AI Adoption, Founder Pressure & Scaling SaaS Teams

My belief is AI cannot acquire a quarter of a million teachers. AI can't acquire a million bookings a year where a teacher needs to open a phone where they get on in our app. AI certainly can't acquire 5,000 paying customers, 5,000 Australian schools. Is what can we build quickly to serve to those eyeballs that are already in our app? And that's the agitation and that's the excitement that if you show me a team that is comfortable saying, I don't know. I need help. I made a mistake. I'm late. I'm over budget. They're comfortable saying that. Then I'll show your team on rocket bursters every single time because that vulnerability to say that something has gone wrong means that the problem can be solved extra quickly, collaboratively, and you can move forward and be stronger together as a team.

Running a business can feel lonely, especially when the decisions get heavy. Welcome to CEO Rispro by Sora Jane. Practical insights from the boardroom and the meditation cushion. I'm sorry. I've done 10,000 hours in three major parts of my life. I spent 10,000 hours being a CEO, 10,000 hours being a board member, and 10,000 hours meditating. What we're going to do in each episode is really unpack a real business challenge that a CEO is facing and see if we can work through it together. Enjoy.

Hi, good day guys. Sen here again. Today I've got Ben from Class Cover with me. Ben, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah, thanks very much. Thanks for having me. Uh, yeah, my name is Ben Grosia from Class Cover. I'm the the the co-founder and CEO of Class Cover. It's a software as a service that helps um 5,000 schools and about a quarter of million teachers in Australia and New Zealand to manage casual relief teachers. It's a bit of a niche offering sort of I guess we have a a solution to a very large problem in a in a very niche area of education where where formally someone would make up to 45 phone calls find a casual teacher and now thanks to our software they they can automate that whole process find their teacher really quickly.

Oh so teacher calls in sick your tech finds the right teacher allocates them the job and gets to there whenever they can.

Yeah that's exactly right. We're sort of uh moving towards got a lot more adjacent services now moving towards being a bit of a a LinkedIn for education or a bit of a education super app as we like to call it where uh the teachers can access professional development. They can access job opportunities sort of LinkedIn style news feed and and so yeah very much sort of a vertical or or jobs platform

and then do you guys just my interest in do you guys then have a marketplace of available teachers or does each school set up their own little marketplace of who they want to teach at their school?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So, one of our what I would call our unfair advantages, especially when we're first starting, is that our acquisition of those teachers came at zero cost because whenever we signed up a school,

bring something between 20 and 100 teachers with them. Now, teachers can sign up themselves, just come straight on the platform, but the school curates their own list of teachers and their preferred list of teachers they like, right? or they can access a directory of teachers who have said they're available for additional work and that's that directory that they can review profiles and connect with them if they wish.

Okay, brilliant idea. So the way we run this podcast is we kind of talk through a business problem you're having right now and we'll workshop that together. What what's something top of mind? What's causing you some grief right now?

Yeah. So um grief probably not so much more um more would it be accommodation managing shiny new things syndrome in an AI environment. That's what I'd like to call it. And really how hard to push my team when it comes to adoption of AI technologies pretty much across the board. And and I'll give you I'll give you some comments.

Yeah. Give me some examples. Yeah. Yeah.

So I feel like that the Classco business is extremely well positioned to scale more efficiently to really hyperchote revenue and profit thanks to AI technologies. Um, and and that's partially because of our size in that in that we typically we're not going to go from 10 designers and I'm going to need to sack four of them because of AI. We have an engineering team of course with about a dozen 15 engineers in it. There might be some efficiencies to be gained there as time goes on, but typically we've got one to two people in every skill set. And so of those one to two people, what can they do to do more with less when it comes to utilizing AI technology

or just produce more output, produce more better code, build more features with the same number of people?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And and probably much the frustration of people on my engineering team, I'll spend a Saturday evening vibe coding a new feature or my head of product or will will get on Claude MCP and and say, "Oh, this is so easy." Or, "Oh yeah, why can't we be doing this with AI?" And it's from a cultural um team management point of view, it's a a bit of an intricate balance when effectively in a software company, you're challenging your subject matter experts, who are your engineers, who are your designers, and as a non-technical person nor a UX person, nor a designer, I'm saying, well, how hard can we push it because I've just read this blog.

I've just heard this podcast. Can we do this? Can we do this? can we do this? Can we can we tap our head and rub our tummy at the same time um because of what's out there?

So the problem is, you know, how hard do I push my team to adopt to use AI? And that's to use AI to make them not more efficient, not necessarily the product, that might be a separate thing, but how do I get them to want to use the newest tools to be more efficient?

Yeah. And and it's Yeah. So absolutely. Yes. Um, and then so let's say for example, I read an article in the AFR the other day and the and the CEO of uh safety culture. He was talking about we're deploying features in days that used to take us months to deploy. And it was straight out of the top drawer of that done is better than perfect because he was like if it takes me three days to deploy a product and the product doesn't work or the feature doesn't work or and not doesn't work from a bug perspective but isn't adopted by the user base then you can always change it. You can always you know iterate or you can pull it and because it's only taking you 3 days to to develop then that's way less time and money investment than something that Yep.

that takes three months. Now um in respect to traditional whether you want to call it software practices or the mindset of a software development team that creation of a road map that welloughtout process that user feedback I guess in summary what is perceived to be available out there in the way of AI utility for companies such as ours um is the ability for me to go proper founder mode and just to say I want us to have this feature. How quick can we get it? Just do it super cheap. Just do it. If it doesn't work, we'll pull it. Or it doesn't work, we'll iterate on it. And and that can be frustrating to have a CEO or even senior team members who pretty much feel like they know better, you know, in an area of the business that they've never really had too much expertise in.

Yeah, that makes sense. Look, um to if it makes you feel better, you're not alone. So out of the boards I'm on four tech companies and every single CEO I've had this exact conversation exact conversation because um because change is hard like you know 40 years ago when they put computers into um into workplaces or 35 years ago when whenever it was CEOs at the time were like how do I get my staff to use word processes?

How do I get them to get off typewriters and start using word processors because they're so much more efficient? And then similarly like with when Excel kind of happened, I'm sure finance people be like, "How do I get my guys to stop using manual ledges and use Excel or use these new computerized accounting systems?" So we've totally faced this problem before. So it's not a unique thing for humanity to sort out.

It's a bit different because it's a bit faster and it's happening a lot quicker and

historically just waited for people to get old and retire and the new generation will come up, but you can't necessarily wait for that. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Um,

do you have credibility with your engineering team when it comes to these kind of things? Do they view you as an engineering peer?

No, but I'm very transparent about that. And that's part of like I'm I'm we've known each other a little while. I'm very hard on my sleeve, very authentic, very willing to say I don't know. Very willing to say that as my role as CEO, I've referred to myself over the years as the chief snowplow. Just get all the crap out of the way and let the people who know their job better than me allow them to do their best job possible. So when you when you talk about credibility, I think my vulnerability in subjects I don't know about is where I get the credibility. So the relationship with with uh I guess teams like my engineering team is is excellent.

And and it's funny you reference the speed like versus whether it be you know typewriters into uh into PCs or what have you. It is the speed and the fire hose of information that we're getting about what's available. You add that to a curious mind. You add that to an ambitious business owner. And I need to be very empathetic towards my team to sort of throttle that to not be constantly saying, "What about this? What about this? Have you seen Claude Design? Have you seen this? Have you seen that?" Um, so the conversations are open and the conversations are again very authentic and and no one's really pushing back and and I should say the other area where I'm trying to be the best possible leader that I can be is that we're also in the back end of a massive integration piece of work with our new Queensland government partners and my guys are flat out.

They're busy anyway, right? last thing they want to do is get a blog forwarded by me saying, "Hey, can we deploy a deploy a feature in one day?" So, yeah, there the sort of there sort of challenges. I think I'm managing reasonably well, but it still is something that it always it keeps me in a bit of a state of agitation because I would love to get to the end of the year and have a bunch of new features deployed in a tenth of the time like I'm hearing safety.

Everyone else does. Everyone else does.

And you think everyone else in the world is doing this properly except for you.

Exactly. That's right. The my question was a tiny bit subtler. So I'm sure you've got a great relationship with your engineering team, but do you have engineering credibility with them?

And by engineer as in do they do they think I know what I'm talking about

when it comes to technical things?

No, not at all. And again, I own that completely.

Yep. That's just not your expertise. Your expertise is somewhere else.

Exactly. Right. Obviously, I've learned a lot over the years, you know, from from a non-technical perspective. And then that would extend to other members of my team who are probably agit well I'm putting a bit of a a speed hump in between the other members of my team saying can we do this can we do this can we do this and I'm saying guys they're super busy with this Queensland gig just leave them alone let's talk about that in June yeah when we're signed off so yeah to answer your question yeah as far as engineering chops I got and that's normal and everyone everyone understands it

and is your agitation caused by perceived lack of agility that you might have had in the past.

No, it is out of excitement.

It's excitement. Okay.

Absolutely. It's a good It's a good problem. Um and and and part of that is the excitement's filled because you know I think so many founders and CEOs will have gone on this emotional roller coaster as we've seen the AI press let's call it just again fire hose of information but scary stories positive stories opportunities threats and everything. So we're losing sleep for good and bad reasons pretty much because of what we're seeing in the media about AI now. I've been on a bit of that roller coaster. You know, could someone replicate Class Cover? Funnily enough, we're launching in Ireland or we've launched in Ireland. And would you believe that the reason we launched in Ireland is because a young punk in Ireland copied our entire platform using a AI dev, called it class cover, and then started a waiting list and and threatened to launch.

He actually validated the market for us. We got into season, and they were launching. So, we sort of turned a threatened opportunity there. But in in respect to lost sleep and again opportunity and um it's it's a real case of my belief is AI cannot acquire a quarter of a million teachers. AI can't acquire um a million bookings a year where a teacher needs to open a phone where they get on in our app. And AI certainly can't acquire 5,000 paying customers, 5,000 Australian schools. And so where the excitement comes from, this goes to the sort of LinkedIn for education dream so to speak, is what can we build quickly to serve to those eyeballs that are already in our app.

And that's the agitation and that's the excitement. Let me give you a pessimistic view of that though. I reckon there's a SAS apocalypse coming. And I'll tell you why. Because in the same way there was like one kid that replicated, I don't know, 20% of your app, whatever it was, didn't replicate the usage or any of that kind of stuff with an AI tool. When there's just one of those guys, it doesn't really matter. But you could totally have 30 of those people chopping at your bit very quickly

for sure.

Um, they'll charge a tenth of what you charge or a quarter of what you charge. They won't have your cost base. So, they might not chip into your existing client base. They might just make growth harder.

Mhm.

So, I reckon that's one of the great risks about not adapting

is allowing one or two guys, one sales guy, one tech guy with a bunch of AI tokens to legitimately compete with a team of 15. Mhm.

That's that's the terrifying risk that one has.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And and I think um in respect of you know I I think that education is a very slow to change. Obviously I've run this through my head many times the last six 12 months right and and education very slow to change sector. probably 70% of our revenues is tied up in long-term government enterprise contracts in in respect of um you know our market saturation five and a half thousand out of the let's say 7 and a half thousand addressable schools in Australia use our product

so you got market

so we got some moat little bit of mo and I'm not stupid enough to to just go no we're done like let's you know we're good here it's no threat um interesting you say about the two versus 15 that's kind of what we're setting up post June to to really challenge um you know how hard we can push things and say okay I've got a I've got a um product manager who is reasonably technical um certainly not a senior senior engineer by any means but knows his stuff and the stuff he's spinning up you know on a weekend just for fun and I I don't know how robust it is in the back end but again it's starting a conversation it's challenging norms It's basically saying can we do things faster, easier whilst of course remaining secure and compliant especially in the sector we're in.

Um but yeah look to totally one eye on

it's good to be paranoid about everything.

Absolutely be paranoid about everything.

Absolutely. But uh but all things said and done at this point um I think reasonable moat around the business a lot of exciting opportunity and and really it's me with shiny new things syndrome and and how do I responsibly convey that to the team and and motivate them

and and have you been able to do anything that's been effective so far?

Yeah, I mean like so we're launching a we

sorry effective in terms of changing their behavior, getting them to use these tools and

Yeah, big time. So uh UX UX um UX designer, UI designer, graphic designer. I think I heard a stat late last year where the average number of designers to engineers about 1 to 10. I think that's now about 1 to four because the engineering is seeing huge efficiencies with AI but the designers that you know the AI slop

we need the designers. Um and and I think when

and that's plus I also reckon people have more emphasis on design than they would have had 2 or 3 years ago.

Yeah.

So they want to do more design before they build something.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And so so say end of last year when that stat was published, it's almost like the designers breathe out and they go, "Okay, great. A

we're going to survive going for my job."

Then look at Claude Design. Yeah, we just had an example just uh just just yesterday

where a presenter who who publishes some professional developing professional development content for us for our teachers wasn't really clear on the on the brand guidelines and submitted something which 6 months ago it would have been that needs to be redone into claude brand brand you know style guide uploaded changed in 10 seconds. Yeah,

completely edited pro probably half probably 3 to 4 days of work down to 45 seconds.

What is it that's made the designers adopt yet the engineers not as not adopt as quickly?

Uh so design side their capacity that's an operational reason and that's to say that in respect of this very large Queensland project that we're undertaking their job is basically done. They have some capacity on the time. Yeah,

I'm I'm not reticent to say, and this is what I threw down at them. I basically said, um,

your job's safe.

You got a long-term future here at Class Cover, but I want to see how much you can put yourself on rocket boosters. Pretty much, here's the credit card for the AI tokens, the AI tools. Just go at it. And and they responded so well. And and this is a team of young driven um, you know, uh, you know, team members/ colleagues who really met the challenge. And what I'm hoping is that come June when the when the heat comes off our dev team is that they're going to step up to to that challenge as well. Um and when you ask about do I have credibility with the engineering team probably my my weak spot is they say no or they don't adopt I'm not in as good a position to challenge them because again I'm not an engineer.

Yep. So,

so I'm glad to hear the designers worked well, but I think there might I wonder if there's something subtler in design teams

that perhaps design teams over the last couple of years have self- selected to be open for change. So, 2 years ago, you didn't have to use Figma.

Today, you just have to use Figma. If you don't use Figma, you're not you're not a legitimate designer.

You used to do this in like, I don't know, Adobe Photoshop or something a couple of years ago. So all the designers that were not up for change, they probably got filtered out of the tech industry and went to publishing or went inhouse.

Yeah.

So I reckon most designers are probably happy to change. The other word you said, which I'm not sure you noticed, but you said young.

Oh yeah.

Like I'm 45. I'm too old to learn Canva.

I just can't do it. I get irritated when I get a Canon presentation. I get my AI bot to convert it to PowerPoint for me and I read that. Sometimes you're just old. And the ironic thing is great engineers are in their 40s

because it's a complex mathematical problem that you've had to solve for 20 years to get really really good.

So that might be just another lens. This thing that kind of fits with

Yeah. No, I totally agree. It's funny cuz we just hired uh I was I was saying before we we started that we just hired a new salesperson locally. Now, it was a big consideration when when we're interviewing her about the her growth mindset and her open-mindedness towards adopting AI tools when it comes to sales. Um, and again, probably from a generation point of view, she's right in a sweet spot. She was 20 years younger than I am. I'm 47. And uh, yeah, I agree with that. And and I think there is realities around whether it be levels of comfort, whether it be your risk appetite, your ability to um well again your appetite to be disruptive to both yourself and and to the work that you do.

Yeah, I I think that's absolutely true and and I like to think that uh as I'm sure you do, I think we both think we've got a big growth mindset that we're really open to anything that's that's out there

except for Canva.

Except for Canva. So I was trying to think of what my example was with c with with canvas something that uh because it it is absolutely out there but um yeah it it's it's very true you need to um be realistic about the world that you know professionals are growing up in. Um, and if you if you are met with that fixed mindset and whether it be risk aversion, fixed mindset and and no appetite to adopt in what is an incredibly fastm moving and changing environment, then then it can leave you a bit wanted. I mean, so I'll give you an example. Um, I used to code a long time ago. I only vibe code now.

Um, text editors. So I reckon if you go past every one of your engineers desks, they use the same text editor they probably used a decade ago. And there's all these cool smart better text editors that have this all this AI and better color coding and those kind of things. But what happens whatever text editor you learn from you almost never change because you're just used to it right you know all the shortcuts you know you know how things work.

So change is fundamentally hard

it's hard for everybody in every facet of their life but in engineers how they code.

Um and the initial reaction engineers I've never had an engineer being worried that AI is going to take my job. They've always been worried AI would do a shitty job.

Yeah. And that might have been the case a couple years ago, but now AI is probably better than like a a good engineer. Maybe not an expert, but give it a year, probably better than an expert.

Yeah.

Um, but it's very hard to get that level of change. And I and my challenge to you and cuz this is not solve. I've not figured this out in my other board roles.

Is this even solvable?

Can you actually get get an engineer to become a 10x coder? Yeah.

With a whole bunch of AI tools next to them.

Yeah. Yeah. And it is a great question when when you say about using the um yeah using the same tools and that that level of comfort. I just think that yeah it's again goes to sort of if we talk about fixed mindset there's a connotation there that someone's sort of archaic. I do ultimately think though because especially in engineering the downside and the risk of of bugs or if again if you're an enterprise you're in gov tech edtech like we are the the risks are higher you know it could be health healthare could be finance is that risk of you aversion is fueled by a acute desire to not make mistakes and that's okay too and again my my CTO told me probably 12 months ago now that that something like eight out of the 10 of the biggest security breaches of the last year were all platforms that had a large component of of AI engineering involved.

Um,

and they were probably hacked by AI tools, by the way.

Probably were.

Yeah. And then I was listening to a podcast um just on the way up here about, you know, that new anthropic model that they haven't that they didn't release because they were

Mythos. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Mythos. That's right. So yeah, it's it's a really interesting one because because I look my I we have an offshore dev team, a class cover based out of Chennai in India. Um been with us since 2019. Now the senior team members of of this team, they walk the halls of the Queensland Department of Education when they come out, you know, once every couple of months and they're basically cheered out of the room. They and and they've had to meet some stereotype challenges. They've had to meet some Yeah. This is

a government that had really never embraced SAS ever until they engaged with us,

let alone SAS with an offshore team.

That's right. Exactly. So when we had to on board them with a team's environment and I gave an Indian phone number, they went, "What the hell?"

Yep.

And what's this scam I've just signed up to?

Exactly. Exactly. Good news is to the huge credit of my team, we're now in the second phase of UAT testing, massive integration piece with their human capital management system and their payroll system and they've just given a great account of themselves. And so there has to be that risk aversion when you got a CEO who they know is nontechnical or whatever. What about this? What about this? What about this? you know, it could be anything from spellchecking to, you know, making, you know, design elements consistent, what have you. I understand the push back cuz they also know the risk.

I agree with that. And also, I think there's a depth to that. So, something engineers and doctors have in common is um they value their intellect. Like everyone will totally rate the doctor that's smarter than them, the surgeon that's better than them. Every developer will totally rate the engineer that's better than them. And if you want to ever attract an engineer, get a 10x CTO and they'll find the best engineers in the world and they'll want to go work with them.

And engineers want to work with smart people. And one of the downsides of that is you get a bit of intellectual arrogance. And that's why I kind of p you on the credibility question at the start.

So for example, right, um, if I joined a company and they told me I' got to use a Windows computer, I would turn down that offer.

I'm like, I'd rather not work for you or I'd rather not have a computer. I'm going to use my Mac

because I'm smarter than you and then Macs are better for me and Windows sucks.

Very simple example, but I think engineers engineers have that.

Y

so how does one and I think that's one of the things that prevent them from adopting new tech is they need someone so crudely said but the sales they need someone smarter than them in their domain.

Yeah.

To take them on that journey.

Yes. That's interesting because um you know my CTO once again have a great relationship with him been with us since 2019. He he built built out the dev team. Um and and and he has a incredible pedigree um when it comes to the organizations he's worked with over the years gone by. Uh you know he he carries himself with an immense level of confidence and and certainty again which has held us in when we walked into I keep referring to this Queensland project right now. So that's a that's a $500 million project give or take um of we occupy a tiny amount our little niche product that they went to SAP for 98% of it and for the 2% they said no we want class cover because they solved this problem the right way and this would have been with SAP knocking on the door saying we can build that just let us do the whole thing.

So, if we'd had this podcast 6 months ago and you'd asked me about my greatest business challenge, it would have been how do we get this how how do we get this over the line by being a a a small start

being the riskier option. Right.

That's right. Exactly right. But we got there and we won it. It was a great thing. So, problem no more. But when we first walked into this workshop day one with Queensland, the only person in the room who did not feel out of his depth was my CTO. And again, Chennai base had flown over he's been secounded to Seattle for Amazon in years gone past done Huff Post, Google, IBM over over the the uh the course of his career and just the confidence and the certainty, the willingness to challenge them on assumptions, but the and it's not even a downside. It's just a again it's just a team management and people management. It's not again it's not even a it's not even a yeah it's not a negative.

It's just that that risk aversion which has done such great work for us.

It's great in that arena. It's amazing in that arena mandatory. Would we be here without that mindset is a little bit of a friction point when I'm going the safety culture is doing that and Camera's doing that. Why can't we do it? And and and that's where it sort of is that balance.

I totally So I'll tell you one of the things we're trying one of the companies I'm on the board of is to get a new CTO on top

who's super AI focused. I reckon that's only a 55th chance of success whether they work out or whe they just alienate everybody.

Yeah.

The other thing we've tried is just have AI training for the guys. That's not really been successful either.

Really interesting. So I So yeah, same thing. We've had a we've had a period of about two and a half years where our entire the business's entire existence has been about winning two government contracts.

Yep. It's all been worth it because those two contracts have resulted in a 60s something percent growth in the business.

Amazing. Yeah.

Uh a high margin long-term contracts. So well well worth it. However, that very tired turn of phrase that I'm spending too much time funny mentioned tech earlier. Um too much time working in the business and not enough time working on the business. That applies absolutely not just to our entire business, which is very normal and and very common, but to our engineers. And I'll give you an example. We had um as part of this uh this this Queensland deal, we had to respond to 85 non-functional requirements. Uh everything from accessibility to pen tests, all the good stuff.

All the good stuff. Now, we were 99.9% of the way towards executing a contract. Our friends in uh Queensland DOE HR walk into a meeting any given Tuesday. How you going? Yeah, good. Can't wait to get started with class cover. Have you seen the updated uh nonfunctional requirements? Oh, I haven't seen them. I'll send them across. They give me a call and say, "Bam, I'm really sorry, but we've just had the NFRS updated. They've added 100 to the NFRS. There's now 185." And so again, handed that basically said to my engineering team, "This is what we need to do to get this contract over the line.

Can you build it?"

Exactly.

Please. And they did. And they nailed it and everything got done. And and again, the one of the unfair advantages of being a small business playing in the in the big kids pool with Govtech is that they marvel at the speed that we can do stuff that we can change 100 times faster than

Exactly. And and they and they've paid us a lot of compliments for that. So in respect of let's say a CTO or or at least let's say a partner or a mentor or someone that can challenge my team around adopting IO technologies whether it be putting my dev team through AI training at this point in time it's a we're too busy working in the business to work on my business of engineering.

Yeah.

Um I hope to change that in a couple mentally plan it for July. Right. Come July let me plan this. I'm I'm trying to be the best possible leader to them to say, I'm chomping at the bit.

I'll stay out of your way.

But I'm going to stay out of your way.

Yeah.

And and I I'm consumed in launching an Ireland. I'm consumed with launching our education intelligence, educator intelligence, professional developing product uh for for the teachers. But I'm like, you guys just get Queensland over the line. Let me know if there's any you need out of the way, but otherwise I'm I'm going to stay silent.

Yeah. and and and that makes sense the next couple of months because you got like a critical deadline but I mean again I've seen this problem a few times where you'll have a CTO which is a steady safe pair of hands which is totally what you need like you can't have platforms going down you've got live environments and stuff is it even solvable to make someone like that take what might be perceived as super high risk with AI tools and external models and data being pushed around the internet all those kind of things is that even doable again I think it comes down to capacity and growth mindset. So again, give you an example. We with our launch in Ireland, um we're classcover.com.au.

We wanted to change our domain to class coverhq.com. So we have a have a global uh now on my head of growth, even head of product, myself, we're like, look, we've launched an island. Can we get our emails up and going? Yep. Great. When can everyone have class coverhq.com? Well, you got to consider this. you got to consider this, you got to consider this. You got to consider this, you know, from our CTO. Now, in that moment, all of us collectively, oh jeez, I didn't think of that. And it's a great call out. And and that's nothing to AI. That's just change. But it's a safe pair of hands, who is mitigating risk, who's calling out things that either a we haven't thought of or b have no capability to think of.

And that's a massive virtue from a from a CTO or or anyone in the business in in respect of uh and I mentioned growth mindset and capacity. I think the first step as an as a CEO whatever owner that I need to do is I need to make sure that they have authentic amounts of capacity in order to work on their business being an engineer.

Yeah. Um because while I'm consistently overloading them unintentionally,

there's something to that. Yeah.

I don't think I have any right to say change your practices.

They won't have the mind space to think about it.

That's right.

Yeah. Just just going back to the steady pair of hands. Is it possible to have a growth mindset and a steady pair of hands in the same mind in the same person?

It absolutely is.

Have you give me some examples of where you've seen that be a thing? I'm just racking my brain. Doesn't it's not obvious in my mind. Well, I think I think it again comes down to prioritization. it comes down to effort over impact or or more to the point um you know highest impact lowest effort and I guess in respect to prioritization it's aligning on risk profile on like I've said three or four times already about about the proportion of time you can spend on the business rather than the bit in the business and again I guess changing the email domain it's the same you talk about the text editor it's probably a really simple and relatable analogy to use around code.

We want to change it, but that's going to take time because it's going to touch everything from our customer service software to, you know, um, you know, login, all that sort of stuff. Um, and so, yes, I'm open to do it, but let's make sure we do it properly. I think I have that.

And you think that exists in one person?

Yeah. Okay.

And I do think I've got that.

I hang on to them.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Because my experience has been you tend not to get that in one person.

Yeah. So that's why like a lot of founders that are nontechnical

will totally not be a safe pair of hands

cuz they're like oh let's do this let's push into that let's push in that and you have to be

you have to have that kind of mindset otherwise you won't be a founder you won't grow versus often like the two IC of the founder

they're they're the counterbalance

they're the safe pair of hands but they won't have the growth mindset.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And look, I think you talk about product managers being kind of a mini CEO and and and why are they mini CEO? And that's because they need to be the the best and most astute prioritizer in the business, especially a software business because my product manager Prash, he's hearing from me, mate. Can we do this? Can we can we get this done? Sales team wants something. Customer support team wants something. Enterprise partner wants something. Teacher wants something. And he has to juggle that so astutely and to prioritize again probably effort and impact and and try and hit that balance correctly. And if if he does that well then he is a bit of a unicorn because the knowledge of the the knowledge around the complexity of the request that is being made and the risk offset against the impact of getting it deployed.

That's that's a really really acute skill.

Complex problem to solve.

Very complex to solve. Yeah.

Though I mean I like the idea maybe it's capacity is part of it. I think that's a huge chunk of it but I don't think that's everything right.

Like I'm sure engineers at Kodak had a lot of capacity.

Yeah.

They probably had nothing to do all day. Right. But they still couldn't see it. What else is there besides capacity that one needs to figure out? Capacity is definitely one of them.

Yep. And so I think it's if you can see if you can see there's capacity to educate yourself and again use the analogy to work on your personal skill set business. So we talk about it as obviously as founders you know on the business in the business. If we look at our ability to be an engineer or or what have you. Um again we hear it with the with the tech cohort right. It's like, can you get these business owners just to carve out one day of their month to come and work on themselves? And even though it's really hard,

even though you only get 70% success in most of the sessions I go to.

That's right.

A third don't show up.

Exactly. Exactly. So, so I think it starts with capacity and and sometimes capacity can be and and you will have seen this in workplaces plenty of times as I have. Sometimes capacity can be a bit of a heat shield or an excuse to

I'm too busy. too busy. Too busy things change.

And so the first thing is to get on board with your counterpart or your team. That's okay. We've agreed you've got a bit of free space. You got a bit you got a bit of clear space. All right.

Has anyone ever agreed they've got clear space?

Well, this is

ever in history.

So So I I think I've said to you, you know, in in in conversations we've had previously that if you show me a team that is comfortable saying, "I don't know. I need help. I made a mistake. I'm late. I'm over budget. They're comfortable saying that. Then I'll show you a team on rocket bursters every single time. Because that vulnerability to say that something has gone wrong means that the problem can be solved extra quickly collaboratively and you can move forward and be stronger together as a team. Now, in respect to admitting that you have capacity,

even knowing, even thinking I've got capacity, cuz like my seven-year-old mom is so busy. Oh my god, she's busy from morning to night.

My 5-year-old is busy. Like, no matter how much free time you have, just work expands.

Yeah. And and and you're absolutely right. It's it's good people management, right? And again, it's I think it's promoting the vulnerability or running a culture that that um rewards and encourages vulnerability.

I don't think it's vulnerability. I think it's just them actually having that knowledge.

But you don't think it starts with vulnerability? I would say it starts because everyone everyone everyone is everyone thinks or or a huge proportion of society thinks that how's work? Oh yeah, not bad. Yeah, I'm running at 90%. Would they ever say their boss? Like no way.

And and so I think it starts with 0.1 or pre.1. It starts with you're vulnerable enough to say I got some clear space. I've finally got some clear space. Great. All right. Would you be willing to sit down and have a look at your maybe get a subject matter expert in be willing to sit down and get a subject matter expert in and just have a look at the tools you're using because there's a whole lot of exciting stuff going on out there as you know I'm not technical so I don't want to push it on to you but would you be willing to work with me on on maybe improving output and capacity what and then hopefully getting an authentic response and then work no one's going to say no right well no but again I I do think that it comes comes down to if you have a culture where where people feel safe to say I'm having a really quiet week and they know that the response from the business won't be a we don't need you b I'm going to triple down on your workload but instead they're going to go so pleased to so pleased to to hear you're running at 95% that's about where I want everyone in the next couple of weeks let's take advantage of this time and and I'd really like to sit you down about about embracing some of these these new exciting technologies.

Let me let me challenge you that on the vulner vulnerability side. I think engineering team just the way the design I imagine you use agile or scrum or some version of it

is you're actually designed as soon as you're you're busy you go grab another card.

Mhm.

So engineers are used to knowing when I've got free space I will go and ask for more work.

Yeah.

So I think normally they're okay with saying hey I need more to do. Hey, scrum master.

So I think I think that part is mostly solved in agile dev. The part that then might not be solved is in how do we how do you get them to want to learn these new skills, use these new skills, use these new tools.

Yeah, I think that if you know in to use I guess agile language if you said to them at the end of whether let's so let's say again I use a real world example. Let's say that this Queensland projects out our Epic, right? Um, now as part of the retrospective, which again I'm pulling a number out of the sky, but let's say you have a two-hour retro once every two weeks. Now, let's say that rather than pulling 10 cards for the next two weeks, you say to them, "Guys, pressure's come off. Just grab five." Obviously, speaking on analogies here, just grab five because I want you to spend half of your week on again working on your business as a as an engineer.

And that's actually going to become part of the sprint. And so you can take twice as long on your five cards, but I want you to really push the limits with adopting new tools and technology, new mindsets, growth mindsets to see if there are different and more efficient ways to solve these problems in a less pressured environment. I'm not telling you to change with a full workload. I'm requesting that you contemplate change with half half a workload for two weeks, for example. I wonder whether you're projecting your level of competence and ability to change on mid-level engineers.

Big time. Absolutely. And I hope that's the culture I run. I don't think I I do it completely successfully. Yeah. We especially for probably the last probably seven to eight years, we really pivoted from a what I'd call a sort of micromanagement sort of culture to one where we hired I mean we really I don't want to say we hired on culture trained on skills again that's inappropriate for an engineer because the the skills are so important but at the same time that cultural alignment was so important important and and again to to speak very openly when you're talking with engagement of offshore teams and we have a team in the Philippines team in India in the Philippines you have a team member who's been 14 years um I think the shortest tenure on that team is about seven so these are longstanding individuals India like I've said there for coming up seven years the loss of face um does not the loss of face reticence let's call it that does not necessar feed into an ability to say I'm wrong or I'm late.

Um, so it's taken some work. You talk about business challenges. Probably

it's a complex thing. Yeah.

One of the proudest probably one of the proudest like aspects. It's not one singular event or achievement in the business, but it's I feel like I run a multi- cultural team who are very happy to say I need help.

I hear that. I think my point was slightly different. often as a founder or a very senior manager who's very skilled. You're very good at time management. Uh you're very good at regulating what you need to do, prioritizing what you do when you have free time, let me go consciously go allocate that to go learn something new, read an article, vibe code something often mid-level engineers or more juniors that just don't have that level of expertise. And that's what I was thought you might be projecting your level to do that onto theirs.

So perhaps another way to do it is, you know, let's just say you normally have 10 cards is you're great. We're going to allocate eight cards for dev, but these two cards are legitimate tasks for you to do this AI task to do this AI task

where you super structure it for them and you actually make it part of the sprint.

Yeah, totally.

And I've not tried that, but it's a great idea. I'm totally going to try that now.

It's it's why and and it's sort of in in the mindset of of fail fast, fail cheap. It's a you know, everything's on rocket boosters, right? Everything's on steroids right now. and and that is that the failing fast and the failing cheap is now 20x 50x what it used to be or the opportunity to fail fast fail cheap I should say. Um and and again imparting that mindset onto perhaps a young risk averse engineer who didn't sign up to be an entrepreneur, you know, didn't sign up to break rules, didn't sign up to challenge norms, just there to pull a paycheck, do a great job, go home. Absolutely a challenge.

Yeah, big big challenge. But but I think with good yeah once again I think with good you know people management team management reassurance even allowing them to make a few mistakes and then

you know walking the walk make the mistakes it's fine it's all you didn't breaking

you know it's not it's sitting on that instance it's fine you're not like you shipped it

you know well done let's go around do it again you know be better

but I wonder and maybe this is just my arrogance once it comes to AI that AI is so great so use for can make everyone's life better when when you're an engineer. You don't need to worry about the philosophical side of things. You don't need to worry about hey, it's okay to make mistakes, to be vulnerable. Maybe you don't need to worry about growth mindset. It's a super structured thing where great two cards in every sprint are AI specific tasks and and just it's a nice easy way to bleed a bit of training into them.

Yeah.

And all the other stuff will just happen as part of your normal culture. But may but maybe that's not part of this conversation. It's just we want to allocate 20% of our time to upskilling and this month happens to be AI next year will be whatever comes after AI and so we're a growth company and this is how we've

this is how we've systematized it to make sure it happens.

Yeah. And and it's that does raise an well raise an interesting thought interesting um sort of sort of challenge in that we a large part of our business is gov high security high risk needs to be you know absolutely max out on compliance etc etc. Now the other part of the business um whether it be a professional development project that that's just straight up and down B to C private sector do what we want pretty much. Um now what what you're talking about with the 20% or or just the the blending of the two is that I can spin up three new products and I'll tell I'll tell you there's three new products. One is it all it all leverages our existing database of teachers and trying to put more services and products in front of them.

One of them is called Class Cover Hub. Right. Probably once a week I get a company contact me saying, "Can you email all your schools basically selling my product?" I say, "No, there's a couple of competitors out there who are have been bashing away for years with marketplaces and portals for businesses that sell into schools. We'll shortly deploy Class Cover Hub, which allows businesses that sell into schools to buy a listing, just stick it on the Class Cover app." Yeah. class cover deals, basically partner discounts for our 200,000 teachers. Same thing, lots of people doing it, plugging it straight into a massive database. Now, those two products there, they've been vibe coded. They're ready to go.

The designs look awesome. They're all good to go. How do we responsibly and safely plug that into the I don't call slow moving, but you know what I'm saying. How do we plug that into the gov tech?

Yeah.

And that's the challenge.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think what you do is the first nuance I think you've already done is you have two separate teams

like the vibe code high risk

low security um posture versus a super high security posture super slow we've got a you know every 5 years and release software whatever it is right

so I think the first thing which sounds like you're doing is you have two separate teams because I think one person can't pivot between the two and people will self- select what group kind of works better for them. Yeah, absolutely.

But then the challenge is, okay, well, I've got this revenue base, I've got these clients, they're super happy,

there's all this cool stuff my competitors are doing that I can't do with this environment, right?

Mhm.

Um, so then how do you bring it together, which is that sounds like that's the problem you're having.

Well, it's it's it's a future.

Yeah, problem you had. It's almost like we've got a bunch of things sitting on a staging environment and we got this live environment which is again being becoming bigger and more complex and higher risk because of every every new contract more pay masters to serve so to speak and yeah it's how to blend the two.

Yeah.

And again it's we haven't really addressed the issue or won't address the challenges. Yeah. At the moment, it's almost like we've got the pretty pictures and we've got the front end and the UX that to a to a non-technical customer, they go, "Wow, looks amazing. That's done. That's that's feature complete."

Y

but then when can we sign up

over here? We've got 185 nonfunctional requirements and maybe by plugging in this shiny new stuff, it's going to have to play catchup on on compliance and security.

So, the analogy I'll give is zero. You guys use zero? Yeah,

awesome. Um, steady, safe,

quite a boring tool, right? But you want boring cuz you don't you don't want insane amounts of innovation. So that's why they have the zero marketplace where super innovative companies can have a crazy idea that might break something has a bit of risk, but they've got these amazing guard rails around the core zero data. Maybe it's that, but the people who build the marketplace app just happen to work for class copper as well. And that's my product manager has suggested this about about having a having I think he referred what does he refer to as two 221 or was it two devs two

two devs two designers one month or something there's some sort of methodology where where these little sort of sub teams

pods

yeah and so that's been a suggestion I think it's a really good one um

and and again it's exciting time because the good news is we've got this you know very stable uh revenue and profit you know in a dominant position in the Australian education market and we do have the the working capital to reinvest to go and have some fun run some experiments and that includes launching an island for example so pods won't solve that because pods will just allow you to have smaller teams be more agile and be more responsive so you might have like a small pod of three people that work just on your next government contract right just to go sort that out

so pods are really good at giving small people small teams agility and focus.

But I think what you need is you need it's almost like the zero marketplace analogy again. You need someone to put all the guard rails around this. This is the heavy government platform.

They can only integrate with these APIs and this level of security. You can do whatever you want here. You can go crazy here, but here's where we we vet everything that comes in and out.

And it's probably like a three to six month build. It's not a trivial thing to build. And I and I'm laughing because if if my CTO Ash listen listens to this like and and I love Nits is my he's a good mate of mine now like he must feel like you know the Grinch has stole Christmas and again this is sort of to this core problem right at the guard rails to talk about the person who's there to say yep great go at it go build a zero marketplace but here's the rules of the game. Yeah. And and he is so effective at doing that. And I know that I make him uncomfortable sometimes because I'm asking and asking and he's going, "We can't or not yet or it's going to take four times more because it's not just putting pictures on the front end.

It needs to be compliant." So yeah. And and he he does a super job at doing that and and frankly manages me, which is what

he's great at managing,

which is what I want. It's great.

Yeah. Well, but I think that's what you get like here again when he has the mind space to build it. If he can build the guardrails, he can make his environment safe and secure cuz today it's three class cover apps, right? It's your marketplace, your LinkedIn, what whatever you build. But tomorrow might be a product that a third party company builds or a government department builds or I don't know WA government want to integrate a new product that you guys don't have or want to integrate with your data.

Yeah. Um so yeah and we do we do that but um

yeah it's a it we we wanted to all be in one environment ultimately and it's just again no different to so many other businesses but it's just that we have the enterprise side

I don't think you can you can get away with having it in one environment

as in having all those products.

Yeah. So my experience has been um and every every I don't know your code base every company is different but my experience has been you can't have them in one in one environment and you can't have them in one team.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you literally have one environment integrate into another environment.

Oh you mean in the back end?

Yeah in the back end.

Oh back end for sure. Absolutely.

And the front end might look the same.

Yeah. Exactly. It'll trick us. Sorry. I I mean one user environment. Yeah. At the front end. Yeah. So, so that and and having let's say the the bookings which is the core again and that's the bread and butter like cannot risk you can't screw that that's the million bookings a year that's the eyeballs that's the revenue that's everything

the complexity of that is x what the little

deals and market fever dreams are the coupons yeah

but how do we get them all on the same interface with with the back end being being uh yeah again being secure and compliant and also So to build them in a way that is as quick as done as quickly as possible in a responsible manner. And and it's funny I'm verbalizing all this with you. I I do think we're doing a pretty good job and

what you're describing is completely solvable. So many companies have solved exactly that problem. There's nothing new about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a really interesting conversation to have because um and especially now that I've I've definitely hopefully with some good self-awareness, I've throttled back me agitating them in a time of of stress stress.

Yeah.

Which which just allows me to research and think and prioritize and and talk with other team members who aren't involved in the in the Queensland Beast project. And so when we are ready to go, I think we'll have a refined sort of hit list of areas that we want to, you know, test and innovate, focus on and adopt. Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing I've seen founders do, like founders have brilliant, brilliant ideas, they just got a lot of them, and you got to figure out which ones are brilliant

because 90% aren't, but 10% are amazing,

is um if you have the capital, and you might be doing this already, is just have a separate team, have like two or three devs, what you know, one dev, one product guy, they just report to you.

I mean, I mean, this is whether it be a pod or whatever. This is my product manager Prash.

Oh, he's a two plus2, whatever it was.

Exactly. Yeah, that's what he suggested because, you know, I'm sure he's got a Ben's crazy ideas folder in his email. I mean, he's basically I mean, we joke about it like and and it will be on the basis of a of a another company in another sector that's doing something I think could be applied to education or it could be an article I've written or whatever. and and now I'll just forward it to him and say just put in the Ben's crazy idea folder and and to execute on hopefully the 10% of those crazy ideas which are half decent to have that team

off to the side would be useful

and what it would give your product manager it would get you out of their hair and that might be the greatest win ever.

I was about to say he loves it. I almost I think he does. Again, we have a great a great relationship, but u I'm sure there's times when they've been so over capacity and I've just picked them and email pings up

wrong time the wrong time. What about this?

Totally. Very fun.

Totally. So, let's let's start wrapping up. So, I mean the question was, you know, how do we get the team to start adopting AI as part of their part of their, you know, workflow?

Well, what do you reckon the takeaways are? again it's funny and I know we we've been trying to get together for you know best part of sort of three or four months now and and and and you positioned me when you first got in touch about think of a problem and it's amazing in this fast changing environment how that problem has evolved now I think as I sit here with you today that I would mark myself reasonably highly when it comes to solving the problem that that I've put forward today about adopting AI because I've been I've reflected I've been more disciplined time exactly whereas if you if we' sat down a month ago

I reckon you would have going you just got to leave these guys alone like give them some time

they were probably 6 months from completing this project not two months from completing it

exactly but I think the the takeaways I I actually think what we've talked about today in respect of especially using the agile language around the sprints and to say that it's not realistic if their regular workload is 10 cards in a Fortnite. If I come over the top and say you got to do the 10 plus you got to educate

here's 12. Y

exactly.

Yeah.

Not only does that equal 12, it also is 12 plus change

which equals probably 20.

That's hard.

Exactly. How can I expect good results if I'm going to expect that of my team?

So, by me being a realist again, me taking a all right, time to work on the business, not in the business mindset. We say, "Guys, awesome job at Queensland. Go, you know, let's let's celebrate." This is important, too, right? It's that I don't turn around the second that that job's finished and go, "We're changing."

Give them time to breathe.

Exactly. Let them celebrate. reflect, chill, and then being as empathetic as I can be is to say, look, what I was thinking was to take a little bit off the day-to-day workload, but we're going to replace that responsibly with hopefully a bit of education, bit opening our minds up to what's out there because I don't want you doing this off the clock. Um, I don't feeling pressured, but I do want to I I do want to expand our minds a little bit because my understanding is what is available out there is is very exciting. It can do great things for the business

and there's new tools to learn, competencies to pick up.

Yeah. So, I think I think blending the education into

into a sprint

into a sprint,

which I've never seen anyone do before. So, I'm certainly going to try that now in our companies.

Yeah. I think it's I think that's a really good place we've ended up here to be honest.

Yeah. And there might only be one card out of 50, right? might be less if you're busy.

Exactly. But I think it'll be I think it could be well worth trying.

Yeah,

totally. Well, I'm going to try that as well. I'll let you know how I go. Let me know how you go.

The other thing you might consider, how bleeding edge are you with AI tech do you personally use in your personal life? Yeah.

Like have you do you use Open Claw for example?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. um in respect of I mean where where I get most out of it outside of sort of UXUI vibe coding you know solutions to problems what have you um in around the research just as a research partner a thought partner um you know even when we went to when we when we um uh thought about going to Ireland obviously that validation process was done by someone else for us pretty much But we had five years ago give or take uh the executive MBA program at UTS got in touch with me and said look can you come and present to the students and what have you and then and then what we're going to do after that is we're going we want you to come to them with a problem in your business and three exec MBA graduates

are going to try and solve this problem for you. My problem was I want to find the next best three countries to deploy class cover into. They worked on it for two months and they published a report what have you. Um and it was sort of it it was good without being like great because it wasn't from education subject matter experts in respect to research and we said personal use of AI. I I I had a heat mapped one to 20 of next countries to deploy class cover into

in like 20 minutes or something each country across 10 attributes that I wanted to score out of 10 for each and so you know France was 47 Ireland 45 South Korea boom boom boom boom boom so at this point in time that's that's where I'm getting the most utility out of it is it is as a research partner to try and explore new opportunities both in the tech business and as you know I also have got arms length um managed around my family business and that's how we found the Philippines to expand the manufacturing business into that as well.

Yeah.

So the so I mean that that's fantastic using for research but what I think might be interesting is um so I'll use open claw for example because I've come back three months holidays while I was away open claw came to be so I've been hacking around for the last couple of days is all those micro use cases they're amazing conversations with developers. So I'll give you an example of a micro use case for me. So before every meeting that I have open claw which now has access to all my data. I hope it doesn't take advantage of me. I hope it doesn't. Um we'll go look at any emails you've sent me. Look at any eye messages you've sent me.

Summarize email look your LinkedIn profile and give me a 300 character summary of everybody uh before I meet them.

Mh.

Um once once a week or go through my entire calendar and tell me, hey, you don't have enough travel time between these events.

Um it's just all these little micro use cases. I find if I use that, that's a really interesting conversation for a developer when you sit with them and be like, "Oh, yeah, hey, I'm using AI for this." You're not telling them all of a sudden they can ship code out as quickly as safety culture,

but you're just telling them how you're using it.

Yeah. Interesting.

So, it might be worthwhile in the same way we talk about, you know, getting developers to spend time educating themselves is to get really deep in AI

in all your personal lives. And it it's just a fantastic conversation to have.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, hey, I was off to you off to Taiwan on a holiday

and I made this cool little AI agentic bot that you know, hey, let me show you for three minutes and this is how I picked my hotels.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. And it's good. It's good to again just to I guess demonstrate the growth mindset

that you're actually doing yourself.

Exactly. Exactly right.

Like I reckon the first companies that moved over to email and got away from letters and memos were the ones where the CEOs said, "I'm sending it sending this via email."

Oh, big time. Absolutely. You got to like leave

you got to walk the walk making mistakes where be having a growth mindset. Um and and again it is a balance because the way that manifests um or certainly the the perception I give off is pretty much whether it be the Ben's crazy idea folder or you know we're we're deploying to Queens and we're launching an Ireland got um we got a AI professional development product shipping and we've got the the hub and the deals and and whatever. So and and all of that or not all of it most of that has been expedited by use of AI whether it be the the the the iteration the thinking the the development deployment but yeah there's a balance.

Yeah.

But I think I mean what that will do it will just mimic to the guys or or just mention to them or just kind of show an example to them that you're learning this tool set as well.

Yeah. Absolutely. and you've seen obtaining benefit in this personal scenario or setting up this business meeting or summarizing these notes.

Yeah,

it'll just make AI bubble to the top. Yeah, it's an interesting one because I actually think that the again in full respect to capacity and and where we're at at the moment, but I think in the in the four to eight weeks to come, the leading from the front around adoption will need to come from CTO plus our most senior engineer on the team and they'll be the ones because I can I'm I feel like I'm already doing it to the point of annoyance, but I think they'll be the ones to go, guys, I've changed my text editor. And that's again

here's this amazing text editor does all these cool things because because if let's use that text editor um example that you gave and and you sort of you start with one with it for life if the CTO and our most senior engineer

a happy change.

Exactly.

Yeah. Exactly. So I think and and and that's in any business you you need to pick those who can influence and persuade on particular topics and and pretty much work with them to persuade the people around you on

and you got to pick the one that you think you can persuade.

Well, totally. Yes. Absolutely.

And again, that's and it's very similar to what we've talked about um in the last little while. It's can I can I persuade them? Yeah. Can I persuade my CTO to change his text editor? That that's kind of the title to the book.

Yeah. Because if if we could do that,

if you do that, it can change anything. And maybe there's a few baby steps because that it's almost like asking change the widget, right? That's huge.

Yeah.

Um so for example, like I use a tool Fishka to automatically reply to my emails.

Every email that comes in, it drafts a reply. You use it. But then I told my CEOs about that and you know, probably 20 of them use it now.

Yeah.

Just cuz they've seen me use something super low impact, super easy.

It wasn't a foundational change in the way they worked, but it was their first blend or taste into what some of this cool tech could do.

Yeah. And again almost said I've said this to you before but if if if someone says to me what do you want what what attribute you want your kids to grow up with but I've always said empathy empathy is a superpower and obviously be a great salesperson great product developer be a great customer service person be a great human now you need to use empathy when it comes to using AI and that is what how much do you delegate your tasks and your communication and your everything over to AI before it becomes was disingenuous before. Totally.

And so again, from a leader point of view,

you know, I I had a guy on our team, I asked him a question

and I got a probably three-page response back with the signature chat GBT hyphen and I was like, mate, do you think I'm a bloody idiot?

Yeah, he's just wasting my time.

Wasting time.

Yeah.

But if he had led the email off saying, I don't have a heap of time to respond to you, but I've just chucked in JPT and this is what I came up with. his credibility is

completely intact because he's empathized with the situation. Yeah. And then responded accordingly and and it's no different to that whether it be the um you know automatically you automatically replying to the or using AI to reply to emails. It's are you willing to invest the 5% of time just to run your eye over it to make you not look like a full

review the drive for you. Totally.

Yeah.

But that's an empathy thing and it's just saying okay it can do this much. It's gonna say and and it's no different to what I used to say to startup founders about offshore dev team terms

10% the cost

but don't be so stupid to think that your net cost is going to be a 90% net saving is going to be 90%. Because for that gross saving you're going to need to invest more time

more time on a video call more time because English is a second language whatever empathy

overhead y

and then if you can get away with a net saving of 60%

you're well ahead. Yeah, ju just aside because I I agree with you on empathy. It's like it's one of the most foundational human emotions. It's one of the ones that I find it's incredibly difficult because you have to realize someone exists outside you.

Mhm.

And you got to have enough clear space in my mind to be like that's what that guy's saying. Why are they saying it? Let me process that before I blurt something out.

Yeah.

Bit of a side. Not not a child rear viewing podcast. But how does one teach that? Like how do you teach that to kids or to other people?

Yeah. I think it's extremely difficult. That's why I think it's a superpower because I I I think that um I I think that it's funny you mention about whether it be myself or a CTO um demonstrating that they're willing to change. I think success stories that that again using empathy. If I know what you identify as success is if I can show you a way that empathy helped you succeed, you might go, "Wow, gez, I can make a bit more money if I more empathetic."

It's a good thing, too. Yeah. Or or if if if I'm a if I'm a teacher and I'm wrestling with a troublesome class or something like that and I demonstrate that empathizing with my students allows that class to be more settled. I think that it needs to have a tangible connection to successful outcome. Easier said than done. Very hard to teach. But I think that most people value well they they value being educated on on things that ultimately either make their life easier, enrich their lives. Um

I tell you the way that I've been trying twins and a four and a half got 2-year-old kid, 2-year-old, too young to teach anything. With a 4 and a halfyear-old twins, the way I've been trying to teach empathy is to is to have them feel it in their body. So if one of them's crying, I actually will ask the other one, um, you know, your brother Nikki is crying. Does, are you feeling sad or happy? Cuz I want them to feel bad.

So I think to be empathetic, you have to physically feel what the other person felt

big time. Yeah.

Um, I'll tell you in 20 years if it works out or not.

Yeah.

And it's funny, man, with with kids, like you see it in living color. Like I I've not a parenting podcast, but uh yeah, I have a 13-year-old who just feels everything.

Yeah.

And and it's like where's the nature of nurturing that? Um it's Yeah. And if you apply to an adult and empathizing and trying to teach them to empathize to be a better salesperson, well, that's it's difficult. M but again with success with successful outcomes if I can say look I put myself in the shoes of this customer that made me pivot my strategy and they made the say they they made the purchase you hope that you can sort of

guide them into

guide them into that I wonder whether I wonder whether you could be more directive and to tell me what you reckon right so is to tell them like I looked at that person they were obviously upset about their job or this product, right? I felt that upsetness.

Mhm.

I felt that inside me and that's why I changed what I do.

Yeah.

Cuz I reckon we're driven by what we feel less about what we think on a conscious mind.

Yeah.

Um I don't know whether you can teach that to a saleserson. Some are just born with it, some aren't. I don't know.

I think I think very difficult. And and it's funny. I used to the team used to laugh. I mean, if on the on the rare occasion we'd have an I rateate customer, never on the school side, on the teacher side. Um, and I'm a teacher by background, so they love our teachers. But

let's say they thought something had gone wrong with a booking or something, they missed a booking, whatever, that's I rate. I would relish the opportunity to get that teacher on the phone and and just to have that conversation and to deescalate them. And and again, you will have seen this plenty of times, but how often do you hear stories where you've turned a quite high rate customer into a super fan? You know, that that's a pretty well trodden path in customer service when it comes to um success stories and successful outcomes. Um me and my personality, I love that challenge because a I know we're not trying to swindle them, rip them off, do anything, you know, unethical.

And so, but they might have a point. something might have frustrated them and I try to take the time. I don't do it these days because just capacity and number have got and whatever

but back in the day I used to love it. Yeah.

And is to love just trying to calm them down, trying to empathize with where they're coming from. They've just missed out on $450 of casual teaching work. That hurts. Completely acknowledge that. Um and getting off the phone and going, "Yeah, yeah, she was fine in the end. She's

I reckon I reckon why you would been effective of that and I can I can feel it now visually." um is that emotions are contagious.

When someone's array, you can choose to make that contagious and make use you very irate. Yeah.

But when you're calm and collected and empathetic, the other person almost has no choice but to be the same.

Like you can't be angry at the calm person, right? You just can't. And if you can, you're probably a psychopath. think that and and it's interesting another another sort of unwritten rule in our business is that if you have anything remotely close to a grievance with a coworker even any slightly like you haven't done this

a small groin somewhere a bit of friction y

get off the typing and get on a video call right now

because the second I'm looking you in the eye and it could be

face to face a video call still is effective whe whether it be that non-verbal language whether it be I'm calm your high rate whatever deescalation happens to by a factor of about 95% just by looking at you in the eye and knowing that you know

you're a human

I didn't get you're a human I didn't get out of bed tomorrow morning to make you angry

you know so that's 95% of the job done

and then stay calm empathize and and just sort of you know hear them out and uh and hopefully get a good result

yeah totally perfect well I mean the last thing we finish up with this podcast um question I ask all the guests what is something that you always knew to to be true that later on you actually found out wasn't

something I knew to be true that later I found out that wasn't wow on the on the hop question something I knew to be true that later found out that wasn't uh look I I think I think I was I was pretty idealist as a as a human and always always thought that I was had an incredibly blessed life. You know, I thought I worked my backside off, but but you know, on the shoulders of being born in Australia, let I say to my kids, lucky country. I say to my kids, no, you won a lottery five times. A, you were born B, you were born in Australia. C, you were born to a reasonably welloff family.

You know, whatever. You know, you know I'm going totally totally three times, five times, whatever. when we lost my dad six years ago, like number one, I felt like that I went from being a child to an adult like that because that's how quickly he died. And and probably everything will be all right was was the thing that I found not to be true. Everything is not necessarily going to be all right.

Yeah. Explain that more. Give a bit more context.

Uh what do you mean?

Well, just that just that a little bit of it'll never happen to me. the car won't happen.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mentioned to you um before we before we started, you know, I love my surfing. I love the ocean. Whatever. My my neighbors down, Mercury Salakus, got eaten by a shark at my home beach back in September. I now look at this place that I used to love that I used to send my 13-year-old kids down to play in on their own as a place that I'm now fearful of. Like, that's not okay.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't like that. Um, not everything turns out to be all right. And I say it from a position of someone where a lot has gone right. Luck plus hard work plus timing, tailwinds, whatever. I'm fine. But it doesn't always end up all right.

You know, that's really true. I reckon the base entropathy empathy of life where life goes by default is unhappiness. That is the default. Um it's like Martin Luther King used to say, you know, there's a law of God, there's a law of man. When whenever there's a difference, good men should stand up.

Yeah.

So the default of life actually goes unhappiness.

It's through our actions that we we we try sometimes very unsuccessfully.

Yeah.

We try to push it to a happier place.

Yeah. Super interesting.

Yeah. Good to think about.

Perfect. Awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thanks everyone.

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. If you do want to be a guest, make sure you hit me up and do follow me on socials and make sure you check out