Navigating Growth Beyond $100 Million with Jeremy Cabral

Welcome back to Epic Execution. Today's episode's hitting very differently. This is an absolute weapon. If you haven't been, uh, head under the, in the sand, you know this man. But let me just say that once you get north of $100 million in revenue, the questions change. And this isn't necessarily about the company he worked for, but some of the questions are going to be, Things like, are we happy with the direction? Do we still honor the leadership we've built? Is the culture still feeling right? And is it what we want to do or did it just get away from us? Who am I actually doing this with? And is this stretching us or breaking us? So there's a lot of questions that go through your mind as you get through $100 million. But when you are at the top of your game, the question becomes, is this what you want to do still? And you've built a playbook. And you go, but you can't give this to anyone. The shortcuts are not for anyone else. They're just the ones you've built. But the truth is you can only really earn these insights. You can't give them to someone. So that's so important for you guys to understand. But what I will say is that the good news is that there are only 4 chips in this game and they are attention, energy, money, and time. And the good news is this man I've got here is very good at helping with all of those. So yes, he helped scale Finder to over $100 million and beyond. And today he's on the Epic Execution Podcast, my very good friend, Jeremy Cabral. Welcome to the podcast, Jeremy.

Mate, I don't know if I've ever had an intro like that before. When I, when my alarm goes off in the morning, if you can just play that for me, that'd be amazing.

Well, it's not all been, it's all hard fought wins. And I know how amazing the company is and I'm just very lucky that we've got you in the ecosystem out and about with your posts, et cetera, and loving all of the work you're doing. So can I just ask you, in all honesty, you moved into this new role, which is now coaching people. And how do you maybe see the ecosystem right now? What are, what are some of the most important things? The founders should be focusing on from someone who's been there.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I think, um, I play the game differently to a lot of people and it doesn't mean I play the game right. I think everyone has their own method. One of the things that I've observed is that people spend a lot of time building and not enough time determining if they can get traction. And I'm a big believer in getting traction early to try and inform the product. It's a little uncomfortable for a lot of people that I speak to, but for me, I'm looking for early signal that what you're doing is the right thing and early signal that you can make money. Honestly, like I, when we kicked off Finder, like we didn't use words like startup or anything like that. It was just a business and a business is there to make money and we had to figure it out. Like, you know, it's a, another interesting thing about Finder is there was never like a recurring revenue model in the beginning. It was really, you wake up and you make money that day or you don't. And so it's also very different to software companies where, you know, they might've hit some pretty epic heights in terms of revenue, but each year that, that kind of base that was playing forwards in terms of the revenue contribution. Whereas, yeah, we, the clock, you know, calendar ticks over, we start again literally every day at Finder. And so I think that's always been a blessing and a challenge as well. A blessing in that I feel like we really do like pay attention to the granular detail that drives growth. And we learned a lot about the art of and science of growing businesses. The challenge is that, yeah, you can, It's a rocky ride at times. And so you've got to be able to have long-term vision at the same time as, um, you know, getting revenue in the door each day. Yeah, it's been an incredible, um, opportunity to learn so much about business and people myself. And, uh, yeah, I'm really focused on giving back now and sharing to people what I've learned. And hopefully people can learn something from that that, you know, gives them a bit of confidence to do something differently and take some more risk.

And it's just one of those things that it's a daily battle, as you say, but I don't think it ever stops, um, because If you remember, we had the chat at the S2S Summit and all of these founders that had hit product market fit, but then we're seeing across the board in so many companies that we're seeing product market fit collapse and ChatGPT doing a really good job of describing a landing page. This is where we want to double tap you here a bit because this is something I know you're working on. And also just increasing the quality of earnings that you sort of said. That a lot of it was like, okay, today we need to make money, but then making things more inevitable. So what are you thinking when it comes to the companies, once they get through this $100 million range, what are some of the challenges that you think across the board? This is not just a Finder episode. This is really, what do you think and see? Because you're actually already out there consulting to a lot of people that have, you know, not just startups, they're Got challenges. They don't go away. Yeah. Yeah.

I think when you get out of survival and you start having optionality, the problem is optionality and you really can choose your own adventure. And then it becomes about strategy and capital allocation. And for me, strategies, there's lots of different ways of approaching it. For me, what I think led to so much sustained growth for Finder was an obsession with our flywheel, where we really just invested into the core growth engine that enabled the business to continuously just reached exponential growth. And then I think as things evolved, you know, really after that it was about how do you build this level of stickiness or kind of like, you know, recurring kind of customer experience, like a customer experience where people came back and, and how do you, you know, build discovery and like, so all these other parts of the chain that Finder were trying to solve for. And there's lots of different ways of solving for it. And that's, that's the challenge. And so again, if you don't place big enough bets, then that's also another issue. You place too many bets, not big enough bets, and you end up spreading your capital across too many things and you don't get enough traction or kind of signal on something and then everything's a focus, right? So I think Finder did a number of things very well and does a number of things very well. Like we expanded into a lot of categories that kind of stacked and were kind of adjacent to the core personal financial comparison we did. We brought in those additional categories. And, um, yeah, I think the, the challenge for a lot of companies right now is like, how do you, how do you build a personalization experience that really keeps you relevant and a customer in your ecosystem Like where you can, you don't have to reacquire them again, essentially. So yeah, I've got, you know, really observing how companies are doing this well at the moment and have been quietly obsessed with, I guess, an approach to this for the last 5 years. It was literally a back of a napkin diagram I saw around how you can drive people into a community and a community then driving the success and growth of your companies. Yeah, I'm really trying to think of, I guess, an evolved flywheel that You know, really, really gives you that customer relationship. And from there outwards, you, you can really grow and build your business on top of that.

100%. So can we go like clear the clouds a little bit away about how you think about building a flywheel? Because I think there is so much value and you are a very good exponent of this methodology. I've been lucky enough to see some of the things you're working on, but I'd love you to just maybe break it down a little bit to think about first principles and Maybe some of the questions that you're asking yourself. So not just what you're doing, but how to think about what are the steps of building this flywheel?

Yeah. Yep. So the flywheel concept, really Jim Collins brought that to life, you know, through his, his books and a flywheel in an engine is really, it's like this rotating disc and it effectively makes power delivery easier in an engine. You know, I'm not going to go into all the details specifically. Um, not expert in that at all. You know, but yeah, I think the thing that I think about with a flywheel is like, it's the things that when you repeatedly do it, the growth engine or, or, you know, the, the business just starts turning over faster and faster with each time you kind of pour more capital into it. And, and ideally it's in a position that, um, it's generating cash flow to fund itself as well, which is, um, you know, the most, I guess, um, incredible thing about Finder was, you know, bootstrapping to $100 mil plus in annual revenue. When I think about flywheels, the first thing is like, you know, the most famous ones. And you can think about companies like Amazon. You know, for them it was, I think it was the back of a napkin diagram of like, you know, Amazon was the A to Z first and foremost. They wanted to have every single product, increased selection. They started off in books and they went to toys and music and all these things, movies. And the goal was to have the greatest selection on the planet. The first, the biggest online bookstore, and then eventually the biggest online retailer. And the idea of that was like, you don't need to go anywhere else. So that selection led to a better customer experience. And a lot of people, I guess, learning the behavior that you just can go to Amazon directly, amazon.com, and you'll find what you need. And if people started going to Amazon directly, they're in a position where they can actually have a platform which, you know, instead of just having their own products in stock, people can sell their products through Amazon as a marketplace. So it creates a lot of demand. You've got all this traffic coming to the website daily, and then more people listing their products on the platform increases selection and customer experience and so on. So that's, that's what was playing out for Amazon. And then I think there are a couple of critical inventions that made Amazon So competitive and just separated them from the pack that ultimately what they did was they invented into parts of their flywheel things that made it very difficult to compete with them. One of the first was Prime, where they effectively made it possible to get really fast and free delivery to your home of a product on their platform. Up until that point, you were paying whatever it was, like for a pen, you might pay $12 postage for, and you actually never knew what the postage was going to be with e-commerce. It was literally so varied based on weight and postcode and wherever it was going around the world. So they invented Prime and they made it easy for people to know, you know what, it's just free. And so you could buy anything you want and it'd rock up in a box and a few things in a box or just even one thing. And, you know, that was a critical invention because it created membership revenue as well for the business, which I think played massively into the other products they ultimately launched off the back of it, things like Prime Video and all these sorts of things. And the second invention, which probably was the most significant for them, was Amazon Web Services. So it generated so much net operating income for them. That they could have the lowest prices and effectively be in this position that you couldn't compete with them on amazon.com because their prices were always the lowest. The why in part, and to solve for something like this in cloud computing, was that they saw speed as a really critical factor towards their customer experience. So by solving for speed, by having their website hosted in the cloud, they built this incredible product, which made them the fastest, improved customer experience, and they ultimately then on-sold that to other businesses and they built, you know, So many companies have built their infrastructure off the back of AWS, which is a business that is massive. And so, yeah, I think for me, when I think about a flywheel, that's Amazon's. You could easily just rip out the Amazon logo and look at that in a way and go, cool, like any company that's in e-com could effectively have a very similar flywheel there. But I think what differentiates you is the inventions you make into each part of it. And so for me, I think first and foremost, you've got to think about your company and go, all right, What are the variables at play here and how do you combine them and how does one thing lead to the next and ultimately get you to a position that when you focus on that input, it generates an output that generates returns and revenue for your company. And then I think from that is, as I said, the invention into those parts of the flywheel. How do you do something proprietary differently that creates, I guess, a bit of an edge for you to be able to do that thing cheaper, faster, or better at a greater scale? And for us at Finder, I think there are a few early inventions that really led to us having that level of competitive distance. One was, I guess, an innovation around having the cost of content creation be low. We innovated a way where we effectively built a freelance, um, I remember hiring a freelance writer and then I taught her how to build a freelance writing agency. We were paying people based on output instead of, um, full-time employees. And so it scaled a number of things. It scaled our ability to find expertise and people to write about the specific topic we wanted to write about, um, because we weren't limited to whoever's on staff. But as we wanted to increase output, we just kept on stacking more and more people under them and they were all remote. So we didn't have an office space constraint. And that was also really critical. And so that solved for like content at scale. And the second was, you know, we had product data as an issue. So hard to believe, but APIs like open banking and so on didn't exist in the early days. And we literally had to manually go and acquire all this product information and update it ourselves. So that was totally insane. And for us, instead of kind of stopping where the banks were providing us information or insurance companies or whatever, We created an edge by doing 2 things. One was we found a way to acquire data cheaply and at scale and maintain it accurately. So the way we acquired the data was a combination of some technology and a large task force of people effectively that were collecting and verifying this information. And yeah, we built, you know, high confidence in our dataset, which ultimately allowed us to build the comparison tools that lived on these content pages. That was kind of 2 very early innovations. And I think the third was we were really good at consumer insight and the psychology of what, you know, went in behind financial decision-making and how to really prompt people through research we did to understand what would be relevant for company, for people wanting to, I guess, stay across what the sentiment was in market. And we found a way to really run this research, which generated a lot of attention and news for Finder. We were constantly in the media and it really helped build out trust in our brand and awareness. And that kind of really led to so much scale from there in terms of traffic to the website and ultimately having more partners wanting to list on there with their products because They could see the platform growing. So very similar to Amazon, as you grew the traffic, they had more sellers, we had more partners, so more products and services willing to list on the platform as advertisers. And Finder has always been a free service for us. We charge a partner for ultimately on the customer's success, which I think was really key. Unless the customer was receiving a product, we, especially early on, were just focused on ensuring that they were getting qualified and we only really got money if they got the product they wanted that they were eligible for. It was kind of, um, that was really it, you know, and we obsessed on this thing. I certainly did on this flywheel concept. It was something that I kind of, I had in my mind and I remember hiring all these people and drawing it on the wall continuously. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to turn this into a diagram that becomes official inside the company. But that was only really several years in. But it became how we onboarded people and ultimately built entire functions, entire systems and processes, technologies underpinning this flywheel that led to the scale and growth that Finder achieved.

Well, under, under any level of metric, you were incredibly successful in what you did.

But it was a lot of fun.

But with all that success, what did you find was missing that you wanted to do and now you're doing? Like, this is the best part of it, is you've created this amazing company, but now you're actually out doing something you're super passionate about. And that's what I love too, like just seeing you happy doing stuff you love and helping people you love. So, so what is, uh, what is this next stage for you, Jay? What's the thing that you are really energized by?

Yeah. So for me, Finder was thoroughly enjoyable and I learned an incredible amount professionally and personally. I, I mean, to have the opportunity to, to, yeah, so many things worked in my favor, timing, chance, you know, All these things, right? And to be able to build something so significant for Australians and also Americans and Canadians and the British, we've helped so many people around the world. We expanded to over 23 countries at one point. It was an amazing journey. And I think you need ups and downs to be able to kind of— ups are great because you kind of learn so much about operating at speed and scale. And then you need some downs to go, how can I improve? What was it that made this thing happen? How can I change my approach to get better. And so that was like from a developmental perspective, the most incredible experience. And then I think the core for me that I, I think for me drove me so much was always being on the edge of whatever was new and like really trying to be first. We grew so much as a business just by being first. And, you know, for me seeing AI hit, like, I mean, we'd been doing AI stuff at Finder and ML and all these sorts of things. You know, I was, The data science team reported up into me. You know, the thing was this is like, I remember getting access to GPT-2. It was sitting in my inbox as a preview API, like some beta program or whatever it was. And couldn't do anything with it. I knew what my mates were. I didn't really have time to understand the significance of what I'd gotten access to. I knew I needed to get access and I was like across it that much. But the summer ChatGPT hit and built a UI over the top. And then really it was just an incredible effect on this planet in terms of how it's changing user experiences and the way that companies will have to ultimately be built. I think I've always enjoyed and actually thrived being at, you know, riding these waves. And I didn't want to have a situation where I couldn't ride the wave. And literally it's an entire era. I believe it's like, you know, almost I used to play this game Civilization and you'd go through like, you know, all the inventions that happened through time. Like, you know, and I see this as like, literally we're here. we're about to not only witness, but be a part, we are all a part of this incredible transformation of this entire human race and the way we contribute value and extract value from this, you know, this, I guess, existence. And I just wanted to be at the core of it, right in the nucleus. And so I have been deeply immersed in communities that are all, they're obsessed. Tonight I'm going to a hacker house in Des Moines where Literally, you know, people are all AI first, building together, living together. Um, you know, it's just—

You're in your element, mate.

I'm in my element and it's like, I just, um, I just want to be around it. Like, and, and for me, it's like, the crazy thing is like, you know, I'm hanging out with, with this super young crew. I think the youngest was like 16 or 17 years old building out tech. And for me, it's like, you know, when you kind of see, you know, I got kids, 5 and a half year old twin girls, and you can kind of see kids using a phone or kids using whatever, like they have this natural thing, like, cause they have had it around. Like my kids are Montessori, so they don't use it very often. But I think where it's at is like the technologies available now are changing what's normal to this next generation. And I want to be playing from there outwards as my assumption of this is how you need to build and grow a company with all this technology as the norm. And so that's, that's what I really was chasing was the opportunity to not miss out on this because I think it's so significant. Um, I'm only 39 years old. I've got like Hopefully another couple of goes left in me and I want to be able to leverage this technology to the fullest. I think you are.

And I guess the reality is the, these projects that are energizing you, it is the cutting edge and you're seeing a lot of companies and founders come to you to say, what are we doing? What are we going to build? How do we build this stuff? I feel like you've also gone way down the rabbit hole of coaching as well, not just building. Yeah. This evolution of you from builder to coach, which I'm loving. And so what is it about the coaching that you're enjoying so much? Tell us a bit about what you're offering and why this is lighting you up.

Yeah, well, I mean, not many people would know, but you're probably one of my original coaches. We met back in, I think, 2015, 10 years ago now. And through a startup event, you've always been such a critical part of the startup ecosystem here in Australia. And yeah, I just remember hanging out and going like, well, firstly, why does someone that's so successful want to spend time with me? Like, you know, this is, that was like, and like, he's the guy that's running this event. I'm like here, like, you know, in his office and he's made time for me. I was like, amazing. But you've always asked questions that have challenged me. Um, and I would argue that I'm not necessarily the best at articulating my thoughts or putting my thoughts into frameworks. But there's something about the group coaching model that really is attractive to me. It's ultimately It comes from my personal values. I, I've got 3. I love connection, growth, and helping people. And I think if I can get to a model where it's one-to-many, where I'm helping as many people as I can and effective in doing that, that's what the appeal of group coaching is really about. So it's not, I'm not all in on it, but I'm very attracted to the time efficiency and impact that it, that comes with group coaching.

Yeah. And you've also taken all of that later stage of business knowledge Which in the beginning, like you were learning and building it and finding it out. And yeah, now you've got this deep well of experience, not just as a builder, but as an entrepreneur. So being able to build, lead teams, et cetera. So what do, what can we go into some of the things you are teaching now as well?

Yeah. So where I'm at was like, I had this unintended problem to solve. I kind of I've been building a bit of traction on LinkedIn. I'm obsessed with algorithms, you know, probably spent 25 years studying the Google algorithm. In the last 5, you know, social. Beyond that, like, you know, a few testing and kind of learning in communities like Reddit and so on, you know, getting to the top of subreddits on, you know, some content we had generated. But yeah, I built a bit of traction on LinkedIn, ran this marathon this year. And I announced my My kind of decision to step out of my operational role at Finder. I'm still a special advisor to the company. And, you know, kind of, I was actually sat with my mate who does group coaching. He's like, well, why don't you do a little form and have people apply to if they want advisory with you? I was like, okay, cool. And like we were sat at lunch in the Central Coast and just wrote the most concise thing. It was something like, you know, bootstrap Finder to $100 mil plus in revenue. Now I'm helping others do the same. Apply here. So it was like that simple. I was like, oh man. And just like, you know, covered my eyes, published. And it blew up, like literally had over 200 companies now reach out. And it created at first this overwhelm. I was like, whoa, like this is a lot because as I said before, one of the primary goals for me was to have space to do R&D and really immerse myself in these technologies and new ways of building companies. And I didn't want to kind of end up in a position where I was committing a lot of time towards just getting busy again without creating space for learning. So that was the first kind of feeling. And then it created a data problem where I was like, well, even if I wanted to help, who would I help? And so I asked all these questions and I had like different kind of forms I'd built for different stages of like, all right, now I've figured out this. What else do I need to know? Are they funded? Are they pre-revenue? How many employees? Whatever. And then I landed, um, on some clarity and I was like, okay, um, from here, like, what can I do? And so I've just been in this position where what I'm teaching is like different by whoever you are, because I've kind of got a pretty big spectrum of who wants to work with me. Everyone from like pre-revenue, pre-revenue to $40 mil plus annual revenue bootstrapped. It's pretty crazy. And that's US, sorry, USD bootstrapped. So Insane. And the first thing for me was like, how do I help startups? Because I felt firstly confused that startups were coming to me because I was like, isn't there something else in the, you know, somebody else or like, why are you speaking to me? And just done the Startmate mentorship through the latest cohort and, um, had connected with a bunch of them and became a little bit obsessed with their companies, like just in that kind of early scrappy stage as they're figuring things out. And, um, you know, one of the Startmate asked if I could invite a bunch of startups into this, this cohort that I was effectively kicking off to coach people on how to growth hack their startup, which is what I taught people at. I taught people about inside Startmate. And, um, so we created a little WhatsApp group and then have a call twice a week. You know, first call is where I share a playbook. The first was actually yours where we really wanted to dig into what you do with Epic Execution and everybody got given a book. The Epic Execution book. And we walked through like, you know, how do they sell that, like the elevator pitch, like their RCP, like ideal customer profiles. Um, you know, what is it about them that, you know, they do better and all these things. And, um, a lot of people struggled to articulate what they do well and, and, and what they sell. Um, and then I kind of put it to a vote and said, hey, I can teach you about a lot of things. So they ran product, tech, design, growth, operations, international expansion, like so many things at Finder, right? What do you want to learn about? And I basically put out a poll in this WhatsApp group and they kind of voted against these playbooks. And, um, that formed up, you know, the, the kind of 2 sessions a week, which is the first is teach the playbook. The second was office hours where I kind of help them learn. Okay. They can play back, you know, their implementation of the playbook or otherwise just ask me about anything. Then async, we just, you know, WhatsApping each other at all hours. I think I was messaging one of the startups at like 1, 1:30 in the morning, which is insane. But, um, I love the hustle on their side. And I was like, well, if they're responding now, then I'm just going to keep going. Um, it's been a heap of fun. You know, someone just said today, we just did the last, um, office hours call and said, hey, is it okay we keep this group going? Like keep the WhatsApp going and we can do calls. I'm like, I'm obsessed with your companies. I'm not letting go. Sorry guys. We keep these chats going. So, um, don't get rid of me. You can't get rid of me now. I'm sorry about that. Um, so yeah, that's where it's at, man. I'm just like, that was the first thing is, um, kind of helping startups and then There's been some interest from people to work with me in a one-on-one capacity, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do that. But I think there's kind of 2 lanes that I'm imagining, like a deep dive where I kind of spend an hour or 2 with you and it can be regular or once-off and we go wherever you want to go. But I'm incredibly tactical. I'm not someone that's going to talk high level and give you like, you know, some consulting deck or something like that. I'm going to give you the exact plays to the character, to the, like, here's the hack or the whatever. As a follow-up from that meeting during and as a follow-up to that meeting. And so that's what, you know, I've been doing these deep dives. And then the second lane is like really bridging, and I think there's an incredible opportunity around this, companies that want to build technology because now they can, their kind of target, which is often their existing customer base and selling software into it. And then sometimes an investor that's willing to back that. And I guess I'm just giving them high confidence in building AI-powered or applications, or, you know, just finding a way to prototype to a milestone that allows them to kind of run with that and maybe get another investment round to keep it going further. So that's what's consumed probably about 20 to 25% of my time, and the rest I'm really just networking and having a heap of fun.

That's amazing. So in terms of the concept of getting something out early, do you think that anything's changed with The concept of building the MVP early or testing, because I feel like one of the key things that I see so many founders doing, completely random things, but the use of the time. What are some of the, if you had to condense all the lessons on how to manage your time, what are some things that you go, hang on, stop doing that, or that's a great approach to time. Can you tell me bad, good? What do you, what's—

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, um, the bad originally for me was, and I think, you know, on and off throughout my time at Finder is I always, um, had so much responsibility inside the business. Like I ran so many functions. Um, it was core to the execution of the strategy and development of the strategy. But then I built a way, like the good, I think it was like trying to figure out how to do that effectively. And so, I'm a massive advocate for having a chief of staff, someone that can be a chameleon and ultimately emulate your thinking and be you in the room when you're not there. So that's, you know, my, my first and number one tip is, and I kind of have 2 types in my mind. It's like, one is like a strategic and specific and, and one thing at a time. And then somebody else that plays at scale. And so they're almost like your operating system. And then, you know, you've got a specific lane that somebody else, um, plays to. And that allows me to kind of have strategic projects, which I'll often spend a lot of my time in, but then also have visibility and the possible possibility of making change across the business through a scaled out operating team. So I built this function inside the company called BizOps, which is modeled off LinkedIn and the way they kind of did that. And yeah, it just allowed me to have kind of my team embedded into every single function in the company, even the ones that I didn't manage. So we had like, you know, support crew and whatever inside every, every, um, function. And, um, yeah, I think that was, that was probably one of the good things that allowed me to hit the scale. But ultimately, like, for me, I live by my calendar. Like, if you have more things than you can put on a calendar, like in terms of like allotted time, then that's one constraint. And then it's like, you know, if you've got a block, a unit of time, how do you generate an output that somebody else can take and deliver, you know, 100 times more things from that unit of time? So that became a bit of a playbook for me as well, going, okay, I built a a way of working and there's like a diagram and a confluence of it on it inside Finder. And it came, you know, it was a briefing session which led to a playback and then a kickoff and then, you know, checkpoints, final draft, go live and a review after the go live and then kind of go again. And it was like, you know, pretty universal way of rolling something out, but that was my method and allowed us to have so many projects in in parallel, really at the same, in the business and, and yeah, really impactful.

I love it. So I think that's a great couple of examples of how you protected your time and you maximized it. The next thing I think is important is what you pay attention to. Like as a founder, you can literally do 100,000 different things, but usually you've only got 18 months to work something out. That's otherwise you're going to run out of proof, run out of trust, run out of money, run out of all these things. So distilling down the founder's playbook today, according to you, which is a pretty one, you need to listen to this. Um, the, what do you think founders need to be paying attention to? What should their calendars be looking like when they've got this protection barrier? Assuming they do, but what should they be working out? What are the things? Is it validations? Is it, what are they trying to be? What's going to give them the biggest lift?

Yeah. So, um, I ran the data analytics function. Um, we had a chief data officer that reported up into me. And one of the key deliverables of our biz ops and analytics, um, functions was getting metrics across all the inputs and outputs inside the company that mattered. Not everything. We probably, to be fair, at one point was like, it was tracking everything. It was pretty insane. But you could have the answer to everything as a result, which is, it was good. But, you know, you need to have the answer to the right things. And This, so we have these metrics, the input and output. So an input being, you know, something that when you did that would generate the output that you wanted. So an interesting story to bring Amazon back into the picture. I remember, so selection, like in that their flywheel was important and they are famous for, you know, kind of coining the input and output metrics concept. They basically rewarded people with a metric internally of having as many products, like selection, like the amount of most amount of products available. And so they had a metric was like, Number of product detail pages live with traffic or something along those lines. So it was like, you know, if there's a page on the internet and people are getting traffic to it, we're winning. What that led to, um, as a result was, uh, that essentially they were stocking all these products because they're getting traffic to pages, but then people weren't buying it. And so they had these warehouses full of products that weren't moving. And so they're like, okay, products that, um, you know, people are interested in. So there's demand for it. And so it's not just about traffic, there has to be demand for it and that it's in stock and ready to ship. And so there's like started moving towards the customer experience and And sure. And so it was, had to be ready to ship as part of Prime for free. And it went from like having warehouses full of the wrong product and pages having to maintain with products they didn't have stock of to instead focusing primarily the business on what they had stock of and what they could ship immediately. So it was about the customer experience and that drove an enormous amount of growth and ultimately revenue for them. So for me, with your flywheel, if you can identify those input and output metrics, so the things that drive that part of the flywheel, you know, in terms of the inputs. So whether it's a new piece of content, That's a very basic thing, like a new piece of content that gets traffic and ranks for a competitive keyword or something. And so you can kind of keep, uh, and then, you know, what type of content you should write. And then you've got the outputs from that, which is, you know, you're generating, um, organic traffic and revenue from this channel and zooming all the way out on a monthly basis. If you can have almost a traffic light system of where are all these metrics at, and it's called a monthly business review. This is something that Amazon's really famous for. And you're looking at it and you really pay attention to it, then I think you can have a helicopter view of your company at all times. And it's extremely powerful. We used to actually print it out and put it on the executives' desks. And so you'd walk around with it and you'd mark it up all month long. And it just became something to take around the company. And you'd always be able to flip to the chart. You'd have to find the file, like, which would just be there and it'd be like in your hands and physical. And it was just, yeah, it gave us total visibility of what mattered at the company at all times. And You know, the way to kind of, the overarching thing with all of that is making sure you have a really good strategy in place and that's a whole other beast, but yeah.

Love it. Love it. So, so let's go back. So it's protect your time so you can focus on the right things, give your attention to the right things. And you've broken down that you've picked a few things and, but you measured it so that you could move it forward and fix it. And so it would improve. The third thing, which you might not, and this is, this is my opinion, that you might not even know or notice or anything like that, but I would Encourage you to think about the question was, how much energy did you bring to the exchanges with the team? I feel like that's the third pillar of absolute greatness is bringing massive energy to the things you do, the people you're working with. What do you think?

Mate, honestly, that was, um, energy has been the theme for the last year or so for me, uh, just over a year. So, um, what happened? It's a random story, but I went to this punk concert, um, And, uh, yeah, I was at this, I was at this dinner called Season Opener. Taryn Williams, um, and Chris from Ex-Pedestrian and now Linkbee run this event. And so we're all, you know, hanging out. Guy next to me, um, we only saw each other for the last 10 minutes of the dinner because he had to go to this concert. I was like, which band is it? Tells me the band. I was like, the most niche band you can even think, ever think of, the Southern Californian ska punk band or whatever. So anyway, I was like, mate, it's one of my favorite bands. And it truly was. And so we roll into this concert together and I just really Forgot about like my true self and like kind of what fires me up. And I just felt like this crazy level of energy. And I started really riffing on that conceptually and going, well, you know, it was quite selfish. You know, I kind of went to this thing and enjoyed myself and like whatever, did this concert. Like maybe, you know, sometimes you feel like, oh, I'm not gonna go to that concert. I'm looking after the kids or I've gotta work and whatever. But I think selfishness as a concept gets a really bad rap. And I actually think by being selfish, you can really look after yourself so you can look after others, but by being selfish, you can be the best form of yourself. And if you think about the etymology of the word selfish, it's, you know, there's a lot of positive nodes to the word self, self-awareness, self-care, selflessness. And so for me, I really was chasing down how do I get to that level of physical energy that I can experience that night, but every day. And my kind of answer to that was getting as fit and as healthy as I could possibly be. And I set a crazy ambitious goal of running a marathon, which Made no sense at 128 kilos, but I just went for it. And it was a forcing function for me to just get to a position where I knew that I wasn't physically held back and was building this resilience and an energy source that ultimately allowed me to kind of enter this next chapter. Energy is everything, dude. And like how you spend it really matters and who you're willing to spend it with, you know, is also really critical. People that give energy back and they're kind of this multiplier effect in your life. Like people like Taryn and yourself and others are incredible. Like, you know, people that just are so generous and yeah, I think that's so important.

Completely agree. So we've covered those first 3 and then the last one I think is remembering it is a business, it's money. And that is getting good at capital allocation or when for a maybe less esoteric description is beating your costs. Beating your runway and beating your milestones. I mean, those 3 things are absolutely critical for trust with investors, teams, keeping the doors open. What are some of the things that do you, does that resonate with you or do you think that's—

Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think, so interesting because as we grew, we started expanding our technology team and that was about, you know, doing things more efficiently and, you know, allowing us to You know, not just solve problems with people. Um, so that was like one aspect of it. Uh, and the tendency with that is to have very long range and perfect execution on technology. Like that's what engineers love to do typically. But what was unique about us is like, and probably just largely a result of the business model was that we always had to have our finger on the pulse in terms of what was driving revenue today and how can we build technology that would support that outcome. And so ultimately we were focused on cash flow funding our success, like, and the technology we were building. And so there's an enormous focus on that. And we always were about, you know, spending a dollar to make 2 or more. And so if there wasn't a positive return on advertising spend or it's, you know, something we were doing was not really getting the results we wanted, then it was hard to keep that project alive. I tended to be the one that would be carving out the new, um, in terms of what we were trying to do next. And that was often a battle internally because, you know, there's the short-termism of like, you know, driving revenue today. But some of those things led to enormous traction for the company as well. Like where we grew internationally and we've got successful operations in the UK, US, and Canada. We had a few more markets than that and we pulled back a little bit, but also like, you know, allowed us to be riding the wave and really dominating in moments in time. retail investors took on crypto, for example. We became a top 10 referrer to Binance globally, learned a lot and kind of built for a period of like 9 months where it made no sense to do it. But as soon as Bitcoin hit the price it did that summer, it literally made Finder a leading comparison platform in crypto, which is kind of, for many might think is the future of finance. Who knows where it goes.

It's really crazy, isn't it? When you think about that, that's really crazy.

Yeah.

So I think, uh, one of the things that matters that I've heard you talk about as well, and I've heard so many exceptional people talk about, and that is the coaching, the mentoring, the coaching, developing strategy, but the right way to be coached. And this is something I've seen you with your group coaching do is asking a lot of questions, uh, and not giving them your playbooks, but helping them build their own. Yeah. Like I've, I call it polluting founders' brains by giving them, doing the work, robbing them of the opportunity of working it out themselves. Because they, you want, this is a funny thing being helping someone, but you're creating more capacity and capability. Is there something that you think is getting the right balance of helping founders when you're doing your sessions that sort of resonates and you see that's the bit that Moved the needle the most when it came to the progress between week-to-week sessions?

Yeah, well, it's fascinating because, you know, as I said, I had this kind of vote on playbooks and, um, I was like, cool, let's go and do each one and went through. In the end, what I realized is I was actually teaching mindset because like every single playbook I came to talk about, you can go anywhere else on the internet and talk and you'll hear about like, you know, how to run ads or how to whatever. Um, but the mindset is what differentiates you from others, how to think about this problem. Laterally, um, and creatively. And it's actually hard to teach. And that's something I'm trying to figure out more, like in kind of really teaching that way of thinking. But yeah, for me, it often boils down to a couple of things. It's like, I think empathy really matters. So for example, you're trying to build content that does well in Google. Well, try and imagine you were a Google engineer responsible for the algorithm and you had to, you know, start your job that day. Like, I'm building the algorithm, what would matter and work that way outwards. And you kind of start building assumptions on what works and then running tests to kind of validate that. I think that's a useful frame. And then I always would think about like, imagine I was the customer, like be the actual customer, like dogfood your product, use it, and you'll learn a lot from that as well instead of building in a vacuum. So I think it was that. And then the kind of meta thing across all of these growth playbooks was really about how do you create attention towards what you're doing across all of these platforms and the Concepts are fairly universal, and I feel like it's about getting above the noise and developing a consistent way of doing that. Looks like almost habits and a level of discipline around doing things that aren't inherently easy, that require way more effort than reasonable, that borderline obsession to kind of achieve the results, and not stopping until you get it done. Like, and like kind of for me, that's just like. That's it. Like, I, um, I, uh, yeah, when I, um, kicked off the marathon, you know, obviously I wanted to finish it and I was like, cool, that's the goal. But, uh, in order to get to that, like, there was no logical— medically it would never make sense to a doctor. And actually spoke to a sports science, um, doctor for like a national, um, professional level team. And they said to me, you are crazy. You cannot run a marathon. You'll have a heart attack. And I was like, I'm going to take that statement and deconstruct it. And then turn it around into like, what would it take for me to be part of the 1% of people that actually can do it and not be like, you know, part of the study where they talk about normally the 80 or 90% of people, right? And so I started pulling it apart. It's like, you know, so we're worried about my heart. I'm going to do a CAC score test. And I actually, turns out I have nearly a perfect score on like my calcium score for my heart. Did a VO2 max test. I did every single blood marker you can imagine. DEXA scan. Just broke apart all the bits. And then for me, you know, this is— I'm lucky that, you know, running a marathon with ChatGPT, I actually prompted ChatGPT 3,049 times and asked about everything from like, I'm a little bit tired, I've got another 3K to do, do I— can I walk for how long, whatever. Like the whole thing, just went for it. And, you know, got to the position where I lost 20 kilos and finished the marathons. I just think everything's possible, man, and it's just about how committed you are to make it happen.

We'll just say, bro, you just refuse to fail. Like, that's it.

That's pretty much it. I'm a bit obsessed with, um, with, uh, yeah, just make it, make it happen.

Yeah, you do. You do. In terms of listening to people, and there's so much information, advice out there, et cetera, how important is it to be coachable, but also have a balance of not listening? So maybe filtering advice as well.

It's so interesting. I mean, that example is one of them, right? If I listened to the doctor, I would be like, I wouldn't have ran into that. Yeah.

Yeah.

I think I believe in this concept of like knights at the round table. So I think not one person has the answer. Having lots of people that are specialists in various areas allows you to triangulate around an answer that probably you can only have yourself truly. But you need to be willing to listen to people that have done it before and kind of find a way to synthesize all of that and then carve your own path. And my method is almost like one of immersion. So I will go and speak to authors, conference speakers. If they've got an agency, I'll speak to their clients, I'll speak to their key staff. I'll pay for coaching sessions with the founder of the agency ongoing, read the books, multiple books on the same topic, and then do my own stuff and trial it out and arrive at my own method. Call up the author and say, why did you say that thing in that chapter 3? I don't agree. And he's like, yeah, you know what? If I could rewrite it again, I would. I agree with you. And so that's my method. It's like through immersion, I think you can, you've got to be coachable because like, you know, ultimately these are all, these are all, there's a message in everything that I've said there. Like, you know, something that you can learn from, but there's probably very few that will obsess as much as you want, you are willing to about your own company and what you're trying to achieve. I think that's about taking ownership of an outcome that if success requires that to happen, then there's no option but making it happen. So therefore go and find the answer or create one yourself. It's kind of like—

Well, yeah, you're a great example of brute force of The sheer power of like not failing by never giving up. Like sometimes you might've failed, but you just wouldn't give up.

Yeah.

But you also went and tested your theories and you wanted to learn, having that curiosity. And then, then still thinking, is this right? Because it's always, what do I do next? As opposed to, because everything, even though there is a book, sometimes there can be no answers. It's just got to be bet questions.

Yeah.

And that's to me the key thing that most people struggle with. They go, I want the answer. What? That's the wrong approach.

Yeah, I agree. And I think, um, something that to go back to that concept, concept of selfishness and self, I think that we all have unique gifts and superpowers. And what it's about is finding a way to unleash them in a way to have the most amount of impact. And so somebody else's answer isn't necessarily the answer for you because we're all here to play the game differently. But it's about combining your skill sets and your weaknesses with others to get to outcomes that are, you know, one and one is way more than 2, right? And I think that's the combination of people and your network that open doors or whatever. Like, I feel like it's the first and foremost important thing is to really have self-awareness of what is your unique superpower and how can you create space to constantly do that every day? Because That's what, that's, that's what's going to separate you, separate you from the pack. And yeah, hopefully in a way that's very impactful and commercially valuable as well.

Yeah. And you don't, I'm not sure if this is the same with you, but like helping people who haven't already tried first is a bit not enjoyable.

Yeah.

We want to see them in the arena so that there's some context. They haven't, they're not just learning to swim with the book.

Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. I think, um, that's one of the things that a lot of the the startups I'm mentoring are, um, are actually doing. It's like they've, they said, you know what, after our conversations, I decided to bring my launch forward. It's like, you know, they're releasing things, learning with their product out in the wild now. And it's scrappy. And, and I think, man, it's like, I like that way of doing it. I know there's companies that do it their own way. And that's like, again, it's about their gifts and superpowers. I'm not the Apple, um, kind of big bang release sort of thing. I'm more an incremental unlock guy. That's what I do. Yeah.

And I think, um, that incremental unlock is also in, uh, the lessons that people are assembling and being able to share that information across the whole cohort of your coaching is also quite useful. Like I've seen it in action where people are listening to their problems, explaining their problems as well. And, uh, that whole process is you just never know what's going to click with someone. Like how they absorb the information, how they learn. And that's the discovery thing. And I feel, I feel like that's the next level of like, this is your new algorithm now.

No, it absolutely is. And the crazy thing is like when things exceed your expectation is expectation is your simulation, you know, seeing some of my methods, um, being adopted and changed and kind of built upon by The crew I'm working with has been phenomenal. It's like a guy that had 800 LinkedIn connections who was building for about 3 or 4 months straight and then went to marketing his product through one LinkedIn post. He's had nearly 600 comments, about an extra 500 or 600 LinkedIn connections, and has a pipeline full of customers every day that he's on calls with. And literally, you know, there's one LinkedIn post, like, and He's just like, said, man, like it just changed what I thought was possible. He just thought like he had to just keep building and they will come or something. I don't know. But, um, um, what an incredible—

That's the power of that group. Like it's not just, uh, that they transfer knowledge, they normalize struggle.

Yeah, true.

And they are in it together. Uh, and that's, I think as much as, uh, people are enjoying the beauty of being around you, but they, they're all seeing it, they're in it together and it's like a, it's a great vibe and that community you're building is very powerful, which is why they want to, so we can't, this can't finish.

Yeah. Well, some of them are solo founders as well. And I think there's one thing that's going to be like at a, say like a, I don't know, WeWork or, you know, Tankstream, whatever, hanging out and building a company alongside others. But I think it's almost the permission to bring your challenges to a group to solve together in an allocated way as well helps you build a rhythm. Where you're like, okay, I'm going to bring that up on Friday at 1 o'clock or whatever it is. And I'll get feedback. We'll build it together, solve it together. And, um, you know, the thing that I've really loved is like seeing the confidence of some of the, the founders, like actually contributing massively in the office hours and like, oh, you know, read this and try that and whatever. And they're actually, yeah, collaborating in a way that, um, far exceeding my expectations, honestly. So, um, I'm very grateful to be going through this experience and learning so much.

I think, I think Um, by now you realize that companies don't scale, people do. Yeah. And you are a large credit to a lot of people, bro. Hey, um, so I'm going to start to bring this to a conclusion because we have the, the exciting part of the podcast, which is the lightning round. And are you ready for that?

I'm ready, man.

Let's go. So what's a question you ask yourself a lot?

I think when I, uh, I get into a mode sometimes where I question myself and whether I'm wrong. And then that's like, that's not, it's kind of, it's okay. But I, I think when I'm in that mode, I'm not productive. So like asking, asking if I'm wrong versus just believing myself and going, you know what, I'm right. And actually I can get this done. So yeah, that's, that's something I kind of teeter between sometimes. Like, you know, am I wrong here? Like, well, like we can have—

People that think they're right all the time anyways.

Yeah, exactly.

So what's, therefore, what's the behavior you've had to unlearn?

I think for me, the behavior was, you know, ultimately, I have a weekly session with my coach, my life coach. And I think the emotional reaction to kind of things is hard, like where, like you, you feel down because nothing's working at a point in time and you kind of end up in this rut and then you kind of up again when it's, it's, you know, when it's all on the up and working, I think the The behavior is more like, well, the, to unlearn is like, you know, just letting your emotions drive you. And what you need to learn is like tools and ways of better managing yourself. That for me, like I went from like probably 6 or 7 years ago before I started working with my coach to, you know, for like, you know, kind of spending sometimes days like kind of in this rut to more like hours or even minutes at times and having like little tools, whether it be like a quick meditation or a, you know, walk around the block or whatever it is you need to do to kind of Separate yourself from that kind of thought bubble and kind of move on quickly. That's, um, a tactic I definitely use.

What's one mistake you're grateful for?

Mistake I'm grateful for. I think I, um, yeah, that's gonna make me emotional. I'll try not. Yeah, I, um, I see it as a mistake because I'll never be able to buy back this time, but there were periods where I was working so hard. At Finder that I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted to with my kids, and I feel like I missed moments. And that's a mistake because what's the most important thing on this planet, in my view, is like being a father and a husband to my wife. And it was a mistake, but then at the same time, I think for me, I, what I've learned from that is to be more grateful for the time I do have with them and more present when I can. And I'm not perfect at this. Some of the things I did, which I loved, was like, you know, I did the school pickups and drop-offs and Really was, um, present, say last year, but then in the last 6 months, it's been a bit more crazy for me. So, um, it's something to keep in balance. Uh, but I certainly am more aware of what I'm trying to do and directionally trying to get more and more available to my kids.

Um, this is supposed to be the lightning round, but I do know how this— I know what this proved to me is how much you love what you do and the people that you are working with. So what's the one thing that you wish more people asked you about? They ask you a lot of questions. So what's the one thing you wish they asked you more about?

I think questions about me, like instead of like helping me, asking questions to me is what I would wish they, like that would challenge me to think about and kind of look inside. Why do you do that? Like why is a really good question. Just lots of whys, I think. 'Cause I just think I learned through that. Yeah, that's, that's where I think, ask me why questions.

That brings the lightning round to an end. And like, I guess the question is, what do you really think is This crazy career so far, the brilliant work you've done as a father and a husband. I know that. And, um, so if you had one word to say to founders now that they have to take a responsibility for, what is it?

Possible.

Possible. Okay. Yeah, it's possible.

It's possible.

But you are a living example, uh, at your band, at your coaching sessions at Finder. Of what is possible. Jeremy, thank you for everything you've done and everything, even more so what's ahead of you. I really appreciated you coming on the show and more importantly, just seeing you in action and being a mate. I've really thoroughly enjoyed every moment.

Likewise, man. And as a mentor of mine for over a decade now, I just owe you so much, mate. Really looking forward to doing more things together now that I've got more capacity to do that. So 2026 is going to be fun, man.

Thanks everyone for joining us. Uh, what a great episode. Jeremy Cabral, find him on socials. If you've not been asleep, you've found him already. Go looking harder if you can't find him. He's available. I'll put him in the show notes. Thank you so much and have a great day.

Stay safe.