Quad Lock's Rob Ward On Trust And Learning

Rob: The Daily Talk Show.

Josh: It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 609.

Tommy: Back in the studio, Rob Ward.

Josh: First time actually in the studio.

Rob: Yeah, first time.

Tommy: Yeah, we were at your studio.

Rob: This is way different to the last time.

Tommy: We were in your boardroom. Yeah, there was no video cameras.

Rob: No, there was pests running in and out.

Josh: That's right, free coffee.

Tommy: No, that was—

Josh: we appreciate that.

Tommy: I thought he was calling us pests.

Rob: No, no, no, all the— everybody else.

Tommy: There was some photos taken, but no, it's good to have you back, mate. Good to be back after all these, all these episodes. It's, we've seen you since. Yeah, it hasn't just been a disconnect. How you going, mate? How you go?

Rob: Good, good. Things are good. Yeah, it's complicated but good.

Josh: Well, you were just talking about, so for people who don't know, you own Quad Lock. You're co-founder of Quad Lock, which is the phone case that you mount onto bikes and all that sort of shit.

Tommy: Look for blue. Yeah. And it's probably, there's a lot of black colours out there now.

Rob: Is there? Yeah, they're popular. Real popular. The blue pops. That's why we didn't do it until just recently.

Tommy: I actually sent you a screenshot of Kevin Hart's doco, and one of the guys in it has a Quad Lock.

Rob: Yeah.

Tommy: And you said— I was like so pumped to send it to you, like, mate, I'm not surprised where they pop up now. It was really anticlimactic. I thought I'd found something like, Rob's gonna love this.

Rob: I do love it, but yeah, they are absolutely everywhere.

Tommy: So I get that you weren't as excited as what I just said.

Rob: I don't know if— I think I shared on the storeys or something. Did you see Jonathan Pye? Yeah, I saw that. On YouTube and his big rant on Brexit and he's literally going to the camera and he's holding his Quad Lock and he's like, this is what's wrong with the world today. This is Brexit. And he's talking about social media and the media on your phone and all that.

Josh: But it looks like he's talking about—

Tommy: Oh, because he had a Quad Lock on.

Rob: Yeah, because he's got the Quad Lock on and you're just like, oh shit, this could be a massive PR feature.

Josh: I love—

Tommy: I mean, the success metric changes that gets you excited. I can imagine it does. Like for now it's not seeing it because it's mostly everywhere, but You know, for us it's going to the St. Kilda Festival and someone coming up and saying, Josh and Tommy, you guys are from the Daily Talk Show. What does it shift to when, for, you know, being so far into the journey?

Rob: And yeah, nah, to be honest, I think, you know, like the things you track as a business, like, you know, units, revenue growth, things like that, and that's all cool. But after looking at it for a long time, it just becomes another goal, another thing. And it's great when you hit it and everyone gets pumped and it's a good feeling of the success of that metric. Because when you are, inside your own office with just everyone who's working on Quad Lock and you're not out and about seeing it, doing it. That is the thing you've got to work with. But then when you, when you're on Instagram, you follow the hashtag and you see every day like hundreds of motorcycles and bikes going up with new people using it and things like that. You're like, wow. Then you walk out in the street and there's hundreds of them out there. And then you go to get a coffee and people got Quad Lock t-shirts on and they're like, hey, do you guys— hey, I need to get one of those. Where do they come from? Like, oh, you can come upstairs. We, we make them. We have them. Like, yeah, that then those kind of things still, like, you know, you sending through that thing, Jonathan Pye, like, you know, those things in the real world are still the things that make you go, oh shit, there's a lot of these things out there. Or you travel, go around the world and you see them in different cities and things like, you're like, yeah, okay, this is, this is a, this is a lot bigger than us now.

Josh: You're talking about goals. We're always talking here about like, we want a dashboard. We have this dream one day of having this.

Rob: That's correct, because you saw like our 6 dashboards.

Josh: Yeah, so What is like— so you do have all these TV screens that have all these graphs and shit. What are they actually measuring?

Rob: Just to impress people.

Josh: It's just a line going up. Yeah.

Rob: No, no, no. I think it was like probably 4 years ago now. I think we really started, you know, like we were, you know, us, we were pretty run and gun, shoot from the hip kind of operators when we started. But you sort of have to be, I think, at a point. And I think we're talking about before, long-term plans when you're still trying to figure things out are difficult because they can sort of push you into this place where it may not be the best to be. But after a while and you get more people on the team and you've got to sort of express a vision or try and express where we want to be or where you want to go. Like CP and I used to say things like, we've got to make something bigger than us. Like, sounds good, but it's not really. How do you act on that? Yeah.

Tommy: Were you saying things like, we want a $10 million a year business?

Rob: Not at this— not it. Nah, not, nah, not at the start. It was literally like, you know, we want to do something bigger than ourselves. Like, because some of our other businesses, some stuff you probably remember, just like the, the lasers and the 3D printers and all that kind of stuff, you're looking at, that's never going to get that much bigger than us kind of thing. So that was just a thing that we could say to ourselves, and it worked probably when there's one or two of us and maybe a couple of others, but it doesn't work when you've got more people who are really trying to pull those levers for you because it doesn't give them the— if I say that to someone, they don't go, okay, and they turn around and go to do something like, what do I do with that? What should I act on now? So I think with the revenue being a goal or no, with the goal of making something bigger than ourselves.

Tommy: Yeah.

Rob: Then you start breaking it down to maybe it's a revenue goal and even a revenue goal. I've found we did start with revenue goals, things like that. I've even found revenue goal can be the big picture goal sometimes, but it's not necessarily, it's hard to act on getting revenue that day in a certain way because what we can sort of pull levers to do is, yeah, get revenue, but a better metric is orders. How many people can get to buy a Quad Lock that day? That'll transfer into revenue, but it's easy to understand because we sell in 6, 7 different currencies. It's a hard thing to work out sometimes where if we can go, right, just say we want to do just like your figure, say you wanted to pretend we want to be $10 million, um, and go, okay, to do that, the thing that will make it easy for someone to act on something is if they understand to do that, to be there at this point in time, what do we have to do today? Because the thing with the goal is it's always so far away, and it's hard to sometimes put yourself in the position of going, what do I have to do today to hit that goal 365 days from now? So if you can go break that goal down to be, okay, we want to be at this number, it doesn't really matter the number by this time. How many orders a day would that look like? And you can't do the simple thing of just going, you know, it's 1,000 orders a day every day for the next 365 days or something like that because you're not going to be able to go to 1,000. But if you go, actually, we could get to 600 today and scale that up to 1,000 by the end of the year. And if we did that and then you go, what would it look like? It'll look like this many on this side, this many on this side, this many coming from B2B, this many from here. Then you end up with these finite numbers and the next day you can measure back to those numbers. You can make a plan and then you're at— it's these little wins. Like you can go and get a big order off someone, but it's just a little spike on the radar. It's like a big PR piece. You know, we used to chase PR and stuff like that a lot and it was good and it has a big spike and gets a whole heap of interest really quickly, but you can't repeat that. So it's kind of like, all right, if we're doing $200 on one website, What would it look like if we do 220 and we can chase 220 and we can start doing this to try and get that 200 to 220 orders a day? And 20 orders seems trivial, but over a year it starts to stack up and you do that on multiple websites plus in a few different marketplaces and all of a sudden you've got quite a substantial business. It's not as sexy as chasing one big PR piece, but the longevity of it and the things you learn along the way, I mean you can then go from 200 to $400 million.

Josh: What about revenue versus profit? How much are you looking at?

Rob: Yeah, that's super— it's— yeah, that's a big conversation right now. I don't know if you've seen the stuff that's happened recently with Casper in the US.

Tommy: It's a mattress company.

Josh: So they IPO'd, did they?

Rob: They IPO'd, yeah. So their last round of funding was at like $1.1 billion.

Josh: Wow, that's a lot of mattresses.

Rob: It's a lot of mattresses.

Josh: A lot of podcast advertising.

Rob: Yeah, but the thing is that $1.1 billion is done on the last round. That last round they wanted to IPO, I think at $1.25 billion because you want the evaluations go up every round you do.

Josh: Sure.

Rob: Once the numbers start getting out in the public, you look at it and you go, okay. And then people start realizing, shit, since Casper started, they would've been better off paying everybody like $140 to have a mattress than selling it for. And at that point you've got to an awesome brand maybe that's really good at losing money. I think I've read something like $67 million lost in the first 9 months of last year, something like that anyway. And it's not that they haven't done a great job with the brand and the business per se, but what it is is you've got this pressure as they've raised all this money that maybe this could have been a fantastic $100, $200 million business, but they need to be a unicorn for some reason. They're not a tech company. And all of a sudden you've got, it's like, you know, Captain Snooze trying to be a billion-dollar unicorn overnight. Like, it doesn't make sense, right? Yeah. They have disrupted the industry. They've done some cool stuff, right?

Josh: But the reason they've disrupted it is because they've created a false dichotomy based on selling mattresses that's where they're losing money every time.

Rob: It's true. And I think the thing is, I mean, it can make sense losing money on the first sale of a customer depending on your lifetime value. Maybe they don't have their lifetime value right. I think the problem is you're not buying a mattress every other week. Yeah.

Josh: So what is the lifetime value?

Rob: I don't know. They have a 10-year warranty on these things, so I don't know.

Josh: Just get it replaced all the time. Yeah. 97 would get one and get it replaced every year. Wet the bed, get it replaced.

Tommy: Well, they do the 100-day return. He'd get it in at 99.

Rob: But I think what's happened, right, this $1.25 billion valuation, they go to IPO, they do this bit of a roadshow. It turns out people are not loving their numbers. It goes down to $750 million and then it goes down to $500 million.

Tommy: I know.

Rob: And then they're doing an IPO at $500 million valuation. So overnight it's gone from $1.1 down to $500 million.

Josh: So who loses the money? So the people that lose the money are the last people that bought in.

Rob: But I suppose the people who have invested are just trying to hope that mom and dad investors buy an IPO and hold onto that and then they can sell some of their shares. They can sleep easy on a Casper. Well then the next thing is I think I checked it today and then the share price has slipped another 20% to like $9. So I don't know, it's now only worth probably $400 million. But this is the thing. So you can go, okay, it was valued at $1.1 billion and now it's $400 million. It was never worth $1.1 billion. Some people just put money into that valuation, but the market says no. And I think we're going to see more of that. So coming back to profitability, I think it's important because We're in a— we're way different to Casper. No one's put money into us. We're bootstrapped from the start. It's just CP and I as the two owners. To scale a company like Quad Lock, you need money. And could we scale it faster with a whole heap of cash? We definitely could have. But now doing it the way we've done it, we've got this pretty robust system. That works. I mean, if someone had given us $100 million when we first started, I wouldn't have been in a very good position to spend. I wouldn't know what I was doing.

Tommy: How many Google Homes would have you had?

Josh: More than the 15 you got right now.

Tommy: When do you think it's right to take cash?

Rob: I don't think— every business is different and everyone's doing a different thing. So the thing we did was try and build a business that could fund itself. And we're successful doing that. It's definitely not easy. It's a slower road. We've been doing this 8 years now, but the business model looks really good on paper and it is really good and it's provided great lifestyle for everyone there and we can continue to churn out results. Also, we're in the position where something like coronavirus coming up right now, we know we can weather storms because we've got a robust business model that's been built little bit by little bit. It's not that I mean, still people probably, you probably talk to people and they think it's an overnight success, but it's one of those things, overnight success took 8 years of blood, sweat, and tears to get here. You've seen the, probably the rise of Quad Lock over the years, Joss. But at the same time, if we were another kind of company that needed 20 developers to work on one thing for 12 months before you even get to market, like you have to, like we couldn't have, we couldn't afford to do that. Like, it's not doable. So we made decisions around our business, around our business model, of things that were doable for us with the resources we had. And I get there's other things out there that are just not that, and you have to raise money and you've got to get them to market in a different kind of way, and it's a longer journey to profitability. Um, so it just depends, uh, depends on the business, depends how fast you want to scale it, depends on what game you want to play. Like, one thing I think about is I've never spent any time chasing funds or chasing investors.

Tommy: It's a role in itself.

Rob: It becomes a full-time gig. Yeah. All that time I've spent chasing customers, trying to learn how to acquire customers, get customers, keep them. And so not one is better than the other. They're just two different things.

Josh: Do you think that viewpoint on not doing that? Has that served you, or has there been moments where that hasn't?

Rob: I think, I think, uh, it's simpler, but it's simpler if you can make it work, I suppose, because there's a lot of things that don't work. And a lot of things that, looking back, um, the one thing money would do if you had external funds is it'll buy you time, you know, buy you time to sort things out. We didn't necessarily always have that time, and it would let you do a bit more experimenting with things? Like, you know, when we do stuff, we gotta know it's gonna pay, so we do a little bit, then we'll do more. You could just do more things. Is that good? I don't know.

Josh: Well, it feels like you get to, um, actually the resistance and the tension allows you to build a good business based on chasing customers. Well, you don't do it for the business rather than chasing outside funding.

Rob: Totally, totally. And I think, I think it's also that for us early on, we weren't clued up in that sort of area of what that would look like. Chasing money, getting funding, doing a round, getting some goals, trying to hit them, trying to do another round like that. We weren't well educated around that. I mean, I'm not well educated at all anyway, so that doesn't— But especially around that, just for me, the simple thing of waking up and going, all right, I need to go get a whole heap of customers. To be able to make the next round of this product, to be able to fund the next part of the business, to be able to, you know, expand and grow and do everything organically, I suppose, is a better way of looking at it. It just made sense to us and we did it and it's been good and I wouldn't change it. But also, I— if I was to do it again, I would never not take money from someone if they were the right kind of partner or it made sense or anything like that.

Josh: So what about like personal finance versus business finance? How do you manage that? Having a business, thinking of things like dividends and paying and I guess having a return as an owner?

Rob: Yeah. Well, I think in the early days it was really good for CP and I that, and this is all stuff you find out in hindsight. I've heard horror storeys now, but it was good that we were in a very similar position when we started. Almost exact same position. Like, you know, we both gave up something good to go and do this. You know, we had good jobs, we both had savings, we both had— but we both did have a mortgage. We both had long-term girlfriends, now wives. We had a lot of things similar in our lives. So at the time, there was not that much friction around. We were just happy to let a lot of stuff ride, like not pay ourselves for, for a certain amount of time.

Josh: And even was that, that you didn't pay each other?

Rob: I think when we actually— because we had those other businesses running on the side of our main jobs, and then we quit our main job. Yeah, I mean, no, we even then were using most of that money to fund the other things we were doing. So we just effectively, we could almost experiment for free because we were doing other stuff that was just effort, not really that much cash. We put a little bit in the start, and then that would make more money to then go do the next thing, make more money to go do the next thing. And we're just rolling those those funds from one venture over into the other to self-fund. And then we sold the laser beams, that money went in. But even then, the money was trivial. Everything we did, we had to make money on to keep it moving forward. And then I think it might have been from when we quit our jobs, maybe 3 months before we paid ourselves. But even then, we've always been pretty modest in what we would do in those regards because it's kind of like we figured there's no point paying ourselves if it was at the expense of doing something else. So if we wouldn't pay ourselves—

Josh: There's always something else to do.

Rob: I guess there is, but there gets to a point where the business may be that profitable that you're already doing all the things you really want to do, all the important things. And then you're like, actually, no, now's a good time that we can—

Josh: Was there a trigger point for you guys? Was there an amount where it's like once it gets to X amount, we can take a percentage?

Rob: It's not. It's not really that. It's literally when, it's as simple as when the funds in the bank, I suppose, are going up faster than they're going out. That simple. And you are still getting into that point where, you know, we always like having cash in the bank because you never know what's going to happen. And we also want to be at it if we see an opportunity. So if we see something, I remember it was this time the year before, we saw, we saw a whole heap of— I remember going through Instagram, seeing a whole heap of space opening up for advertising just in images. And we're doing lots of video at the time, and I'm like, man, there's so many image ads popping, so much space for image ads popping up. It went to like every fourth post, like the carousel stuff. Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah. And then we're already doing it, but not, not as hard as we could. And all these extra placements opened up. I remember chatting with the guys, I'm like, I think we we gotta get back into some serious, like, um, just old school image ads because people's attentions were short, that kind of thing. We did that, we opened it up, started getting good results, and then we just pour money into it and get those results. And if we were a more traditional business where it's like, all right, this much is taken out, this is much left in, there's a budget for marketing which is X amount and that has to be spent every month, and you just wouldn't have bandwidth to do it. But we, we're like, we never have a marketing budget. All we have is like spend as much as we can get a good return on and then if it works, keep it going. But that seems so simple and just makes so much sense, right? What about like a runway? And you can't explain that to people sometimes.

Josh: Yeah. But what about the idea of like, do you have a, okay, we need to—

Rob: A runway.

Josh: Yeah.

Rob: Well, we never had the runway because we had no money. So we had to build the runway out in front of us.

Josh: And so did you have—

Rob: Runways, if you've like got a run— you still have a runway if you've got some money in the bank, but really—

Josh: You should always have a runway, right? Yeah.

Rob: But we started pretty much with no runway.

Tommy: Yeah, that's most businesses. Exactly.

Josh: But you, so you start then building the runway.

Rob: Not if you've raised money. Well, you raise money, raise the runway, you get $10 million and you're like, right, we can start here and it's going to cost us to run like this $1 million a month. We've got 10 months and by then we have to be all set. But you know, sometimes you're getting to the end of that runway and you don't have anything sorted. It's not a good place to be.

Josh: So do you have a comfort factor where you're like, if I have 6 months in the bank in regards to salaries and all sorts of things.

Rob: Yeah, we definitely, we're at the moment, we'd have, we used to do this thing, I haven't done this for years, but, and when I used to do all the numbers, all the books, I used to have this thing where what I do, this is probably what you're getting at actually. Now I think about it, it was a while ago, I probably haven't done this in a long time, but I used to do like worst case scenarios to call it. I'm not an accountant. I used to go, if I had to pay all our bills today, everything, um, and then, and especially being a product business, like, often, like, for us, especially back then, we probably only had a few people. Wages aren't the biggest bill for us. Like, the biggest bill is products and marketing, things like that. You know, if I had to pay all of that, if I had to pay off like all the tax, if I had to pay out everything we could, and then you go, right, how much money we got in the bank and how long would that let us let us last. And sometimes it wasn't that long and then other times it gets longer. You do a bit more stuff with it. So we used to just do this worst case scenario. And then when you can get into this place where you just feel comfortable and safe, you can just push really hard because you don't owe anything to anyone. All you're losing is money and you're not losing it hopefully, but all you're spending is money that you've made out of the ether anyway.

Josh: Sure.

Rob: So you're getting into this position.

Josh: So you're losing dividends essentially, like you're losing—

Rob: Yeah, but you never had them anyway. It's just a number in a bank account.

Josh: It doesn't— you're looking at— yeah, I mean, yeah, you're right. Why the fuck are we here? I mean, but like, that is a— it is. Yeah, like, what is money?

Tommy: Well, it's— if you just look at it, and that's why people—

Rob: if you start going like insular, oh, I'm going to lose something. Yeah, I reckon you'll probably lose it.

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Rob: If you're like, well, it's there in the account, I'm still fine over here cruising. I may not be like living large. Yeah. But I can go be a baller on my marketing spend. That's more fun and has a potential to do a lot better for you, the business, everyone in the long run.

Tommy: In terms of, um, you personally, 8 years the business been around, what you need to do today is not what you were doing 8 years ago, 5 years ago.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: How much has that been a struggle for you and found friction in becoming a different version? So you're good at year one, you're good at doing a bunch of little things, but the next year you almost have to throw those out because you've got to assume a new role and lead in. How's that challenge?

Rob: I think like every founder would go through that. Like if you're a professional manager or someone that comes in at a certain point in the company, great. But if you're a founder who's, you know, literally, you know, rubbed the sticks together to start the fire in the first place, like you're always going to be thinking, oh, I should be rubbing those sticks, but but someone else can do it at a point. I think the thing relevant to the Adventure Club as well, I think the thing, the thing for us is that, you know, you, you get to a point where you don't have a choice. You've got to do it.

Tommy: I just put the sticks down, please. You just stop rubbing the sticks. I didn't need you to help me.

Rob: Yeah, but at the same time, you— there's one thing I've realised when you get people in, they come in under their whole— what they've learned outside and what they're used to doing. And you have to be able to take some of that, but then you have to show them what you've learned specific to the thing you're doing. And it's a dance there, and it's kind of like taking and then teaching. And so that is something that just try to get better at every day. And I think for me, 4 years ago, I'd be a lot better at it now. Can I still get better? For sure. But also then it's a trust thing. It's a whole heap of things, but a lot of the people—

Tommy: Letting go.

Rob: Letting go. But the thing is letting go but still being across it because there's still a—

Tommy: as you get—

Rob: I like having a really good wide view of everything, but I like everyone else to be able to have a good wide view of everything because I feel when you do something with a big company and you realise everyone's just in their own little silo and they're not even sure how the thing works.

Tommy: Well, they're serving themselves.

Rob: Yeah, like in their own silo, but they don't even know they're doing that sometimes. Yeah, and that's the dangerous thing. So I still want to have it that people understand like the breadth of the business. It's good, but then just with more people, you have to be doing your sort of role within that.

Tommy: And so how much is the relationship with CP, your business partner, changed over the years?

Rob: Yeah, changed a lot, changed a lot over the years. It's, um, It's, it's one of those things, like we've said, we've said, I think we've said it late last year, it's like you go from rocking up and talking all day every day about everything to I can go to work and he can talk to all day about the business and I could talk all day about the business and we haven't even talked because we're operating on different things, doing different things at the time. Um, there's so, so much that is going on and you just, you want to be across everything to a certain point, but you physically can't be. So I think it's a delicate balance of being like knowing how deep you can go into each facet of the business and still keep your, like, keep a heads up awareness of what's going on, but not getting too bogged down in each part of the business until there's something that needs your help or or you're really trying to solve that issue at the time with the team, and then you get into that one at that point in time. Then you come back out and then there's something else, then you get into that one deeper at the time. So you sort of got to be flexible, I suppose, along the way. And that, for us, I suppose, along the way, that has been one of those things that is just that constant learning, you know, who does what. And I think I look at our business now and we're still I think like, you know, you would say maybe at this point, maybe this point in time you'd have a board and you'd have really defined role, and we still don't have any of that. And there'd be companies, you know, a tenth the size of us that would have all that nailed.

Josh: Do you feel the need to create those roles? Like, you guys don't really have a CEO?

Rob: No.

Josh: Like, you're just co-founders, directors?

Rob: See, I think internally we don't need it, but maybe externally, maybe people want to know. I don't know, I don't know. But it's also, if you, if you go and talk to some of the guys, you know, at Quad Lock, they, they won't even— it's, it's like the joint's not big enough that people don't know who to talk to about what.

Josh: Sure. I suppose who makes the decision at the end of the day?

Rob: If we have different roles in different things, so, um, And it's not always us. It's like we're talking about a new lease, like we were talking about before, and we had someone come in who's going to be searching for us. He's like, so I can come back and give it to you guys and you can have a look. I'm like, and the first thing I'm thinking in my head, yeah. And then we'll show the team. Yeah. Because it's not just CP and my company. People have been there a long time now and they're all part of it and they want to say, and that's sort of how we run it. It's pretty open in that regard. Talking about the dashboards up on the walls and things like that. There's no hidden surprises. People know how many dollars the company did that day if they care.

Tommy: It's good to bring people in on that so they get a real sense of if there is an urgency or if things are lacking. In terms of, because I think for someone like Josh being in business with him, I don't think that sounds like the ideal situation of not understanding specifically where everyone fits. And I think it's like, it's each to their own, right?

Rob: It's like, works for you.

Tommy: For you guys doesn't mean it's the way I mean do it.

Rob: Yeah, it works for us.

Josh: Empowered, I guess that's a question of like if also new people coming on maybe not as good for, but also like the other thing with bringing in employees, do you need to have trust day one? What does trust look like? Uh, I mean it, because most people, I think that the, the answer that everyone wants to hear is like, well, you can't have, but you can't work with people that you don't trust. Well, my thing is like, you can't trust people until you've worked with them.

Rob: But I mean, they can't trust you until they've worked with you as well. So, you know, you go do— I mean, I'm— the more I think about it, like, the whole interview process is pretty— it's pretty tricky.

Josh: Yeah.

Rob: Like, you— we're, we're just sort of— it's like, no, it's like trying to buy, trying to buy a bed, right? You go lay down on that bed for you know, 15 seconds, and then you go, okay, so that's what it's going to be like. No, but I did get a bed, so it's just in my mind. But the thing is, like, you lay in it for 15 seconds and you're like, okay, so that's what it's going to be like for 8 hours a night. No, probably not.

Tommy: Well, you do.

Rob: It's like you have an interview with someone, you're like, okay, so what are they going to be like to work with every day? I don't know, we'll have to wait and see.

Tommy: Well, Ellen DeGeneres points out that when you're trying on shoes, you do shit you'd never do in the shoes.

Josh: 100%.

Tommy: And so like you do shit at an interview where you— yeah, it makes no sense. I mean, some, some places have like gruelling processes to sort of— I guess it irons out.

Rob: We do that. We do a lot of like kettlebell swings. We do psych tests and stuff like that now.

Tommy: But is it true that you guys actually make people mount it and see how quickly they can mount it on and off?

Rob: You can't do it in 4 seconds. You'll get the chop.

Tommy: Everyone knows that. First shot, 4 seconds, you're done.

Rob: No, no, I think, um, No, I think, you know, trust is super important, but to be honest, you— trust comes with time at the end of the day, doesn't it? And you see results and you see things, and then you see people, you know, like, we were just before I came here, we're talking about, um, a certain stock item that we tried to— usually we try and sell more. At the moment we're trying to sell less. It's a different thing for us.

Josh: So we're trying coronavirus stuff.

Rob: So we're trying to work out how to sell less. And we're doing a few different things. And just as we walk out, Tim's like, why don't we put these other two things that we know we have lots of stock on as an upsell? I'm like, yeah, we should do that. And I'm thinking in my mind, I reckon a year I definitely would've said that as soon as we took the other thing down. But I've probably got the trust that someone else is going to come up with a good idea.

Josh: You've lost it. You've lost it.

Rob: I'm losing the edge.

Josh: I'm losing the edge.

Rob: No, no. But at the same time, by the time as I'm walking out, it's all being done and all being done, it'll be done well and it will work and we'll sell a few units and it's a perfect substitute and it makes sense on every level. And literally I didn't do anything.

Josh: So what you're describing though, there is someone is now doing what you would have done, which I think is the criticism that Tommy has. Sometimes with how I operate, which is like, I want people to be thinking how I'm thinking about certain things. So how do you—

Rob: but even if they— yeah, this thing, there's difference. So it's like thinking the way you're thinking or just getting an outcome, because you can think about something differently and still get an outcome. So maybe the way they get to that is different to the way I'd get to it, but if we get the outcome, it's still great.

Josh: And so then when it comes down to the thinking versus the outcome, how have you worked out ways of communicating? If you have an idea, if you've got a destination, will you communicate that destination up front, or is there a little bit of letting go, waiting to see where it, where it lands?

Rob: I think that's a good question. I think, uh, I've done different things at different times. I think at the moment, when someone's new, I think what I've found works well for me now is, um, explain how we would usually go about doing something and give them the tools to have success in that way. And then do it with them that way. Like, whatever the thing is, like, just say it's like shooting a video or it's, um, writing a script and the whole thing, right? Letting, letting them do it that way, doing it with them, like, you know, holding hands effectively along the way. And then you step back at a point, and then you see how they go about doing it. And then if— because there's a chance they'll do it one way that may work better, there's a chance they'll do it one way it may go to shit, but you can— we can afford that now. Probably like years ago we couldn't afford that. So then depending what happens, it's probably not— it's not one or the other, it's a scale somewhere in the middle, right? Then you can come in and go, okay, so that was cool, but why don't we go back to doing this checklist for this thing? And they're like, oh yeah, no, that'll be good. Because what happens is when you get shown everything as a new person, right, in a new job, in a new environment, you may not know— this is what I've realised over the years— is they may not know why they're doing it. But you've written this process or you've done this thing because you've fucked up 10 times in a row, and then you go, I know we need to do it this way. But when you don't— and for the guys that you work that out with, it makes complete sense and they love that because they've gone through— they've gone through all the friction. Yeah. And so if you've had no friction, it's hard to communicate that. And so I think you've got to almost show, let it maybe go the way it's going to go, and then come back in with, that's why we do it this way. And then you get the big, okay, as long as the risk isn't— as long as the risk is not too large. Yeah, well, the way—

Josh: I mean, the other interesting thing is around that, like, we do it this way. I think that one of the things that we're discovering is it's like, I do it a certain way. When does the way that Rob does it, the way that Quad Lock does it have you worked out sort of distinguishing between this is a process that you think is best versus a co-creation from the—

Rob: to be honest, now we're at the point where most that stuff is— I, I remember it was probably a while ago I realized, like, you know, pushing something— like, if just say we sat down to do something now and I pushed to you guys, this is the way to do it, you'd be like, oh, okay. And then you'd be like, you might say yes, but are you going to get on board 100%? Probably not. But if I go, all right guys, let's work out a way to do it, and we all go together and we put it down together and we all own it, even if you're influencing a little bit, you're going to deal with it 10 times better in the long run. So most of the things now, if we go through a template that we have of doing something, just as I left, Tim had been like, oh, we've changed the way we're updating this website. We just launched a galaxy today. The S20, we're changing the way we're doing it. We're going to go back and redo the templates. I'm like, yeah, cool, that's awesome. So they'll be redoing the templates probably right now, and that's great. But they know what needs to be in them. They know why we do it. They like doing it. Like, it becomes this tool that we rely on. That's, that's great. Like, I don't need to be there for that. I can look at it later or whatever. But, um, the thing is, I think we need to go redo those templates as well. But they're taking the initiative, they're doing it, and I think You know, you're not going to rock up and on your first day start saying that, and you don't know why or how. You haven't been through this friction. But we've launched— all these guys have launched heaps of products. They know what are the upsides, what are the downsides, what are the things we miss, what are the things that we, we don't need to be as critical about because we have a better way of doing it. Like Dave's worked out a way to do something automatic. It's, it's great. Then they adjust. And so that kind of stuff is now happening, sort of. It's not by itself, you can't take it for granted, but it's happening like with without me effectively. So that's good. But like, like they say, like all good things take time.

Tommy: Well, what's interesting too for young businesses that still haven't worked out the model of their business, or yeah, that we were not— it's not working. And so the decisions you're making, uh, it's so much higher pressure because you're like, fuck, it's not working.

Rob: Oh, that's, that's That's what I was saying before, we can afford to do some of these things now because not everything has to work.

Tommy: And so when, when it wasn't working and—

Rob: well, well, when even if it was working or we were learning our way through it, at that point in time you feel like you've got to be involved because you're like, we can't afford to fuck this up. Um, well, you don't have the liberty, you don't have the runway if you want to call it, to be out of it. Afford to do those things. And so at that point, there's always a bit more pressure.

Josh: Is it a different energy? Does that energy serve or does it hinder?

Rob: I think, I think like a bit of urgency and a bit of pressure for me personally is good, but that's not everyone. So you've got to understand who deals with that. Like, that can be motivating for someone. It can be like— it's like at the end of a basketball game, there's a person who wants to take the shot and there's a person who's thinking, fuck, I hope they don't pass me the ball to take the shot. Yeah. So everyone's different in that regard. So I think— but that other person might have just put in 20 for the game, and that person who's still willing to take shots only put in 10. Everyone's different. And it's not that one's more important than the other.

Tommy: Yeah. There's a guy on the sideline saying, fuck it, directing everybody.

Rob: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So everyone's got a role to play, everyone's got a different way to do it. But then in saying what you're saying, it's probably why not everyone's a founder or should be a founder. It's maybe not good for everyone. And if you look around what's happening now, everyone's being told to be a founder. I feel, I don't know if that's the best. Some people, great. Some people need encouragement to do that thing. That's great as well. Some people maybe it doesn't suit them.

Josh: What about risk? Are you someone who takes risks?

Rob: Yeah, I'm pretty calculated though. I definitely take risks, but I want to understand the risk and then I'll do it. So I think the answer is probably yeah.

Tommy: You think as you go on—

Rob: I mean, quitting your job and just a good job just to do something is a risk.

Tommy: It's a big risk.

Rob: But it made sense to me.

Josh: You had savings.

Rob: I did have savings, yeah. And so like, man, there'd be people who had savings and in a better position, more qualified to do it, and they wouldn't do it.

Tommy: What is it? Naivety at the start? Like, I think you identify more risks as you have more context on the world and your business and things.

Rob: Yeah. I mean, I think there may be a part of it, but I always think like worst case scenario, we live in Australia, worst case scenario is still pretty good.

Josh: Yeah. I mean, you also have solar panels so you don't have to pay shit for electricity.

Rob: I didn't have them then. No, but the thing is, like, worst case scenario isn't that bad.

Josh: Well, so that's what, like, we're talking, and the upside is amazing. And so that's like looking at the upside, looking at the positivity. So we're just talking about, um, where I think that we could go with the business. And the interesting thing is that it's like, I don't have all the answers on stuff. I don't know.

Rob: No one does.

Josh: And but also, like, I can see the risks involved in certain things, but say like looking at a bigger office, like that idea of like if we had a bigger office and the different sort of revenue streams that we could generate and doing all that type of thing, like how, how do you actually execute on something like that that is— has a bit of ambiguity to it?

Rob: And maybe is a bigger office the thing though?

Josh: Also the thing And I completely agree based on that being the first question because it's such a trap that so many people fall into, which is like, I need a bigger space, I need to be in a better location. I need to like all these things that's going to fix their bigger problem that they have.

Tommy: But then also like another question is, is it, can you make now work? But then you could also challenge that by going, yeah, but then what about thinking about the possibility down the road.

Josh: I think you've got to take the lead. Like, so for instance, the way I see it is like the way we started the show wasn't like this. It was 2 USB microphones plugged into a single laptop, and we've done like 600 episodes, and the first 260 weren't even filmed. And then we started filming, and then we, you know, get 97 on part-time, then we get him on full-time, and then so all these things are happening. It feels like there's a, um, there's an opportunity. We have two options. We can say, yeah, work with what we have. Yeah, just try and work within those constraints, realising that the things that we want to do aren't necessarily conducive in this sort of like— so there's a bunch of elements in this space. So for instance, being able to have a live audience 100 people, being able to do musical performances, being able to have comedians doing stand-up, doing like— this space has, has served us very well for the current vision that we're in. And so it's working out, okay, what is the— so part of it is it's like for us doing the SB or doing AU79, these are all tests for the live element. This feels like there's also the added pressure of first to market. So it's like we think that there's an opportunity where by being first and being there and starting, if we think this is the way that it's all going to go, what is— what's holding us back? And then I guess the other part of it is the biggest space has 8 different business models in it that could do really well on their own. So it's like, okay, no, we don't want to be a studio for hire, but if we had an amazing creative hub where we've got the daily talk show and we have 20 other podcasts that big media companies producing, and we, and we don't have to be great, we don't need to make heaps of money personally, we just need to live good lives. But we think that we could create a format, a business, a whole model of co-creating this stuff where heaps of people are creating their own shows and it's all helping one another.

Rob: I think I get what you're saying. I think—

Josh: and you're part of my Challenger Network.

Rob: Have you heard of the Challenger Network? No, but what I was about to say is sometimes when I do what you're doing in your head, I go all the way one way and then I argue back with myself.

Josh: Yeah. And you do it the other way, which I appreciate.

Rob: Okay, so here we go.

Tommy: Do you do it out loud or is it—

Josh: he's about to—

Rob: no, I do it in my head.

Josh: He's about to body slam me.

Rob: No, no, no, no, no.

Tommy: I'm just—

Rob: the thing I was going to say is like and you would have seen this was what we do, is I always think like I'd rather see like a trend in a certain way before I go all the way into that. So what I'm saying is like, you know, there's no one on the couch here. Why don't we have 5 people here? You can easily fit 5 people here. Yeah, like you could do that. Maybe you had someone here earlier, I don't know. But the thing is you could, you could still start doing a version of what you're talking about without all the other things you're talking about? Because it's so easy. It's like, you know, you've got the camera, C200, whatever. Do you reckon you could— it's not whatever, it's a great— I know it's a great camera, right? All right, it's a great camera, but he's really— you could— it's not— it's no RED, but okay, if it doesn't matter. This is what I'm trying to say is like audio. Do you think you you could go and get some of the same clients with a 5D Mark I or Mark II, maybe.

Josh: Yeah. And I reckon you could. Yeah.

Rob: And, and that— then you're telling yourself a storey that, oh no, to get that bigger client we need a RED. Not— and then you go, no, do I need that? Could I just go talk to that bigger client and try to get that work anyway?

Josh: So there's a minimum viable— so there is the minimum viable stuff, but then you could say, like, why have an office? Like could—

Rob: No, but that's a good place to start. Yeah, that's a great place to start and then argue with yourself one way or the other. I also think like you've still got a space like on this, like this minimal viable product is like if you're thinking of doing a space and getting people in, like it's a lot easier to put 5 people than 100. So start trying to get 5 every day or whatever that thing looks like. Like it's not, it's not because I mean, like you think you— the other thing is whatever space you're in, whatever you're doing gets become normal, right? And then you don't see it. But I walked in here and said, oh man, this is so cool. This is awesome. Like, I didn't realise it sat wrapped all the way around. I thought, this is epic. The thing is, this is all normal to you guys now. You're not really seeing it for what it is. The new place you get will become real normal real quick as well.

Tommy: It's exactly what happened. But I think selling the future to ourselves, it's always in the best possible scenario. So we sell the space with everything. And there's also—

Rob: you don't want to give yourself an excuse.

Josh: It's intention. I feel like part of it is like okay, I realise that to do that it's 18 to 24 months off it actually happening. And so by then putting that intention out, yeah, okay, then exactly what you're saying, which is like, okay, do we need to do the little 100%?

Rob: How can we do—

Josh: how could we— so with that whole like 20 shows, like one of the, um, the WIG's Wildly Important Goals that I'd sort of was, um, thinking potentially is, okay, creating a new show by the end of April. What would a new show by the end of April look like? And so then saying, okay, if we want to get into that co-creation stuff, who do we know? What talent do we have where we can produce a show? I think the other great minimum viable product is a website. If we can get good at— so big media companies' websites, really bad at the moment. We're working on a complete sort of shift of it and synthesising what we're doing. The, the website is the ultimate as if, because you can have everything that you want to do. You can be the biggest brand in the world.

Rob: You can tell the storey without having bought the office.

Josh: Yeah. Yeah.

Rob: No, I get that. I get that. But I think what you're saying is on the right track now. You're going, okay, so if we want to be there in 24 months, what do we do today? What do we do tomorrow? Like, that goes back to that thing of like, all right, we got this goal. 'But how many orders does that look like today? And what product mix do we need to get to those orders?' And, you know, we need more orders. What geography— like, what other markets do we have to open up? You start thinking about these small things that the extra 1,000 orders you need a day is still a mile away, but you'd start moving the pieces to get it in the way. But the thing that I worry about is when you— if you talk about the end goal too much and the big thing, the big piece of the puzzle, which is that that new space, you can use that new space as the excuse as to why you're not doing the thing today.

Josh: Yeah, exactly.

Rob: And so that's the— that's because I think I'm always—

Tommy: I feel good, like we feel good when we speak about those things.

Josh: Well, because it's all—

Rob: as long as you speak about it and then you break it, that's— it's just like, it's just like a big rep goal like you said before. That feels great. The thing is, that means tomorrow we got to go do this.

Josh: You can't live in the dream.

Rob: No.

Josh: Yeah, it needs to be that reality.

Rob: And it's what you're saying before about the, um, level up. So I think I like breaking it down into chunks that are sort of manageable so that, you know, to go from here to there is very difficult. To go from here to here to there to there, it becomes more manageable. Other people can understand it as well. Um, and then you can look at what do I do now? Like, what, you know, there's all this stuff we want to do, and there's this big goal that we want to achieve for X amount of reasons, and it's going to look like this, but what can I do today to get us on that journey?

Tommy: And then it's— patience comes into it because it's big time.

Rob: It's a bit annoying sometimes having to do the little things, but it makes you grounded. Yeah, because I have to tell you what though, when you end up signing up to a $300,000 or $400,000 lease, you'll be pretty happy you did the little things that I'd say.

Tommy: Oh yeah.

Rob: Yeah, because also as soon as you start doing stuff, you start learning. The faster you do stuff is the quicker you start learning. So I don't know, when you guys did hoodies, how much stuff did you learn from when you're talking about it to when you actually did it? Then the next time you do something— Well, Blast hadn't included GST into the form, but that's great to work out on.

Tommy: We didn't factor in Mason's miscounting of the people that needed hoodies.

Rob: See, all these things you'd rather work that out on the amount of orders you did then versus the amount of orders you'll do next time.

Tommy: Yeah, doing 1,000 hoodies with your stuff, stuff shit up.

Rob: So that's the thing. That's why I think working out how to get, I don't know.

Josh: To iterate, it's minimum viable.

Rob: 100% every time. A good example is when you did the, what's it, 500th episode?

Josh: Yeah, AU79.

Rob: AU79. Um, that was great. I remember getting the invite on Eventbrite and it was like, uh, it was free and the tickets sold out and all that. I'm thinking, I wonder how many people don't rock up, because I know I've spoken a lot of things where, you know, they're free or they've just charged $5, because then you know the people who are coming are really coming in. And your numbers and things like that, you just— so many little things to learn along the way. Yeah, you can start to go, next time I do it, we do it this way. Next time we do it this way. And then as you do that stuff, you're sort of like building a process, building a more robust system that when you get to do it at scale, it's more likely to work. Yeah.

Josh: Sevs, do you have any questions for Rob? I feel like a lot of these things would be relevant to some of the things you've been thinking about.

Rob: Yeah, I mean, I think the, the whole thinking about the big picture and thinking 24 months in advance and the steps you can take today, um, to sort of get you there.

Josh: That's—

Rob: I think that's super interesting. Um, do you have an example of any of the steps that you took that, that might have helped you, you know, build, build out Quad Lock? I think, uh, yeah, something that's, that's helped us— I think I'll go back to more earlier days— is um, doing things quickly. So doing things quickly and not necessarily the most polished versions of things, because what it meant is when you're trying to make something— but who did I hear the other day? You said you did something, you put it up, that video you did, and you put up a terrible thumbnail, right?

Josh: Oh yeah, yeah.

Rob: So for me Here we go. I would usually do a worse job on the, on the actual product, which is your creative thing you're doing, and I try and nail the thumbnail.

Josh: Sure.

Rob: Because I know how— because I know how— because it doesn't matter how good the thing is behind the thumbnail if the thumbnail is not right, right?

Josh: That's what the YouTube is all about now.

Tommy: Just body slammed you, man.

Rob: No, no, no, it's, it's, it's fine because the thing is, if I— if you're doing more stuff faster all the time, you just get to realise what is the thing that actually makes a difference every time. It's hard to separate yourself from your art form kind of thing though. I totally get that. But the thing is, if you can almost be ruthless with yourself effectively, and you know, you would— if you look at the shit we used to do, it's terrible, but we learned so much so fast. And even now we've lost a bit of that, but you sort of have to like at a certain point. But early on, we're in this, in this sort of period where we could just do stuff, throw it against the wall, see what worked, and then just do more of that thing. And the thing was, the cost and the time and the effort was so low to do a lot of that stuff. So, um, if you go back, if you— what you guys are almost doing now is in the phase where we weren't even really Quad Lock yet, where we were a bit 3D printers, a bit like, um, a bit, uh, laser cutters.

Josh: Yeah.

Rob: And then we rolled that in. It was Origin Systems, the country that we then then rolled that into, you know, we did the opener and then we got on to doing Quad Lock. So you, you're still in that area of like figuring it all out, which is fine.

Tommy: Um, were you waiting to find what sticks or— Yeah, yeah, totally.

Rob: And also it— there's that, but then, um, I spoke about this on the Founder, um, uh, podcast I did just the other day, and it was that I think— and it sort of— I sort of realised when I was talking about it, and that is that I think a lot of the time what we're doing is we're actually even just not just working out what works, we're working out what we actually want to do because we worked out, okay, those businesses are great, but it's not actually what we want to do. This looks more like what we want to do. And so we just started chasing that and going down those routes. And so I think if you can get to the point where you can just do multiple things without having to take on a $200,000 or $300,000 lease is an awesome position to be in where you just do stuff, do stuff, see what works. Like you're saying, the tests, do AU79, do that. Is there a way that you can go and do, like, lock in 20 shows to a month for the next whatever somewhere and do that? Because that's, you know, you're sort of acting as if you've got an office but you don't have it. But do you need it to do that? Yeah, no, maybe no. So I just think doing stuff all the time as much as you can, learning from it, being self-critical of it, I think is a big part. Um, and that's one thing when people come on I remember I didn't realise you almost have to teach— like, it's fine to fail. It's absolutely fine. Like, it's, it's a, um, it's a good thing. The sooner you realise something doesn't work, the sooner you can stop doing it and go on to the thing that you think is going to work. And when I say work, I mean show you some inkling of, of success. It doesn't mean that this new ad has completely revolutionised the way we do everything. What it means is there's something in what we've done here that is interesting to this part of the market? What if we double down on that? Or what if we take— it's just the front part and then we lose them and we, you know, we learn and we iterate and we go from there. So, but if you don't throw that thing out there, you'll never learn that.

Tommy: So how emotionally connected are you to the failures or the successes in your business?

Rob: Uh, I'm emotionally connected to the business, but it's easy for me to just like put my hand up and say we fucked. Like, I, I just have no problems screwing things up.

Tommy: What, what, um, what gets you? What makes— keeps you anxious or gets you worried? Like, I mean, coronavirus slowing things down in China, that's not an anxious thing.

Rob: It's like, for that one specifically right now, that I'm just a bit disappointed because this is a massive problem for the world and like it's almost selfish to be that disappointed in our own little part, but it's what affects our day-to-day. So yeah, that's what you've got to keep in, um, in mind. The thing is, the thing like I felt, we just done some big— like we've just gone through, um, we did a big change to the way we do things in the structure of some of our Facebook ads and things. It sounds boring, but it is a big change for us. Um, and we did that at a crazy time just before sort of Black Friday. Then we go into Black Friday, then we have December, then you have— you have all these months that are all over the shop. And in Jan we just started seeing, man, we've got— this is really working, this is really good. Like, we're really pumped and we can start to see everything tick back up. And we're like going, all this work we're doing, we're starting to see that it's working and it's going to be really great. And it's like, just as we get to that point, which, like, this thing has hit and it's kind of like, oh, I just feel like, um, it's not— it's not an anxiousness or anything, it's not— it's, it's just a bit disappointed that, like, the team and everyone, we've all done the things that we need to do, you know, we, we we did new fulfilment out of China for the Asian market where we're going really good there and really strong and we're doing better jobs. We're about to, you know, all these things sort of drop in that you're working on now. It seems like things we work and then they drop in and they start to pay for themselves. We're right at that point and it's kind of like just a bit disappointed.

Josh: Well, it's resilience though, like the fact that you guys can weather the storm.

Rob: 100% we can. Yeah. And everyone knows that. It's just we have to literally— we're trying to engineer a way to sell less product at the moment, which is like, we never had to do that.

Josh: What about— so on the failure thing, one of the things that Tommy and I talk about is arguing your position or trying to protect your position in why you did something. So for instance, it's like, okay, we've done this shoot, we could have done something potentially better. Um, but say especially I'm, I'm the culprit in picking out flaws or saying, oh, what's the learning here? What's the learning there? Tommy will say, okay, the, um, I did this because of X, Y, and Z, right? And that's why we did this thing. Uh, protecting your position versus being like, actually, even if I consider all that, it wasn't necessarily the right— like, I understand how having this would have been better.

Rob: Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think when we first have people starting to work on things that especially I was doing, I'm like, you can just like putting something out there that tanks and then go, okay, let's have a look. I think it's more interesting sometimes to look at the things that are tanking because when you do that, that's where the lessons are. That's no good because of this, what can we do next time? But you've got to get everyone into the same mindset. Mindset, yeah. So if they start day one, you— we start doing that, they can be like— maybe they worked in an agency, and maybe in an agency the whole thing is we only talk about the stuff that's good, right, that you can put into a presentation. Yeah, yeah. And, and the thing is, it's a false economy. Like, um, we're in a different position where, you know, we don't have a board, we don't have to present, you know, make our jobs look great. All we want is an awesome result. If the awesome result is behind the failures, is behind the good stuff, and it's all important to look at and learn from, um, let's go look at and learn from it. But in saying that, you've got to be— make sure that that person that you're doing it with, their mindset is that, hey, it's okay to fail. We, you know, we're cool with that. Um, we understand that it's fine to fail as long as when every time we do it we're doing something that we don't do it again next time, or we learn from it, or we whatever. I just think it about, it's kind of like you're buying a lesson. It's like you're buying a course.

Josh: But what about like over— because I think oversimplification is one of the things that the feedback that I get from Tommy, which is like he's worked on a complex thing. I'm on the outside.

Rob: Everything looks more simple on the outside. And then you get into it, you go, I'll show you.

Josh: Yeah.

Rob: Oh shit, Yeah.

Josh: And so how like, TJ, what do you like with what?

Tommy: Oh yeah, I think, yeah, I think you're saying the thought is that it's quite easy from the outset to see it really simply. Don't do that, that and that. It's like, but it's always so much more nuanced within the project.

Rob: The thing is, after the fact, everything's easy and simple.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: Yeah. And so then the thing, but that's the whole—

Rob: where were you before Einstein when that was going on? That's a good one.

Tommy: I'm going to use that. Yeah, fucking use that.

Josh: But I guess that's the the thing, right? Which is like, just because we're looking at something in hindsight and I like— shouldn't we use oversimplification as a strength? Like oversimplification is almost like that second simplicity that Jason Fox talks about, which is like second simplicity is the simplicity after all the complex shit.

Rob: So it's like I was literally talking to Blake about this this morning. Yeah. And it's that he's making a website to sell personalised hats called, um, harvey.com.au. And it's quite cool, but the thing is, he's doing the site, he's putting it up, he's got all these hats. It's personalized, non-personalized, adult, kids. It's simple, but when you're in it and you're doing it, and I'm like, man, what you actually need is just a single page. And you go to the single page and you select the size, then you select the color, then you put in the personalized. You don't have to get them to a page, it's just for adults, get into a page as kids, get them to a page for babies. And he's like, oh, you're right. And then we're talking about— I'm like, isn't it funny how after all of this, it's just fucking simple? Yeah, it's easy. But, um, simple's hard. It's hard to get to simple quick. And if you can get to simple quick, it's great. But sometimes you got to do the dance. And that's the thing is, if you got to do that, do it. But then if you can learn from that thing so that the next time you do something similar you can get there faster, then that's— that is where you want to double down on. So perfect example is Gene doing a photo shoot. This is a real world situation, just happened the other week. He's like, I've got 3 cyclists, we're going to go out here, windy road, it's going to look awesome, I'm going to do all this stuff. He's got this huge list of stuff to do. It's like, you know how long it takes? It's like lock-on shots, close-up long shots, farther away, you know, 3 different mounts, 4 different phones. And I'm like, man, like, we're not going to get any of this done. Yeah, he's like, oh yeah. And then it comes back to, we're talking amongst ourselves, um, and it's like, you know, I think it was like, you know, Ido, Tim, Jacinta, myself, Gene, we're all looking at this thing. I'm like, all right, what we're going to have to do— and we all come up with this together— is what we actually need to do is be simple right at the start. Before we book talent, before we find this place where we're going to shoot, before we do anything, is like What are we trying to achieve on this shoot now? Because what we did is we organised a shoot and then tried to fill it with stuff to do, and then we turned into— this is actually more a social shoot, this is a shoot for the socials, longer lens, further away, a couple of close-ups here and there, but we'll be able to nail all that and do all that. And then he was like, oh, we still need stuff for the ads. I'm like, well, we're trying to do everything all at once here, nothing's going to come out any good. So let's just go— when we do this next time, let's go back from the start. And then we get up We start working on the process again. Okay, so someone's new in the business and they haven't been doing it as long as the other 4 people in the room have. We've gone through all the friction, we know that, but now we've got an opportunity to go, all right, let's simplify this. What do we actually need? What is it going to look like? Then we go, and then if we need those kind of shots, who do we need? What do we need? Where do we need to go? How many people do we need? And then you'll end up in the right place. But if we don't go through that, we're never going to get to the point of making it simple. So at the end of it, it's like, well, this is really easy. Yeah.

Josh: And there's optimism at the start too, which is, oh, we can do everything. Like, yeah.

Rob: And the thing is, everything I'm thinking in my head, we can't do all that. Yeah. The thing is, how many shoots have we done?

Tommy: Yeah, 100 shoots.

Rob: So learnings, learnings. Yeah. But the thing is, you can share that quickly and get it out in the open and, and sort of get like, not, not everyone needs to go through all the same pain to get to the end result as you may have had to in the learnings you've done before. So it's how do you convey that? How do you put that into a bit of a system that sort of helps people achieve, I suppose? And then all of a sudden the conversation's not about you're wrong, you're right. That never even comes into it. It's like, how can we do this better? How can we get to this where we are now? We were in a meeting and it was like, oh, now we're clear. Okay, we're clear. Let's forget about what we're doing. How next time will we get to this clear point fast?

Josh: Which I think— what do you think, TJ? I reckon I don't necessarily do the 'you're wrong, I'm right' thing. It is very much like, what is the, the learning?

Rob: It depends how someone feels about it.

Josh: And that's why I think—

Tommy: so there's— because what I was thinking about it, say you do a shoot and then there's a nuance of what the shoot was. Was it minimum viable? Was it something that we actually don't understand? And then in what we, what we're doing is in hindsight looking at where the pain points were and it's easy to go, obviously they're all here, but then it's like the type of shoot that you can't fix that shoot. That's done. Yeah, yeah.

Rob: And it's just learn from that shoot.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And so then it's pointing out—

Josh: so it's the— it's like what the purpose of a retro is. And the retro is not to— not for any like blame game or being like, God, we could have done that. But it's like, okay, for the next one, What are the little things that we need to do to be able to make it better?

Tommy: Yeah, 100%. I think also putting a restriction on when the retro happens because it can be a moment to sort of disengage from something.

Rob: Yeah, I reckon that's a really good point. So it's easy though to go like when you sort of, if you're still in the stress of it and you still have like, you got to have a letdown period. But then you can't let it go too long because we all just forget stuff.

Josh: So I did it in the car on the way home from the troops, probably a little soon in an anxious environment.

Tommy: And so it was— but like, here's the fucked up bit. It had to happen for me to even realize, oh, we need a rule of it's the day after.

Rob: But are you in the best position? Yeah, I was going to say right then you're not in the best position to take on any of that.

Tommy: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Josh: And so I think like the next day it's like work, but I think that it's if you build in a retro by default as well. Because the thing is, even if like if something's good, then there's probably learnings that we could have taken. Like, why was that good? Exactly.

Tommy: It should be a good—

Rob: no, it's everything.

Josh: And that's what like an average shoot, a great shoot, a fucked up shoot, and that's why I know even working at Envato, it was like at the start it was like you'd only have retros when shit went bad.

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And so we all knew what it was fucking there for. It was like throwing everyone down the The bus.

Rob: The thing is, the thing is, like, it's not something's good, something's bad. It's a scale. Because, like, if you're doing something— these are like, we're always doing complicated, more complicated things, right? There'll be parts that are good, there'll be parts that are bad, there'll be parts that are okay and could get to great. So perfect example for us is, like, our, um, our last, uh, Black Friday sale. Um, on a whole, amazing, great. It'd be easy just to pat yourself on the back. But then it's like, okay, let's look at individual emails, individual this, individual— let's dig down into the details. We found out we missed something big. You're like, oh wow. But the thing is not to feel bad about it. It's like, whoa, that's an opportunity. If we do that right next time, imagine where we'd end up.

Josh: Which is a different mindset.

Rob: It's a different mindset because it's an opportunity. And yeah, it's a fuck-up, but if you get past that and you get to the point where you're like, well, it's done. We can't change that. What all we can do is learn for the future.

Josh: So I think that like Tommy, I think his criticism of me is that I don't set like— I'm quickest to go to what's the learning, what could we do better. I'm like, where it's like, I do that too, not so much like, yeah, that was actually like amazing, everything else was fucking great, it was just this one thing. But my thing is that like the great stuff is great, that's good, like we don't need do it. Like, there's no learning necessarily there for that. But for these, like, other things, there are.

Tommy: I think it's at the individual level, right? So you say both of you guys are quick.

Rob: You've got to celebrate the wins. And like, I have to— I don't do it naturally. I just move on. But you've got to be aware of that.

Josh: And so how do you then correct it? What do you do?

Rob: Oh, I, I'm still working a lot of stuff.

Josh: Have you worked out a way of like, okay, is it like a shit sandwich? But then all these things become a thing that, you know, so Tommy's like, oh, when Josh is— he said, oh, that shoot, that was really good that you did that shoot. Then you're waiting for the, the punch, you know, like if it's that sort of shit sandwich thing.

Rob: No, I know. I mean, even like, just think, like, I know personally I just move on to the next thing, and I think that's an aid when you're, when you're like maybe first starting stuff or you're just doing stuff with yourself. But then when you've got more people around you, partners, employee, that kind of thing, you've got to like— I think there's a lot to be said for like putting a time aside or, you know, going for lunch or saying— and saying this, we're going to lunch. And even if you go to lunch all the freaking time anyway, you're saying it's because of this. Yeah, just tying it to something. And then, and obviously you've got to tell people great job. And I think, you know, you can get up and say to everyone, we did a really great job Good, good work. But geez, you're good. Yeah, I know, sounded flawless.

Tommy: But you're—

Rob: what probably is better, especially if you're still— it's like, you know, you just— you're doing something, you're like, oh, great work there, man, like, didn't we smash it? And they're like, yeah. Well, I think—

Tommy: and then you're like, I think it's reading the room. And I think it's—

Rob: everyone's different.

Tommy: You go— setting the scene, I think, is appropriate. So it's like the, the post-retro is let's bring good, bad, everything to the table.

Rob: Yeah.

Tommy: And where can we learn? I think then that's like—

Rob: but it's also no one's fault, it's just what happened.

Tommy: But it's so less emotionally charged than— yeah, in the night.

Rob: And that's different for everyone. Like, I think, I think, um, like, I find it quite easy not to be emotional with this kind of stuff. Other people, definitely not. And if you're less emotional, if you are almost if you come to something like this with no emotion and you're just being super logical, that could be super fucking annoying for people who are a little bit more emotionally charged. So it's sort of—

Josh: but that's the oversimplification thing, right? Like, oversimplification is actually both sides got to realise where each other's at, and that's almost like less emotional in some regards because it's like, oh, this, this, this, and this. But then I guess it's also tied into if it— if the— if that was evoked from because the thing is, like, we've done a lot of shoots, like having— of course, yeah, like over all the years that we've both been doing video, we've had so many different shoots.

Rob: And so we have some commonalities between them.

Josh: Yeah.

Rob: And that's where you need to try and look for that stuff.

Tommy: Like, do you think Robbie pointing out going quickly to those things is a link you've made in your mind to not, not feel emotional? So it's like it's the antidote to entering into some anxious state, or if you're feeling anxious, the solution is actually to point out these things. So it then becomes a personal, internal—

Josh: But isn't that then emotional anyway?

Tommy: Yes.

Josh: So like, if you're like— so if you— if it doesn't matter if you're speaking calmly on the phone, if you're like, there's a shoot and you, you're straight— like, the impulse is to get on the phone and try and fix it.

Tommy: Yeah, because it doesn't allow it to be emotional. Like, it doesn't bring out all that anxiety though.

Rob: Like, I remember when, like, a few years ago, we'd be launching products, right? Not, not a, not a shoot, but it's similar things like multiple things have got to happen at in a short period of time, uh, and different people are doing different things to get a good result, right? And we have angst around that in the fact that sometimes just wasn't clear who was doing what. And then when we've made a better process around doing something like that, even though products are different and everything, there's just a better process around it it gets everyone on the same page, but also that the angst around it is gone because you've got this thing you can rely on that you trust and you can fall back to. And it's kind of like a tool that will, um, get you there anyway, even if you get lost for a second. Because, you know, when we're doing this stuff, you all get— you trip yourself out in your own mind. I should be doing this, I should be doing— I should have done that already. I've done that, I've forgotten this. Um, The problem with all that is you're relying on a flawed system of our memory and all the rest of it. And also it's so easy as soon as you have more than one person doing a thing, you think he's doing that, he thinks you're doing that.

Josh: The bystander syndrome. Yeah.

Rob: And then something will get forgotten. The thing is, if you've got that system to go back to and you can check, you know what that person has done, you know what you're on top of.

Josh: So is it a checklist? What does that system look like?

Rob: We do it in Basecamp with checklist, a templated checklist for different things that we're doing. And that, that is, yeah, that's been a game changer for us. It just means everyone knows what they're doing, and if something is not done, it's just right there and you can go back and do it. And I think the thing is, when the, the thing is, you can't start with that. You've got to go through all the pain to get to that, because if you just write it, it's going to be wrong. Or if you just start a process today, it's going to be wrong. And there's no way you're going to remember all the things that happened on all those shoots you did. But if you start going through some of this process and you get to the point where you're like, this is a start, because all these things are like a never done.

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Rob: And you got to start, then you go do the next shoot and you just add one thing to it. You go do the next shoot, add one more thing to it, or you change something, or you go to the next shoot and go, this is slightly different. What if we ask ourselves this question at the top here that says, is this for a product or an interview? I don't know, something, right? And then you can just start laying all this down. You're like, if it's an interview, we go down this route. If it's a product shoot or a lifestyle shoot, we go down this route. And then you can get to the point where you've got this system that you can all rely on. And I think, you know, that stuff's working when all of a sudden you don't have it and people are asking for it. When they're doing that, you're like, okay, this is working. They're relying on it now. And it's good because that becomes their own, like it becomes everyone's tool to success.

Josh: And even for the retro, like being able to— the reason why, yeah, because the reason why we're just doing it randomly is because we don't have anything where it's like rather than it being this person's opinion versus this person's opinion, it would be much nicer and simpler if we just had, yeah, the decision of the checklist. And did we do everything on the checklist?

Rob: 100%. And the other thing is, I suppose, with that, I reckon is um, you know, you might be doing things that are similar to each other, and then you do one thing that's an outlier, then you'll go and do these other things, then you come to doing the outlier again. You're like, it was like a year ago that you did last did that kind of shoot. You'll be like, like trying to bring that all up is so hard. We're like, for a good, good example for us, something that happens once a year is Black Friday. We just go back and open up Black Friday from the year before, we start looking at everything and going, oh, and then you don't— you, you realize, like, I was doing the SMS campaigns, I'm like, I'm lost. And I go back and look at all the old SMS and I read all this stuff we wrote about it, and in like 5 minutes I was back up to speed. That took me like 2 days the year before. And I'm like, man, if we didn't have this, it'd be hard. It'd be hard.

Tommy: How much of business is being up for dealing with some kind of pain? And the pain could be learning something new or Totally new challenge, I think.

Rob: But yeah, I think you— I definitely think it's pain to some extent, but eventually you'll get to like the pain. Like, it's like you'll— I hate to use your term, lean into it, but I'm gonna— like, you'll be leaning— you'll be leaning into that because you realise once you do it and it hurts and you get better and it works, you'll start to realise that you reckon— I feel like I do it now. Like, I— we get to somewhere and we're doing something and I'm like, this is familiar to a time before this happened.

Tommy: Yeah.

Rob: And then you go, this is going to be good in the end.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Well, it's like a run.

Rob: Yeah.

Tommy: People who are great runners, really fit, still struggle and feel a bit of pain when they're going for a run. Oh, me knee's not good, but I can run 20K.

Rob: Or yeah, but they like I've had this before, I can get through it, I know I can. And it's the kind of thing like, um, you know, someone hands you like a widget or a lock or something and you get like a Quad Lock maybe and you've got to take it off. And if you don't know how to— if you don't 100% know it comes off and how to do it, it could be hard. But when you know what to do, it's just like— because you've done it before. And once you've gone through it, you can lean into it and go through it again and again and again. And it, and it gets, uh—

Tommy: he didn't like my running one, so he brought in a Quad Lock analogy. It's great.

Rob: But the thing is, the only reason the runner can do that is because he's had the sore knee before. The first time he has it, he's like, oh shit, can I get through this?

Josh: Well, even like Seth Godin talks about with like using the running analogy, you know, with runners, you are going to get tired. It's not about how do you not get tired, it's where do you put the tired.

Rob: Yeah, how do you deal with it?

Josh: How do you deal with it? I think that like even with all of this sort of stuff, it's just because there is friction, it doesn't mean that things aren't going well. It's just part of any project.

Rob: Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, this is, this is a bit of a problem, I think, with how much content's out there. Everyone's killing it, everyone's getting up at 5 AM and they're perfect and they're having no issues, they've solved everything in their life by doing that.

Josh: Or solar panels.

Rob: Yeah, like cold water, cold showers, whatever. The, the thing is, you've set off all of you.

Josh: Yeah, there's 25 Google phones going off right now. How many Google Homes do you have, by the way?

Rob: Um, not that many. I have 3.

Josh: It's really— and some Nest.

Rob: There's, uh, no, well, what do I have?

Tommy: 1, 2, 3.

Rob: Yeah, well, I have, I have it. It's inside the Sonos speakers as well, but I don't count them.

Josh: It'll just be too many.

Rob: No, no, I have it turned off because they, they both—

Josh: is the Sonos functionality with the speakers smart?

Rob: It's okay. Yeah.

Josh: Do you see that they're doing the new thing with the hardware?

Rob: Um, you know, they're suing Google.

Josh: Really?

Rob: Sonos. Yeah.

Josh: Well, they're also doing a whole programme where you can, um, you get— I think it's like 30, 30 or 40% off, um, but they brick your old Sonos. So they're saying like, this is old technology, we don't want it out in the secondhand market. And so, because I had all those old Play 5s or whatever Um, and yeah, so it was—

Rob: I, um, I ended up in an interesting spot.

Josh: It's hard, like, unless they go super, uh, because I guess the whole thing was they were doing the, um, mesh network stuff, right? Whereas now wireless is way better.

Rob: Google Play Wi-Fi is awesome. Yeah, no, I get it. Yeah, I still like the stuff and want to support them, but yeah, they're in a tricky spot, I think. Did you see, um, Apple's wearables, like, bigger than— right, if you put together things like—

Tommy: it was the Swiss, the SwissWatch, like Swatch and stuff.

Rob: Put them all together there. Yeah, if you put together, like, a lot of it's the AirPods. Put together watch and AirPods, it's bigger than, um, like Rolex, Tiffany's, um, uh, Sonos, a whole heap of brands. They just dwarfed everything. Like, by themselves, they're like a Fortune 100 company now.

Tommy: It's just the wearables.

Rob: Just the wearables.

Josh: Our mate Tall Gronk, uh, Peter Shepherd's got this new device. I forgot the name. It starts with W, I think. Uh, it's for tracking sleep. Oh yeah, but it's just— it's, um, you don't pay for the hardware, you pay a subscription. It's $30 a month and it does all of your sleep. And it's a, um, uh, it's really thin. It doesn't have any screen on it, almost just looks like a um, like I said, like a Velcro armband. I think I'm thinking of getting into it maybe. Really?

Rob: Do you need another sleep tracker?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Do you think you need to have a problem to be using something like that?

Josh: Well, he was saying that last night when he did it, it was like, um, he woke up in the middle of the night and he was like angry. He's like, you're gonna fuck your sleep data. Yeah, just like trying to get to sleep real quick.

Rob: That's why I reckon you want anxiety when you're trying to fall asleep just to get a better score on an app. It's a modern day problem. Do you remember that app?

Josh: Like, this is years ago. This is gotta be like— do you remember the Jawbone app?

Rob: No, no, you used to just— they used to say just put your phone— it was when they first had, um, like, uh, accelerometers and that in the iPhone. You put your iPhone on your bed and it would tell you how well you slept. That went massive.

Tommy: Well, they even— was it real?

Rob: I don't know if any of this stuff works, but they sell a lot of it.

Josh: It was the one that, like, uh, TJ tried one where it records the audio and just played back where you make noise and it just caught me farting. Yeah, I mean, the accelerometer stuff's interesting. The, um, you were telling, like, when it comes to— are you in the Apple Store? Like, can you buy Quad Lock at the Apple Store or no, not online?

Rob: Just online. Yeah.

Josh: What's the— can you talk about the process of that or is that all NDA?

Rob: No, probably. Yeah, that's a bit of a nightmare.

Josh: Yeah, it's a long pro— like, they go through so much stuff and it It's changed over the years.

Rob: It used to be that Apple did the testing, then they outsourced the testing, and it's— yeah, it's just, it's all over the shop.

Josh: You have to get a new test every single time?

Rob: Like, yeah, yeah, every model.

Josh: Yeah, it's a lot of work.

Rob: It is a lot of work for— this is one of those things like you say to someone, oh yeah, we sold on Apple.

Josh: Like, really?

Rob: That's amazing.

Josh: No one buys anything outside of iPhones and MacBooks and shit, right?

Rob: Like the accessories, pretty much. I mean, you go to— it's even hard to find stuff. Yeah, like I was trying to buy a laptop stand the other day from Apple for someone new, and literally how I got there is go to the search bar and type in 12 South because I know the brand of the laptop stand that I needed. And that—

Josh: yeah, it's a mess.

Rob: How many people doing that? Yeah, not that many.

Tommy: Have you got an exit strategy for the business, or is it not something that—

Rob: we've done that dance before back in the day with different people. And it was, we've done it twice, but now best decision we ever made is not selling.

Josh: So is that just because of how much it's grown?

Rob: Oh yeah. And one time we were doing it with a company in the US and we were growing a lot at the time.

Josh: What sort of company wants to buy?

Rob: They were more like a distribution company. It was very opportunistic. We've talked to likes of Belkin and Logitech early, early days., and they actually came up with the thing that's— both of them independently come up with the right, the right call on us at the time. And that was that really we're, uh, you know, more of a sporting sort of lifestyle brand than a CE brand, um, which is consumer electronics. Oh yeah. And they're all traditional consumer electronics brands. So, um, talking with those guys at the end of that sort of press, they were like, you know what, both separately said that where you will be popular is not where we're strong.

Josh: Like Garmin, but are they doing too much of their own hardware?

Rob: We're probably too— yeah, yeah, probably too, um, competitive. Like, people effectively are using these instead of Garmins.

Josh: But if they wanted to, uh, diversify or whatever, you could see like them developing a really good—

Rob: it got all that app and stuff like that.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Um, and so is it in your mind about, okay, Because you always see people saying we need an exit strategy.

Rob: Yeah, I mean, the exit strategy would be that effectively one day, and this is going to be worth more to someone else than it is to us. It's like any company of worth, that will be a point in time where that is that. The thing is, I still think we're a bit unique or a bit different in the space. And we don't even do much. We do hardly any PR or anything anymore. People don't even know Um, I know probably 4 or 5 years ago there was heaps more around Quad Lock in the media and that kind of thing. Now there's just heaps more Quad Locks out there, but like people don't really know us. Even like, um, so we're not chasing that kind of thing on a daily basis because we don't raise money, so no one talks about anything. We just sell lots of units and get lots more customers. But what we are doing is building like a really, really good business, a really good brand, strong brand. People come back and buy it. Eventually, I'm sure someone, either PE or another brand or someone will be interested in us at one point.

Josh: What I do—

Rob: it's not like we need it at any time soon.

Tommy: Yeah. What I do love about Quad Lock is that you get behind and sponsor local events, and one of those events that you're sponsoring is the Adventure Club that the Daily Talk Show has.

Rob: This is a massive stitch-up. No, it's not.

Tommy: I spoke to Rob about it. Haven't spoken to him since. That was 2 weeks ago. And I said, mate, would you sponsor the event? And I don't know what that actually means, nor does Rob. So let's just leave it at he's sponsoring the event, or he's at least going to come. So he's a representative from Quad Lock that will be there on the day.

Josh: Can we— can you sponsor a service of my bike? Because I need a new chain, I think.

Rob: On the way in, I think it was on the way in, I was listening to the podcast on Instagram because I thought, what are these guys— if I ring the doorbell and they're doing a podcast, how does that work?

Josh: Yeah, no, don't.

Rob: So no, I didn't do it. So I just messaged Mace Rendown and opened up on the live chat. I'm out the front, but I heard you say that you're going to tell us your favourite ice cream. No, you said, you said I'm going to come and do the service on your bike.

Tommy: No. Yeah, he mentioned that. I said absolutely not. The CEO, you'd be good at it.

Rob: The fan group do it, but I'm not going to do it.

Tommy: It needs a, it needs a whole, it needs a whole— if it's been sitting on the balcony It needs a whole new chain and just, you just need to grease up.

Josh: I also want to get the, um, new wrap of the, um, handles.

Rob: Yeah, because I mean, a little bit— the thing is you got to get all the parts and you got to go do it all.

Josh: Well, he was suggesting taking my Specialized bike and getting Curve to serve.

Rob: Don't think that they won't do it. Your bike?

Tommy: Yeah, they won't.

Rob: Anyway, uh, sure, it's a great bike. Just take it down the local bike shop and just get a service and I'll be fine.

Josh: Because I nearly— the last time I was looking at it, it was wrapped on wrapped up also in getting a bike trainer. I was thinking I'm going to get it serviced, then I'm going to get an indoor bike trainer and get a stand for my MacBook Pro.

Rob: It's putting a lot of things in front of the just riding the bike, which you have.

Tommy: Well, you'll be riding it.

Rob: Who's Trey?

Josh: He's my challenge network.

Tommy: You'll be riding it on Feb 29th, Saturday.

Josh: You're gonna come?

Rob: Uh, sure. What's, uh, cheque what happens on February 29th. What day is it?

Tommy: The main sponsor's just checking if you can come to this.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, bring, uh, bring East Cavendish.

Tommy: So we're going to do a bike ride and it's going to start at a car park so you can park, so it's not annoying, so you can bring the bike.

Rob: So it's not a ride to—

Tommy: not a ride to— I mean, too far for you.

Josh: Where are we going?

Tommy: Well, we'll get to work it out. Oh, those details will come.

Rob: Those—

Tommy: no, the details will come. The car park, we're gonna ride, it's gonna be fun, we're gonna get lunch.

Rob: So there's a car park and there's a ride.

Tommy: Yep, that's what you know.

Josh: Do I need to—

Rob: as a date?

Tommy: Yeah, you can wear what you want. I love to see you in full skins.

Josh: Yeah, I could— I literally spent $400 on my Rapha Lycra. I don't have, um, bike shoes.

Rob: That's okay, that's all right.

Josh: When you go to get service, I need— should I buy some? You—

Rob: I think if you click in, you will crash.

Tommy: Yes, please just get the mount changed to just standards, just standard.

Josh: You can sort of use them.

Rob: No, I've got some pedals if you need it.

Josh: We can just put some stain on while you're servicing.

Tommy: Right.

Josh: All right, great.

Tommy: So details to come. But yeah, great that we got the main sponsor on board, guys.

Josh: Thank you, Rob. Uh, it's a Daily Talk Show. Hypedthedailytalkshow.com is the email address. If you enjoyed the show, give us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. Also, uh, you just did a, um, a podcast with Founder as well, so, um, and they've just released their course.

Rob: Yeah, the actual course course is up now.

Josh: The course source, what's the course called?

Rob: It's the Ecommerce Masters course. So it's specifically for people that already have an ecommerce store and you may be doing okay, but you want to scale it up. And then they've got one that sort of precedes it, which is the Start and Scale course, which is run by Greta. And that's if you're just starting your sort of ecommerce journey, I suppose you could call it. So two sides of it.

Tommy: Sam can put the link to see that too in the show notes.

Josh: All right, see you tomorrow, guys.

Tommy: See you guys.