Chaos In Business Is Not Random When You Learn The Patterns with Troy Fazakerley

Chaos in business feels random until you see the pattern behind it. We’re joined by Troy Fazakerley, founder of Business Alchemy and author of Business Pattern Science, to talk about what really breaks as service-based businesses scale and why smart, hardworking operators can still end up stuck, stressed, and flying blind.

We dig into the fundamentals that stop the bleeding fast: knowing your numbers, understanding cost to serve, and separating cash flow from profitability so your bank balance doesn’t become your only “performance metric.” Troy also breaks down the founder bottleneck: the identity shift from practitioner to business leader, the imposter syndrome that shows up in bigger rooms, and the practical reality of delegating ownership to a leadership team so growth doesn’t depend on one person holding everything together.

Then we go deep on a counterintuitive turnaround story: cutting a $20M business back to $10M to rebuild a profitable core before scaling again. We also unpack resilience during pressure cycles like rising costs and economic shocks, and how to build a playbook that helps you respond instead of react. Finally, we debate AI in business, from faster documentation to better decision support, while calling out the risk: if AI writes your emails and summarizes them, are you actually communicating anymore?

If you want clearer operations, stronger margins, and a more durable business model, hit subscribe, share this with a founder friend, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Welcome And Noosa Real Estate

George 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of Million Dollar Days. I'm here with Troy for Zakali and co-host Mr. Robbie Chickere.

Robby 0:08

Thanks for having me, George. Did you like the intro? Did you like the intro? It was very good. That was one take. I practiced. Most people won't know that I practiced. Uh, but welcome, Troy.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Great to be here.

Robby 0:18

Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us. You've traveled all the way from sunny, sunny Noosa.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Not so sunny today, but yeah. Hey, we turned it on in Melbourne. It's a beautiful day in Melbourne. That's it. Yeah, well, you it's always like this. Didn't you know that? I must move. Yeah.

Robby 0:32

Yeah. And it does make us feel better to think. It's not, it's not, it doesn't have everything.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

I do slide down every now and then.

Robby 0:39

Yeah. I feel like everyone does. Oh, it's not that good. And then you see them in the happy every time you go there, it's sunny. Yeah.

George 0:45

I go to Noosa annually, actually. Every summer. We head down there with a family and go to the RACB resort down there. Good sport. It is good. Yeah, we've been going there far out, I reckon, for at least the last eight years straight. Yeah. So the kids love it. It's always the same faces we see down there too. We go up with some friends and yeah, always nice weather. Never really contemplated moving up there, but I've mate, we were talking about it actually a while ago. Some of the property prices in Noosa, phenomenal. And you're not getting like anything grand. It's just the prices you get, you're paying for something up there. It's massive at the moment, isn't it? Noosa is certainly its own market.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Yeah. And it's pretty resilient. Um, it's a special place. And yeah, lived there, grew up in Sydney and lived there for 18 years now, and very you know grateful and fortunate. And you know, it is a great community as well. It's a great holiday spot and for families and things like that. But you know, it's a great community to be involved in, and you know, there's lots of entrepreneurs and businesses and you know, some pretty cool, cool people hanging out there.

Robby 1:45

No, it's good. It's if if I had to spend like 20 million on a home, that's where I'd go. Would you? Yeah, I like it's very nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

It's a very, very somewhere nice, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

George 1:57

It's I wouldn't know where else you could spend 20 million in Australia, like Turak or something, but like it's like you're getting it's a huge that's a huge, yeah, it's a huge entry point, like for what you're paying, what you're gonna get. They go way higher than that in New South.

Robby 2:10

Yeah, way like some of the house, it's it's you're not getting anything that's like you're getting a really nice house, yeah. Yeah, but you're not getting like what you'd get here, 20 million, would be a whole different level, in my opinion. But yeah, you give up the sunshine. You give up the sunshine. Uh Troy, thanks for coming down, we appreciate it.

Troy’s Story From Trade To MBA

Robby 2:29

Tell us for those well, for those who may not know who you are, do you want to give us a brief intro as to who you are and and what you do?

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Absolutely. Troy for Zakley. I'm uh Sparky, uh, who transitioned to the boardroom and spent many years running large, large businesses. I am father to five amazing daughters and also uh my beautiful wife and business partner. We have a business advisory firm called Business Alchemy, and also just as we'll get to, uh released a book or about to release a book called Business Pattern Science, and that's based on 20 years of all my experience and knowledge and and lessons on what I've observed and and and played with in businesses for the last 20 years from the field.

Robby 3:17

So former former Sparky, I assume. Yes, you don't do anymore because we've got a couple of cameras that aren't working.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

A couple of down lights might need you to fix. I think I might finger might you know have something to do with it.

Robby 3:28

Why why the change? Because I've actually got a trade background as well. And I went from tools to tech. Yep. Right. So what I I'm curious to know what drove the change in you.

SPEAKER_03 3:38

Well, I left school when I was 15 to start my apprenticeship as an electrician. Uh I didn't know I wanted to be an electrician at the time. I just knew I wanted to get out and work. And my parents at the time said to me, you can leave school so long as you have an apprenticeship. So applied for apprenticeships, got into a good electrical apprenticeship, um, really enjoyed it. Um, learned a lot, a lot of lessons being uh 15-year-old and and you know, a lot of life lessons as as well, um, going through through a trade. And then um, yeah, I was on the tools and you know, I I always wanted a bit more. And I guess there was probably an element there of yeah, I was probably the first person in my family, an extended family, I grew up in the southern suburbs in in Sydney, working class suburbs, and we didn't really go to university and and things like that. Well, you know, hard workers and tradies and things like that. So I always wondered, you know, what what would it be like to to be a bit more? Am I smart enough to to do more? And always had that that drive and ambition in me. So not long into to being a tradesman, uh, I was working in a large organization and you know, I said, well, what's next? You know, do I go down electrical engineering path or or something else? And I chose to go down a business route and I you know got off the tools into contract management and project management, and from there fell in love with business and and completed an MBA and and uh you know just gone from there.

Robby 5:06

So how how long were you working as an electrician?

SPEAKER_03 5:11

Yeah, probably in in total, including my apprenticeship. Um on the tools, probably six to eight years.

Robby 5:18

Okay, so significant amount of time. Yeah, yeah. Like there would have been because I so I used to be a mechanic, right? And I now yeah, oh it's a great problem solving uh like teaches you how to find the problem, how to diagnose, correct, and then fix it, or work out how it works and then fix it, right? Uh but I used to I used to associate I was probably the mechanic.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

Yeah.

Robby 5:42

Now if someone says, like, are you a mechanic? I'm like, no, don't touch like no, yeah, that's not me anymore. I I don't associate at all. Don't like cars. Used to love cars, don't even like cars anymore. It's like I moved so far away from that identity that I don't know who that guy is anymore.

SPEAKER_03 5:58

Wow.

Robby 5:59

Yeah, like I don't I I'm like, I don't even like cars.

SPEAKER_03 6:02

Yep.

Robby 6:02

Like, apart from going fast, I've got no other interest. There's something like I'll be with my mates and I'll see like a some exotic car on the side. I'm like, I don't know, don't not even interested. Yeah, and uh 10 years ago would have ran towards it. It's like I'm completely disconnected from that.

George 6:18

Do you feel the same way? Do you feel disconnected from it because you like despise not despise, but you don't like the whole mechanics side of things? So do you reckon there's that element of fuck you hated being a mechanic, so now you don't like cars as a result?

Robby 6:34

No, I didn't I didn't hate being a mechanic. I feel like I saw the best of cars real I was like 19 driving around in a C63, yeah, yeah, and I was like and prior to that I'd like I'd like Skylines or Supras, and it's like they're shit now. This is like a whole different level of car, and then it kind of just becomes like oh your car's a car. Would I would I have a smile on my face if I jumped into Lamborghini? Probably for a little bit.

George 7:01

Well you did when we went to base.

Robby 7:03

Yeah, but like because it's gonna go fast. It's like, oh yeah, this is cool, but like I've completely disconnected from I wanted to have my own workshop, everything. Had I had my workshop sign drawn up. That's how far yeah, like that far. Yeah. That far. Now it's like I don't know who that guy is.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Yeah, and look, I don't identify as an electrician anymore, although that was brown route. Absolutely. And one of the best um roles I had as an electrician, I was doing emergency service work, working for um electricity distribution. And that involved shift work. I think I was only 21 years old at the time, and I would have to go into all sorts of situations and quickly think on my feet in high-risk situations. It might be cars hit poles, house fires, wires down, electric shocks, as well with a lot of other people without power working on my own at night in the back streets of Redfern and King's Cross in Sydney and things like that. And you know, I had to learn to problem solve really quick and to be able to make decisions without being able to ask questions to other people and things like that. And I created a lot of my career to that role in which which I've you know had all that experience.

Know Your Numbers And Delegate

Robby 8:31

And so what is so you said you've got a business advisory firm? Correct. So what does your day-to-day look like now?

SPEAKER_03 8:37

What does my day-to-day look like? Um we're running multiple businesses in business with with my wife. She also has a recruitment business that's focused on engineering in Southeast Queensland, which is absolutely booming at the moment, which might be a little bit different to the economy in Melbourne, but there's lots going on in Queensland. Um, so that certainly keeps us busy. What I'm actually doing right now, along with business advisory, and that's the day-to-day assisting business owners identify and correct the underlying patterns in their business when they are stuck, when they are stalled, when they don't no longer have any growth, diagnosing what's actually broken in their business, and we actually correct that. That's my day-to-day work in business alchemy. What I'm actually creating is a whole new category in a management discipline called Business Pattern Science.

Robby 9:30

Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna dive into that. I've got a lot of questions about the book. Um Do you have any questions? Anything you'd like to add, George? Negative. Okay. Tell us uh what's the biggest thing. So you work with business owners to help them like unblock their blockages, right? Correct. What's the what's the number one thing you see where you're like every fucking time? Like, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 9:52

Look, my fundamental rule in business is know your numbers. It's still amazing how many business owners and and I see great businesses and great people, they'll be great at their their craft, their profession, their their trade, and they get into business, but running a business and a large business is a totally different skill set. And I'm still outstanded by how many business owners just don't know their numbers in their business. Um that's number one. Number two is is probably ownership. And when we talk about ownership in the context of business patterns, it's about as you grow and scale a business, there's only so much you can actually hold on to as a founder, as an owner, and you need to start building that capability with a leadership team. You know, I know it sounds so simple, but you know, the the delegating and empowering people, that really still gets a lot of people stuck and they want to hold on to everything.

George 10:45

I feel that it's yeah, I definitely agree with that. I feel I'm a little bit different in the sense that I niche very much. So do you actually on that, do you do all businesses? Or would it be do you niche in a certain type of business? Service-based businesses. Yeah. Service-based businesses where I play my whole career. Sure. And I think that's clear, I think that's the way to go. That's what you're an expert in.

SPEAKER_04 11:07

Yeah.

George 11:07

What I found is a lot of people tend to be practitioners in their business, as in they were a fantastic electrician. Correct. You know, and they're really good at being an electrician, and they don't stop being an electrician, even though now they're the director of their company. So it's like, yes, I run this, I am director. That's what my title says, but I'm also fitting off GPOs. I'm also running the cables, I'm also digging trenches, I'm also doing the quoting and the estimating, and then yeah, everything. And they don't step away from that. And I always say it because from my business, I do a lot of business um construction businesses, predominantly builders, but some trades as well. And the number one thing that I see is they're uh they're always a practitioner. So whether they'll used to be a carpenter, whatever it might be, like they're either stuck on the tools, or I literally just had a coaching session with someone who's like, I've been doing this for 17 years, I've been relatively successful, but he goes, I realize that I don't have things and processes and systems in place. I've just learnt as I've gone through it over the last 17 years. Now, arguably, if he had gotten a coach or a mentor or some advice prior, someone might have told him, hey, 10 years ago, after you're seven years in, why don't you try to do this? And he could have been 10 times further ahead than what he is now. So I think a lot of business owners think, cool, I've got my business. Now it's my time to just make millions of dollars. But the skills that I love this saying, it's like the skills that you have that got you to where you are are not the skills that you need to be to get you where you want to go.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

100% agree with that. And is it also a question of identity? Yeah, Robbie just touched on.

George 12:42

Yeah, it could very much be. There, I'm a builder.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

I am that you no longer identify as. Yeah, I think there is a a shift in in business owners where at some point you actually need to shift your identity into being, oh, I'm a business leader now.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:59

Um, and that's a a different identity, a different set of skill set to like I said, what got you there.

Robby 13:04

Yeah, that's that's 100% true. I without a doubt, I don't even know that guy. Like it's it's not we had two different people. That guy died. He passed away, yeah. He's been removed on from him.

George 13:15

Um Really, I need you to fix my car.

Robby 13:18

Yeah, come on. I'm not the guy. Come on. You know what the best part is though? I've carried skills forward. Like I can fix almost anything around the house. I won't, but I can, right? And just knowing that you can and like sometimes I'm thinking about it.

George 13:33

I actually don't have a trade behind me and never got one, but I still have that mentality where I'll just give it a crack to try and fix something. Like I had a puncture in my wife's car on the weekend and I'd already fixed that, which pissed me off. Like she had one, I fixed it, and then she had another one. But nine times out of ten, it would have just been like, Oh, I'll go to Bob Jane and get it fixed. And this one was close to the to the wheel, to the wall of the wheel, so they don't fix it. So I'm like, I'll do it myself. But yeah, same, same idea. Like I try and a lot of the time I'll look at something and I'll go, well, I know I've got the skill set to be able to do that. And I think that's it's kind of a good fallback. I don't feel completely useless when that comes into play when something's wrong, or you know, if whatever dishwasher starts will stop working. All right, well, there's got to be a logical reason why this thing's not working. Let's try to figure it out.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

Yeah, and I guess I'm probably doing the same, but on a different dimension where I've started to learn to code. With the help of Claude and AI, things like that, I'm I'm starting to learn to code, and that's I'm certainly not a software or computer engineer.

George 14:34

Yeah, there's different skill sets that are going to come through as a result of all that stuff now, and we'll probably touch on that anyway, and how it's uh helping your business.

Robby 14:41

What do you uh what do you carry forward from being an electrician to being in business advisory? Like what's something you learned there that you do here?

George 14:50

Sorry, did you run your own electrical company or were you always working for someone during that time?

SPEAKER_03 14:55

No, I was always working for other people in CEO and COO roles towards the end of my my career. As an electrician? Uh or you're saying in the corporate space? No, in in large service organizations attached to electricity distribution industries and things like that, but not electrical businesses as such. Um, so yeah, really, those electrical skills somewhat lapsed. Um, and it really became the skill set of how to run large service-based organizations. Um, and yeah, as the saying goes, we've had similar mentors, it's about along the way, I've made a lot of other people a lot of money. And it and then yeah, about five years ago I realized similar to when I was on the tools and wanted to grow and and and continue, you know, I had a you know a very comfortable life. You know, being you know, CEO roles and and things like that, I had a great life and provided a lot for myself and family, absolutely. But there was always that point and always an element of what if? What if I don't make this leave? And I'm and I wanted to build something for myself. Yeah. And that's where we are now.

Robby 16:08

Yeah, I get I can relate in the um that you know that feeling of comfort. It's like you're in a job, you're getting paid well, weekends off, your phone doesn't ring, no stretch like at 6 p.m. I'm done, clock off, and you leave. I don't remember that feeling. Yeah, but like the that's nice for a brief moment. Yeah, and then you get the is this it? Like, is this it? Like, this is it? Like I'm gonna do this, it's it, like forever, and then die. And it's like, I can't do that. Correct. And I don't know what that itch is, um but yeah, I can I can definitely relate. Uh is there anything you had to unlearn from because because they're very different. Like, is there stuff that you learned doing like sometimes people gotta learn to put the tools down, right? It's like, hey, you don't have to fix the or you need to let go. Like, all right, you could have you could have fit that PowerPoint better than anyone, but that's not your fucking your your hourly rates here, not here. Right? And you need to accept that they're gonna do it at 80% what you could have done at, but no one gives a shit.

SPEAKER_03 17:18

Yeah, what did I have to unlearn? It's probably not what I had to unlearn, it's probably what did I have to let go of. Um and you know, throughout my middle of my career and management roles and things like that, I went through a lot of imposter syndrome. Um, you know, sitting around rooms and you know, general management roles or management roles and things like that, and and sitting around tables where there are people that I perceived were a lot smarter than me, had a lot more experience than me. And and here I still identified as that 15-year-old kid who left school and become a Sparky. So, you know, I probably had to unlearn that identity, you know, which we've touched on a couple of times now. So, you know, it was dealing with yeah, with that imposter syndrome, um, which was you know holding holding myself back in a lot of ways, and and at the time probably leading with a bit of ego and on, you know, a persona of the leader who I thought I had to be in business and really learning to become you know vulnerable and and to be myself and just to back myself ultimately.

Robby 18:26

Um there's so many ways I can take this. Okay. So electrician business advisory Jimmy Carr said you should feel imposter syndrome every 18 months. Wow. Yeah, he's like you should, it's a fucking great thing. It means you're doing something you've never done before. He's like, it's a wonderful thing. He's like, you're stepping outside your fucking comfort zone. He's like, you should go to feel imposter syndrome at least once every 18 months. And he refers to it as like the greatest thing ever. He's like, it's fucking wonderful. And I'm like, when I when I heard that, I was like, like what a perspective. Because most people are like, I feel like I don't belong. It's like good. You should feel like that. You should be in those rooms or try and put yourself in those rooms.

SPEAKER_03 19:23

Absolutely.

Robby 19:23

You know what I mean? You should I remember when we were at the um the Alex Homozy workshop and then the guy to my left was doing like a sign stupid number in they had like a roofing business.

SPEAKER_04 19:39

Yeah.

Robby 19:40

And now doing like multiple eight figures, and I remember thinking, like, I can't talk to you. Like, we're not on the like, you know what I mean? And it's like, good, you should feel like that. You want to get around those people because that's where shit changes.

unknown 19:51

Absolutely.

George 19:52

Yeah, because imagine you picked up the contract for him on all his advertising. Yeah, do you know what I mean? Whereas if you go and meet that person at your level that's doing 150k turnover a year, he might be like, Oh, yeah, I can afford a thousand bucks a month on SEO. Whereas this bloke will turn around to you and say, Yeah, I can do SEO, it's ten thousand dollars a month, okay? Yeah, yeah. And that's and you're like, Yeah, fuck, uh is that gonna be enough? It's a good starting point. Yeah, is that enough? But that's and they're they're the opportunities that come to fruition. I think what has to happen in that space is you have to back yourself.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Yeah.

George 20:22

I've I've had times in my life, and I've actually got one coming up now, funny enough, and I'll talk to you about it another time. But is a significantly large project that's sort of sat in front of me. And I know the developer quite well, and he knows me quite well, and he's like, I want you to build it. He came to me about a year, a year, let's say a year and a half ago. And he goes, Listen, he goes, I want you to build it. I don't trust anyone else. He goes, I want you to do it. And I looked at it, I said, Look, I can build this. It's not a matter of skill set, it's not a matter of knowledge. I go, I can do it. It's do I want to get into that space? Because it was a five-story building, probably needs a tower crane, those, that type of job. I'm like, do I want to get into that space? And it's come full circle and it's come back again. And we're I'm gonna meet him this week. And then there's that part of me that's like, hey, like, why are you saying no? Why are you actually saying no? Or why did you say no? It's like I don't want to get into that space. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Because there's no other logical reason when I think about it like that. When I think, why should I not what give me the good reasons, the reasons why I shouldn't be taking this on that are beneficial for you, for me, as as in George, to do this thing. And I'm like, well, oh, it's hard, it's gonna be hard.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Okay. Do hard things?

George 21:38

No one said it was gonna be easy. Yeah, no one said life's gonna be easy. Correct. There's like there's a whole range of things, and I was looking at it, I go, There's I can't actually convince myself to say no now, given where I'm at in my life and what I'm trying to do and achieve and all that sort of stuff. And I'm like, I'm standing because I we we talk on stage, we mentor other builders. It's like, how am I telling you to play a bigger game when I'm not playing a bigger game? Absolutely. So it does come back. Um, and I think that's the great thing about making yourself uncomfortable and putting yourself in those rooms because then all of a sudden you then level up. You become the next and best version of yourself. And then who knows, the year after that, it's probably a different, a different room altogether. Maybe it's could be a 20-story building, or it could be something completely different. Maybe not in the same industry. Maybe the challenge could be a personal challenge. All right. And you're standing next to a bodybuilder and you're like, oh, well, I want to have a six-pack in six months' time or 12 months' time. Well, be uncomfortable. Take your shirt off and stand in front around all of these people that are in fantastic shape and say to them, I'm going to have a six-pack in 12 months' time. Who knows? Whatever it's going to be.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

And my my wife on the weekend has completed a half marathon. And have you done that? Did you do that as well? No, I was uh a spectator, and that is a challenge of its own and getting around the course and getting all the shots. This was her second half marathon. Um, and she actually did a PB and she did it under two hours.

George 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Um, fantastic result. Yeah, that is quick. Yeah. How many Ks is that? 21.2 Ks. Yeah, right. And the way she achieved that PB in that good time is when you start a marathon, you're on the start line, they have different groups as to typically what pace you you might run at.

Robby 23:27

When she Yeah, they do like under two hours, over two hours, subscribe. 215, two and a half, things like that.

SPEAKER_03 23:33

And then the rest. And then the rest. So I'll rest. I'd be the rest, and then I'd catch an Uber the rest of the way. So she's learnt a little hack, and this is about putting herself in in uncomfortable places or surrounding yourself with those people you aspire to be. So her first marathon, she did by mistake. She put herself in, I think, the the sub two hour category and took off and ran her fastest 10K she she ever had. Um, but that was her strategy for this weekend as well in the Brisbane Marathon. She actually went and placed herself in a faster group. You take off, guess what? You're trying to keep up with them. And ultimately, she got a better result from it.

George 24:11

What says that saying the mind will give up before the body does?

SPEAKER_04 24:14

Yeah.

George 24:15

You know, so if you've got that target and that person that you're running with or keep trying to keep up, or that group that you're trying to keep up to, it's definitely going to elevate you for sure. And then I think that's a very powerful lesson, even in business as well. Yeah. Being in that room and and following those dreams and those aspirations.

Structure Beats Mindset In Scaling

Robby 24:31

How how often do you find speaking of mindset? How often do you find uh with the businesses you work with, how often do you find it's a mindset thing? And then how often do you find it's a structure thing?

SPEAKER_03 24:46

I think structure precedes mindset. Um I think it changes throughout the stages of your business. I think to grow a business, you'd your first two million dollars are gonna be the hardest two million dollars you ever make. And that takes a lot of grit and determination doing everything, and you're operating in in chaos, and there is a good chaos and energy that comes with that. Um and I think the mindset really kicks in to make that decision to go and start a business because there's statistics are in Australia that what is it, you know, most small businesses will will fail within the first two two years.

Robby 25:24

So Yeah, yeah. I think it's like five years in, it's 90 something percent a wiped yeah. Something stupid. It is a it's a phenomenal statistic, isn't it? You know what though? Everyone I talk to been in business for a while.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

So straight away you're you're setting yourself up for the quite a challenge. Yeah, and and that does take you know a mindset of of of resilience, um, a lot of fear and a lot of risk, and you've got to be comfortable with with that.

Robby 25:50

Um that's that's a I I feel like your your appetite for risk, you get more comfortable. Like I remember the first month I was in the negative. I almost thought I thought, oh, this is it, we're going. Do you know what I mean? Like, what? We did it, we we're backwards, like I could not believe it. And now you have a backwards month and you're like, it's okay, I've been there before. Like, we'll make up for it.

George 26:17

Yeah, because you you've been there now. And you can forecast now, you see the future. You're like, all right, backward month, but I know next month I've got this, this, this, and this, or hey, I need to do more work.

Robby 26:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, even with the I need to do more work, you it's not panicked. No.

SPEAKER_03 26:31

Because you're like, uh, I've driven, I've walked this path before. You're no longer reacting, you're responding. And I see a lot of that happening in the market and the businesses at the moment with um yeah, fuel prices going up, everyone's margins under a lot of pressure. Yeah. Um yeah, minimum wage rates are about to increase from the the first of July. There's a lot of pressure on businesses right now. And I see a lot of people reacting. Um, the first thing they they do is look to cut cut cost. And I'm not saying that's incorrect, it's just an incomplete response. And I think you know, the the longer you've been in business or the more you've actually endured in those negative months, I think you come become better at responding to situations in your business than reacting.

George 27:16

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think with the cutting costs, it's also just optimizing a little bit as well. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think you've just got to sometimes step back and go, hey, there's uh a bunch of expenses that we don't need to be spending right now. And it sometimes means you've got to cut back on some of those things.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah, agree.

Robby 27:34

What what should um what should people do in that scenario? Like what would be the first ideal step?

SPEAKER_03 27:43

Well, it comes back to to knowing your numbers in the business. Um, I see a lot of people when we say reacting, they are cutting cost and it's not incomplete, it's just it's not incorrect, it's just an incomplete response. But just part of the process. But starting from can't be the only thing you've got to do. Not from the bottom up with your numbers looking profit, start with the top down. Look at your revenue. Look at what does it actually cost to serve? Where's your revenue coming from? Is it your customers actually profitable? There's some parts of your business where where there's customers you may need to let go. Is there they're customers that are costing you more more to serve than than the profit that you're getting out of them? Um so starting at the top and actually just looking at the fundamentals of of your business, um, really understanding the cost to serve, gross margin performance, and then look at the the operating cost in your business afterwards.

The $20M Turnaround By Refocusing

Robby 28:35

You you uh I was fortunate enough to get uh a copy of the book early on, and I I had a squiz through, and I I do want to go back and read it properly, but you've written a book called Is it Business Pattern Science? Business Pattern Science. Business Pattern Science. Why Chaos Isn't Random and What to Do About It. And in the book, you talk about a story of someone you worked with, and they had that exact same issue in the sense of they were doing a certain amount of revenue, but they had revenue they weren't really grossing well on. Correct. And they had to reduce it a significant amount. Do you want to share that story? Because I think it's quite because most people, when I read this, I was like, back most people will not do this. And I I'll be honest, like if I was in that person's seat and you came and told me to do this, I'd be like, there's no way. It's a counterintuitive move to actually Yeah, but it's the right move.

SPEAKER_03 29:27

Correct.

Robby 29:27

Yeah, correct. When when you see the end, when you see the end play, you're like, okay, this makes sense. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Correct. So this was a a business that I got placed into um somewhat by accident. Um, and I was there to to do a turnaround. This this business was turning over $20 million, and when I arrived, they that year they'd lost two and a half million dollars in profit. They they'd lost their their way. Um how were they surviving? They were owned by a large, large US corporation. Um, and this was a an Australian-New Zealand division of that business. So we went in there and the the local general manager or managing director had lost his way. They were losing money. And my initial brief was to go there and shut it down. When we got there, quickly identified there were some fundamentals incorrect in their business and how they were charging for their work to start with. Um, they were sending crews out to do work and losing money every hour they were sending them out there. So we we fixed that up first and foremost. Then we actually looked at they'd had quite significant growth from 10 million to 20 mil, and they'd actually diversified um a lot of their services and got into a lot of markets which weren't their their core business or their core competency. In doing that, they didn't quite understand how to price it. They weren't servicing their customers quite quite well. And the management team they had in place, they were they were flying blind. The managing director at the time was the one holding on to all the numbers. He was the only person in the business who actually knew the dire situation they were in and they were losing money every single month. When we when I arrived there, it was a hard move, but we had to share that information with the team saying, guys, like you're coming to work, they were hard-working employees, they were good guys, and they didn't want to come to work every day and and lose money and feel like they were were failing in their jobs. And you know, it was a hard conversation to have, but it was an important conversation that that had to happen initially. So straight away we empowered the management team with owning their PLs and the results. But the move that we made was to actually get back to core business. We actually diversified essentially and then wound back from 20 mil to a $10 million business. And we celebrated making a dollar. The next month we made a thousand. And then we just had that consistency. Once I saw consistent results, they weren't big results, consistent results. I'm like, okay, we've got a a business model here that now works. From there, we scaled back up to to 18 million and whether we're making two and a half million dollars profit at that number. So, yeah, that took a number of years to to complete. But yeah, sometimes you can actually make more money, and this is quite often the case for you know trade-based businesses and other service businesses, as they grow, they'll make more money at $4 million than what they are at $8 million.

Robby 32:30

Yeah, they'll turn more over and make less. You say that over time.

George 32:33

Well, they've got a leaking bucket at the end of the day. That's what's happening. They're they're not they've got inefficiencies in their business, and those inefficiencies are fine at $2 million. But when you get to four to five to ten to twenty, that is the water's gushing out of that bucket at that point. Yeah, it's amplified. And I I experienced that during COVID. We were a great business before all the before the industry got hard. And it was fine. Like you don't make a mistake, oh fuck, that cost 10 grand. All right, whatever. But then when you go and you have all these other huge um pressures on your business that you never accounted for in the past, and then all of a sudden that 10 turns into 10 per project every month. You're like, okay, that's a big issue and needs to be fixed. So uh again, the problem, I believe, is a lot of these guys learn it as they go. Yeah. You know, they're like, okay, when I get to four and I have a leaking bucket, then I'll come back to that down to two and then I'll fix it, and then I'll go back up to five. We'll go again. Yeah. And had they spoken to someone before they went to four, when they get to that point, they'd be like, okay, great, this is a good thing. But this is like you don't know what you don't know. You're like, no, no, my business is good. Yeah. It's good. So if I get to four, it's just going to be more good. Yes. You know? And I think that's where it sort of falls down a little bit. Yeah. And it's it's growth isn't a linear equation. You know, just no, no, that's right. And people always think that too. Yeah. And they have that emotional connection to their bank account. It's like when it goes up, we're happy, when it goes down, we're sad. When it goes up, we're happy. When it goes down, we're sad. And like I've been victims of that as well. It's hard sometimes to disconnect from that. But it's also important to understand you're gonna have peaks and troughs in your business and you've got to, it's part of the journey. You're gonna have that month where you're not making much money. I had a month in my business. When was it? Last, I think it was last year, early last year, where I got my Bass back in Pascon. And it was I the ATO owed me money. And I'm like, fuck.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

You know, that's not good.

George 34:30

No, I'm like, shit. I go, that's the first time in my history that the ATO have paid me money. And I go, that's not a good thing. And it's like I said that at an event once. So you're paying out more GST than we're collecting. Correct. Correct. And I looked at that and I was like, look, I kind of knew it was coming because I had a couple of projects that held money until the following quarter. So I kind of knew, and it was a huge, like the next quarter I paid a massive GST bill. So it paid itself out anyway. It sort of made up for it. But yeah, I had a huge month. Uh it was the start of the year and it was after Christmas. That's what it was. And the developer didn't pay December or January. And then I think that trickled into Feb. And it's like I didn't get the money coming in for that first quarter. And then the next quarter, literally, the when was it, January, March, like April? It was just a massive influx of cash, which was great. But then at the end of the next quarter, you had a huge tax bill that you had to pay. But yeah, it was um it was the only time that's ever happened to me in business. And I people say that, oh wow, how good would that be? The ATO gives you money. I said, My guys, that's not great. That's not a good thing. You want to be paying tax.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

You made an interesting point about and and and and we all do it, and it's hard to detach from, is a lot of people judge their business performance on their bank account. Yeah.

Robby 35:47

Well, it's like it's the scoreboard, almost. It's not. It's not, but it is, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 35:53

But I do see a lot of business owners, that's the only thing they look at without understanding the the fundamentals of actually how the business is is performing. Is it profitable or is it is it not profitable? The cash in your bank is about um once you successfully make a profit, that just becomes a collection issue. Yeah, the timing of of collecting money in and out of your business. That's your cash flow measure. Um but I do see you know some businesses who struggle uh to differentiate between their bank balance to the profitability in their business as well.

Robby 36:27

Yeah, it's um it's something you learn. And and to go back to what you said before, like you go from two to four and then you realize all this shit that's wrong. But no one there is nowhere you go that can teach you everything that can go wrong with your business.

George 36:42

No, no, no. Because there's probably people that haven't even experienced that.

Robby 36:46

Yeah, and then it's like you got to come back.

George 36:47

It's gonna teach you about a COVID pandemic. No, exactly.

Responding To Chaos With A Playbook

George 36:50

Right, wall in the middle of it, isn't it? Exactly right. How do you how do you navigate that? But in saying that, I believe that the difficult times that I went through during COVID will has made me a millionaire, will make me a multimillionaire. Because the next time the next COVID happens, and it could be this war, like who knows? Yeah, all right, but the next time the next COVID happens, when I say COVID, the next global pandemic, because it's been shown that it happens every 12 to 15 years, something in the world happens and everything turns to shit. In 2008, it was the GFC. Yes. All right, this time around, it was COVID. So I find that people that adapt to those disasters are the ones that always make the most money at the end of the day. I've seen it with uh next business partner who I used to work with. He made a lot of money during the 2008 GFC. Yeah, like a huge, like stupid amount of money. He went out, he bought property at the lowest price, he opened up this, I won't go into it, but a business that exploded and ended up exiting. He listed on IP, like he listed the business, everything. It went next level. And great, good on him. And then uh I've also seen who was it? Uh Grant Cardone. Yes. So he had a similar thing in the GFC in 2008, and he's like he lost all this money, did all this stuff, and he used to say it at his events. And then when COVID came around, bang, he was the first one. He let go 3,000 employees, he shut down this business, he shut down that business, he consolidated everything, and then he went out and bought a huge amount of property, and as a result of that, became a billionaire. And then he went back and out and employed 5,000 people. And it wasn't that that was there was a lesson in that that I saw is like he reacted, he he wasn't, he was proactive in his approach, he wasn't reactive to what was going on in the world, and that's where I think the next time it happens, I'll be in a better position. Like even now with the uh fuel prices, for example, right? So I saw that I I didn't do anything about it as far as because I got fuel cards from my employees, but I was ready to because if fuel did get to five bucks a liter, I had it ready to go right, everyone. Fuel cards are no longer part of your package. I had the letter ready, I had everything ready to go. Okay, you'll need to now start all or it won't be fully subsidized. You need to pay, you'll get this much fuel allowance per month. That's it. Everything above and beyond that you have to pay for, or whatever it is. The fuel cards are a privilege, not a right. But if I'm gonna be, because back in COVID, I was that guy that looked after everyone, I did the right thing by everyone, and I didn't protect the ship. I didn't protect myself, I did everything good by everything, everyone else, but not myself and not the business. Whereas now it's like, no, no, the ship, the the ship, the business is number one. If I have to fire you because the fuel prices are too high, then so be it. Like, what do you want? Do you want to have a job or do you want to pay for a bit of fuel? I'll let you decide. I think everyone in that situation will certainly opt to keep their their job and their own.

SPEAKER_03 39:40

Yeah, absolutely. And hey, you've got to come up on a fuel car.

George 39:43

That's it. But it might also mean that you've got to be willing to let them walk. Yeah. Like if you turn around and say, I don't get well, I'm gonna go here because they're gonna pay for my fuel set. Best of luck to you. Thank you so much for your service. Yep. So again, this is where you have to make those decisions to say this is the best thing for the business.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

So you feel since COVID, and you know, I'm sure it might not be COVID, but any kind of crisis within a business, something you endure and go through and you come out the other side. Do you almost feel like you have a playbook?

George 40:11

Yeah, I I do a little bit. I think it also builds resilience um for yourself. It's not just the playbook, is the ability, and you kind of said it, you don't stress over a month that might be bat read this month or next month or whatever it might be. You build a belief. Yeah, if that's right. And there's that resilience there that no, I've got this. I've got this, I've been through worse. We've been here before. No, we've been here before. Yeah. We've been here before. And I felt like that this year. Yep. And it's like there's been certain things that have happened and have come up, and you're like, fuck, are you serious? This is happening again. And then employees will look at you and go, Oh, how do you do it? How do you do it? Well, this is how we've got to do it. Um, and I I it's a very difficult thing to teach that. I think you almost have to experience it rather than teach it because you can never teach someone that that level of resilience or self-awareness. It's like they have to kind of experience it.

Robby 40:56

No, but you I I think what you can teach is the ability to critically think and the belief to back yourself, you know, and say, okay, cool, like this is fucking shit, but like I'll get us out of this. Like it's okay, we'll we'll do whatever it takes, or we'll work out a way, or you know, and then you start like you get you know, business is is the best vehicle for personal development. Like you learn so much about yourself, like when your back's against the wall and rant's due tomorrow, and you're like, hmm, how the fuck am I gonna do this? You know what I mean? I'm either gonna call someone, how are we gonna make payrolls? Yeah, payrolls do, and you're like, okay, how are we gonna make payroll?

SPEAKER_03 41:41

People's lives are depending on me.

Robby 41:44

Yeah, and and those those pressures are not are not for everyone. Like, not I I don't believe everyone um I I I believe if you buy it off too much too quickly, you'll crumble. Like if you never run a business and then you can run a $50 million business with you know 170 employees and you're gonna crumble as soon as payrolls are due and then you're gonna catch fire, you're like, I'm gonna go take my life, right? But you you build up the resilience to the oh okay, like I I can I'm gonna back myself to get us out of this current situation, right? I think one of the things we're losing at the moment though is people don't think like they they can't work their way out of a paper bag, like do you know what I mean? And and as much as I'm a endorser of AI, I partly blame AI.

SPEAKER_03 42:38

It's taken away some of that ability to critically think themselves and critically analyse. Right. But coming back to your point about mindset earlier as well, you know, and and around resilience in in hard times in your business, is the ability to understand what I can control right now? What is within my sphere of control versus what is outside of my control? Like we can't control world oil prices right now, but what are the things that I can control? And that applies to any crisis or situation in in your business. If you want to build that resilience or might be something you haven't dealt with before, it's really understandable. Well, you know, what can I control right now?

Robby 43:14

How do I respond? Taking yeah, taking a step back and saying, what are the things that I can actually what are my options here?

SPEAKER_03 43:20

Yep.

Robby 43:21

Like what are hey, just on the fuel thing, by the way. I heard so many people complain when it was at $3 a litre. I drove past the survey last night, it was $1.90, and I haven't heard one person say yay. Not one. Yeah, it's at $1.90.

George 43:38

Is it?

Robby 43:38

Yeah.

George 43:39

What are you diesel?

Robby 43:40

Diesel.

George 43:40

Oh, really? I haven't seen that. I've only seen it.

Robby 43:42

I thought that was I thought that was I kind of I don't know. I was gonna make a video ranting about all the people ranting.

George 43:48

But that's the new norm there, isn't it? Like, isn't that still a dollar ninety, I think, is still high, isn't it? Was it it was like a what was it pre the increase?

SPEAKER_03 43:55

Probably diesel was sitting around dollar seventy, like really.

George 43:58

Yeah, it was left, it was definitely. It wasn't a dollar ninety.

SPEAKER_03 44:01

It was definitely a dollar.

George 44:01

A dollar ninety is good. I think a dollar. That's how conditioned I am. That's how conditioned I am. Yeah, but that's I think everyone's like that now. They'll probably look at that and go, oh wow, bargain. I think I got up to three. I kind of understand 24 or something in its peak. So a dollar is when you think about when you think about how hard it is to get oil, like what's involved to get oil to a Bowser, you kind of understand two bucks a litre. You know what I mean? I get it. Yeah. Like, why is milk more expensive? Milk is ridiculously more expensive, you know?

SPEAKER_02 44:26

And although like even water, you go buy a bottle of water, 600 mil, four bucks at the servo.

unknown 44:32

Yeah.

George 44:32

It's more expensive than petrol.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

Just can't do any cars off it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's it.

AI As A Tool Not A Crutch

Robby 44:38

Uh do you what's your what's your take on AI Trome? What do you think it's going to do to the business world? Are you a are you a user of AI? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:47

Yeah, great question. Um AI, I think, is a a great tool. Um used in the right context and used at the right time and used in the right way. Now, if you're a business that is already operating in some level of chaos, and you know, this this even applied, you know, five, ten years ago when systems were coming out, you had, you know, service mate, you had click up, you had Monday, you had all these tools that you could put into your business. Now, if you've got a shitty process that you then go and automate and make faster, you've still got a shitty process, it just runs quicker. Yeah. And AI is a little bit along those lines for some people. Um, look, for me, it's made me a lot more efficient in in some of my outputs that I do be able to synthesis, synthesise, you know, my thoughts and things like that. It's still all my IP that is going into it, um, being able to synth synthesize thoughts and and ideas and expand on them and to be able to output um things as well.

George 45:50

And enhance it too. Absolutely. Yeah, because I I've looked at it from multiple business aspects and I I look at some of the documents that it's produced for me and I look at that and go, okay, could I have put that together myself? Yeah, I probably could have. Would have taken me a lot longer, would have taken me a week comparatively to the five minutes it did. And then also, would it have been presented as professionally? Probably not. Would it have looked as nice? Would the words have flowed as nice or as well or as more as logical or as uh technical? Probably not. So I think it enhances what you are and what you're about and what you're trying to get out of it. As long as you don't do it, I I think where AI fails today is people might use it as a tick and flick. Yes. Right? As in, okay, go do this form for me, go. And like, don't even look at it, just copy, paste, send it off to someone. And then it's got something in there that's irrelevant, or something in there that you don't need, or something in there that's detrimental to you. Yep. So I still think there's it's not at that level yet. But again, you might say something different. It's also the questions that you ask it, the input that you give it. Uh, and it's a learning machine too. So the more you do, the more you invest in it, the better it will become. And then eventually maybe it will get to that point where it's like, okay, this is exactly what you have to do. You know what you need to do. Don't, don't, don't call me. Yeah. Unless it's an emergency.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

You made a very good point because the the output is only good as the input. And that's the the context in which you're asking or prompting it and the the questions which you're which you're asking. Um and you know, well, I I've used it to enhance and and make parts of my business even better. We build a a diagnostics tool for be able to um identify and disrupt um patterns within a business and a diagnostics tool to be able to do that. And I actually used AI to assist in the scoring logic behind that, which which made it a more robust and defensible tool in in how I diagnose those businesses.

George 47:48

So you know it's really allowed me to But it's also something that might have taken you a day to do.

SPEAKER_03 47:55

Correct. Right versus now six months of engaging with a university mathematics professor to build an algorithm on how to diagnose this goal.

George 48:01

Whereas now you look at it and you go, these this is the information, this is what I'm trying to get out of it, assess everything and go. Tell me what I need to do. And it's like like that. And that's the beauty of it. But it does come down to how good are your questions and how good is your input into what you're wanting it to do.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

Yeah, and we've recently hired um in my wife's business um a few new employees over the last 12 months. And it's been an interesting journey because there's a couple of them, and they are younger than us. Um, you would think they would, you know, uh adapt to technology a bit quicker than us and be using AI. Um, but a couple of these employees were actually a little bit reluctant um to to use them. We're gonna say, like, God, just put it into chat, will you? Or just you know, ask Claude a question or something like that. It's gonna you know speed you up and allow you to provide a more quality answer or part of your part of your work. And there was absolutely reluctance to to use it. So I think there is now within careers and industries almost two camps um of employee, those who are actually becoming proficient in the use of AI tools, and that is exactly how to prompt it, which tools to use. Not every every AI tool is is like, so which tools to use for for which application, how to prompt it, and then those who are basically using it like Google. Yeah.

Robby 49:22

And then soon there'll be only one.

SPEAKER_03 49:24

Yeah.

Robby 49:24

That's the reality. Because the people who are using it like Google, you're gonna get wiped. Yeah, so you're just gonna get replaced. Like if I can do the work of four people, those four people have nothing to do.

SPEAKER_03 49:36

Yes.

Robby 49:37

You know what I mean? And if you it's a multiplier. I tell people all the time, like it's a multiplier. If you use it properly, you use it efficiently, it'll make you better what you do. It'll either allow you to do things you can't do or uh allow you to get time back. You know what I mean? Like as in something took me a week, now it takes seven minutes.

George 49:58

So thinking about those hires and their reluctance to using it, do you think they're they are the right hires in a business now? Well, interesting point, two of them are no longer with us. Yeah. So that's exactly right. See, I would look at my next hire, and I'm at the point where we're probably a job away from hiring another person in the office. And, you know, again, it's all re always resource-based. But the way I see it is I've in the past, I probably would I probably would have already hired someone, but because we're utilizing AI and aspects of it now, we're like, well, we kind of don't need to. I've got some team members doing it the this way, some team members doing it that way, me doing using it for elements of that role that I would hire. And it's like, well, I don't really need that person at the moment. Something that used to take, because I would normally call up, say if it was a scope of works for an electrical contractor, I would normally say to my administrator, say, hey, do a scope of works for this project for the electrical work. And they would take a good person, say they're competent, they know their shit, maybe a couple hours. Yep. Got to review the drawings, got to look at all the notes, all the things that need to go in, maybe need to refer to the head contract, what we're what have we allowed, what's it, the prime costs, all that sort of shit. Whereas now it happens in five minutes. And instead of me asking an employee, I'm asking AI. Yep. Now I think the next hire has to be in my business. They have to be able to use it. Like I can't, if they say, oh no, no, you know, I don't, it's not me, AI, I'd like cool. Thanks. We'll we'll let you know how you went in this application.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

I think you've got to see a new round of questioning in interviews where 20 years ago, uh, you know, a standing kind of question was, well, how proficient are you in Microsoft Office? Can you use Word? Can you use Excel? And yeah, other agents. I think the the narrative's now got to change where you know I even think maybe you know six months ago, 12 months ago, it almost felt a little bit taboo to say, you know, why not use AI? Yeah, you know, to to help me do my job. But now I think that the line of questioning in a job interview is, well, tell me how proficient are you in the use of AI tools?

George 52:03

You need to. Yeah, I sent a summary of something a while ago. And then like, oh, do you use AI for that? Of course. Yeah. Why am I gonna sit here and type this email? That's ridiculous. That is literally the most ridiculous thing you've ever said. If you're not cheating, you're only cheating yourself. Yeah, like I've got to I've 100% I'm gonna use that. That email that I typed, that if for me to type that, because it was a summary of a meeting, all right, and I just wanted to have it in writing. Hey, this is what we spoke about, this is what it's about, go. Recorded the meeting in and using an AI like Fathom or whatever it might be. Uh, what's the other one? Fireflies, I think it was. Fireflies. Yeah, there's a few out there. So recorded the meeting and said, here's a summary. I want to email the person. Go. And it's like created the summary for me, literally copy and paste, put it in the email. Hey, John, here we great session today. This is what we discussed. Dot points, action items, go. And it's like, yes, I did that with the use of AI. And now we both have these are your action items. This is our discussion. We you know what needs to happen. So the next time we meet, I can go through those and say, well, have you done this, this, this, and this? And it's like, yes or no. And like, well, that's why you're not getting the results. Or great work, you're smashing it.

SPEAKER_03 53:08

And that's a really interesting point because one of the five patterns of business pattern science is clarity and rhythm. And what those AI tools have allowed you to do is ensure you've got the right patterns in place in your business quicker by giving clarity and direction to your team after that meeting. Yeah. And enforcing that that rhythm and the meeting cadence as as well, where you hold people accountable by providing that summary back. Yeah. And now, yeah, rather than typing minutes, which may have taken you an hour or two when you eventually get to it, it's done within minutes. Yeah.

Robby 53:42

It's gonna, it's gonna I read a a a stat that I thought was wild this morning and I was just looking up then. And uh I follow uh a futurist, his name is Peter Diamandis. I don't know if any of you have heard of him. He's got a podcast called Moonshots. He's like super successful friends with like Elon and blah blah blah. And uh every morning I get a email summary of his uh of his podcast episode. And the one they released this morning said that 80% of new code is written by Claude. Claude wasn't around three and a half years ago. Like, think about how much we've changed in the way that we do things or 80% of new code is now by Claude, not by AI, by Claude. So that means like 95% of code would be written by AI. I would say, I would dare say 99, right? And think about how much we've changed in such a short period of time. And to go back to your Microsoft uh office question example with the interview, it would be like someone going someone going in. It we we'll get to the point where if someone doesn't use AI, it'll be the equivalent of someone coming in 20 years ago and being like, email, no, no, I use Australian Australia Post.

SPEAKER_04 54:57

I'll send you devices.

Robby 54:58

I'll send you all to X. Yeah, and you're like, Well, you you cannot work here, right? But I give an example when we do the events, and I say I say, uh, if you're trying to hire an excavator operator, it's the equivalent of someone saying, Come, I don't use excavators, but I've got a really good shovel. And you're like, dude, like, how are you gonna compete? You can't. Um I think we're in for a root shock.

SPEAKER_03 55:18

But one of the downsides of of that, and yeah, I think email probably started contributor, but I'm one concern about AI is the art of communication. Yes, yes.

Communication Skills In An AI World

George 55:30

Communicating is having conversation. Yeah, I think it's one of the most powerful things you can do in business still today is to communicate. If you have great communication skills, you're gonna go very far in business because it's all about that. It's and I'm not sure I'm not just talking about a well-written email. I'm talking me and you speaking to each other. Correct. That's huge. You got your ability to negotiate, your your ability to communicate clearly and get your point across and influence massive. Like we do it all the time when we're on stage. We stand on stage and we communicate in such a way that's impactful and meaningful. We do this podcast. The very first episode that we what that we did, it was very different from right now. There's lots of ums, there's lots of R's, there's lots of, you know, us swearing for the sake of swearing because it's cool to do that on a podcast. Like there was things that we just weren't doing well, but that's great. That's part of our story and part of our journey. But even now, we've become so much better at not just on stage, but in this scenario and this um and this space that it's also helped in business conversations and relationships moving forward.

SPEAKER_03 56:31

And I already saw, you know, in in my daughters, you know, uh from you know 20 years old down to to 13, just the the the change there. And even just in in that narrow gap where my oldest daughters you know went through their teenage years without Snapchat that wasn't released yet, but my younger daughters now have Snapchat. And even how they all communicate with each other these days, they've you know have lost that art of conversation or been able to you know directly talk to people. So I you know already I think you know there's some some challenges there for the current generation, and then you've now put AI on top of that that's got to write your emails for you, write your letters, whatever it may be. Um, where where do you learn that that critical skill?

Robby 57:11

Yeah, I I 100% agree. And I think you're seeing it well, I see it more and more. I I do you follow uh like Alex and Layla almost? Yes, yeah. So I saw a clip she put out, and she said this thing of like, if I send you an email and I use AI to write my email, and then you get my email and you copy it and you paste it into AI and you say, Give me a summary of this, and it gives you a summary, and then you're like, all right, write a reply, and then you copy and paste the reply back to me, and I take it and I put it into AI, and then I say, Give me a summary, write a reply, and I write it's like, are we even fucking talking? Like, what the fuck is happening? And but that's the world and what it's coming to.

George 57:51

Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's just the you may as well just cut out the middleman. Yeah, and you just have one bot speak to another bot. Yeah, you're like we're in the way.

Robby 57:57

Let the bots talk. Yeah, we're in the way. We're slowing you down.

George 57:59

Yeah. Have you experienced a high AI hallucination yet?

SPEAKER_03 58:02

Yeah, no, what's what do you mean by that? It just fills the gaps. I was it does. I was finishing off a business proposal and uh just asked yeah, Claude to tidy it up a little bit, and it actually came back and it changed my name to Troy Mackenzie. And I'm like, who the hell is Troy McKenzie? And like no conversation history, no chat history, there's no any other client, person, colleague with the name Mackenzie in it that was calling me Troy McKenzie all through the document. Yeah, right.

Robby 58:32

Yeah, and then it'll apologize when you pull it up. It'll be like, sorry, I don't know where I got that from. You're like, what that? That's a bit odd. No worries, Joseph. Uh, but I'll tell you what it does do as well. It makes mistakes. It does.

George 58:45

Yeah. But it also But this is where you can't rely on. Like at the moment, it has to have you have to review, you have to have that input in it.

Robby 58:52

But you've also like humans make mistakes. Yeah, yeah, it's true. Uh, I'll tell you what though, you correct the AI once and it doesn't make the mistake anymore. Yeah. You correct it once, it's like boom, fixed. You're like, that's pretty good. I like that. I don't know, you gotta tell me a few times.

SPEAKER_03 59:09

Imagine if you say that to any of your your staff or employees. Yeah, yeah. And we're all gonna make mistakes and you fix it once, and it never happens.

George 59:16

The other thing is is imagine. That's the greatest.

Robby 59:18

When imagine when your employee does that, so you're very happy with that.

George 59:20

Yeah, and imagine when you call your employee a fucking idiot. You can't do that to your employee, but you can do it to Claude.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

What the fuck?

George 59:25

You do it, Tom?

SPEAKER_02 59:26

Like, sort your shit out, mate. Uh, critical thinking. Does anyone actually say please and thank you to Claude? All the time.

George 59:33

Yeah, all the time. I do it without even realizing. Yeah, I'll be like, oh it'll do something. It's got uh excellent, thanks. Like I'll say something, yeah. That's great, thanks. Yeah, let's do this. Awesome, go. Yeah, it'll give me everything I need. I'm like, you're the best. Well, your agent emailed me the other day, that car ever said, and I just responded, You the man, Reggie? Yeah, it's um it's getting out of control, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:53

But then it's it then it's what'd it say to you after that?

Robby 59:56

He goes, George responded, said you the he seems that he is pleased with the outcome of something. Like he seems quite happy. I'm like, all right. Um, yeah, I I I think AI is going to impact our ability to critically think and in turn communicate, right? And uh I I I was lucky enough to to uh have a squeeze through your book prior to this sit-down. And I'm gonna take a guess here and tell me if I'm wrong, but I would say you're an avid I'm gonna say you're an avid reader or at least learner.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:32

Avid learner.

Robby 1:00:33

Learner?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:34

Yes.

Robby 1:00:34

Do you do you do you listen to books?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:36

Do you I read a lot of books. I don't listen to books. I've tried audio picks, I can't can't do it. I'm old school, love to go into a bookstore and touch them, feel them, smell them. Yeah. I I buy a lot of books, read a lot of books, and and podcast. Um, you know, a lot of driving in the car, you know, wake a podcast, on and yeah. Yeah, I often do that more than listening to music these days. Yeah.

Robby 1:00:58

Yeah, there there was some key things. I thought this is this is great. I was like, there was some things in there, I was like, I gotta go back and read this properly because I need to take my time with this and really, really digest the information. But have you got the audio book ever out yet?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:12

Not audio, no. That could be the next step. Yeah, because uh a lot of people I speak to, I think I am you know um a rarity that I haven't adopted audio books, but a lot of people listen to it.

George 1:01:23

I think you'll just capture another another segment of the market. Yeah, that's all it is. It's just getting the getting it out there and people knowing it's why no, uh, just haven't released it yet.

Robby 1:01:33

The the book is No no, as in for yourself, consuming wise. Like so what you listen to podcasts, so you can listen to people talk. I'm a I'm a visual learner. Um I guess is it a learning do you learn from podcasts? Or what sort of podcasts do you listen to? Apart from this one, of course. Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:50

This one, of course, million dollar days. Um always love um yeah, Steve Bartlett, Dorothy. Yeah, yeah, definitely good fun.

Robby 1:01:57

Second best podcast, absolutely parts of this one, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:59

And um Huberman Labs.

Robby 1:02:03

Oh, yeah, Huberman, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:04

Andrew Huberman. Yeah, I love his um you know the I I listened to him interview David Goggins, and and the way he broke that down as to how David Goggins' mind actually works and what was going on in his brain, because we just got this term pushed through. That's a weird, that's a weird covers an interesting combination, yeah.

Robby 1:02:26

Yeah, because one's like, stay hard, you know, fuck your weakness, and the other one's like, well, what he's actually doing there is his brain's releasing this that's exactly what it was like, yeah. And he's like breaking down the science behind everything that's happening. Um, yeah, interesting, interesting duo.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:43

So behavioral science, you know, human psychology, yeah, love it all.

Robby 1:02:47

Yeah, I can tell, um, I can tell, not just from this conversation, but from what I've read as well. Um, you know, you've obviously invested a lot uh into yourself.

Learning Habits And Self Investment

Robby 1:02:57

Uh, why do you think people don't invest as much in themselves as they should? Oh, good question. Why don't people invest? Because people don't. And you share you you do the greatest example of this, George, and you say you go buy a brand new Ford Ranger and say, I spent $80,000 on a Ranger, and everyone says, Well done, look at it, shiny. But you guys say I spent $80,000 on a mentor, and everyone's like, What the fuck's wrong with you?

George 1:03:18

You just won a colt.

Robby 1:03:19

Yeah, oh yeah, did you get scammed?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

We're scammed. We've had all that, we've been involved ourselves. Yeah. Um, why why do you think this is?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:28

What I think it is. Uh one of the things I have learnt is you know, we we really understand, my wife and I, our own personal values and personal motivators. And you know, it's taking away all the the service level stuff where you think you got, you know, values of honesty, integrity, and things like that, but really stripping it down raw and went through a pretty challenging exercise to pull these out. And our personal values, and we actually share you know our our three of our top five together uh freedom, growth, um, and connection as well of our personal values. So when it comes, you know, freedom, um, freedom in the context of yes, I'll live in the news of not laying down on the beach all day going surfing, freedom of time, freedom of choice, freedom of where I get to choose to actually place my energy. And then we have achievement as well. Um, that is a a high value of ours, and that's you know been observed all the way from my career. Um when I left school, I just wanted to leave school and start achieving and doing the next thing and the next thing. And why people you know don't invest in themselves, I just think they have a different set of values. Some people actually value stability and comfort as well. Yeah, there's a huge comfort factor there.

George 1:04:52

Yeah. It's also security, yeah. I think it's the it's like with marketing. When people go and spend money on marketing, they're spending money on the unknown. Yeah. It's like, I'm gonna give you money, but I don't get anything in return right this second. And I think it's the same thing when they invest in themselves. It's like, cool, I'm gonna give you $100,000 to go and fix my business, but like, is it fixed yet? Like tomorrow, yeah? Yeah. We're gonna be done, and it's all this is gonna be the best thing I've ever done. And it's that unknown that I think people have the issue with, but also like it's not you that's gonna fix the business. You're just gonna give them the tools they need to do the work and do the repetitions and the push-ups. So it's like breaking down that barrier, I think, for many people to go, yes, I'm willing to invest, yes, I'm willing to go down this path.

Robby 1:05:40

I I would also say that it's a thing of like people you're not taught to learn. Yeah, if that makes sense. So you you aren't taught to go and learn things. You are taught to learn what you learn in school, and then it's kind of like, oh, learning now games and we're all And and be productive. Figure it out. Right? But you're not you're not taught to Yeah, like they should. It's almost like, and I'm talking about this with our team. I'm like, hey, we should do like a book club. Like, do uh I don't do you follow Patrick Bitt David?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:14

No, I do.

Robby 1:06:14

I'm pretty sure, I don't know what exactly it is, but they've got something in the in the high level. He's a multi PvD podcast. They sold his company for like 300 million um a few years back. And I think all these like his leadership team, they all have to read the same book every month.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:32

Interesting.

Robby 1:06:33

Yeah, or something along those lines. And I thought that was cool. Because I was like, you're kind of like saying, hey, like if you want to come hang with me, like you need to be an avid learner. Like, I don't care if you like reading, I don't care. Like, learn. There's no there's no reason to not do this. Find a way to consume this book.

George 1:06:49

Yeah.

Robby 1:06:50

How you do it is up to you, but find a way to consume this book. You know what I mean? Because you want to grow with people growing around you. And I I I think that's that's really cool. You know what I mean? And I I think we're not taught to we're not taught to do that. We're not taught to I read my first book when I was 25, 26 years old. I've become an avid reader since, but I wasn't taught to read. For me, when I was growing up, reading that's for nerds. Now I'm like the biggest nerd. Right? Like I read and read and read. Um, and I I think that's something going back, touching back on the whole AI thing, I think reading's gonna become more popular. The same way exercise exercise wasn't a thing 300 years ago. And it became a thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:37

It did.

Robby 1:07:38

I think reading is gonna become it's like it's gonna be like brain exercise because otherwise you're gonna see a lot of brain atrophy, and people aren't thinking anymore. You're not using your neural network. Yes, you know what I mean, and then we're gonna see people, we're gonna see cognitive decline. People can't string words together anymore. You know what I mean? It's like you see all those memes laughing about it. Oh, hey chat, there's someone at my door. What do I do? It was like, what's gonna happen when they can't even put that together?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:04

Yeah.

Robby 1:08:05

You know what I mean? And I I think we will see a segment of that, like a period where we start to notice that, and then a period where we we bounce back. And, you know, they might be like, I don't know, maybe book clubs take off. I don't know, something something where you know you go to the same way, you go to classes now and you do, you know, high-intensity training, you might go to reading classes, or you might go to some type of brain exercise class where you know you do stuff with your eyes and whatever it is, I don't know. But I think we'll see a big uptake in that.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:35

Yeah, and I think there are multiple modality of of you know health, wellness and and well-being. You're already seeing that. Like, you know, 20 years ago, would have we, you know, gone to a meditation studio or or had access to meditation tools, ice paths and talked about and ice baths. I do all that. Um, not the red light, but yeah, all the rest of it. And I do see the benefits from it as well in in in business and life. Um, and it's when you start experiencing those benefits for yourself, uh, then it you know it certainly gets widely adopted.

Robby 1:09:09

Yeah, you go you experience it firsthand. Nothing believed, nothing builds a better belief than experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:14

Absolutely.

Robby 1:09:16

So the book is business pattern science.

Book Launch Details And Where To Follow

Robby 1:09:20

Why chaos isn't random and what to do about it. Is it out? Is it available?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:24

It is available. Um, we haven't done an official launch as yet. It's on its way, but it is available on Amazon right now.

Robby 1:09:30

Available on Amazon, business pattern science. This is my copy. You don't get a copy, George. So you have to buy it on Amazon. That's okay.

George 1:09:37

If you use if you use the the code, the checkout code Million Dollar Days on Checkout, you'll get um 89% off. As well. Um who's this book written for?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:49

This book is written for business owners, founders, or you know, leaders of of companies who you know, typically probably doing $2 million plus in in turnover, all the way up to $50, $100 million. It all applies. Um, you know, it's once you get to that certain level within your business that you start having to employ staff and have leaders or managers or and you're growing your business, um, is when business patterns really become applicable in the business. That's that's who it's really targeted for.

Robby 1:10:25

I look forward to uh to diving into this. Yeah. Um and for people who want to follow the journey, uh, where can they where can they learn more about yourself and your business?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:37

They can follow me on Instagram and the socials. Um, business alchemy is our practice. Um, business alchemy is the practice of business pattern science. And yeah, we've got some pretty, pretty cool plans, what we're we're doing for this. Essentially, um, we're creating a new category. Um so think of you know, Uber create a new category of transport. I'm not saying this is going to be an Uber, but essentially a new category of management discipline. There's plenty of business frameworks out there scaling up EOS, um, OKRs and things like that. I've used them all. Um, they are great in their their own right, and they're they're really good for businesses. I think you need a business framework. But each of those that I've worked under, I would still see businesses have improvement for a season. Then they would regress because hadn't structurally fixed the the patterns within their business that underpin everything uh in which they do. So um this is a new management discipline, a new category. Um and you know, looking at uh later on this year, maybe early next year, then starting to move towards a certification pathway where consultants, business owners and and and others can actually become practitioners um in in business pattern architecture.

Robby 1:11:54

And then they can deliver this correctly. So they they will adopt like like EOS. Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:59

Yep. EOS has EOS implement.

Robby 1:12:01

Yeah. Okay, that's cool, man. Yeah, I like that. That's that's awesome. Um, well, if you're a business doing over two million dollars, go on to Amazon, type business pattern science, uh, and get a copy of the book. Troy, we really appreciate you coming down and thank you for having uh making the trip. I've enjoyed this conversation. I look forward to getting into that book and um yeah, I might just do a review on it on YouTube as well. I don't know. We'll see how we go. But I look forward to diving straight in. But really appreciate you coming down, man.

George 1:12:33

Great to be with you. Uh thanks a lot, mate. All right, everyone else, thank you. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. And if you haven't, Robbie's gonna give you a phone call or his AI agent will definitely email you because we have all of your details, even if you just come past the post, he knows who you are. So we will find you. So make sure you subscribe and then go and tell four other friends to subscribe as well. All right, thanks. Thanks, guys, mate.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:58

Very good. Thanks, guys. That was good.

George 1:13:01

How was that? How was it for just an hour and you started out 10? Yeah, a ten pass or five pass?

SPEAKER_03 1:13:09

What's happening? We don't know where the conversation's gonna go.