Fergus Watts On Building Bastion Collective

Fergus: The Daily Talk Show.

Josh: It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 543.

Tommy: In the studio, we've got Fergus Watts. Welcome, buddy.

Fergus: Gents, honor. Thank you.

Tommy: Mate, uh, founder of the company that first gave me my first paycheck for freelance video work.

Josh: Invoice 0001.

Tommy: Well, we're talking yesterday, Ferg, about when you start out in business, do you not lead with 0001 because they know it's the first job.

Josh: You'd be a bit tricksy about it.

Fergus: So we used to, we used to make sure that all of our proposals went out with like, you know, 5492. So it looked like there was some science behind them.

Tommy: I reckon I didn't mark it. I reckon it would have been 0001. I'll tell you the quick story. So when I moved up to Sydney, I left radio and I was like wanting to get into video. I wasn't quite sure. And I'm sitting in a cafe looking probably lonely and your brother walks in, Jack.. And he says, what's going on, mate? We have a bit of a chat. And I told him that I was kind of looking to find some work. And he said, what are your skills? I love Jack. He's a real straight shooter, just like you. He said, what are your skills? And I told him video, blah, blah, blah. He said, leave it with me. I get a call later that day. It's Gus Seaback from, from the Sydney office of Bastion. And he says, come in, mate. And then that's how I got my 0001 job as a freelance video guy.

Josh: And so Bastion Collective, I feel like I know it as the business that's very good at buying businesses.

Fergus: We have done a bit of that. Yeah. So we're a marketing services group. So we're a collection of marketing agencies. So we've got 10 agencies here in Australia. Most of those we've acquired along the journey. So we acquire small independent agencies and then we, when they all come together as a collective, then they can provide a fully integrated solution for clients, big and small is the pitch.

Josh: You were talking, I heard on another podcast about the owner-operator model and how you want to keep that within Bastion Collective. What are some of the challenges of having that type, I guess, that personality, if you're used to running your own business? How do they all play nicely?

Fergus: Well, that's, that is the million-dollar question that, that in our industry, in the marketing services industry, without going too deep, there's the very big and the very small, right? And there's a big gap in the middle. There's no one really in the middle. And, and most of the time, the very small have started by people that worked at the very big, spat out, and they said, I don't want to deal with all of the big business stuff. I want to do my own thing. And after then a period of time, a small independent can only get to a certain size. And so then they say, well, what else is there? How do I get access to bigger clients? How can I grow the business? And all that sort of stuff. And that's then when we come in. But the reality of that is that as much as we, you know, like to think that we're a lot less red tape and a lot less politics and a lot less of the bullshit from a lot of the big companies, you're still not running your own shop down the road, right? If you're one of these entrepreneurs that's come into our group. So you've still got to work with our unified systems and some of that sort of stuff. So that's always difficult and it's always a challenge. But a big part of it is making sure that the people we bring in are people that recognise that and can adjust to that as they go. And that's, you know, that's a huge component of not just making an acquisition based on the financial transaction, but making an acquisition based on the people transaction, and then running an organization, you know, based on our 3 values. And the first one is make each other's lives better.

Tommy: And what— so I was going to say, how do you find great people? But it's using the values of the business to find the great people.

Fergus: Is that— yeah, I mean, finding great people more often than not is based on is based on referrals, right? So the, your example with Jack, then Gus, that is how business works, is that I'm on a referral, you know, I recommend you because I like you, you're a good guy, and then you come in with a warm introduction into whoever needs your particular service.

Tommy: They regretted it because I was in the office in Sydney, fucking flat out. Jack, can I come in, mate?

Josh: Can I get a ride with you? I did that with Tribe too. You're eating their Nando's chips. He's got a certain way about him.

Tommy: What about Mr. 97? Can you get a gauge on whether he's a nice guy, whether he's a good guy?

Fergus: He looks nice. He's got the Timbs on top. That's what I'm saying.

Tommy: Timbs on top.

Fergus: Justin Timberlake.

Josh: Got him with the nostalgia. And so what are the blind spots that a lot of these owner operators have? Because I guess they come in and you get to see the friction points.

Fergus: Well, The blind spots in joining our group? Is that what you mean?

Josh: Or generally running their business? Well, I guess if you're, um, if you're used to running your own shop, you can tell storeys about who you are as a business and what you stand for and what people are buying versus when they come into a collective where they need shared values. What are some of the things that they're sort of the limiting stories?

Fergus: Okay. So, so part of the, part of the challenge generally is the autonomy. Right, so when you're running your own show down the road, you can have full autonomy. Now the stark reality, I mean the reality of business generally without being too much of a doomsdayer, is that it's exceptionally difficult and very, very few people make any money out of starting their own company.

Tommy: Amen.

Fergus: And that is, and that is very true in the service game. However, even if you're not making money you're still running your own show. You're still living and breathing the day-to-day. And the reality is the majority of people, especially in the service business, they just love what they do, right? Same as you guys. You guys love doing this. People that make advertising or do PR or are research experts or create content, they love creating the content, right? Love creating, love executing the craft and the skill. And even though they might be on their own with 10 people down the road in a small office, they're still doing it for themselves and they're still creating the content. They're still doing all this stuff. When you come into our place, we operate as a business that needs to perform and perform consistently, right? And so that removes a level of freedom there, right? Not that it's all about the numbers or any of that sort of stuff, but they are important because if one link in the chain starts to fall apart, that, that has a flow-on effect to everyone else. So that autonomy does get lost a bit. Um, the other challenge is as a business grows, and this is a big reason why they choose to join us in the first place, is as if you are exceptional at creating content or making advertising or whatever, you generally then build your company and you build it to a point where it has more staff. Right? Now every time you have more staff, you have tighter cash flow. When you have more staff, you need a bigger office. And when you have a bigger office, you have more locked-in payments every month. So before you know it, with 20 staff, you've got, you know, X hundred thousand dollars that you have to make every month just to break even to keep the thing alive. Then there's HR problems and there's issues about people complaining they don't have a car park. And then there's a whole bunch of other stuff that goes with that that is just the day-to-day reality.

Josh: Aren't you in Cremorne too? Cremorne. I can imagine that being an issue.

Tommy: Well, their sustainability business, they want everyone on the train getting there every day.

Fergus: So all of those factors come into, come into it. So, so one of the things that people find difficult, it, it's a difficult question to ask in isolation because it's about the entire journey of a business, right? So there's anyone sitting out there going, yeah, I want to start my own business. Starting your own business, the actual day one It's not that difficult. Yeah, right. It's day 265, then it's day 540, then it— and the problems are the same problems, they're just the bigger, or they're slightly evolved, or they're whatever they are. And that's the evolution of running a business, which ultimately gets you to a point where you think, I might want to sell this, or I might want to join a group that does something bigger.

Tommy: So being a cop looks like a great idea. Yeah, exactly.

Fergus: Yeah. Join the academy and then have a go. Yeah, exactly. And then walk into a, you know, into a crack den that you have to then deal with all the stuff that goes with that. Like, that's— and that's the reality that people don't see. And that's the reality of running a business. All looks cool on the surface, and it is the majority of time. It's great. I enjoy what I do. We all like what we do. But the full journey of someone running a business and building their life that's the storey rather than an isolated piece of it was a bit annoying that that happened. I didn't quite agree with this decision.

Tommy: So the brands that you've acquired, you're looking to find people who are wanting to make the leap but can't do it within this specific model.

Fergus: We want, we want people that want to be able to build the business more than they can.

Josh: Right.

Fergus: So in the marketing services world, If you want to go pitch on McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Nissan, Kia, these big brands, you want to go pitch on that, there is just some reality around, around that. One, you have to be able to deliver the work at scale. That's a difficult thing to do in a people business because if, if I engage you, if I engage you to do one video, you can do it with one person. If I engage you 10 videos, you can do it. If I engage you to do 1,000 videos, you can't do it. Right? You need multiple staff and you scale up really quickly. I don't pay you for 90 days, so you've got to pay 5 staff to deliver it for 90 days, which you can't cash flow. There's all that reality that goes with that, and that's, that's just the truth of it. Then there's the reality that if, if a brand of that note is going to, um, pay, you know, whatever, a million dollars, whatever the number is, a big chunky number, to a to an agency to deliver a service, if that's an agency no one's ever heard of, it's a tough sell, right? If it's an agency that's been around for 50, 60, 70 years and is a global agency and everything else, well then it's a slightly easier sell.

Josh: You're an insurance policy essentially.

Fergus: There's a lot of that, right? So there's just a big reality of all of those different options and those different variables that what we look for are people that say, I want to get access to a slightly bigger brand. I want to get access to a place that has 400 clients going through it every year. I want to get access to other services so I can provide an integrated solution to our clients. And, you know, I want to be, be part of something bigger. Half the time it's, I just want to have some peers, you know.

Josh: What about the health check? I guess you've looked at a lot of books to work out which companies to buy. What are you looking at?

Fergus: I am a very, very basic operator when it comes to that stuff. Um, I look at very basic money in, money out. Can they sell revenue, right? Can they sell enough clients to generate enough revenue? Is that top line number good enough? Can they deliver that work in an acceptable margin? So if you sell a million bucks worth of advertising work and it costs you $1.1 million to deliver Who cares, right? Like you just lost $100 grand. And that happens a lot because in the creative industry, creative people who run that will say, well, it's all about the work. And it is all about the work until you can't pay the bills.

Tommy: Yeah.

Fergus: Right. And so.

Tommy: Well, it's not really a business at that point. Yeah. It's going backwards.

Fergus: But that's what happens a lot of the time in the service business. So is there a discipline around that? And then that's it. You know, I mean.

Josh: What about debt? So if you go into a business and you're like, okay, they've got, $150,000, they've got this equipment and all that sort of thing. How do you deal with that when you're acquiring a company?

Fergus: So that's part of the acquisition that comes off the cost. It comes off the acquisition price. That's pretty standard for generally how that works. The reality is most of the agency world doesn't have a, at that size, doesn't have a heap of debt.

Tommy: It's people. The people is the main cost.

Josh: The salaries. Exactly.

Fergus: Yeah. You don't have to go and invest in big equipment or I mean, occasionally you do, but, but not often.

Tommy: What have you found in— you said there's sort of that old lay of the land of, you know, the big brands going with the bigger agencies that can service them. With the amount of people starting businesses these days, the easy bit starting, but there are a lot more boutique marketing or people using their personal brand to be able to connect with these bigger brands, maybe not to service them at that scale, But have you seen these bigger brands pulling in some of their money that they were spending at that scale game and now dispersing it to the individual creator?

Josh: Yes.

Fergus: So, and that's, you know, oh, I have this conversation with people who are individual creators a lot, and, and they, they ask advice on building a business, or, you know, how do you take it from what I do now to, you know, what you do. And I said, well, why do you want to do that? Because you can make a lot of money as an individual creator, because a lot of those times they are, you know, you're highly talented people, right? Like highly talented people creating very good content, um, that can go and execute the work really well. Now they can't do it at scale, but there are a lot more brands saying, well, you know, this one particular person creates really good creative output for us, does it in a niche area that works right for us, right? And that, and that person, zero overheads, you know, very little cost.

Tommy: Mum and Dad's paying the rent.

Fergus: Yeah, they can control that sort of stuff. So there's a, there's a heap of benefit in that. And for anybody, you know, that's doing that, there's absolutely nothing wrong. With being a purist and being passionate about what you do and delivering your work, because there's plenty of clients out there.

Josh: About freelancers working for agencies, what have you learned about that?

Tommy: Oh, they've stopped since me.

Fergus: That's a lot of, uh, yeah, it's a big part of the industry and it's a good part of the industry because ideation is a difficult thing. Coming up with an idea that people are going to resonate with, you can ultimately sell a product that is a difficult thing to do. Um, and it being, you know, with— if you didn't have the freelance market, then agencies would only have the exact same people coming up with ideas every time. Now, that can't work to a certain extent, but of course you need some fresh ideas. Now, the beauty of our place is that we've got everyone in the, in the one place, right? We've got access to multiple different thinkers that come from multiple different disciplines that have complete, you know, that have different expertise but all unify and work together. So we constantly engage different parts of the business to come up with different ideas and different planning metrics and different execution, um, as part of that. So that freshness, which is a big part of the freelance world, the freshness is— we feel has been— that issue has been solved by our collective of agencies rather than just having one agency.

Josh: Yeah, doing the acquisition hire, the acquihire type of model, do you end up with more deadwood because you're not in the hiring process, or is there a certain way that these things sort of filter out over time?

Fergus: Uh, they do filter out over time. Yeah. Um, yeah, the biggest thing I've learned, it's nothing new. I was watching a thing last night, Richard Branson was saying the same thing. It's the same in business. Every time you think you're flying You're not.

Josh: Yeah, right. And unless you've got an airline, you probably want to get that dialled in.

Fergus: But every time, and every time you think you're going bad, something good happens.

Josh: Yeah, right.

Fergus: So like, just this business is just a constant flow up and down of good and bad and multiple changes. And, and we've been in this 10 years now. The good thing about being in 10 years, there's very few things that come up now that we haven't experienced.

Josh: Yeah, right.

Fergus: So we've experienced the good, the bad in every aspect of it. And now, like, as things come up, it's like, it's not shit, how do I deal with this? It's like, oh my God, is this happening again? Yeah, you know, we've done this 4 times already, you know. And the— and I always, um, say to mates of mine that run businesses and stuff like that, you know, it's like, I can't believe we can't solve this one problem that's come up 4 times. And they're like, you know, it's 4 times in 10 years. Like, yeah, yeah, you know. Get over it. Like, that's life, it happens, right? And that's, that's just the truth of business.

Tommy: Um, when you— so 10 years ago you started that, did you understand what the success actually looked like for you then?

Fergus: Mate, I don't have a clue. I was 22 years old. I, I, I, I let— I started this business, um, after a very short and unsuccessful football career, then got, uh, a job in an advertising agency for 6 or 8 months. I kind of thought there is a way to partner with people who are experts in their field, and then I could do whatever they didn't want to do.

Josh: That was basically a good employee.

Fergus: It was the premise. No, I was a— no, no, no.

Josh: Was that part of the reason of like, I can't be an employee, I need a partner?

Fergus: It was a bit, yeah, because I, I started, I was selling for this, this advertising business, and, uh And I was, you know, I was at this salon and then the guy would change, you know, my boss would change my job. Oh, we don't want to sell anymore, we want you doing this. I was like, what? I don't want to do that. And he's like, I don't care, this is what's happening. And I was like, this is bullshit, like what? And then, and that's kind of what kickstarted me into thinking I've got to go do something by myself.

Tommy: Did he ever make you dye your hair?

Josh: Yeah, because we did make money. That's how that actually happened.

Tommy: Surprisingly, he's not thinking about leaving.

Fergus: Yeah, exactly. I used to run the blonde tips, the peroxide stuff. It's— I was a lot harder than that too.

Tommy: Yeah, it was a full head, but that's just—

Josh: that's been 6 months, has it?

Fergus: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh: It's done pretty well.

Fergus: How do you feel about it? I quite like it. Oh, you do? I'd consider getting it done again. Yeah, really?

Josh: We've got it done.

Fergus: You don't say that with a huge amount of vigor.

Josh: It was done, uh, by Rachel Vitullo, who works at Joey Scandizzo. It was— she's the number one colorist in Australia. Is that right?

Fergus: So yeah, in good hands. Good.

Josh: And so, um, looking at, uh, employees and how they operate and seeing the other side, so obviously the frustration that you had there versus now being on the other side of the coin running a business, what sort of empathy do you have for employees versus, uh, business owners?

Fergus: Yeah, good question. It is It's evolved over time is the honest answer. Um, when we have, we have sort of this blanket rule like, do whatever you want, just get the job done, right? Which in theory is great. In reality, and, and over time as our business has got bigger and, and we're in two countries now and all that sort of stuff, that, you know, part of me just like just turn up, do your work, go home, right? Like, there, there is the— but on the, on the dark days, I go, geez, it'd just be easier if just everyone was a bit robotic and just turned up, did the job, went home. But then that sucks the life out of the place, right? And on the good days, it's like, we want everyone to bring their absolute full self to life, uh, to work every day. And, and, you know, I'd like— we have more good days than bad days, but, um, that— and, and that's It's certainly changed over time. As a 22-year-old coming out and hiring our first employee, it was—

Josh: who was the first employee?

Fergus: A woman called Caroline McMillan. Um, yeah, what was it?

Tommy: What was her role?

Fergus: Uh, she, uh, she was a real, like, just— I think she was an account manager, I think was her title, but she was a real jack of all trades. She used to just— she used to keep the thing on the straight and narrow. It would have been screwed.

Josh: So the first hire was an account manager. So who's servicing those like, so you got the account manager who's bringing in the work or doing all that, then would you have freelancers? Is that the idea at the start?

Fergus: Yeah, so we had, um, so this was, uh, the first employee was an, was an advertising business, and, uh, and the guy I partnered with was a very, very good high-end creative, creative guy. And, uh, and so he was the drawcard for a lot of the work. He'd deliver a lot of the top-end creative, and then a lot of the execution would then bring people in. Learned over the journey to go and do that. But, um, you need, you know, our business, any business, it is only as good as the people within it. And, and the people within it are only good if they believe in what you're doing and they believe that, you know, they, they can grow themselves and achieve themselves. Like, it always gives me the shits when there's all this talk about, um, you know, millennials, you know, they don't stick it out long enough, they don't do it. And now That's true, they don't. But why should they? You know, like, it's part of me. So we've got a, um, we've got an average tenure, average tenure. People stay below 30, stay kind of 3 years, which is fairly good. Above 30, they stay a little bit longer. Generally, people with kids don't chop and change as much. Um, You know, and our premise is, well, you wouldn't want them staying more than 5 years, generally speaking, right? Now we have some that do and they're terrific, and they— and when they do and they continue to evolve with the business, they're bang on, right? That's what you want, lifers. Um, but you know, a lot of the time you don't get that, but nor should you. Like, it's this thing about, you know, people are— people— there's no loyalty anymore. There's no— you know, this loyalty is just It's bullshit, right? Like, what are they loyal to you for? Because you employed them and then paid them a wage and they delivered the work. And especially in AaronStream, people bust their ass, right? Like, they really work. You get your pound of flesh out of them. And so this— unless the company can continue to provide opportunities for them to grow, earn more, develop a bigger life, why, you know, why, why is that a terrible thing that they then leave after it, after a 3-year period or whatever, you know?

Tommy: And that We've served their part of the— your part in their journey to do whatever they want.

Fergus: And they've served their part in our journey, right? And that's the gig and that's how it works. And we find, you know, that's, it's, that's a good part of life, right? Like, and it just, it's one of these things that just, you know, it's generally old blokes who talk about it and say, you know, there's, they've got no values because they just chop and change their jobs and stuff like that. It's like, mate, Join the real world. Like, yeah, you know, people are going to evolve and the reality is you can't keep paying staff more. You just can't, right? You'd love to, you'd love to give people a pay rise every second year and you'd give them meaningful pay rises, but you just can't in a business. So they have to go somewhere else and, you know, they shouldn't have to wait 20 years to be able to go and get the next evolution of their life.

Tommy: Yeah, I'm always really impressed when I see or hear about businesses that have formulated the business plan before they've even started. So Nick Stone from Bluestone Lane, he developed the business concept, the idea, I think at business school, was it?

Josh: When he was still, he was still doing the investment banking and stuff. And it wasn't until it was really taking off that he's like, oh shit, I probably should.

Fergus: Well, there's two different types. I mean, yeah, you guys are on an interesting storey yourself. So it's interesting in the way you guys are doing it, but I think there's two different types of operators. There's guys like Stonie who I know from school days and footy days, very disciplined, very intellectual, uh, great planner, great strategy guy. You know, he's pretty hardcore, Stonie, in the way, in the way he operates, in his discipline, right? And he's very successful and he's very good. And then, and I know a number of guys like that. Then there's guys like me and a number of guys that just had none of that, you know, they just thought shit, I'll just do— I'll start something, I'll sell something to someone, and then I'll sell something else, and then the thing will keep going.

Josh: Was it a job at the start? Were you just creating a job for yourself at the start, or did you always have the vision that it was going to be this bigger thing?

Fergus: Uh, yeah, do you know what, I don't know, I don't know if I can remember. Is the honest answer, like, I think initially it was just, I just want to go and do something for myself. Um, but I, I think I always thought I think I always thought that we were gonna— I was gonna build a business, you know.

Josh: I mean, where does that come from? Is it from families or reading books? Is it—

Fergus: yeah, I don't know, is the honest answer. My, my, my old man— so I've been very lucky to work with my, my old man and my brother for pretty much the entirety of Bastion. Um, my old man's been my mentor and taught me everything I know and, and, um, has been a great advisor to me over the journey. Jack, my brother, is the CEO of all of our Australian businesses, is an exceptional operator in, and we really complement each other very well. He works on the clients, he deals with all the CEOs of our agencies, he runs the operations of the business. I look at our expansion, our growth, our future stuff.

Tommy: Well, it's great to have a CEO that you can actually give a dead arm to and not get arrested because it's your bro.

Fergus: Yeah, that's right. And so we've been very lucky in that. So I've learned a huge amount off those guys. And then also the the people that come into our business. And, you know, these are experienced people, right, that are running their own business and much more experienced than I am, and— or certainly I was. And then they, you know, I've learned a lot off them over the journey. So it's been— I've been quite lucky in that regard. I've always had really good people around me. And then we've had great advisors, you know, we've had very high-profile advisors, we've had great industry guys, we've had, we've had people around us that we can learn a lot from, which has been vital, you know, in our success.

Josh: It seems like you've got a comfortability with failure and pointing out your flaws. It was interesting, we were talking to Nick Stoner off air, talking about like, what does failure look like? He's like, failure is not an option, right? And it's very kind. It was like, we were— was it Nick Raywald that we were doing stuff at Bond Street Dental? And I was like, oh, find a— remember, we're trying to get him to smile. So remember a happy moment before he's like, I was not happy or something.

Tommy: You're on the ground, on the ground, fucking, you know, you're on it.

Josh: And I was like, oh, there's something in this competitive sportsmanship type of stuff that's pretty intense. It seems like you probably have a bit of a different perspective.

Fergus: I'm, I am very— I don't know if I'm okay with failure, but it is a big part of life.

Josh: Yeah.

Fergus: And it's, and, and it's a big part of my life. They're in our kitchen. There is a, a quote by JFK that says, that says, you know, only those who fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. Right. And then there's another great quote by Winston Churchill that says success is the ability to move from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm. You know, and that is so true. Now, I think I was exceptionally lucky because I was a first-round draught pick out of school. I was meant to be a bloody very good centre forward. I had a whole bunch of injuries. I was too slow, and my football career failed miserably. And it failed on a very public stage, right? So in Adelaide, you know, it was a reasonable profile around me in Adelaide, and, and people really let me know about how much I'd let them down and the supporters down and the club down. You know, as I'm walking down the street in Adelaide, or as I'm playing in the Essendon Grand Final with 40,000 people, I knew all about it. Started South Australia, not happy with me.

Tommy: There was no social media as heavy as it is now. Imagine that.

Fergus: Oh, that would have been bizarre.

Tommy: Well, look at Jack Watts. He's, you know, getting thumped.

Fergus: Yeah, he's not your brother.

Tommy: The footy player. Yeah, same name, Jack.

Josh: I don't know footy talk.

Tommy: Number 1 draught pick, Melbourne.

Fergus: But all that sort of stuff happened. And so having the failure in my footy career, it was meant to be my, you know, it was meant to be my life, right? Um, it was a very public big failure that affected my life and completely changed it all by the age of 21, 22.

Josh: So did you have to reframe? Were you someone who had that relationship with failure, or did you have to purely—

Fergus: I never had that until that moment, right? Until then, young, I was like, shit, I was meant to be 35 at this point and I'm now 21, and what the hell am I going to do? And but it, you know, that I kind of all sat— I mean, it was a very traumatic experience in my footy career, but it all, um, you've got to be okay with the failure. And we have failed many, many, many times in our business, and I'm really cool with that. Like, who taught you that? Uh, I don't know, probably the answer is probably my family. Um, but I think it just comes quite naturally to me. Like, I was, I was listening to a podcast a few years ago because I always, because I was sort of reflecting on this at the moment and I thought maybe it's a bit screwy in the head because I can fail and then like forget about it the next— well, not forget about it, but I'm like psychopathic. I can be like, that happened, whatever, move on, right? Take what you need to learn and get out. And I was listening to a thing with Richard Branson a few years ago and he was taught, they were talking about all the Virgin stuff that they had that failed and, uh, and he— they asked him a question like, do you ever think about it? He goes, no. He goes, the second we decide, like, the second that meeting happens, we decide, right, we're shutting down Virgin Brides, because I'll never think about it again.

Josh: Virgin Brides, exactly.

Fergus: I think they sold.

Tommy: But is that, is that a, is that a building the muscle of being able to deal with failure, or is it a muscle to be able to push failure to the side You know, like, is it— is it building? Is that actually resilience, or is it some kind of, um, you know, laser beam focus that nothing outside of my periphery doesn't matter?

Fergus: Uh, it's both. It's— that's as dismissive as I could potentially sound by saying it, and, and, and whatever. It is hurtful in every way. Every time something fails, right? We went to London And we had 2 good years in London. We had 1 year that was a bad year in London. Like, it's painful, right? Every time we've had a business that hasn't worked, there's this flow-on effect. People lose their jobs. It is emotionally painful and hurtful in every way possible, right? And that's— and, you know, that can't be dismissed. At the same time if you don't try and you don't open yourself up to that pain, you'll never actually succeed. Because we've had so many more successes than we have failures. But the failures that are maybe 2, 3, 4 significant ones, they're the ones that hurt. They're the ones that put lines on your face, right? They're the ones that really, you know, they put some, put some hate on you in, in your, uh, in your heart. But they're also the baseline that allows you to then build a bigger business. We're now in America, we've got 40-odd staff in America, we've got a good business over there that's really going very well, and we wouldn't have done that without the failure in the UK. So you've got to be able to do that, but you've also got to be wired a bit that you can just let it— you can move past it, because if you can't move past it, a lot of people don't, you'll never get back.

Tommy: Maybe there's something in failing big first when you're young because if you start failing small and then you start moving away, because failure is failure, you feel shit about it. And so it's— there could be a resilience in failing big. Not saying go and bloody take out—

Josh: well, yeah, there's diminishing returns in regards to how sad you can feel. So if you're going to feel sad on the small stuff, might as well go for the big stuff and feel equally as sad.

Tommy: Yeah, well, if we don't— yeah, that's the thing, it's like if we don't give it a real red-hot crack, yeah, just failing with a little crack. Yeah, I definitely have. I've had a bunch of different businesses and I still, I still don't think we've found the, the model or the thing. We're still working on our vision in ways that we almost know how we know our vision, but we, we don't know yet how to get there with what we're doing.

Josh: Because you've got short-term and long-term and sometimes there's short-term opportunities that could create sort of a sustainable business, but it's not necessarily the exact business you want to create. But I was on, um, quitting because I was thinking about like what it takes to— like, at what point do you quit? And you were talking on another podcast about the going into a room knowing that it was done and they were going to sort of let you go in the footy thing. I mean, you had it. It's the classic case of like Am I going to quit or am I going to get fired? Have you built the resilience to quit, or do you, do you wait until you're backed into a corner?

Fergus: It's a good question. I would say, uh, in business you have to quit early because you can lose big. Um, but it's, it's not— so, so you have to decide in, in business because there's a whole you can't string people out because there's other people involved generally in business. So you can't string people out, you've got to do the right thing by them. And generally the right thing by them is calling something early. And then there is obviously the financial exposure as well.

Josh: If you let a thing go insolvent, you have to—

Fergus: yeah, exactly. As soon as— if you keep letting— you know, you don't want to make the decision, it might come good next month, or it might come good the month after, and then there's a bigger and bigger hole. And the ones where I've made bad decisions are the ones where I've tried to do the right— I've tried to be nice and I've tried to be, you know, we'll keep that going. Yeah, the impact of that's too hard. And then, you know, ultimately you're trying to be— trying to be nice is different from trying to do the right thing.

Tommy: Is it— have you moved away from having a hard conversation in those times? Because I think I would probably go to the nice or the the thing that is a bit more comfy, then go, fuck, I know I need to have this hard convo, but I just hold off a little bit longer.

Fergus: That's, that's when I've done it badly.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah.

Fergus: When I've done it well, um, is have the hard conversation immediately, straight away. And I'm kind of comfortable in that environment, um, being able to say that and give direct advice, whether it's to my friends or my work colleagues and staff or anyone. I'm very happy to give that you know, direct advice to you, my thoughts or whatever as it goes. So that's a— it's a really important component of doing that. And again, people, if you live your life by saying trying to do the right thing, and the right thing is distinctly different from being nice, because the right thing to individuals helps an individual get better, it helps an individual improve, it helps them learn in their life. People are just nice all the time, there's no challenge, there's no growth, there's no evolution. And that, that, that is what ultimately provides a lack of leadership, and it provides a lack of direction, and no one gets anything out of that.

Josh: What about short-term versus long-term? So there could be the right thing to do now that could potentially be the wrong thing to do in the future. So for instance, like businesses this time of year, cash flow, people stop you know, doing work and all that sort of thing, trying to work out, like Tommy and I working out, how do we make sure that December and January looks good and into Feb while still maintaining our overarching vision of what we want 2020 to be?

Fergus: Well, it's a good question, and a lot of people get caught up on the overarching vision. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying revenue's light December and Jan because everyone's away. We need to do a couple of things December and January that just allow us to get through this period and then we'll get back on track, right? There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The amount of people I've seen, businesses that fail because they want to stick so true to that vision and that direction they've got. 6 months later they're out of business because that vision or that direction didn't work. Like there's just there's just nothing. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but unless other people are going to buy it and they're going to engage with it, it's not worth anything right now. You've got to offset that with, you know, the Henry Ford quote that if you ask people what they wanted, they'd say faster horses. They didn't know they wanted cars. So you've got to— it's same with, you know, the great creators of, of our time are those who have, who have led industries, led product, led people, or led society into areas that the society didn't know they needed to be in, and the leader took them there. You know, Nelson Mandela is a great leader in taking a society where they needed to be, not where they were. And that's my, that's my big knock on leadership generally in, in the world, whether that's in politics or whether that's in business, is there's so much polling done I'm going to ask you what you want. I'm going to ask you what you want, and, and I'm going to ask everyone what they want, and I'm going to then act on what they want. Now, that's good to a certain extent, but you're the leader. The leader's job is to take a group that primarily is just trying to day to day just get through their lives and do what they do. You've been put in charge of business or society, of whatever, to be able to propel this thing forward. Great business leaders have vision and say, we are going here. Along the journey, we need to step off that path a little bit to ultimately get to where we need to get to, but this is where we're going. Great political leaders do the same thing. We are taking this society from where we are today to where we need to be, not necessarily where everyone wants to go. And we've seen that time and time and time again. The civil rights movement's the same. We've, you know, we've seen, we've seen those who have been afraid to act because of backlash or because of their perceived, you know, in business, especially in the creative industry, you know, we're selling out or we're doing those sort of things. Sometimes you've got to do what you need to do to get to ultimately where that vision is taking you and where you want to go.

Josh: When you've got all the sort of businesses within the business, is that how you see with Bastion? Is everyone running their own books or how does it? Yeah.

Fergus: So everyone's got their own entity, they run their own P&Ls.

Josh: And so if you are having a meeting with one of the CEOs or whatever within that sort of area and they've got a cash flow problem, how are you entering in as a leader? Does it, at that point, are you talking very specific tactics around that? Okay, how do we make it work now? Or is that the time to pull out the strategy and go and circle?

Fergus: Just to answer that question, there's some specificity around around things like cash flow or people management or any of these operational things in business. So we meet with the CEOs. I meet with the CEOs once a month. Jack deals with them on a day-to-day basis, helping them through all of those different issues that come up in business and all that different stuff. There is also, is also part of my job primarily to be able to pull out the strategy when appropriate, when we're going off course, and saying, hang on, let's not get distracted over here, let's stick with what we're doing because we know that works, and let's keep going. It's also my job to say, well, we're bang on the strategy, it all kind of works, is now the time to be able to do the next thing, right? It's now the time to be able to just push it out a little bit more because we've built a good baseline to be able to create an opportunity for growth. And that's, that's one of the good things about our about our group and the structure of our group is that it puts us in a position where the CEOs and the business operators can operate on the day-to-day, find the clients, deliver the work for the clients, look after the staff, execute each business's strategy. And then it's my job to say, right, how do we grow this thing by 100% year on year, not just 10%? And it's that balance that is a constant push and pull of when's the right time to do all that stuff.

Josh: So do you have shared services or are you Like, is everyone invoicing each other for time? How does that work?

Fergus: Yeah, there's a bit of that. We have shared services like finance, HR, like people and cultural recruitment, that sort of stuff, marketing, anything that everyone uses. So there's a centralised service around that that everyone sort of chips into. And then, but everyone operates on their own accord, right? And then there is some in invoicing to each other. But we find the best way to make everyone, or to get everyone working together, is to have as little of that as possible.

Josh: Why is that?

Fergus: Because you care more.

Josh: Yeah.

Fergus: Because if I care about you, I'm more likely to help you. And if you care about me, you're more likely to help me. And so creating a culture of people caring about each other and working as a team, that they generally give a shit about each other, then you are in a better position to be able to have a better working relationship. If I'm only helping you because I'm going to get a kickback from the work you win, it's, it's hollow.

Tommy: So for new businesses starting out, they've focused so hard on the vision to get it to a point where it's actually working. Once you get it to a point where it's working, is it a matter of like, have you guys found you're like, we're bunkering down now because we've got something that works, versus spending too much time on achieving a greater thing or expanding.

Fergus: Yeah, there's, there's a combination of that stuff. So businesses, like, for me, I, I am most comfortable when I'm starting new businesses, doing new things, creating new stuff, coming up with a new idea. That's my sweet spot. Now, we got to a point 3 years ago where that wasn't good anymore. Right? Because I used to do a different thing every second week, right? It was always a joke in the company that I'd come in and all of a sudden I had some other idea and we're going and doing that. Now that got us to where it got us to about 3 years ago. Then I kept going for another 2 years and made a shitload of mistakes.

Tommy: Yeah.

Fergus: And put a heap of pressure on the company, um, sucked a lot of cash out of the business, put a lot of resource pressure on the business. Because I was going, well, this has worked for 5, 6 years, I'll just keep doing it. And just not— that's just not how it works. Because just because it's worked for 5 or 6 years doesn't mean it's going to work for the next 5 or 6 years. So my greatest discipline now in what I do is do less. It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, is with a business now with 250 staff across 2 countries, um, our growth in Australia and how we're going to get, not just our growth, but how we're going to get fundamentally better at what we do is by more consistently doing the work we already do with the people that do it.

Josh: Is that a shift from the original? Because I guess from an outsider's perspective, you guys are building the mega agency sort of thing. And so you start the business, you're acquiring, you're building the mega agency. Is it a bit of a change of heart saying, oh fuck, like let's stop acquiring and let's just work?

Fergus: It is for me. Jack loves it.

Josh: Yeah. Right.

Fergus: Because Jack's wired differently. Because Jack just, he wants to run the business, right? Do the work, work with the CEOs, create an environment that is conducive to creating the best creative output and executing the best work. He just wants to get access to more clients, you know, be able to provide a better integrated solution. That's what he does. I want to go and acquire 10 more agencies and bolt them in and, you know, turn the thing into this behemoth. Now, so he was— he always, over the years that we were doing more and more and more, he was always like, yeah, um, okay, do you think maybe we should just chill out for a moment now? And, uh, and so this sits really well with him now, right? It, it sits fine with me because it's what's needed to be done, but it's not, it's not natural in my personality.

Tommy: Is it a holding back on being creative? Because I can imagine the guy's creative who's coming up with all these business ideas and wanting to go and do this, that, and the other.

Fergus: Yeah, it's, it's holding back on the, on the entrepreneurial thing to do something different, you know. What I'm like, should we start a strategic consulting firm? Should we have a legal department? Like, should we be selling— should we have a law firm? Like, you know, saying, well, why can't professional services expand into all professional services? Should we have an accounting firm?

Josh: You're gonna be GE by the end of it.

Fergus: Yeah, exactly right. That's, that's where I think. And then, and over that 2-year period where I say I put a lot of pressure on the business, just because, you know, I'm thinking like, right, more, what else can we do? And the reality is just the business just wasn't— it was fine when we were small, but it's, it's not when you're bigger. And so Why is that?

Josh: What happens when you get bigger?

Fergus: It is a little bit more— it's a bit harder to be nimble, right? Not like we're slow, we can change things on a dime. But it's a little bit— you got more— there's a lot more people involved. So you can't just start a legal firm like we used to and just have one going and that'd be fine. It'll work or it won't.

Josh: Are they siloed financially though? That it is, because I can see the excitement and it's like, well, fuck, start a law firm. If it doesn't work, it shits the bed and that just falls off. But then it—

Fergus: yeah, in theory, yes, it could all work fine, but it puts more pressure on their finance department because they've got to raise invoices, right? And they've got to engage with their fund, you know, like it puts more pressure on HR department because they've got to contract their staff now and stuff like that. 8 years ago, we didn't have contracts, right? We didn't have any of that sort of stuff. We're just like, it was different, right? And so there's just a reality. And also when you look at it from a business perspective, you say, well, where are we going to get bigger and better growth? Is it through starting a law firm? It's going to take 4 or 5 years to really get going and is not really part of what we do. And is there any synergies in being across sell clients and all those questions? Or is it just continue to get better at what we do currently? And are we going to get better exponential growth out of that? The answer is stick to your knitting and do what you do currently, right? It wasn't the answer 7 years ago. 7 years ago, the answer was do more, get more stuff in the pipe, because then we can create something that is unique. And we've done that in America. Um, you know, we've got 3 agencies in America, so it's a combination of both, right? And I'm not living over in America, I'm not the one driving it. Dax, our CEO over there, he's leading the strategies, doing it his way. He's an old military man, he's an F-16 fighter pilot, he's, he wants, you know, he's, he's a lot more like Stoney— create a strategy straight up and down, get going, get it done. Um, and so we do it that way because it works.

Josh: The, the US market versus the Australian market, I guess a lot of the time we can look at Australia and say we're fucking tiny and I guess even looking at the, the model that you're doing, there's not like— I don't really know of anyone in Australia doing it in a significant way. What was the reality cheque arriving to the US or even London?

Fergus: US is— the US is a fascinating market. I love it. We lived over there for— but we stayed over there for 3 months, my wife and my little baby boy and I, um, a little while ago as we're getting getting it going. And I love the American market. We're based in Los Angeles. It's a great place.

Tommy: Horrible weather.

Josh: Well, they actually had rain like a week ago.

Tommy: That's sad.

Fergus: I was over there a few weeks ago and it was beautiful. I landed from New York. New York was -3 degrees, right? Absolutely deplorable. I get on the plane, land in LA, I get in there, sunshine, it's 32 degrees.

Josh: Is it Orange County that you're— but we're about to—

Fergus: we've got two offices. We've got one in Irvine, which is in Orange County. We've got another in Highland Park, which is downtown LA. And I get in there and I said to the woman that runs their research for him, I said, geez, I love coming to LA, like the weather's beautiful. She goes, oh, tomorrow it's not great tomorrow. I said, what? She goes, oh, it's not great tomorrow. It's 24 degrees. That's not great. But yeah, the US market is massive. If we created the same business, if we were American creating the same business in America in exactly the same way, same story, it's 3 times the size, right? Budgets are bigger, brands are bigger, population size is bigger. All that sort of stuff. Talent here is exceptional. Talent in Australia— not talent in America is exceptional as well.

Josh: About work ethic, because I always feel like in the US, like bums on seats, longer hours, all that sort of thing.

Fergus: Different rules. Yeah, they don't have the annual leave rules. It's a different way of operating. I don't see a massive difference in work ethic or people wanting to be engaged or any of that sort of stuff. I don't really see a huge difference in the way anyone operates, to be honest. I think the talent over there is good. I think the talent over here is very— is, is good. It's on an equal part. It's not like the US talent is miles ahead of the Australian talent or anything like that. Australian talent is top end, right? The way Australian businesses operate is top end. And the only difference is in America they're talking about you know, businesses that you've never heard of that are small to medium-sized companies that are still $400 million businesses, right, with huge marketing budgets. Here you deal with your top tier and yeah, there's a big gap.

Tommy: The pie is so much bigger over there in every regard. Yeah, yeah, that's serving size, everything.

Fergus: That's the thing that makes a difference. I spend 2 weeks there every 8 weeks.

Josh: Have you been to Cheesecake Factory?

Fergus: You know what I have?

Tommy: Yeah, I mean, it's nothing to really—

Josh: I don't know why I was just thinking of it. It was just like size-wise.

Tommy: Oh yeah, you get the point. So when you—

Josh: just moving straight on.

Tommy: We went there for Mr. 97's birthday.

Josh: Yeah, we went there for 97, but I'd watched Game Changers. I'd gone vegetarian for like all the time that we were there.

Fergus: And you went to the Cheesecake Factory.

Josh: Yeah, but they couldn't do my favourite like grande burrito veggie. So I had to have—

Tommy: it came out as a burrito. I've had it for this long.

Josh: Yeah.

Fergus: You know, I think at the Cheesecake Factory, one of their marketing initiatives is their menu. I think, uh, this is not a fact, but I, I think if I recall a conference I was at, they've got some exorbitant amount of chicken dishes on there. Yeah, like it's 100 chicken dishes or something, like it's a huge amount of chicken dishes, um, that's on their menu and it's a big part of their attraction.

Josh: Yeah, I'm glad you leaned into the Cheesecake Factory.

Tommy: Uh, which Cheesecake Factory?

Fergus: If you're gonna stay on it.

Tommy: We went to the one on Third in Santa Monica. That was quite good.

Josh: That's quite all right.

Tommy: Rooftop bar.

Fergus: I went to the one in Pasadena.

Tommy: We got to cheque that out. So when you go over, say you acquired these new businesses, what's your role as a chairman of the business coming into these new— they're already established and you sort of rebranding or putting your stamp on them. What's the day-to-day look like? For coming into a business that already exists.

Josh: And was that with the US? Was it an existing company that you put sort of the Bastion logos on?

Fergus: The answer to that question is we started with just Dax over there.

Josh: Yeah.

Fergus: And then his role was to go find these agents. Okay. So we acquired the agents.

Tommy: The day-to-day for those, for coming in to go as the founder of a company. So when it gets to this level, it's a different sort of activity that you have to engage with each day. Yeah. So for you personally. Okay.

Fergus: For me personally, For me personally, it's different. So I used to find every acquisition, I used to do every deal, I used to lead the integration and all that. Now I don't really do any of that. Now Dax, so we won't make any more acquisitions in the Australian market for the foreseeable future. In the US market, Dax is out there finding the acquisitions. When he's got one that says, yep, we're exchanging financials, we're looking at putting a deal together, he likes the guy, all that sort of stuff. I go over there, I meet them, I basically, I give the tick of approval on the deal. All right. And I, this kind of my kind of skill is being able to put a deal together fairly well. So I kind of get, we have a baseline deal that we operate on, but then I kind of get in with a bit of the creativity on the deal. So I help with that. I help, I kind of give the tick of approval that they're the right kind of person, all that sort of stuff.

Tommy: Are you basing it on the values of the Australian operation and No, based on the values of the—

Fergus: I know what's worked here, but what works here doesn't actually work here, right? So basing it on the values of that, how they work together, it's— but it's good to have an external, a half external person, um, because Dax is driving every day, day in, day out, meeting these guys, finding them, and he wants to get them done. So I have to have the discipline to be able to be at arm's length of that and go, I know you want to get that done, but Hey, you're not the right guy.

Tommy: Is it the old you, like the one that wanted to expand? Is that what you're seeing?

Fergus: Well, it's a bit like that, but it's also the same as if any business, you know, like every time we hire an individual, a staff member into the company, you know, if you're the general manager of one of our businesses and you need, you know, 2 more staff members, for the period that you don't have those staff members, you're hugely overworked, right? It's stressful, it's painful, it's horrible. So half the time you get to a point where it's like, anyone will do, right? Because my life's unbearable at the moment because I'm doing the job of 3 people, so anyone will do. Now it gives you like 2 weeks of, of relief, and then after that it's even more painful because then you realise they're not right for the job and all that sort of stuff. So we always make sure we've got some objective view of people that aren't involved or aren't impacted by whether you hire that person or not to be able to go So less emotional or less trying to fix their less short-term problem. Yeah, exactly. And so that's the same, same in the US, right? So, so if Dax is out there doing it, he wants to build his business, right? He wants to go from 40 staff to 70 staff and be able to kind of grow the thing and do what he does, which I absolutely want to do as well. And we're absolutely aligned in that. At the end of the day, I'm me and my family. We take the risk on the money. So So there's that objective view to say, you know, every time we do one, if we get it wrong, we get it really wrong because it's not small stuff, right? Like it's bigger stuff now. And so no more Cheesecake Factory. So that's, that's a big, that's a big crossover. Yeah.

Josh: What's the deal with profit with these types of things? Like at this stage of your business when you're bringing in these other companies like how far along before you actually see dividends and all that sort of thing within a business?

Fergus: For us it's different because it takes us 3 or 4 years to get a return out of any acquisition. So we don't see anything out of probably 3 or 4 years. We have a policy with our subsidiary, the guy or the person that we acquired the business from, we acquire 80% of the business generally. And then they get a dividend distribution. So service businesses should be profitable from day one. There should be no lack of profitability because as I said, there's no capital, major capital expense that'll stop that profitability. So they should be profitable. Agency should run profit, should never be shied away from. There's a lot of, in a lot of businesses, especially service business, people don't like to talk about money. They don't like to talk about profit like it's a bad thing.

Tommy: What do you think it is? Why? Do you think that is?

Fergus: I think it's a lack of education around how business works. Business owners don't mind talking about that, but a vast majority of everyone else really kind of struggle to talk about that. The reality is if a business doesn't make profit, then you're— then the staff's livelihoods are in jeopardy. And everyone's, you know, the reality is with 250-odd employees, we pay a lot of mortgages, we feed a lot of kids, we turn a lot of lights on, and that is a huge responsibility. Responsibility that, that we as the major shareholders own in the company, right? And that is a— it's a huge thing that sits on my shoulders and our shoulders every day, and it's not something we take lightly. That if I employ you, that's a commitment I've made to you that I'm going to keep paying your wage, and so you can then feed your kids and you can pay your rent and you can do whatever else you need to do, and in turn you'll deliver the work. If we're not running a profitable business, we don't have the discipline around that, your job's in jeopardy, which means your family's in jeopardy, which means, you know, if you lose your job, then you've got rent issues, you've got, you know, putting food on the table, all the other stuff that goes with that. So it's just a reality of life that you just need— businesses need to be profitable. If they're not, they affect everyone in there. Um, and so you should never run away from it.

Josh: The complexities of this style of structure, does it require extra levels of consideration around taxation and all that sort of stuff, or is it fairly easy?

Fergus: The honest answer is you're going to have to ask our CFO. But the very layman answer is not too much. You get hit with a bigger business, you get sort of some larger employment tax and some other stuff like that. But we run consolidated books or we run consolidated cash flows and things like that. Helps a bit. It becomes a bit more painful at the end of the year because we've got to run 15 tax returns and all that sort of stuff. So our finance department gets hit a bit with a multiple entity structure. But it's not too bad. Our CFO will tell you that, you know, it's come tax time, it's a real pain in the ass, which it is. But at the end of the day, it also allows us to engage with all of our different subsidiary shareholders in a pretty unique way.

Josh: You talk about people shying away from making money. I think that people can have a bit of a complex when it comes to sales and generating sales and finding leads.

Fergus: What's your perspective on that? Yeah, I still can't get my head around that. Because they do. The amount of people that say, yeah, I don't sell, I don't— okay, really? Well, you, you know, then you have— you are limited in your career. Like, unless you are creative and you're purely a creative, or you're, you know, you're a very specialist person, of which there's not many of them, you're limited. If you can't grow a client and, and find a way to solve clients' problems, which is all it is. Selling is not—

Josh: is it the reframing? Is people— are people looking at sales the wrong way?

Fergus: Yeah, it's like they're trying to sell you— if I'm trying to sell you this glass, right, and you don't want the glass because you've got a glass, then it's annoying. If you're thirsty, yeah, I'm trying to sell you a glass and water. Yeah, well, I'm providing you a service, right? And that's the way it works. If you're, if you're a, um, you know, the cliché used car salesman. If you're a used car salesman trying to sell them a car that doesn't work to someone that doesn't really need a car, then yeah, you're a slimeball, right? That's no good. If you're selling a car that works for a good price to someone that doesn't have a car who needs a car, well, you, you're making their life better, right?

Tommy: So is it the people that don't, that say I don't sell, they're not clear on the value that they personally bring to the equation.

Fergus: They're not clear on that, and then they're not clear on the baseline of what we act— we or the business, any business actually does, right? Like, um, the, the, our clients engage us because they need the work done, right? They need to see— they need to sell more cars, more soft drink, more beer, more whatever. Um, so they engage us to, to market their wares so they can sell more service. And they engage a number of agencies to do a number of things. Now, if they can get it streamlined in one place, they can get better work, and we can provide a solution that sells more of their product. That's what they want. So why would we hold back? We're actually doing a disservice. If I know that I can provide a service to you that is of value, that can potentially provide you with more sales, but I don't tell you about it because I'm scared of the sell, I'm doing you a disservice, right? And that, that's, and that is what business is. Business is not created out of people that don't want anything. Business is created— these microphones that we're talking on, you know, or the new iPhone that I'm getting today that I'm all excited about, that costs me $1,000, uh, the XS. Okay, it's not the brand new one, it's a different one.

Josh: That's okay.

Tommy: He got the new one.

Josh: I got the new wide angle. Yeah.

Fergus: With the 3-camera thing.

Josh: Yeah. I haven't got a case for it yet.

Fergus: I've had a whole thing about my phone recently.

Josh: Yeah, it's great.

Fergus: Right.

Tommy: He's going to now want that.

Josh: Fuck, it feels nice, does it?

Fergus: For those on the camera, look how excited he is. He's so excited by this, right? For those listening, he's got a big grin on his face.

Tommy: He's really excited.

Fergus: Now, if the sales guy didn't sell you the right phone, didn't, you know, get this on you, you wouldn't feel how you feel.

Josh: I saw the value. Give me back my phone. No, the value is in like, I'm like, I've got a better camera. So I can be a better creator. So I've created the story, right?

Fergus: And that's, that's, that's what it is. It's like, that's, that's what business is. Business is about creating a product or a service that can enhance someone else's life. And that in B2B, that someone else is the CEO, the marketing director, the staff of that company, that ultimately if that car company, whoever sells more cars, then that's better for everyone. So we provide a service that betters them. If it's phones, then they provide a service where you, you can now operate the way you operate on your phone. And you're ex— the beautiful thing that Apple has done is you've created— it's a bloody fashion accessory, right? You're super juiced about it, um, that, that you've got this fashion accessory. Um, that, that's what business is. And anyone that shies away from that, thinks they're just there to do the work they're asked to do, doesn't understand what, how business is created.

Tommy: For smaller operations that, you know, set out to create a business, they think they want to build the brand, but in essence what that brand is, is essentially their service. And more specifically to service-based businesses, less products. So a lot of young people starting a video production company, it's really just them, right, for the early days. What was the distinction with you guys in those early days where you actually saw it as a brand play, or were you even thinking build the brand, it's less personally to me?

Fergus: We didn't think that for years. So we had separate brands and we wanted everyone to work together, uh, because it's a storey we don't have time for here, but there was a distinct moment where we put 3 agencies together, they pitched on work and they won it. And like, I was like, well, that works, right? So that was kind of it. And then, and we didn't rebrand to Bastion Collective where everything had a unified brand and we had the, you know, all the way it works. Not long ago, 4 years ago maybe, like, if that. Like, it was really, um, we, we really didn't push that because we didn't really understand it. We didn't, which is weird coming from a brand and marketing company. But we, because I think most holding companies in the marketing space, they do run independent brands. So we thought, well, everyone can run their own independent brand. But the minute we stopped doing that, that was the minute when we thought, well, we're actually unique in what we do now in our ability to provide a single brand integrated service.

Josh: Well, you have to be in the market to understand where you fit to then evolve and to do all that sort of thing.

Fergus: That's right. It was an evolution. And we, for a long time, I'd like to think we're out of the kids stage now, but for a long time we were kids just trying to figure it out. And, you know, now I think, I think vaguely we know what we're doing, but we were figuring out what is the best way. And there's one of the things about our business that I think has been one of our strengths is we're not settled with any legacy issue ever. I'm not, you know, if I had worked in the holding companies or in a marketing services world for a decade and then left and started my own business, I would have an opinion on how the market operates, what it's missing, and what I should create to fill that void. I was 22, barely had a job before, so I didn't know any of that.

Josh: Yeah.

Fergus: So I just created— we just created whatever the client wanted. And so the client says, you guys do that. We then— we never went, yeah, we can do that, because half the time we didn't even know what it was, right? So then we'd go, shit, all right, leave that one with us. We go and ask someone, how do we do that? We find someone who's an expert in doing that. We'd say, right, we can't do it, but we've pulled them in and they can deliver it. And, and so we, we, everything we created was about creating exactly for what the client want and evolving that without any of the bullshit or any of the red tape that goes with it. And that's been a revolution.

Josh: I love how open you are to talk about this stuff because I think that some people don't go there and they sort of hold their cards close. But I think sharing all of this is going to help so many people. I know that specifically I've got people in my mind that would absolutely love what you've spoken about today.

Fergus: Do you know, it's funny because I never used to have any problem saying anything when I was— when the business was smaller and we didn't have anything to lose.

Josh: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

Fergus: Now I was, I was talking about someone about this the other day because I was in an interview and, um, they said something similar. And always in the back of my mind now as I'm talking, I'm like, shit, should I be saying this? Is this too open or is this— and then quickly I go, well, it's just the truth, so I'm not gonna— I'm not gonna It's your—

Josh: you can tell it's your operating system, right?

Fergus: It just is what it is, right? It's the truth. But the bigger you get, the more you've got to lose, the more scared you are of failing, which means the more kind of barriers you put up around yourself. And, uh, and then you become less authentic and you become dull, you know. And, and I suppose your listeners might be the, uh, the judge of this on the dull factor, but, um, but he, uh You know, it's— I just think it— you lose, you lose a bit of your soul if you're constantly guarded about what you say. This is it, warts and all. We'll tell you anything you want to know because we've had some good times, we've had some bad times, and we've had more good times than we have bad times. And reality is we've built a business, the largest independent in the country, and we're building a business in America, and we're doing some good stuff, right? And we're only doing that because we've been able to attract brilliant people into our organization. That can create something that is significantly better than anything I or Jack could have created by ourselves at all.

Tommy: I think we're beyond the time of showing just the polished, you know, well-executed version. It's the learnings that come from all of the mistakes, and that's the only way you get there.

Josh: Well, if you do that, if you, if you show everything as shiny when it's not necessarily shiny, then when you actually do have wins, you can't properly celebrate them because you've been communicating it the whole time.

Tommy: Just quickly, because I know, what about on a personal level? I think when someone asks you, how you going? You say, yeah, I'm great. I probably say that when I'm not doing great, and it's a thing that it's like, it's almost like to stop that interaction, or it's just what culturally everyone does.

Fergus: It's— I agree. It's that my wife always, she says to me every day, how are you? Stop asking me that. Like, it's this, you know, and she's like, I'm genuinely interested. I'm like, you are not. You're like, you know, you're just— it's just this thing, this habit that comes off the tongue, right? And it's, yeah, hey, how are you? Good, great. Let's get into what we're actually talking about.

Tommy: But yeah, it's the crutch question. But how do you personally, someone who has a lot of responsibility, how do you face that when you're not feeling great?

Fergus: Yeah, well, I lie a lot. I think it's great.

Josh: Thanks.

Fergus: I think, yeah, good.

Tommy: Thanks.

Fergus: Yeah, I think you go, yeah, I'm great, I'm flying, you know, when you're potentially not. Because you'd love to be honest the whole time. And to my friends and other people, I am honest. But, you know, for anyone I'm just on an off conversation with, but it's difficult. It's difficult. What do you say? I'm really battling, mate, actually.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: I don't know what people need. I guess like when someone says, how are you? What are they seeking as well? Because I think that's the interesting thing, which is like, if like it's because sometimes I get caught, you know, the off occasion, I feel like, you know, one every 10 years. You do a how are you or whatever, and it's to like the person who's working at the checkout or whatever, and they tell you their life story. Yeah, fuck, exactly.

Fergus: It's exactly right, because if you go, they go, how are you? And you go, oh man, I'm— oh, she's about another fight with the missus. Oh shit. Yeah, like, oh fuck, really? Are we talking about that for the next 15 minutes? Like, that's— and that, you know, it's a, it's a challenge. That's why, you know, hopefully, um, everyone in their lives has got some really good friends around them. I've been very blessed that I've got great friends, I've got a great family, I've got an amazing wife and, and a young son, and I've got a great support network around me of people that I can be honest with and I can be very true with, um, and share things. Because as a business owner, anyone out there that's a business owner knows that it's not always great, you know. And, and so you go through that and you need those great people around you. I've been very blessed that I do have those people around me. And, and so most of the time I can just go, yeah, man, I'm great.

Josh: Well, next year let's, let's do another episode from the Cheesecake Factory.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Business and burritos.

Fergus: I like that.

Josh: That'd be fun.

Tommy: Oh yeah, we'll probably be back over in LA.

Josh: Yeah. End of the year or something. Anyway, Fergus, thanks so much for being on the show.

Fergus: Guys, cheers.

Josh: It's The Daily Talk Show. hi@thedailytalkshow.com is the email address. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow.

Tommy: See you guys.