Secrets Behind Building a Successful Software Company!

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 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.

0:36Hi, good morning. And today I've got Ash Brown from Empera. Today he is one of the founders from Empera, which is a awesome tool. I'm going to let him explain what it's about. We use it in our coaching program. so we know it quite well. We've been part of the evolution right through to Empera 2, which has just been launched. I'm excited. A few of our clients that use a product are very excited, but I don't want to talk about it because it's really Ash Brown's show today. I'm just the interviewer. So, Ash, how are you?

1:06I'm good, Ian. Yeah. yeah, big push to go from one to two, 1.0 to 2.0. And, yeah, it's been it's been awesome, actually. And, yeah, but thanks for having me on on on the pod, mate. You've had some awesome guests, so to to be asked is great. Oh, appreciate it. Appreciate it. we're going to we normally start out our podcast very very informal. It's you know the journey. How did you get there? you know as a founder who are you and and you're a SAS company so that's also interesting as well in the world that we live in today. So I'm just going to ask you really who are you? Where you from? where do you reside and how do you go from where you are now go back a few years to where you started your awesome company.

1:48Yeah. Yeah. So I'm from Melbourne. I'm a country boy actually based I grew up in Aubry in Banella so which is northeast Victoria which has been plenty in the news lately u for other various reasons but yeah no so for years I worked as in a company that went from sort of 1 mil to 100 mil and I was part of this high growth business and and it was just it was one of those things that just it was so exciting it's awesome to be part of the these businesses that grow really fast and I'm not exactly like the rogue scholar you I'm a bit of a high school dropout. Never did U dud did all that. But I've always had that sort of business acument and just sort of that grit and grind to go okay I can just do stuff and and and I found sort of where the company that I grew grew up in in 1300 temp fence. I found that that was like my jam. you know when you find those sort of places like where we're in this really it was like sometime it was at the back end of the GFC so it was like 20 2008 2009 and the government invested a heap of money into infrastructure I think everyone every school got a library or something so it was ridic it was it was a massive waste of money but whatever that's a whole that's Australia but I was smart enough to go okay well this is a really good opportunity let's jump on this and it actually helped us go from I think 100 million to you from 1 million to about 100 million by 2019 I think it is and now that the the business is doing I think 130 $140 million a year since I left six years ago but I just didn't want to continue

3:22Working for someone make good money all that sort of stuff but you just turn around and go I'm a male content a bad employee I need to I need myself so fair enough fair enough so that's that was where you were at the point to get to Emperor. So how what was the vision of starting it and why did you start it? Yeah. So the vision I was going back to that original that original point was I was part of the the business but the when you're part of a high growth business you sort of you're building the plane on the way up. So then one of the things I really identified was strategy was really important but the problem was it was almost like code word for look I'm really not doing it I'm just working on the strategy. So it was like this this sort of and then no one would question it and then I'd see it all the time and we had these state manager meetings every year and all the state managers would present to the executive team the board and oh we're going to do this we're going to do this and three four months later you're like okay cool how'd you go you know we got busy row row you know the usual BS that you get with around strategy and I went hang on a minute this is one of the most inefficient parts of business that no one ever talks about it's almost like this dirty word oh strategy and I went no no this is something that that can be really impactful. But I was also an early adopter into like CRM into like s I think we were like one of the first hundred people 100 companies that use safety culture for a recommendation through someone else when it was I auditor the app on on the iPhone and so I've always had that sort of tech

4:54Lean always wanted sort of you know you if we could use tech to enable the business to control its own IP and destiny but I always thought that was always a massive win rather than getting Excel spreadsheets seats with sales reports that were basically full of BS. I thought, you know what, let's actually get a CRM. So, when you're sort of building all these these structures that you start to really focus on that stuff. So, yeah. And and but I said this massive hole and I still it's still there to be fair. It's strategy is just not it's just it's not there's no solution that's actually come in and gone and simplified and collaborated and created an engaging way for companies to work in their strategy with their consultants and they okay that's it

5:42Well look when we use in our business I can see because I I tell clients all the time know let's jump on on this great tool and the first thing they say oh we use spreadsheets we we do this in one note we do this on Microsoft planner or project planner or whatever tools or asana or clickup whatever and I and then then you say well can you show me what you've actually achieved in the last year with your strategy and before you know it just unravels because they don't have a strategy and they don't want to focus on the right next thing as I call it when I coach and and and it's because sometimes that right next thing is just too hard and it's human nature to actually just sit back and you know let's do easy things every day you know

6:23Yeah low hanging fruit low hanging fruit and and sometimes you got to hit those things head on or get external people to resolve those things that are the right next thing for your business to to keep on growing strategically and everything else. So it it it's it's it's still you know to this day the biggest challenge I think small businesses even large businesses have is clarity on where they're going the goals they got to execute on and on top of that who's accountable for it you know

6:50Yeah I couldn't agree more one of the big issues that I I've found just in general and it's probably going a little bit off topic but but it probably is relevant as well is that a lot of the strategic frameworks that are out there and and people know who they are so I'm not going to name them it it's about you've got to re-engineer your business to suit the strategy. And the strategy should suit the business because that's where the engagement issues really are. So if if you've got someone that's been working in your business for 10 years, 15 years, 12 months, 18 months, they've got an operating rhythm that they've currently got. Like so they they know they go in on Monday morning. Generally they're pretty systemized. So if you turn around and say, "Hey, we've got to start doing these meetings. Hey, we've got to start doing this." And suddenly it's like, "Well, oh god." basically doing a completely different role. So there's a resistance straight away there and and that's where I've sort of really this we'll talk on 2.0 later but one of the things that I've really done in the designing of and the UX and understanding what customers are wanting they don't want a product or a service that takes them too far away from what they're doing. They want to make degrees of change not not significant that meters of change. They just want to move if we can move two or three degrees to the left, we'll slowly get we'll get to where we need to go. If you do it and it's a lot easier to engage people that way. And I find that that's probably been the bit of a gap too that strategy execution tools have been by the way now you've got to do this completely different system that you haven't done

8:24And that's where the disconnection came. I think is it's a barrier. It's a change management process. actually really right because you know when I ran my own IT services firm was our co-founder there you know we're a 115man company at the time we we did a lot of these frameworks we went out and investigated which one's the best and there were a couple that and we took pieces what actually happened in the end we took pieces from different frameworks that actually we felt was best for our organization at the time and at the growth point rather than you know going for one because the one then meant we had to change the way we did work and we were successful but the problem was it was a change management process then would have to happen for the whole organization to carry on working and that became inflexible that you know

9:10So I think people have you know are smart enough to know what's right and what's wrong at a certain level and they can have flexible tools strategic tools to take them from A to B in their journey without a doubt so I think that's one of the things that attracted to me when I actually had a first conversation with you and I was trying to reflect on this before we did the call the first time I spoke to I think was April last year.

9:31Yeah, it might have been. Yeah. Yeah. I was in a pool. I was in a pool in Shrianka and I mean and I I was on a flight I was on a flight from I think it was Brisbane to Sydney and I saw this tool on the on the downtime on on Wi-Fi and I said this is a tool that I need for my clients. Yeah. And then basically we were talking back and forth a few times and then I at that stage I was on on a holiday in a game park in Sri Lanka and I was on the pool and I was trying to to get clarity on exactly you know where your organization was going with this product and everything else and and that's when we sort of hooked up together. So I'm a big believer that you've got to be flexible enough to actually have a strategy to get you from A to B. So that's what your tool does and I love about it.

10:13Yeah. the the best the best ones, one thing I've noticed with especially the coaches and and consultants out there, the best ones have sort of got this Frankenstein version of of various different strategies. They've they're pulling these different strategies. They get it taking a little bit from agile okos and they're creating this nice little Frankenstein. But that's the best ones because to be honest the simp you grab the best parts of the best songs of using the drum beat from this one. They're using the baseline from this one. They're using the chords and the rhythm of this one and you're putting it all together in this incredible sort of melody and that's that's where the best the best frameworks lie I think.

10:55Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. So let's go back to the seeding part how you started out you know to get to start the business. So you obviously resigned from work at some point and and you decided to get into this gig. So can you tell us a bit bit about that? Yeah. Yeah. So I went through there's a company called Hyper based out in Sydney and it was during co so which feels like many moons ago now. And and I'm in Melbourne so we were locked down for about 200 million days. And so one of the things that one of the things that was really it was advantageous in some regards because I was running a business at that point and and was lucky enough not to get furoughed or anything. It was it was great. So I had time all this time on my hand. So I did this accelerator called Hyperbased out of Sydney which the the guys I still speak to to this day. Awesome. You know they helped me develop the idea. They helped create wireframes and then helped me raise money effectively as well. That was because I had no idea about any of this stuff. I was a temporary fence person and hire person for a decade more. and they really helped sort of okay well this is how you you raise this how you raise money how you do a term sheet this do a subscription agreement this is how you set up your ass and I had no idea about any of this stuff like legitimately zero idea and AI tools weren't available then so couldn't just go into chat how do I set up a company to do it then I yeah so then we I think 2021 we raised I can't remember what it was but overall we've raised about 2 million bucks since then but it yeah But during that sort of we launched into the market the 2.0 I think

12:28It was 2023 the significant back end of 2022 actually there you go. So it is a significant life cycle that takes the development cycles and we'll touch on that later obviously but the development cycle was like 12 months and I believe one of the people that you had on the your podcast already Matt Brown he was a big part of what what we did you know he really helped us he was part of a group that we employed to do it and because I once again had no idea if someone asked me you know you know about a database or I no idea so yeah so that going in a bit blind and just Once again, go back to the put the plane together on the way up. That's kind of how I went. That's kind of how I went to do it.

13:08Great. So, you went out, you got some help. You obviously paid them for that help or somehow there was agreement there and then you sort of launched your your business and then your idea and then you got a group of people together which you paid to actually build this solution for you and get behind your vision of solving strategy for small businesses. So,

13:28That's pretty that's pretty awesome. fundraising. It's one of the biggest things in in startup world. You know, I've invested in a few startups through my life and and I feel sorry for the process you got to go through because it's quite quite a stressful process. It's never easy and, you know, it's about, you know, selling a vision but also showing what is reality around that vision. Can you just talk about the stress of, you know, raising your first bit of cash for for the business and and, you know, what did you learn and what should you have done now since you've been through that process? Yeah. I mean, the stress of it is is you don't actually know what the hell you're doing. And I I I I don't care what anyone says that the first part of it is you don't really know what you're doing. And but by the way, if you speak to any business owner, they don't really know what they're doing when they first launch a business. No one does. No one's ever as prepared. The stress is also too, as soon as I've mentioned this to a few people before, the second you receive money, it's no longer just an idea. It's no longer a vanity project.

14:30It's no longer it's someone is transferring you money to not as a gift. It's given to you because they want a return on investment in the next 5 to 10 years. That's something that you've got to reconcile with. So, if you can't reconcile with that and you can't handle that and you don't trust them, you don't respect the money that's given to you, don't bother. And I know that sounds really really direct, but it's it's true. Like these things, you know, money is hard to get. And people that are investing, they've made money or they've got money and they want to invest in you, but they want to invest in your investing in you. They know that the idea necessarily might not get like this pivots left, right, and center, right? M

15:11So it is so as you get further down the line as you get more and more responsibility more and more investment coming along that that's where it gets it does get a bit stressful because you're sitting there going well gez it's this is hard because you're sitting there going well I just need to make sure that we're doing you know we're sticking to the the original vision of why people invested

15:33But also I've got to give them Yeah. If someone gives me a dollar or $100,000, I've got to treat it exactly the same. And I said that to one of the we had a shareholder once who mentioned something. He goes, "Oh, my money went into that." Like that's probably where the other part of me like people's emotions. You got to especially when you're dealing with angel investors. There's different levels of emotions and different levels of maturity around those angel investors. And I don't mean maturity in a negative way. I mean maturity of like investment maturities. Some might, you know, some might put, you know, say 100 grand in, let's just say, but they're like, I know this, they'll figure it out. They'll get to where someone might someone might put 500 in for a virtual raise and email me every 15 minutes about what's what's actually happening because they're emotionally attached to their money and they're they're probably it it's the old saying if you can't afford to do it twice, don't do it effectively. Yeah. So so for me it's it's it the investor relations can be a bit challenging and and to be honest it's probably the most vulnerable thing you'll do to actually turn around and say to someone hey look we we need money to to get this going to a VC or a faceless thing it's a little bit different like we don't have any VCs which is kind of fantastic to be honest that probably will change in the future but right now in the immediate future I can't see it happening for many reasons.

16:55But it but yeah, you it's the most vulnerable thing you I've never been good asking for help, but I've never been good for asking for money. I've never been good for so you put all those three things together and you sort of as this is a different beast. Yeah. Yeah. Look, it's interesting because I invested a few times in a few organizations and one of the things I or small businesses what I it's interesting to see how everyone reacts. you know, some some of the founders treat you as nothing and then some of the founders treat you very very well and then they over overengage with you as well. And I go like, I look, I I'm busy, but I appreciate the overcommunication, but I'm not going to read everything you send out, you know? So, it's a it's hard to get that medium because I'm a different person. and everyone else is a different person. So, how do you actually match those expectations back and forth? It, you know, it's it's it's quite interesting. Anyway, so you've done your first race.

17:45A juggle. That is a juggle. I will say like I've got stronger I've got stronger relationships with some shareholders I do with others. Some I'll reach out to and they give you nothing. Okay, cool. They're just waiting for the they're just waiting for the return. others are like very engaged and the ones I'm engaged with, but I engage. So you got to mirror their energy as well. So if someone's basically being mate, you're annoying the hell out of me.

18:10Cool. Let it be. So it goes back to those sales skills that you sort of have as well. sort of understanding when a customer when a customer or a prospect is engaged follow those and mirror those those tells. Sure. Now that's great segue there Ash because if I look at your skill set and you've been talking about it you know now but I've known you for for quite a while is you are you know a very personable person and you build trust with someone really well and then you you know it leads to a easy way to to do sales. Okay. Which is a really good thing, but you're not a technical person and you're not a a designer type person, but so how's your team formulated from right at the beginning to where it is now? Because that dynamics you've obviously worked out what you're good at and the team's good at shuffled the decks as you as they say. So how's it the makeup of that team gone from one version one start out before version one I suppose from zero to version one to version two? Has it changed in those three sort of time slots?

19:06Oh sign significantly. So when we first launched we had three people and then we then when about a year about a year or so later we eventually had like five or six in the business I think it was because and to be fair if I looked at it yeah you look at it objectively we bet too early money was too cheap at that point. So this is like 2021 2022 before everyone was getting destroyed by cost of living and all that sort of stuff and and interest rates. It was very easy to access capital when things have and so I which is you know this is probably one of the things that I I'll reflect on I'm reflecting on now actually. I don't I think I went against those values of respecting the money at that point because I just assumed it was just always coming.

19:53And by the way I think that was the industry. I think I got swept up in the startup industry, going to events, that type of stuff. And then you sort of sit there and go, "Well, hang on a minute. A lot of this is after about six months, you go, this is fluff." And then you looked at it and went, "Actually, we're not really making anything here. We our outgoings are unbelievable. I'm stressing out like crazy. I've got to make some decisions." So, we had someone in the US, which which that was strategic at the time because we had an investor. I mean, there's a there's a story in itself. We had an investor that was looking was going to invest $2 million into Impira based out of the US. US and Julon they went bust they got raided by the ATO caused all sorts of crazy stuff like it's it's a whole podcast in itself and then from there was I had to pivot very very quickly so the the someone said what's the word of impira pivot

20:39But that's impira means pivot in French we'll just go with that and but yeah so that was the that was the thing so I had like other sales people on and that but the other problem was we had was our problem and I didn't understand this as well as I leaders certainly do now. We were trying to sell a product to a market that didn't need us at that point and we didn't actually understand our ICP and we didn't understand our product market fit and we didn't understand our go to market. So those three things if you got those three things that are all misaligned. So if you're looking you've got to be in a nice funnel as like you're working with your clients you go who's your customer how you going to get them and what what's the problem you're solving. If you don't have all that in a in a in a foot stone, you can't in a nice little nice silo, you'll get nowhere. And that's what that's basically what happened. We had this product. We thought we were selling to accountants. Accountants didn't want to do more work. We were trying to sell to small businesses. They didn't know what the hell they needed a strategy for.

21:36They knew they needed one, but they had blank page. So then I just went after the scale facilitation stuff, I just went, "Okay, I'm going to use this as an opportunity to to cut bait, release people, which sucks, but that's the end of the day. The business is the business is king." Go back to the investor conversation. I've got people's money and that's a responsibility to investing in the business. I'm not going to I've got to respect that. And if I have to cut people to do that, I'm sorry. That's just the way it is.

22:04And because the b the business is king. whichever way you want to look at it these days and and yeah so that so then I went okay I'm just going to go into founder le sales I understood the sales process a hell of a lot more which is funny I went away from upon reflection I went away from all the things that made me good I suppose like that I was so now if I look at the team I've got me Ash another Ash I don't just hire people with my own name Ashby and Romel so we a threeperson team and we're operating on high cylinders. We're all working, you know, we're working hard. We're not burning ourselves out, but we're working effectively and I think the key to a good team is to have no crossover in the way of roles. So, you don't want any role redundancy, but you want to make sure that everything links into there. Like if you got a vend diagram, you kind of want okay sales Ash

23:00Marketing B Ash McV does this element Mel does this in the middle sort of product and then Ash and I can could contribute to that and things. So if you look at it like a ven diagram so that way we've got no we're not got no duplicity in any roles. We've got no role redundancies everything sort of running in a very efficient way. Very lean. Yeah. Great. So at one point how big is your team? I think we had six. I think six, which you know when you when you're paying a payroll every month and you're sitting there going, "Holy crap, like we got to keep raising money every 10 seconds to keep this going and we're not getting anything in." And and to be honest, like if I had that team now with the go to market, the ICP, the product market fit, the new product and all that, we we would scale really well. But in saying that too, I don't really need to have them either because we've figured out really really efficient ways to go to market and close sales faster now.

23:55Yeah, we we'll get to that next. you know you you've you've got you built a team you ramped up typical what a lot of startups do and this is the thing you know going back to to to what you're saying is what I disbelieve as well is sometimes I've see the in the startup community people go out grab a whole lot of cash burn through it very quickly get to a point where they believe that their idea is unique and and and they can sell anything and they got it you know they're unstoppable and then they hit a wall and then they have a realization point where they go, "Holy we can't keep this burn rate up for 3 to four months." And then before you know it, they cut back. It sounds like you went through that sort of that type of

24:36Yep. Yep. 100%. Yeah. And it's it's it's crazy. It's crazy because in the startup community, everyone's high-fiving each other about, you know, there's one example out of hundred or whatever thousand that actually gets through that B that wall and cracks through that ceiling. And majority of people never get there. They lose, you know, their set life savings. they lose other people's money, put themselves and their partners and teams under stress. And I think sometimes people should take a more of a measured

25:03And then build up consistently work out exactly who the IC ICP really really is and test the market really hard before you know oh this product will work in Europe or this product will work in US meanwhile they haven't even left a state in Australia. You know what I mean? That's that's the the thing that really amazes me when I talk to the startup community itself. Anyway, so you you you moved on to to that you're building the first version at that stage. You you know you talked about your ICP and and it was misaligned at the beginning. Okay. To what it is right now. can you just talk a bit about you know the ICP that changed how it changed and and what's the result of the change I suppose?

25:44Yeah. Yeah. So how it how it changed was we did a thing called AppSumo which worked out quite well. it really accelerated sort of the the visibility of who our ICP was. And we had a lot of people say, a lot of consultants say, "Hey, we want to use multiple can we, you know, can we buy multiple plans?" Well, I reckon we probably had 100 or 200 consultants asked for that for lifetime plans. And and I was like, well, technically, we didn't know how to do it. Like just simply just had no idea how to do it because it's getting in the is code based and various other things. So you got to go through a fair bit of stuff and by the way I wouldn't do Absumo again touch on that one but but yeah so then I realized consultants but then the other side of it so what I did was I went for probably three three to four months actually probably six months actually I spoke to consultants and got them to work with Impira and then package Impira to to companies. So yeah, imper and a consultant x amount of hours or we started going quite well with that in all honesty like the figures were actually going really well.

26:47But the problem was I looked at this is not a scalable business. This is just a service business with software and the margins were just like you know software looking at 80 90% margins if you're doing it right. This I was looking at you know potentially we're losing money and I'm like this is not what we want to do. But what I did identify was consultants wanted to use this product to engage their clients. So then I basically stopped everything at the end of last year and just went, "Okay, I need to I need to stop selling. I need actually because there's no point selling to a market doesn't want you because you're just burning yourself out and you're actually just turning around and just exhausting yourself and and your your emotional energy just goes into the toilet trying to sell to an industry that doesn't want you." you know it's like trying to sell meat to vegans you just it's pointless and and so I was I was okay stop I did a lot of research on agency models of other softwares like go high level zero these type of companies I went okay they've simplified pricing they've simplified this offering multiple sub accounts so then I went back and this is what Imperia needs to do over the Christmas break rebuilt the entire model started testing it in the market and then revenue started. Yeah. As will but then we're trying to find out which consultants were were the ones engaging and the consultants that were engaging were sort of that small to medium sort of that one but sort of three people operation that have anywhere sort of the sort of five to 15 clients. They just wanted v visibility. But the good part

28:22About that was giving it to them and then understanding yes these are the people are paying for it because guess what people put their credit card in. They're the most important. and talk about fundraising. That's the best way to fund raise sales. and so once we started doing that and people were going, "Oh, you've got something here." But that was the 1.0. And problem with 1.0 was buggy. It was problematic. It wasn't scaling properly. It wasn't as simple or intuitive as I wanted it to be. So that's when we sort of made some

28:52Fair enough. Very good. Very good. Awesome. So now you've locked in your Yep. And you realize now at this stage because I've been speaking to you. I was one of those people going back and forth with you at that time. You bouncing some ideas around and you realize at that point that the ICP didn't really align with the product that you had at the No. No. Not at all. So, and that's when you went on another tangent which we'll get to later where you decided to redesign everything from the ground up. You took the brave step to stop the bus basically effectively get onto another train basically and and get going on a different direction in a different mode of transport which you know it takes guts because you spent so much time money and effort to get to that first version then to stop everything jump off and start on something else. Pretty impressive to do that and I I want to take my hats off to you because I think that's that's something that a lot of people cannot do. they can't admit that something's wrong and and and change the direction when they needed to. And I think it's a lot of founders have that issue. Okay.

29:51Yeah. Yeah. I think sometimes the arrogance of the found look all founders are arrogant. You've got to be because because you have the other way you get through the day and honestly because you got to have that self-belief that it doesn't matter if you own a milk shop or your own at lassians. It's you've got to have this ridiculous amount of self-belief that you can get it done. And it's funny because no one really celebrates you on the way up. It's not until you you know you're on the AFR or the BRW or whatever that then you know you crushed it like well actually you know I've sort of had the same mindset since with day one but okay cool.

30:26So but yeah know it you don't really I think you you go back to the idea you got to be married to the problem. Yeah. Yep. Passionate about it. That's Yeah. and then you've got to be self-aware and and if you go back to the vulnerability part, you go, "Well, I can cop some crap because we're completely, you know, we stopped all marketing sales activities for 6 to 8 weeks." And someone might turn around and go, "Oh, well, you got to chase sal." Well, there's no point selling said go there's no point selling cheeseburgers to vegans. It's not going to work. We're we're we're finding this is a wrong this is not working. But guess what? They're telling us what they want. And this is go back to listen to the customer. I think the most important customer is the one that that stops paying you.

31:08The one that the one that turns around and go and not because they they stop paying you because they got no money. They stop paying you because you didn't solve the problem. And it's like it's like, okay, well, why didn't we solve the problem? You didn't do this, this, this, this, this. Your product doesn't do this, this this. It's not as intuitive as we thought. I've got emails that says, you know, we like the concept where it doesn't solve the problem that we thought we'd be able to solve.

31:31Yeah. and you sit there and go, "Well, I've got to fix that. That's the Sol. We We've got the ICP. The ICP is sitting there telling us, "Hey, we want we want to pay for this solution. This is a problem for us. We want to pay for it. Your current version is not solving the problem. It's making it worse because we're finding it hard to to understand how to use the thing. So, if you can, you know, put something together that actually does that solves it for you, then yeah, we'll come back."

31:59Yeah. Great. So it tells me that the sales process wasn't broken. The go to market wasn't broken. It was the product and that was that was the that was the part that wasn't solving the problem. So you've got to be you've got to be truthful. You got to the lessons learned. Let's just work recap that because I think it's really important some of the lessons learned that you had from Emperor one to you know you know what worked, what didn't work and then you know why you shifted to Empera 2 was it wasn't simple enough. wasn't intuitive enough. and then you decided to rebuild it and and move away from Imper One and and obviously you had the feedback from a lot of people in the market that you've been working with and talking to doing demos all those type of things that you know resonated with you know this problem's there but it doesn't really solve it with Imperial one. We've got to have something more and a little bit extra which which is what moved into Empera 2 I suppose.

32:55Yeah. And that that's what it was 100% you you I sat there and went okay the problem's not being solved the problem's still there and I spent three years effectively you know you want to look at it we spent $2 million in three years of market research which could be bit scary to look at in retrospect I looked at went that's what we did and now everything that we're building for 2.0 or built for 2.0 know is like even the design of the way we're doing things is like okay does this flow work does this solve the problem for the consultant does this solve the problem for the client because the end of the day our software is to enable consultants and coaches and business advisers to look like rock stars in front of their clients we want the clients to turn around and go hey we're using loading growth he's got this software it's unreal it's doing this I don't actually care that if it's got this on it or if it's got Loading Growth on it because my thing is if our software enables Ian and Loading Growth to win and his clients to win, the clients are winning and Ian's winning, then we're going to win. We we start that value chain.

33:59Yeah, that's really good. Really good. So, you know, you just talked about 2 million to solve, you know, the the test the market. Okay. And you said it's it's a lot of money and it is a lot of money, but I think this problem is so big. The problem that we're trying to solve, you're trying to solve, I'm trying to solve with my clients, it's a big problem. Okay. You know, if you don't have a plan as a small business, you will more than likely fail. Okay? If you don't have a strategy or a plan or a a way to get through those hard times when you were not working and not operating well and reflect on why you're winning and reflect on what you did last year or 6 months ago to keep you motivated, to keep those energy levels up and everything else, I think you're going to fail. Most businesses fail as we know in the first year and then the stats just prove after year two up to year five is

34:47So get only 10% get to year five. Yeah. Only 10% of businesses get to that is a big problem. Now I don't think strategy is going to solve you know but if it takes from 10 to 20%. I think it's amazingly huge worldwide you know. So, and I think it's it's it's important to I think for all small businesses out there to to just whoever's listening on this podcast is to understand if you don't have a plan, you'll never get from A to B.

35:13And and I tell you the biggest thing I ever remember about, you know, my early days of trying to strategize when I was working for the Reuters in Europe and doing some big system integration projects and and bringing businesses together and splitting them up and everything else. some heavy duty, you know, industrialized scale of moving people around and changing businesses that if you didn't have a actual plan, you will actually get lost in the dayto-day running the business. It doesn't matter how big you are or how small you are, it's it's the same. Okay. So,

35:44Phones ring, emails ping and and as soon as those things happen, you're trying to cause Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a huge huge problem. So anyway, I think the $2 million is well spent and I think you know it's shows that you've proven the problem really really well and you can actually redevelop it. We'll get on to that next. So just some of the early constraints that held you back just just quickly before we get really into the next sort of the next session of discussion. You weren't obviously technical. Okay. Did that hold you back? Because some people end up starting a a software business or SAS business and they're fairly technical. they don't have the sales capability or or limited sales capability. You had a lot of sales capability. What was your technical skills at that stage at early

36:28Fairly limited. Look, I had enough. I was I was smart enough to have people around me that were smart. I think in any business you should be identify what you're weak at and bring people in around you that are smarter than than you because I think that allows you to sort of, you know, you're never going to be the smartest person in the room. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And and I looked I looked at it and went I lent on some people like trusted people I knew like just as sniff and smell test. What's your thoughts on this? What's your thoughts on this? Because I just didn't know. It all just seemed you know SQL databases and you know Angular and andnets and all the like all this stuff. I was like whoa I don't know what any of this stuff is like legit. So I had to really trust people. Probably the other side of it too, I didn't back myself enough if all honesty because I I I sort of deferred and and probably where I would talk about the Imperial 1.0 was I deferred a lot of the functionality and stuff that I originally wanted to to the development team. rightly or wrongly and I'm not this is not a criticism. I just deferred a lot of the vision and idea that I had. now also too, the technical ability and the budget and all that sort of stuff. You got fit X amount into a 5B bag. There's no doubt there. But, but yeah, I I probably didn't trust myself enough. I didn't think that I knew as much as I knew. Don't go wrong, I still I still can't code. I still can't do all that stuff. But I've got basic knowledge now

38:02Just to to pass the sniff test. But yeah, as a non-technical founder, I think it was a challenge. But where it actually wasn't a challenge where it actually was really good was I was focused on the product and the problem. So I wasn't focused on the the technical aspects of it. I think sometimes this is where software developers get a bit sort of they get they're like, "Oh yeah, but it's got to do I just it's fast. It does this processes." Okay, cool. Why does the customer give a crap? how does this how does that tangibly help the customer experience? Oh well, they're going to you know it's 0 five% faster. Well, they don't care about that stuff. They care about where the button is and and how does this do this and how does this do this and they use like how do they use the actual product

38:43And I think that that's I think that that's probably you say superpower I think my sort of superpower around that is to actually go okay how do we build how do we build a product that has that sort of oh this is just the sleek intuitive this is the best products Canva you know redesigned effectively Adobe Photoshop to so people that you know people's grandmothers think that they're clever making business cards you know making Christmas cards all those type of things the best products are the ones that make people feel smarter not dumber and I think that that's where I think having a product lens versus a technical lens I think that that's where where it's actually quite a bit of an advantage but early on yeah I was overwhelmed and completely didn't back myself confidence on it honestly was really low

39:34It's good it's good to be honest And I think it's, as you said, I think it's a, you know, there is a positive out of that that you don't have to focus on the technical stuff because you can get really caught in the weeds. There's so much, you know, every now and then I I want to go and do some technical work myself because my old days are are fairly technical and you end up YouTubing stuff and you get caught down a rabbit hole. You know, 3 weeks later you come out of this rabbit hole going, "Wow, I learned this whole new thing, but how useful is it for my clients?" probably not really that useful yet, so let's park that aside. You know what I mean? It's the focus thing. It's cool, but does it help?

40:05Yes. Does it help? And and it's always good to learn because I'm I mean I've been a consultant my whole life. You you are pushed to learn. So sometimes you got to feel like you got to be keeping learning, you know, and and why why aren't you learning something new? Well, good is boring sometimes. And that's where a lot of people make money is keep it boring Bor boring products. Boring products. I go back to the original my origin story on 300 fence. We sold hired temporary

40:30Yeah. two building sites to keep them safe. A non-technical product, two plastic feet filled with concrete, and a 3x 3.3 m wide piece of wire. Companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars. you can make a lot of money off good and For sure. Definitely. Definitely. As long as it's simple, very simple. So, let's go back to what you built the solution. you don't have to get too technical because you know it's not right about that but because it's important to talk about what the solution one was built on Emperor one was built on because when you decided to hey take that rain check in in December and redeside to build it into Imperial 2 you built it on new platform so can you just talk about what you built it in f version one what were the constraints around that what actually you know were the pitfalls that you didn't know at the time but ended up being at in December going hang on we've got enough. This is too this. Can you talk a bit about version one?

41:25Version one was just breaking left, right, and center. We had too many dependencies, too many different the software was relying on too many different elements and components to work. And the problem was if it's if X broke then Y broke then the customer because go back the customer's having a bad experience, they don't want to use the product. And and I think the biggest the biggest one honestly for me was was when the clients were struggling to log in. and then also too that we had this real issue around.net. and this is probably you know your your clients are probably big on this but thenet framework was effectively

42:05When that was happening. That was that was and then we were going to have to spend two to three months to update it. And I turn around and we're going to spend two three months update an antiquated product that's not solving the problem. There's not then we we've got to we've got to move on from this. And that's where that's that's where I just went no, we're done. let's let's let's rebuild. And then sat there and it's a whole new world of development and engineering at the moment with the different tools that are out there. Yeah. and I sat down for a weekend and started building out the proof of concept and went I think this is exactly what I want it to be and that's that's sort of that's sort of the the origin story of that.

42:48Sure. That's really interesting. So you know the technical debt that you've built up in that solution and everything else is really it's a big decision to move on and and and leave it. But one of the things that I noticed we spoke a bit about this was those product releases to that version one were just taking too long to to keep on on shooting through. So at the end of the day, you put yourself in a corner cuz you couldn't release quickly. And then everyone expects nowadays, everyone expects, you know, products to upgrade and and new new releases of new functionality to be, you know, once a month, you know, talk a bit about that side of things.

43:22Yeah. Yeah. And that was the thing like I mean, well, I mean, we were trying to do we were talking about perfect example like your clients, you wanted a template, right? That took us three three to six months to build and it's something that should have taken two or three weeks max. Yeah. And because the problem was that the amount of tech debt that we had in there was just unbelievable. Like it was just it was way too many dependencies and to be honest the actual cost of what we were hosting on Microsoft Azure and that was unbelievably single database single tendencies and all this. It was an absolute it was it was a nightmare. and by the way that's nothing against the people that designed it. So I will definitely not criticize them for that. It was we built it for a specific purpose. That purpose is no longer required. A multi-tenented approach works with very robust security settings will work exactly the same because if it works for Uber, it can work for Impira. So So that's do you know what I mean? So that's that's why

44:20And tech's changed in the last year and a half alone. The underlying structures and everything else has changed. Can you just talk a bit about that as well? Yeah. Yeah. So, we we went from Angular to to React. We went from from Microsoft to to GCP. We've gone from cloud deployment. We've gone from Azure to cloud deployment. We we've got we've got we're using AI tools to help us develop faster. our whole road map went from 18 months to 3 weeks. It's it's to the point where I was actually talking to the team yesterday. I'm like I have got to start thinking of what else we add to the road map now because we've literally because we've we've accelerated that quickly that like all the things I wanted in there all charts meetings accountability charts continuous improvement plans AI AI throughout the whole platform that enhances not just AI because I look at AI like everyone else does AI document readers all this sort of stuff that I've always wanted to have in there that would have taken two, three years and probably another half a million dollars to do. We've been able to do that in a far shorter and significant cheaper amount of time because because we made that pivot

45:33And you've seen you've seen the 2.0 know and we showed it with one of your customers the other day and he turned around and said this is where I knew when we got him. goes where do we where do we sign this up and how much do I have to pay for this like not in a bad way but like like how much how and part of you know obviously your commercials is your commercials but it was one of those things just like that's when I and when I know is when people go oh that's cool that's helpful that solves that oh this saves us time when you hear those in the demos you're like tick tick tick tick that's that's when you go I made the right decision yes put us back two months but think about it like a slingshot you pull it back for accelerated for greater a velocity of

46:11Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, the new version is a lot slicker. The UI is awesome and the function that you've put in there is basically a lot of the things that we've requested over the period of last year and a half. So, I'm I'm static to see it come through. So, so you moved to the new How much money have you roughly saved on the server costs just let alone moving to the new new environment and new tech stack?

46:31Cut it cut it to 10% of the server cost that we were paying previously. Wow. So, we cut like 90% of the server costs. I think our development costs have been shaved by about 70% as well. So, we've been able to save save money, speed up the development. Yeah. the stuff that be able to also too one of the things that and this is a as a non-technical founder one of the things that was was one of the issues was I was finding that I had these ideas of what I wanted to do but I couldn't articulate them in a way and design them in a way to give them to the development team to develop that for a particular use case now with the tools that are available I can actually completely build the the UI the functionality all that and hand it over to a development team that will work and go okay well this got to crook up to this databases the API's got to do this the rules and logic's got to do this so it's so you don't have that sort of lost in translation of probably 60% of what you wanted you're now getting 95 to 100% of what you wanted because and then and then also from a UI perspective you're able to make those little minor changes I want this to connect to this to do this to this and and then I want this to reflect here and I want this to reflect there you can actually do those things now you couldn't you couldn't do it before and then also You go back to the point of backing yourself. Now I I know because I've had hundreds if not thousands of conversations with Ian Marks of the world that have said, "Hey, this is what we're doing. This is this is this is what we need to solve the problem." I can sit there and go okay when I'm designing all these designing all these features or chart

48:06Whether it's the the story whether it's a continuous improvement plan where it's a risk analysis whether it's the even just as simple as the objectives like I just want this to okay I need this to flow this way because I remember having a conversation with Peter from from juggernaut saying why doesn't it do this well the other reason why because we built it on antiquated technology we can do that now we can get it to connect to this to flow to this to go to this to be sent to and all in a nice nice little you know less stress on the mouse and the

48:35For sure. So it's it's really interesting because I I listened to, you know, the CEO of Microsoft talk about this three or four weeks ago on a podcast. He's been interviewed about big software companies and he mentioned Microsoft himself saying that there are going to be these new breed of small leaner organizations. They're going to be able to fire up quicker, faster, go to market quicker with better tools. and and you've used that philosophy, you know, you've used AI to to to to help yourself, you know, create the design of what you want to hand over to your developers and your developers are using AI as well to help code and help increase speed and performance to get things to market quicker, which is amazing. I know your design team is doing the same thing as well. There's a whole lot of things that have streamlined you compared to, let's say, a year ago. It's it's phenomenal. Really phenomenal. It's it's a new world. Like you can run it as a threeperson operation and have the power of 60 devs.

49:34And I know that sounds I know that sounds ridiculous, but I've got, you know, good mates that have got offshoring technical offshoring companies and we're moving everything to a like getting all our devs to learn AI because our our customer bases are requiring it. But where it actually works out really good for us and this is yeah you know if we had 2,000 consultants on on this platform let's just say it becomes really prohibitive for us to make that move because migration data all we're a good number that doesn't mean we got crap numbers but you know we're at a good number where we turn around and go we can actually turn around and go if we do this now we're not going to basically annoy our customer base. So we can actually turn around and do it. If we don't do it now and we start we're going to we're never going to be able to do this. And so I look at like competitors I suppose you want to call it that are in our space. They're going to they're going to be catching up to us which is hilarious. Companies like I'll use it like Cascade and know that raised 40 50 million.

50:35They're going to be catching up to us. And this this is not me being arrogant. This is just the truth. Well, they're going to be catching to us in two, three years because they've got 10 years of of development tech legacy and data and tech in involving that stack and then we're able to sort of move I I always used the analogy a few years ago the Suez Canal got blocked by this big big shipping shipping container ship whatever you want to call it. and but I remember all you see is these little dingies just flying past. to these big behemoths who were stuck could not get around the sewers can hold these little dingies that got to their destination a lot faster. We're gonna be that dingy because we can just sit there and zip through and then off we go.

51:17Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like the zero when zero created a product that was on the cloud straight up front and my who we used internally at the time was you know not on the cloud. And the reason why they took so long to go to the cloud wasn't because they didn't believe the cloud was the right way to go is because they had so much technical debt, so much infrastructure built up, so much skills built around their current solution. Then to move from, you know, this environment to the cloud was just too painful. It took them too long. And I see this as another wave of a similar thing even if you're on the cloud now to move to new tools with AI built-in and and and featurerich deployment quicker and everything else. It's going to be harder very you know it's it's a big business decision to make to move. People want to make that decision, but it comes down to, you know, shareholders being paid, you know, and and and you know, those things are going to be stuck for two to three

52:14Too many competing interests because yeah, competing interest because no one's going to get those those returns that they invested in because it'll take a year or two to actually switch over. Okay. And I think that's important and I think you are you know wanting those things as those migrations is when you lose people and you know if you have a lot of people on those migration plat platforms to migrate you will lose people through that process as well because they will go out and review what are the tools out there that basically are the competitor to that tool before they make the move. This is like the decision-m process. Oh, Imperial is there. Let's just go and have a look at these guys. You know what I mean?

52:48Exactly. I think I think that's a it's a huge interesting spot there that a lot of these big traditional software companies will end up being in that that's interesting. So you you you know you've built Imperat you stopped the bus big move big move to that and when are you launching can you give us a bit of a Yeah this this we were actually finalizing the cloud environment today we just we were going to launch this week and earlier this week we just wanted to make sure that the our biggest thing is security. We want to make sure everything's secure. And that's basically what we're doing now. We're just working through the security aspects of it. Just making sure that it's it's it's safe

53:24For sure. People's data is safe. So that's honestly been the biggest thing. We're just doing some final user testing. Everything's sort of working really well. So it's it's this week. So I probably would be Wednesday now. I'd say, you know, I'd say tomorrow if not Friday the very latest. It's ready to go. Like everything's it's us early user testing. We're being able to even see things like the live collaborations. So one of the the big features that we we've brought in is and we talk about we go back to the original point about strategy falling apart pretty quickly once the reason is and and one of the early sort of mentors was Trenus who's the the former MD of zero and so he's like was a mentor of mine early days especially and he goes you've got to with this stuff is make it so it's collaborative and engaging and that always sits in my head collaborative engaging simple they're the three things but that's collaborative engaging because he was like employee number 30 at zero left as MD made, you know, a couple of bucks and and he said to me that always rung true. He goes, "The reason why 01 in Australia is because it was simple and it got to cloud and that sort of stuff." So I'm like, "Okay, how do we make this collaborative?" So the simple part, I've ticked that off. Engaging, I've ticked that off. How do we make it collaborative? Strategy is better with people, right? Strategy by yourself is not the it's a plan. Strategy is let's get people in it. That's how how do we create tempos within our business? The if we go back to our ISAP is business coaches, business consultants, business advisers because they're working with their clients. So they're working with their clients. How do you have more

54:55Meaningful meetings around your strategy? So we've built this entire meeting module. So you can actually have your agendas, your frameworks all inside and you can actually work in it in collaborative in real time. You can just sit there, add notes, add comments, create actions, create goals, create objectives, all within the meeting at the time and everyone's working inside of it. And then you're literally going from agenda point to agenda point to gender point. One person's controlling it and is moving. So you got these nice synchronistic meetings which goes back to the collaboration and simplicity that we've always aimed for because then once you've done that you can actually just generate from that an AI meeting summary and it'll actually say hey Ian and Ash are going sales revenue these are the actions that coming through like it actually builds it all out sends it to everyone something that would take two three hours to prepare

55:45Have and then post postmortem is all done within within the time of a All the pre-work's done, all the postwork's done. So, what would And then you're doing it in a very collaborative and engaging and engaging way. So, so that's that's the key. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Great. So, just talked a bit about remote teams early on. You had a remote team and and and then you you know with the new AI tools and and the new solution that you gone away with and the way you could design things, you've lean the teams lean and they are basically all based in one location at the moment. Is that correct?

56:19We're all Melbourne. Yeah, all based in Melbourne. We all come into office a couple of times a week and in in Southern Cross and yeah, it's it's I'm a big believer of hybrid. I'm a big believer of hybrid working. I I don't I don't think the answer is is black and white where everyone's got to work from home or everyone's got to work from the office. I think, you know, if you're a nurse, you can't work from home. That's fair enough. But but I I think that I know our governments in Victoria's turned around and made this mandatory. I don't think that's required, but that's another story for another day. But I think that I think hybrid is the the best way I think to get the best out of people. We look once again if you're a three-person operation, how do we have this to be the best threeperson operation? How do we punch above our weight? And the way to do that is to have hybrid and we're all based in Melbourne, we all catch up and we all work together and we we all get excited and to press together and yeah, all the all the usual stuff. So

57:14Now that's good. Thanks for now the sales side. So your poor sales for a while because you basically in product you know build and launch relaunch for Imperial 2, but I know the numbers beforehand were quite amazing. The processes that you had to actually get you know people to have a conversation and do demos and all that. You were on fire at one point. You were texting me texting me and going like look at the numbers. Look, could you just talk for dinner? Remember we went out for dinner and the slack kept coming

57:41Yeah. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. Yeah, I mean look, we we understood the problem that we were solving. Once we understood the problem we were solving, we're able to build the lead magnets that for meta that were able to to generate the leads and then once we generate those leads and the follow-up part. So the the lead generation part investing in our return on ad spend I think was like 1300% or something. It was ridiculous for when it was annualized.

58:07It was it was awesome. Like it was just it was really good. the problem the problem was that I knew it wasn't going to scale because the conversations I was having with people like oh it doesn't quite do this but we were able to but what that meant was we had really high effective ads we had we had were able to have engaging conversations and those pen but I know actually with the new product and new way we were actually do demos and everything else that we'll be able to honestly take that conversation then get that 1300% to probably three or because we'll have a better product to

58:44Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. So that's I'm looking forward to the next couple of months to see other people using the product. It's going to push it further and faster and it's great, you know. Yeah. It's it's awesome. It's it's all about if we go back to the original, you know, ICP go to market. Understand who you're selling to. Understand what their their pain point is. Don't sell your product. Your product doesn't really matter. I know this this sounds the most ridiculous thing in the world, but as a software company, your product doesn't matter because everything's everything's off. You can build it in PowerPoint or you can build it in Excel. Every bit of software is available, right? so what we were able to do is go, okay, let's talk about how people are trying to troubling to scale their consultancy and advisory firms. People started identifying that, hey, I want to download a guide on how to do that. Okay, cool. They're having time issues. They're having this. We want to talk to them because we're identifying the

59:37Brilliant. Okay. I just want to talk a bit about the the fundraising. So you did the first initial fund raise to get get the money in. You built the team, downscaled the team, went the cypical path of a SAS startup. Nothing wrong there. and basically you know you then tried to raise in late 20 or 2024 and there were elections were happening and in the US. Can you talk a bit about that the timing?

1:00:01Yeah, I mean just horrible timing. We did a virtual raise that type of stuff. It was yeah crowdfunding very challenging to do especially in that environment. The the back end of last year there was a lot of uncertainty. rates kept going up. good in like the wholesale investors were very nervous about a interest rates because a lot of the wholesale investors are highly leveraged and and and then also too, you know, what's going on with the stock markets in the US because that directly affects what goes on in Australia. Yeah.

1:00:33And with the US elections, you know, anything could happen when anything does happen as we find out on daily basis. And and it was it was one of those things was like, okay, this is we so we pretty much underperformed with with that. We've been what we've been lucky is we've got a really engaged group of investors that that really back us in and understand that the passion and what we're trying to do. I was speaking to one yesterday. He goes, I go, I don't know what it is about you guys, but there's this energy about it that that I don't have from other investments. I said, well, it's not the return on investment because that hasn't come yet, but he goes, "No, no, bet. You're doing things the right way. You're doing things truthfully. You're doing you doing things with a with a value set. and you're making it hard." And I think this is probably one of the things that a lot of investors don't a lot of startups don't realize that they investors like good investors are smart. They know that it goes bad at times. it's about having that ability to sort of be that go back to the vulnerability part to say look you know it's going bad. We're we're weeks away from falling over here if we don't have this. This is what we're trying to do.

1:01:45This is what we're trying to do. And by the way we're not continually paying not having we haven't got a $60,000 month payroll. We've got a $20,000 month payroll. So, we've done all the things that good business owner should do. I think that that's I think once you do that, you you're right. But, yeah, the back end of 2024 pretty much from 2023 to 2024, the back end of 2024, very very difficult. Yeah.

1:02:05Markets to to raise. Brilliant. And now the future, you know, capital strategy to to to grow the business because obviously, you know, you got to keep on pumping the money in there so you can scale. can you talk about that a bit at the moment? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, for us, it's honestly investing into the channels that work on the sales channels that work. So, Meta, affiliates, that type of stuff. So, especially Meta, Meta is the biggest one. And providing sales with the resources to follow up every single lead within a day. That's that's our big one. We're able to reduce our development costs significantly. So, we're not pouring money into development. and doesn't that doesn't mean we're not developing fast. We're developing faster, but more efficiently and more capital efficient than we've ever done before. So, everything for us is is like what are we driving top of funnel and customer experience? They're the two things. So driving top of funnel that drops out come to revenue and then how do we how do we take that customer so we acquiring customers how do we take that customer experience so we could create lifetime value to those lifetime value as well.

1:03:04So we're not having we're not having churn issues we're actually having you know we're having high retention numbers that which we do anyway which it would still stuns me on 1.0 which is what it is we have such low churn numbers. So to me it's it's a case of u well paid churn I should say like trials were a bit different but paid churn very low less than.5%. So, but but when we're talking about you so that's that's what we're using capital for like we know the funnels that we're investing in actually work and if we continue if we put you know 10 grand a month into that into that we know we can get 10 20x out of that annualized for every 10 we was like well let's invest in what works every business you invest in what works if you if you're selling pepperoni pizzas at a pizza shop and that pepperoni pizza is out selling everything else. You just sell pepperoni pizzas and you sell that pepperoni pizza as best as you possibly can. You find something that works and you stick to it.

1:04:03For sure. That's brilliant. Okay. So, any I'm closing out a bit. we got like 5 minutes left. I know we you're busy and and I appreciate your time. No, no, no. So, advice to any SAS founders out there building, you know, a solution of some sort. Have you got any? Don't do it. No, no, no. no. don't do it. No, no. no. do you like your sanity? No. In all honesty, bootstrap as much as you possibly can.

1:04:26Use the use the tools that are currently out there that we're in an unbelievable golden age. It's been a a quantum leap in development. And I was speaking to someone at Google about this. And this is not just an opinion of mine, is an opinion of, you know, effectively market leader. We've gone from effectively analog to digital to in a matter of months to to go from sort of washing our clothes in the creek to a washing machine in weeks. we we've made that big of jump in technology from now on it will be just incremental increases I think chat GBT released a thing yesterday open about the AI agents I mean that's going to be phenomenal as

1:05:05So it's about bootstrapers you won't need to spend five six 7 $800,000 to build software anymore you can do it on your credit card for probably three or four grand in all honesty I know that's and people go why would you do that well that's actually the most cost-effective way. Then then once you do it and the biggest part is is have an actual and this I wish I could talk to myself about this five years ago but know exactly who you're building for. I had ambition still do you know that that doesn't Wayne get you get you up every morning but it's to understand who you're actually building for.

1:05:43Build it to be the best and simplest solution for them. But also have a look at what the the market's doing. like even having a look at reviews of of other products that what people don't like that's what you build to. So yeah that and honestly you it's very it's you're in an age now you can build faster build a business quicker faster more efficient more lean you don't have to don't fall in love with the idea and I did it as well you know it is what it is

1:06:11Don't fall in love with the idea of we want to raise you know with air tree or blackbird and we want to have because those a those AFR articles they last and those likes on LinkedIn last 12 18 hours and then the news cycle moves onto something else onto something else. Don't fall in love with that. Build the product to the solution and solve an actual problem.

1:06:31Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Brilliant. What's the best way for listeners to connect with you? Yeah. go to impira.com as you see where the branding or LinkedIn. I'm reasonably active on LinkedIn, I suppose you want to call it. So just look for Ash Brown or send me an email at ashimpira. So spell that.com. So

1:06:52Brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant. Thanks for your time, Ash. it's always good to chat with you and thanks for building a great product that my clients can use and at Loading Growth and I appreciate it to to get them all onto the Impera version two. Thanks a lot. No worries, Ian. Thank you very much. You're an absolute legend and you're a gem to the industry. So, keep doing what you're doing.

1:07:12Thanks very much. Cheers. Bye. Thanks. 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 mastermind talks.com for more