was it that was the email. So I called up Richard and I said, "What are you talking about?" we sold some software down there in Australia. We don't know what we sold. We just sold them all kinds of stuff. We don't know what the project is. We just want you to go down there, figure out what the project is, do the project, make it stay on track, go to the beach, have a holiday, and yeah, we'll sort out Europe after you get back. I'm like, all right. So, that's how I got to Australia, and that was 23 years ago. And literally, the anniversary of 911 did not exist for me.

20:51So September 11th, 2002 is a day that never happened in my life because when I flew from LA to that day skipped missed it. So that day is infamous because I landed on the 12th. I'll always remember that as the day I landed and the anniversary never happened.

21:15Wow. So I remember I remember that day clearly cuz I was in Germany with a whole lot of Americans on a project and we're watching all the stuff on the on the TV happening. So yeah. Yeah. It's I remember that sort of like that's bit of surreal but yeah. interesting interesting. Okay. Then Australia delivering that. What happened next?

21:35Yeah. So so I got off the plane and I got picked up and and it was like 2 o'clock in the afternoon. So I said, "Look, why don't we go to the headquarters? Let's find out, you know, what this company is because I didn't even know what kind of company it was." and find out what they wanted. So rucked up in Brisbane and went to the headquarters and it ended up being MIM. So my m Mount Eiser Mines, right? And at the time back then they were the largest mining company. They owned the mines, the largest company in the world. And so what they wanted was a full driver-based budgeting system analytically driven right so they had all these statistics coming out of each of the mines. I was supposed to go to the real-time commodities markets get to pricing and that would drive value and then the workforce management and capex. So it took us six and a half months 16hour days six days a week through Christmas. They wouldn't let me go, but they did fly my parents down for Thanksgiving and then they flew down my girlfriend at the time that was from Ohio for Christmas. we finished the project and 3 months later, Extrada bought most of MIM. So it was a $20 million due diligence project was what it ended up being.

23:02Yeah, absolutely. So, I decided, yeah, I want to stay in Australia for a little while. check things out. And so, yeah, I came down to Sydney, lived, they put me up, Cognos put me up in, in Cooji for 3 months. and then Manley for three months. So, I was like, yeah, loving life down here. And then, of course, I met my wife who is Brazilian who was here visiting her sister. And, yeah. so that that's Yeah. been here since. So,

23:34Fantastic. Fantastic. That's why I stayed. So, you got into the Australia environment. you started a business. Can you just go through, you know, what the business was cuz you've exited that business as well. I have. So, with with Cognos, their model down here was not to have any employees that it was contractors and consultants. So I contracted with Cognus, got that kind of going, got a bit of clientele, etc. And then I actually went to work for a company called Zapbi at the time. So they're Brisbane based analytics BI tool set on top of the Microsoft analysis services and reporting services, etc. They're still around. I helped them go global in 2008 against the global f financial and expanded them into South Africa and the US and in Germany and they're still around today. they're more data they have the BI suite which is analytics dashboards and through that I met a whole bunch of clients and they actually came to me and said hey you service us so well and I think this is very important for the audience it is about service and it is about value adding right

24:57Because they they really enjoyed what I was able to do for them they said hey go out on yourself by yourself. We'll support you and until you get up and really up and running and we'll make sure that So there was six different clients that actually came together and said look and these are half billion two billion dollar companies right so it wasn't you know just a mom and pop around the corner saying hey we'll we'll give you a couple of bucks right so it was quite good so that's how data transformed my very first company in Australia actually started so data transformed was a data warehousing and business intelligence implementation consulting company. Yeah.

25:36And we we resold Microsoft, we resold Zap, we resold Cognos and implemented and that actually went on quite well. I went from me and one consultant data consultant to 50 within about six months and that was quite good. But then I saw the advent of PowerBI coming and saw a lot of the the data warehousing and business intelligence type consulting becoming a commodity.

26:09So I thought at that point what do I need to do to change and this is also extremely important for a lot of your listeners that are entrepreneurs. You have a vision, you have what you want to do, you enjoy it, you have that passion but you also have to be flexible and you also have to pivot. Sometimes you have to think about the future of even though you might be well established what you might be doing. So at that time I looked at it and say what what's really going on in the market and I said well data management master data management in particular because of all the different you know best of breed technologies coming on. So, it's not just allin-one ERP, but now you've got your CRM system. You've got your logistics systems. You've got, you know, your GL or or your main ERP. But yeah, and multiple systems, especially with conglomerates, especially with acquisition, a lot of M&A. So, there definitely need a master data type solutions here in

27:10So, I decided to cut back. So I cut back to 35 instead of 50. re re I trained some of my consultants that were more on the BI side to be able to do the data management and I started reselling EBX. So EBX was a French master data management solution that was later then acquired by Typco and so yeah I switched to that and grew to about 300 odd consultants over the next five years and with that I also did a rebranding so I brought on a couple of partners and we decided to change the name from data transformed to Ascension and Ascension Services. So it was really about ascending and helping organizations move to that next level. So we focused on tier one and enterprise and federal and state governments and did some really cool projects with some of the security and defense departments in Australia which were quite interesting. So and then you sold out of that business what happened?

28:20Yeah. Yeah. So about it's coming on to about two years now. I exited that business. So with the with with a number of partners that we brought on technology partners often we would go to you know their conferences and we meet up with other other consulting companies like myself. So I got to know quite a number of them and I was quite active. It's surprising how how larger companies have all these programs for resellers, right? and no one uses them, especially the marketing dollars, man. we were fairly small compared to, you know, the PWC's and KPMGs that were implementing and partners with somebody like Tipco. but yet we were the most active in taking advantage of all these types of programs. So we got to be known quite proliferated throughout the global community and actually got a couple of awards behind me, tombstones for partner of the year, etc. beating out some of the big guys as well.

29:25It was always good. It was always a good feeling when you beat the big guys. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And because of that, I got actually gotten in Gartner's critical services for MDM, master data management. We were listed in the top 20 of of service providers globally. So, yeah, that was that that is pretty impressive. That is that was awesome.

29:49Yeah, absolutely. That was neat. That was absolutely. You had Accenture and then Ascension and it was like that was awesome. Absolutely. So, yeah, so I got to know a bunch of them and I ended up knowing really well the chairman for one of these other groups and they were not in Asia Pac. They were across North and South America, Europe and Middle East and Africa. And so we started reselling each other's IP. So during co I actually well prior to co I started building what was called citizen 360 which was actually a citizen centric data repository of their own data. they owned it and controlled it and allowed then then other organizations such as similar to like gov ID but it was reverse as far as ownership right yeah so you'd allow some let's say the open banking and banking to see some of your information what you allowed some agencies especially around around estranged partners and things like that for security of kids and so you control that information and That came actually bore out of one of our implementations of the Northern Territory government because they have a lot of issues up there with security, a lot of issues with estranged partners, etc. and and violence against you know minors etc. So being able to do that and be able to control that information and only allow there was

31:23There was less issues. So we built that and during co that started to become as well the for forerunner for vaccine passports and things like that as well. so that way it wasn't government le it was you know privateled. Well we ended up reselling each other. So this firm out of France started reselling Citizen 360 out of Europe and we ended up saying well why don't we sell each other's you know IP and then he actually suggested well why don't we just take that a step further so they ended up acquiring us about 6 months after that so it was fairly quick so 20

32:1022 20 end of 2122 too. we ended up getting acquired and like most organizations that's well established they say well the entrepreneur thank you for having you we appreciate what you did now see you later and off and off you move into the sunset. So

32:30That's it exactly. So that's so that whole process how long was that year? I mean sorry how long was that company around for? 15 years. 15 years. Long time. 15 years. Yeah. It was quite a It was my baby for sure. For sure. For sure. Everyone's know you grow up and with with, you know, the whole with with my company, we're like, you know, eight eight year not 15, but we every every spare minute you're thinking about the company.

32:57Even more so than your kids, unfortunately, in some cases. So, so that that's the that challenge. And then you have to actually sell it or move pass it on. So, you you learned a lot. Going through that experience. Selling a business isn't easy. I've I've I've helped six other businesses sell. and it's not an easy process to go through. And I always say to people, make sure whenever you go through this process, you're already up for it. And you know that you're probably not going to get what you really want out of the deal. as always, as as as you go into it, you think you're going to get all these grand ideas come in your mind, but and not h half the time it doesn't really match that. to be honest, in my experience,

33:39Agreed. So just talking a bit about your journey and and your growth and everything else. You did have a bit of a team was a team all local or do you have some offshore talent building some of the products as well? What happened at the end there? Yeah. Yeah. Just on that comment, Ian, I think it's an extremely I did not have representation and I did not have somebody in my corner to help me advise and consult and I would definitely encourage that was a mistake that I made. and I would encourage anybody that's looking at M&A or or exiting that they actually have somebody to coach them through it specifically.

34:20For sure. definitely. But yeah, I did have a an executive leadership team which was great. They were they were excellent. So full-time COO, CFO, CMO and head of sales as well. So it was a full Yeah. And I really enjoyed that because I really love developing the team and and developing individuals.

34:46Nice. and I have always looked at my position and a and a leader pos leadership position as a role to help not just build people and develop people but also to remove roadblocks right so if there's something specifically that they need help with how can I help them how can I remove that roadblock etc so it was good because they certainly did help through that whole process of M&A But yeah, it's it's something that I I I love startups as well. I love the spirit of it, but I really love building the team and and seeing them achieve. And that's that's the that's such an excitement when when I can see them, do something that they've never done before or or have that achievement. And when I talk about, you know, the tombstones or or you know, making into gardener, there's no way I would have even come close to even contemplating that if I didn't have amazing individuals. And I think that's that's huge. I mean, we always want to try and strive to hire, you know, the the Aclass person, and we should but you know, I like the the analogy as well that you know, the SEALs use as far as trust versus performance. They would rather have somebody that I mean, the best person is high performance, high trust

36:12For sure. trust more than performance. More than performance. Correct. because you can actually rely on them right and and that's extremely important and I found that you know through co as well and through some of the projects that come you know came against you know some big odds and big personalities and things like that. So it was quite quite important that that you bring those those people along with you and and help them. So,

36:43So your team was it all local or did you have offshore as well onshore or did you just have a that team delivering? Yeah, we we were across A&Z as well as Southeast Asia. So, the last like three years I expanded into Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. and so we had an office in Singapore, we had an entity in Singapore and we had an entity in Indonesia. and I sent my one of my right-hand man up to Jakarta and it was supposed to be a six-mon stent and I believe he's still actually there. Actually, I know he's still there and he's loving life up there. So, he's really enjoying

37:24For sure. A lot of traffic in Jakarta. A lot of traffic. That's what I'm going to say. A lot of traffic. Yeah. Yeah. Lot of traffic. So the team you've obviously learned a lot through through everything that you've done up to the stage and the conversation. you know you had some time off after the exit of that business. How much time did you have off and what did you do to to rebuild the energy and and you know realign on what you personally want?

37:52Yeah. I think it's extremely important part of productivity is your rejuvenation and refreshing right. if you're tired, you can't be as productive and certainly as we get a little bit older that that is more needed because you know thinking is difficult. and that's what we are called to do is to think and to vision and to communicate that. And I took off probably only a couple of months and my wife probably would say that I didn't take any time off. my mind's always going and visions of new ideas constantly come in my mind and things that I want to try and do. yeah, so I probably only about took two months off and during that time I did a complete renovation to and fix and flip. So, I acquired a acquired a house because of the farm and because it had been so long since I really had my hands on something in 200 two 2021 I opened up a property development company and started doing fix and flips. And so with my time off, I actually did that completely all by myself. Fixed it and flipped it. and

39:06Was it satisfying doing it yourself? It was. Absolutely. It was an achievement and it was it was relaxing because it was nothing like anything else, right? Sure. And yeah, it was great to go out there and sweat and lose weight and and you know, be in the sun and do the trades and yes, I had I had certified trades come in and check out what I've done, but I did all the electrical, all the all the plumbing, everything like that.

39:33But in the end of the day, it's still about data, right? It's still about data and still about, you know, how can we do this better and what the market is and all that kind of stuff. So, it comes back to all the analytics anyway. So, so you got dragged you had your time a bit of time off and then you started to think and visualize about Green yes. Okay. Is that what went on

39:55Yeah, pretty much. So I I I did you know the property development as well at the same time because I didn't have a job so I did that but I still had this vision and actually in 2021 I had the vision of Green Parrot but I put it to the side. I also had a couple other companies that I started. So, Symphony, which was a supply chain data exchange primarily for the distribution channel because there is it was all Excel based and email based and you know one one client that I had we built a portal for them had like 5,000 spreadsheets a month that would come in.

40:35Yeah. Just ridiculous of just sales transactions, quantities, things like that. And and these were all not for orders but after the fact type or campaigns, marketing campaign numbers, right? and so Symphony was that it was a digital supply chain management integrated with GS1. and that was just phenomenal. We actually implemented I'm on a different subject just for the moment, but we implemented it with a a beverage and alcohol manufacturer distributor in Australia and we implemented it about a month before COVID hit and their primary model was to sell to cafes etc. Right. And so they had like 9,000 sales people across ANZ. In 6 weeks they had 29.

41:35And because of the software that we put in, they we actually put a special module in for them that was able to buy. So they actually imported all of their special pricing from their vendors, all that suppliers, etc. And they were able to do arbitrage basically from the special orders they could buy because they had been able to buy huge bulks and then from gray potential markets as well. So Heineken from Mexico which was legal but they could make it for less than the original Heineken out of the Netherlands. So they bought bulk from there and was able to resell to Heineken Gear let's say and make $2 on each bottle for instance.

42:21Sure. So in one month they made $40 million on arbitrage using our software. So they canned all their their salespeople and basically yeah went from like I don't know 12,000 people down to like like I said 29 people. and yeah so they completely got out of the full distribution. They just do arbitrage and that's their business model to this day.

42:49Great. even changed a business model through some solutions you provided. So what's happened with that organization? Is that just a one-off project or what happened there? Well, it it so I originally founded that company called Symphony. I was originally was running it as well as but Ascension was really starting to grow. So I actually handed that off to one of our partners one of my business partners. he ran it and we decided then to exit that business about four years ago. and so I sold that off. one of the partners decided he wanted to keep that and so he's doing consulting out of that and keeping the IP which is totally fine but I learned a lot about building that type of platform as well as the citizen 360 platform for identity etc and how data should be done as far as data constitutions use of data and then symphony was all about supply chain the exchange of information and that data etc and how to work with multiple organizations as well as consumers. So I'm telling you all this because part of green parrot is this B2B B TOC right concept. And so Green Parrot is about the ability to get information that the brands or my clients would own and have.

44:15So their ESG and sustainability information out to consumers at point of change or point of sale. Right? So, literally, you're coming into the and you see a green a sign that says green parrot. This is an organic apple, right? And so, you pick up the apple and it's got a logo with a star rating on it saying it's four and a half stars and it's got a QR code so you can go ahead and scan it and then you get the impact of what what the metrics are of that particular product. Right? So it can be product or services. So that particular apple and so it gives the information that the company has about far beyond that. So now we're actually doing traceability. So food security. So the ability to trace that particular

45:12Back to the actual farm. Right. So literally gate to plate. Yeah. So the ability to say yes, it came from that block and that block is certified organic and we can make that claim and then we can actually put that in the UI for the consumer to say yes it's certified or yes they are certified for anti-slavery or or yes their carbon footprint is this. Now most most consumers don't care that they're zero zero net zero right now. What they do care about is the progression and do they have programs of work to do that.

45:52So, Green Parrot was this idea of yes, we can standardize a rating for To be able to allow consumers that information and that transparency. We're independent. Now, we're not the only ones that have that have tried to do this. There are a couple of competitors in Europe, but their problem was that it's solely scientific. Not to say that calculations for carbon sequestering or whatever isn't scientific. They're fairly simple. But what does the consumer care about? The algorithm. They care about, well, is it good or bad?

46:27Yeah. Yeah. Should I buy or not? Right. And and so there was most most logos or most sustainability standards have like a like a a letter. So either A through G, right?

46:48Is A good or G good? I don't know. yeah. And it's not dynamic. So you might see it on the on the milk carton, but you have no idea what it is. So, the consumer would have to go to the website if they knew what the website was, find the product listing for that product, whether it's Nestle's KitKat or Fonta's, you know, milk. and then they get to see the science and say, "Oh, yeah, it's 250,000 tons of CO2 annually." Great. Right. So Nestle in particular has done this quite often to trial, you know, new technologies like this. Yeah. So typically it's going to cost them for one product to be certified for a year. They have never renewed, but they keep trying. So why why do they do that? Well, because there's no benefit for Nestle, for instance, right? It doesn't help them to either increase quantity or attract a premium for a sustainable product because one the consumer can't see it's sustainable. Two, there's no

48:04Yeah. Exactly. So we are in essence a marketing company for the brand to get their narrative out. And I learned this as well because even back in the 70s as a farmer we were changing irrigation from overhead to micro sprinklers, right? to conserve water. Not because somebody buying the apple wanted that. They had no idea. We were doing that because it's cost savings. Plus, we're conserving the water. we're conservationist by heart, right? So, green parrot is a commula accumulation and a combination of every experience, every career that I've done to date.

48:44So, that's why so important. That is amazing. So, let's just quickly talk a bit about Green Parrot. Now it's been running for a couple of years. you've got a a team to develop the software. Where are you in that journey of commercializing it, taking it to market and yeah, is it a SAS solution? What's a bolt on? Let's get some stuff on there. So, so because of everything, I haven't really been able to focus on it until this year. So, it's only about really truly eight months old. we are a SAS solution primarily from a brand's perspective. So, you know, right now the it's it's $15 per product per month, but what does that mean? That actually gives you a whole bunch of marketing capabilities, right? So, when you on board, we certify, we validate. If you already have certifications, and we work with the KPMGs or the Walters Clers, we can integrate with their ESG platform to bring in their information. We're integrated with GS1, we're integrated with one world sync. So, all the base information of your product when you resell, for those people that don't know what who GS1 or One World Sync is, they're the ones behind all barcodes, right? So, when you scan out at checkout, it goes and checks out what GS1 is and all the information. So, your ingredients, allergens, it's not mandatory, but they're like there's only like about 15 fields that are mandatory, but there are up to like in Australia, there's up to 7,000 fields you can fill in. yeah, there's super set down

50:19Here in Australia. But, it's being used more and more because data needs to be more and more, accurate, etc., especially for e-commerce, especially for you know between suppliers and distributors and transport and all that kind of stuff. So that's really becoming the the necessity. So we're integrating with them. So we're bringing that information so that it's less and less need for the marketing department, the sustainability department in brand owners to maintain and and produce all that information because we'll go ahead and bring all that information in through AI. So it is a AI well let me step one step back. It's a data management platform because we're bringing in satellite imagery. We're bringing in drone imagery. We're d bringing in IoT device information from the supply chain, cold storage, etc. We're also bringing in information from all the different ESG platforms. So it is a data management platform. We're built on InterSystems and Intersystems Iris. So for those of you that are data gurus, you know that that is the number one awesome platform to be on especially if we want real time integrations, real time data extractions and real-time polls etc.

51:42So with that as well we're anticipating in 3 years to have 5 billion scans a on your platform. On my platform. That's amazing. on our platform because literally it it can be any service any any product. So we've got solar panels, solar companies that implement the panels. We've got we've got laundry platforms retail laundry. We've got laundry mats. we've got MX to do their their transactions between bank accounts and pause systems. yeah, you name it. We could do we've got consulting consulting services that we're doing evaluation on as well. Obviously Nestles, Unilver, things like that. So so it's a SAS but we also have some other cost structures as far as if you want extra certifications etc if they want validation.

52:48Just get that right. So the Green Parrot is a is a company and then you've got a solution in there and then around that you can build out other solutions on the same platform for other use cases. Is that what you're 100%. So I mean the primary use case is to get that information out to consumers at point of choice right and purchase. Yeah. but it's also you know as ESG and sustainability requirements continues to get ownorous they starting to be pushed down from you know the top tier group ones to group twos etc. So that's a burden. and to truly be able to map a product across its value chain from plantation all the way to consumption. You know, you might have 10 different steps in there. You've got you've got the farm itself or plantation, you've got transport, you've got the warehouse, you got the packing, you got the manufacturing, got transport again, then you've got storage, and then you've got, you know, the outlet, etc.

53:49So most people when they're trying to solve that particular ESG problem, they're looking at one singular pro product or or a group of products across that whole supply chain in silo, right? Green parrot is let's solve this box and guess what? Kawasaki and MK as transporters are brand themselves. Let's do that box. And as we get bigger and bigger and more of the pieces fall in place, well, guess what? Now we know that MK is part of scope two or scope three for this manufacturer. And so now we start to see the whole scope instead of just focusing on one piece. We're starting to build that whole map out. And that's the ultimate goal is to really be the world's most well-known logo because we're the logo behind everybody's sustainability story.

54:43Making that transport. So, so yes, data is is going to be extremely important. I've had insurance companies now come to me and say, "Hey, we want your data." Because you're getting more real-time data than I can get. And especially for like prime producers, for instance, right? They might get one or two feeds a year on on their insurance, right? and here we're able to do it, you know, near real time, let's say, on some stuff and some stuff maybe a week. data broker.

55:16It is absolutely it is exactly that. But again, it has the benefit of being able to give an outlet for brands to get their information about the programs that they're doing, right? and then to consumers to see that information and bringing that whole community back together much closer. So another element is we are capturing all the information from your scan right in real time so that a brand can hyperpersonalize anything that you want to see.

55:48As well as then right we know you scanned it. We're connecting to loyalty program. So you use your loyalty program on the way out to buy. So you scan it there. So now we can say one for one. You scanned it, you bought it. Or you scanned it, you didn't buy it. You scanned it again. Why? We can ask a really good question. Do you not care? It's too expensive. And that information go right back to the brand and say, "This is the reason why they didn't buy

56:21For sure. For sure. brilliant. I mean, so, you you [clears throat] know, this sounds like it's a it's a beast you're building out here in I suppose at some some stage. how do you get the funding for it and and and what have you done around that because all startups SAS you know you know if you if you're not drawing some cash in from day one you're obviously investing in it and and who you invested in about investing in

56:45Yeah. Well that that's the stage where we're at. We're actually pre-revenue at the moment. So I've been bootstrapping it until now. So we're actually working with Malta and the Multa Enterprise. So, they have a fantastic program for startups. I'm actually imminently waiting to have the post come in the mail to give us give us our approval. So, literally today or tomorrow, I'm expecting to it literally I mean, yeah, it's bizarre. They're they're so advanced in in a lot of the stuff that they're doing as far as technology for Multa, but but literally the the award is coming in the mail, so I have to wait until I get the mail. So, they're giving you a couple of hundred,000 loan or what is

57:31So, there's a number of different programs with Malta. So, we're getting a grant as well as then a financial scheme. that is a loan. so, the loan is 500,000. and the great thing is is that the stipulation to start paying it back is we have to have 10% over over our net positive cash flow on a on a regular basis for six months before we have to start paying it back and it's 2%

58:01Nice. Nice. Very good. It's phenam phenomenal. So that should be coming. So we'll open up our head office in Malta. Yeah. Yeah. You have to incorporate your office in in Malta. Yeah. Actually, next week I have my video conference to validate who I am and that'll be complete for the registration. So, we'll have the we'll have the registration and then we're opening an office in Dusseldorf,

58:28Used to work there for 18 months on and it's lovely. Absolutely. My CSO, my chief sales officer, she's she lives there. She's from there. And we're we're launching officially in Germany first because they're so progressive, right? And they have such great programs. They're giving us the government's already ready. I mean, we it's taken us about a year and a bit to get through Malta. It's taken us about two and a half months. And Germans are already ready. Let's go. We We got money to give you. We want to. But Germany is going to be the subsidiary to Malta. So, finish Malta and then Germany is coming next month as well, just after. And that's a bit of extra funding because I've got startup packages. they give you free free office space as well. And depending on where you're at, you get higher higher grants as well.

59:24Great. and then at the end of November, I'm actually headed off to Geneva to meet with about 50 family offices. So, it's an event that was put on by my one one family office that's my lead investor that I've got. And so, they're bringing me in to do a lunch with I I guess around 50 family offices will be represented.

59:52Well, good luck that good luck for that. exciting exciting to you here. It is when you get back I'm going to be overseas as well. but when I'm back in February, we should sync up again, maybe go to the brewery and have a beer and have a chat and find out how that's all going because it's quite exciting time. So, you get the fundraising cycle for the next next next couple of rounds. and then basically from there you're obviously going to scale up what market put the money into marketing or

1:00:23Yeah. So our number one our number one expense is marketing. So our number two is is the platform and infrastructure. we have built we built a PC, we built an MVP the traditional way. Our production platform was built on AI. So everything built AI reviewed though by our architects and our programmers. But literally new modules were releasing h in a month time frame, right? Just

1:00:59Because you can do it so quick, you It's phenomenal. Absolutely. I think of something and they go, "Oh, well actually we can do that quite quick." So it's really good. One of the things that we're also doing and why I also suggested that you know as sustainability and ESG requirements are getting pushed down to the smaller smaller guys is that you know the thememes are not going to be able to afford a lot of this type stuff. So we wanted to on board a number of thememes so that they could see that they they could put that kind of information in. we can do, you know, really good lightweight correct and accurate information so we can start producing you know a printable capability for them in line with the 17 sustainability development goals for the UN. So things like like no no poverty, zero hunger, you know what are they doing with that? What's the pro what do they have a policy? Make sure they have one. What is the program that they're doing etc. So they can participate as well and be able to provide that. So

1:02:03There's so many opportunities around that. It's it'll be interesting to see where that goes. So will you have to do a lot of flying to Malta because it's not a bad place to go for a holiday. I know. I I can't wait cuz yeah, I'm really really excited about it because my COO who lives in Denver is moving there. and he'll head up the office there. And then my CTO who's in Auckland will will be moving as well. I I'll stay in Sydney. but definitely so want to take the family on a regular basis for sure. So

1:02:33Fantastic. That's good news. So that's the one thing you've been working on and you've got another two opportunities that you you're working on. One is around a fintech startup. What's that a bit about Dan? Yeah. So, Reno, Reno Vest Capital, it's a fintech, it's AI driven as well, but there's a gap in the Australian market that I saw because of my property stuff. I'm always going out trying to get other people's money, right? private investors or money lenders, etc. So, a lot of them have been, not my family, but family individuals. So, and high net worth, and it's very difficult even though property is secure you seem but it's very difficult to go out and get private money so I've actually built up a fairly good network over the last few years but but a lot of people don't have that capability especially if they're trade they're trying to you know do their own fix and flips as well and there's a lot of people in Australia that love to do that right they'll they'll do on like two or three houses a year but there's always shortfalls so go out and get prime lending usually by either you know one of the big four but typically for a fix and flip it's going to be the second tier lenders right so a little bit higher interest etc and there's always going to be a shortfall and typically they're only going to do 70 to 75% of your lend of the acquisition and then of course

1:04:05You've got you know couple hundred thousand there for the shortfall and certainly a couple hundred thousand if not a half mill for renovation etc. So my fintech specifically targets the renovation and property development market for shortfalls. So we would be a second mortgage. and obviously it's a little bit more risky. But the idea behind it is that we're actually minimizing that risk based of based off of being able to bring in a lot of information that most portals most you know lenders don't do. So their feasibilities, their past projects, feasibilities, their integration with their bank accounts, project bank accounts, their personal stuff as well as then you know the networks that they're in. So I belong to property lovers which has like 1500 different property developers and and investors in it. I belong to another one out of the states called Deal Titans that probably has about 700 global right. So being able to bring in those confidences but also integration with other prop techs as well. So in Australia there's like three or four protects that I'm integrating with. One that's council DA requirements one that's certification on site etc. So the ability to bring in all that type of information and have an algorithm that I've that I built that allows me to really see what that overall

1:05:41Rating or risk analysis is of that individual and be able to either you know instantaneously if it hits a certain threshold then I don't even have to be involved right it just automatically generates the all the paperwork all the mortgages it does all the all the the caveats or second mortgages on the titles, all that kind of stuff. Don't need a solicitor, don't need anybody. and it's all geared towards settlement. So, usually it's the last six months of a So, that's again less risk and it goes right to settlement. We're second mortgage, so we're second cab off the rank. Yeah. And yeah, so that's that's the fintech.

1:06:25Sure. That's exciting. Exciting. I think it is up there. It is. All right. And then it is the last piece, the AI piece, AI agency. Talk talk us through that. What's what does that look like at the moment? Well, I belong to so one of the things that you know all entrepreneurs and certainly senior executives should have are coaches and not just one coach. They should have multiple coaches for different things. and so you can bounce things off and and not just mentors. I'm talking about paid coaches, right? because you need to develop. I need to develop. The more I develop, the better I can service and give value to other people, right? Part of that is I do have a mentor and coach out of the US. He's got a a number of companies. I think he's at seven now AI companies, but he's in the last couple years he's really been into roll-ups, M&A roll-ups, and I've learned a lot from him as well.

1:07:25And prior to that he was in property etc. But his mindset in this case is actually combining M&A and AI. So pre prescribing an M&A rollup in AI. So there's 50 of us globally establishing AI agencies and we will roll up together in about a year, year and a half and then on sell the whole thing together. So it's just to blow your mind. So you know we're we're all aiming in about 12 to 24 months to get to around the 4 million Ebida. So if we hit 4 million EBIDA the rollup then together is worth about two billion.

1:08:15Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. And do you have a team of people doing that? How how's that? How does how's that working? What's the service you provide in there? Yeah. So my mentor coach owns the main so we have our own core brain. So it's off off in its own private infrastructure. So, as you know, when you use chatttp or claude or any of the main five, it's all public, right? So, you can actually search what somebody else actually searches, right? And if you put any information up there, it's no longer yours. It's everybody's. So, that's why a lot of enterprises aren't using Chat GDP, let's say, or Gemini, because they want their information to be secure. All right. off the off the general public and private. So, we've built a separate platform called Corebrain.ai and we've also built a number of LLMs ourself and a whole number of different persona personas and personalities to target different things like marketing, sales, etc. So, we have the infrastructure in the background, we've got the personalities, we're building a number of workflows as well now integrations with a number of different applications.

1:09:34So we've got the infrastructure. So we'll resell and onell both individual and to enterprise these capabilities and then implement them for them. So that's the idea. So we're building that all together. as far as individuals and team, I don't have a full team yet. I've spoken to a couple of people, one both have been prior employees, one in the sales area, one in the development area. and we're looking to start that really this next month actually in two weeks we officially launch the core brain publicly. So

1:10:15Great, great. Let us know, send me the details when you launch it. I would love look into that a bit more. it sounds like it could be a great opportunity. It is absolutely. I think it's it's really good. Really good. All right. I think it's been awesome catching up with you Dan and I know

1:10:35I know. Well, it's just you know it's great. It's great to hear what's you know what my friends are up to and you're a friend so it's always good to hear that. you jumping on a plane I think next week or this week. yeah Friday. Yeah. Two days. Two days. Three days. Three days. Yeah. Yeah. Well, safe travels and make sure you enjoy some downtime during Christmas as well

1:10:58And we'll see you in the new year when you're back in Sydney. 100%. Thank you so much, Ian. It was a real pleasure. I hope your listeners got some good value out of it. I think I think it's awesome to see the things that you are doing, the things you've tried and the things you're doing now. And it just shows the that growth mindset. I think a lot of people

1:11:18Just don't want to make that jump from A to B. You've definitely got that. and you've you know you've surrounded yourself with the right people and and you're getting results that way. Which I think is really important. So yeah, can't wait to see what happens with Green Parrot, the AI agency, and the fintech startup because there are some really good ideas there. and yeah, and get you get yourself a tan while you're in Malta, you know, next

1:11:45Exactly. I hope so. [gasps] Thank you so much, Shane. It was a pleasure. Chats, safe flight. Cheers. Bye. 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 www.itmastermindtalks.com for more information.