$650M Founder on the Future of AI

Well, welcome to the podcast, Jeremy.

It's good to have you on. Thank you for having me, man. I've been really looking forward to this.

I know. I feel like we actually have never met in person and this is like, I feel like I've seen you on social media for like almost like 18 months now and it's like finally getting to meet you in person.

Yeah, likewise. And like, it's just great, man. Like we've been interacting throughout, you know, Instagram mostly. And, uh, yeah, here we are in person.

Yeah, we're here.

Looking forward to it.

Well, I've got a bunch of questions lined up that I want to dig into around, um, your story and I really wanted to kick things off, uh, right back at the beginning. So you founded a $600 million company or co-founded a $600 million company called Finder. Take us back to how did, yeah, how did it all start? Yes.

So, um, Fred and Frank had a couple of, or 3, 3 businesses and, um, they were agencies essentially that, um, 2 of them got sold and the 3rd housed a bunch of experiments, one of which was Finder, um, or Credit Card Finder. And so I came in, um, unpenalized the website in Google. And effectively got some equity in the business in that process and, uh, built it out, um, alongside the guys to, you know, as you mentioned, pretty big valuation, uh, back in 2021. Um, the other call-out figure is that we bootstrapped to $100 million revenue. So pretty cool. Um, that was in March 2020. We kind of hit that rolling, rolling 12 months, $100 mil. And, uh, yeah, it's fun, man. Like, you know, the guys are amazing. Like they are, you know, very different. Um, but the 3 of us together, I think complements each other and, and really it was about, um, ambition. I think Fred had, you big vision. He kind of spotted the idea of driving, uh, I guess a lot of traffic in this space initially. And then when you build out a big platform, you come, responsibility comes with that. Like, how do you then really make it mission-led? And so very quickly, probably months in, we're like, oh, okay, we're getting a heap of visitors here. How do we then make this the best possible platform in Australia for people to make financial decisions? And, uh, off we went.

Wow. Okay. So you mentioned like you guys complemented each other very well. What was it about the 3 of you that like complemented each other?

Yeah. So I'd say, um, Fred, um, probably the most well-known of all of us, uh, is, you know, very much an ideas person, very creative, but also technical, wicked smart. And, you know, for me, he'd always be like looking ahead, trying to think, you know, what next and what's the future going to look like. Um, with Frank, he's, you know, very methodical. Um, just this person that's extremely reliable and able to kind of keep us on point and a good, you know, drumbeat and cadence for the company. And I think with me, I was like a chameleon. I could kind of lean into both, um, directionally and then also be the glue at times and, you know, figuring out how to, you know, bring ideas to life from, you know, what Fred was talking about, or also with Frank, like how to ensure that we stayed on point and delivered on plan. And, um, yeah, I guess that's how we work together.

Okay. Wow. So I'm curious, you sound like you are a very good operator, like you know how to operate things. And I'm curious, what were some of the things that the very start that you were doing in terms of strategies and tactics to, I guess, run an efficient business and operate something to grow?

Yeah. So I'd say, um, as an operator, I was unusual in that I was very growth focused. I wasn't, you know, sort of about efficiency over everything. I was like, let's get an effective strategy in place that works. And so in the beginning, I kind of break down something into, you know, a problem into its pieces. You know, it was like, okay, we want to rank well in Google. How's this work? You know, there's content, there's this technical component, there's links. How can we be number one and what does it take to exceed our competition? So you break down the variables, you figure out, okay, this is what a good piece of content looks like. How do you go and replicate that at scale consistently? Here's what a great link looks like. How do you go and replicate that at scale consistently? And you then start breaking down these units of work and building a system that can repeatedly produce that. And it's, it's ideally one that self-improves over time, one that, you know, really, you know, with the people involved can find better ways to do it, improve with technology. But ultimately, um, it was about that. And channel by channel, we went about doing that. You know, very good at traditional search, um, performance marketing. Um, we became brand marketers as well, built this jingle, you know, credit to Fred and the team on that. Um, but ultimately, um, yeah, it was about building the flywheel for growth. And, um, that became something that just underpinned, uh, Finder's growth well and truly, probably through until about 2017, 2018. And then from there we had bigger ambition and, you know, launched some other products, but, um, just doing a simple thing at scale and well was the way we grew.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause I've heard like almost at the peak, you guys had almost like 200 people creating content, like going through. And I can't even imagine the amount of like operations and systems you would have had to like be pumping out that much content. But like, yeah, what was that like to do that?

Well, it's pre-generative AI as well. So that was insane. And like, I remember it. like the top end of that, we were producing 180 handwritten articles per day. Um, so much so that I used to get RSI from posting that content online, literally the same movements, like, you know, clicking, copy pasting, editing, whatever. And like, yeah, it was insane. I actually had to hire somebody literally just to do that little bit for me because I couldn't review it because I had, you know, this injury. Um, so yeah, I would say, um, we were unusual in that, um, despite the fact that we were extremely good at SEO as a company, nobody had SEO in their job title. And what I like to to do was really specialize in the various parts of the process and make it extremely easy to consistently get to the outcome. So we had lots of spreadsheets, which were very data-driven in terms of determining what we write about, what do we write about next, how do we write about it, when should we publish it, and would systematically deliver this content engine in such a way that almost you would predict exactly where you would rank, how much traffic you would get, and how much revenue you would generate for the business in what time period. So I'd have these spreadsheets that I'd create with the team and, you know, kind of taught the team on the methodology there. They'd come to me and be like, hey, I'm going to produce my next 200 articles. I'm like, awesome, let's go and do it. And, um, you know, 2 or 3 months later, you'd have this payback period and you just keep going. And, um, we got to a point where we nearly had, I think it was 50,000 articles across the global business. Um, pretty massive. And, um, I can't guarantee that all of it was fantastic quality, but, you know, um, certainly with AI nowadays, it makes it a lot easier to do some of this stuff.

So, yeah. I imagine it's like a completely different game. Now, yeah. What are you seeing? I'm curious with like the switch from, I guess, kind of like, as you said, SEO to more like being found in like ChatGPT and Claude. What are you kind of seeing in those strategies that people are using?

Yeah. So I'd say, um, SEO is suddenly becoming cool again. It's just a different acronym. You know, um, traditional SEO underpins a lot of what's happening in these large language models in terms of the The retrieval mechanism, when they're effectively producing a response in an answer engine, it goes to the live web. If you've got a query like, you know, best electric cars in New South Wales for a family of 5 under $50,000, it goes through this process of query fanout. So it literally runs, you know, 6 to 8 prompts or even more under the hood. And it goes and does this research. And off the back of that, it finds a whole bunch of websites, generates a level of consensus. brings back the answer into this one response. And, you know, in order to kind of produce those responses and do the research is searching on search engines. You know, OpenAI has not yet built a search index. It has a partnership with Bing. Obviously Google AI mode leverages Google. So these engines are really, you know, the traditional search engines play a massive role in determining what shows up in an answer engine.

So people are like still going hard into SEO. Because of that, are they?

Well, I think they should. A lot of people are going, oh, forget about SEO. It's no longer important. It's all about this new thing, but doing well in SEO sets up the foundations required to do well in GEO, generative engine optimization, a whole bunch of acronyms you could use out there, AEO, whatever. Uh, but ultimately AI search is, is a good collective.

Yeah. It's, uh, it sounds like, yeah, it's a pretty new kind of like era and it's, uh, yeah, it's pretty crazy, right?

It is crazy. Yeah. And I think, um, If you're not in a room talking about GEO AI search, you're talking about AI. It's like literally at this point, um, my days just alternate between the two.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I know a reasonable amount about AI, but AI search is like a whole new thing that I like barely know anything about. And it's like a whole like deep web of just like, yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah. I mean, we're all still learning as well, right? It's at this phase of experimentation, but, um, playbooks are certainly emerging and things that you can repeatedly do. Um, and what's now important is, is, you know, up until now you've had your website and you had to build links to it, but now there's all these other websites that suddenly matter because Whatever's showing up on those websites about your brand suddenly determines what's said about your brand in these answers, right? You know, the old review website on Trustpilot you never paid attention to, the Reddit threads that you probably didn't even know existed are suddenly now informing these answer engines on your brands and determining what's said about your brand. So it's, it's a difficult thing to manage.

Yeah, it's really, really interesting. So I'm curious, I guess going back to Finder, what do you think were some of the things you did right? That most founders do wrong?

I can't say if it was right or wrong because I think each founder is unique, but the things that served me at least in my leadership style was highly empathetic. For me, I always used to obsess on this idea of having the perfect overlap between what the crew member or employee wanted and what the company needed at any point in time. And I think that led to a lot of really satisfied and happy employees because, and ultimately the company hitting its goals. Um, but also with that, what came with that was retention. We kept really, really, um, powerful and impactful team members for a very long period of time. And I think that allowed us to build competitive distance in such a way that, you know, literally it took a decade for some of these people to catch up to Finder with SEO, um, and other channels as well, where, you know, people have worked with us for sometimes 10, 11, 12 years. And, um, I think The first time we saw anyone go to a competitor was something like 12 years into the journey, which is quite, that's actually insane. And I remember having the conversation with them over wine and they were bawling their eyes out, like, and apologizing. I was like, man, like, you're good. Like, you know, I actually think this is great for you. It's, you know, closer towards the niche that you want to focus on. Um, yeah. So there was just a special, and it still is a very special business.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause I heard on a, on a podcast as well that you, um, yeah, you mentioned like as well that like 12-year period where like no one left, but you also had like, Um, you didn't name people specifically like SEO specialist so that no one could like pinch and then steal the playbook of like Finder, which is really clever.

Purposely stealth.

That's so clever. Um, so I guess you've finished up at Finder, what, almost 18 months ago? Maybe not quite. Is it?

Um, what are we, June? I think it's like about 9 months ago. Thereabouts.

Yeah. Yeah.

It feels like longer. Yeah. Wow.

Okay. Um, What have you been working on since and what are you excited about for the future?

Yeah. Um, so I kind of stumbled into, um, some startup coaching and mentorship. Um, as in like, I just got really addicted to that whole process of zero to one and kind of, you know, helping these startups figure out product market fit and most importantly, product channel fit. You can have product market fit, but if you don't know how to market it and get distribution, you just won't get traction. So I spent a few months doing that, some coaching through Startmate and others as well. Um, and then also had some interest in people wanting to work with me on AI application builds. So I was doing a bit of, you know, kind of platform builds and that stuff, uh, assistants and, and, and various tools. And just broadly some growth advisory. So I describe myself as a fractional co-founder right now, where if you've got a problem, I ran, you know, various functions inside Finder, product, tech, growth, operations, international expansion, a lot, right?

Yeah.

Um, and that allows me to talk across a lot of disciplines. And, you know, if a company is trying to solve something, I really treat their capital as if it was my own. And how would I approach this problem if it was my problem to solve? It's kind of the level of empathy and mindset I take towards, you know, the solutions that they need. Um, so yeah, I've been really enjoying looking under the hood of these businesses and seeing what's working, what's not, um, fixing the foundations, and then, you know, ultimately figuring out how can we apply AI over the top to really accelerate things.

Okay. What have been some of the, like, most common things that you're seeing is working well and not working well? If you're, I guess, like digging under the hood, seeing things. Yeah. What do you see?

Well, I think the companies that are crushing are crushing with performance marketing. Those that really understand, you know, good ad creative, a good, you know, um, ad structure, you know, landing pages and optimizing them, building a funnel. Those businesses, you just can't beat them, honestly. Like, and their obsession with every metric and they know them like offhand and they're constantly tracking them 7 days a week, 24/7. Those are the businesses that are raising, you know, tens of millions of dollars right now. And really month over month having like 50% plus, you know, um, growth rate. It's, there's a lot of companies growing out there in a market that's pretty tough. So from my standpoint, um, the obsession with the core growth funnel is, is for those that are crushing and doing well. The ones that struggle, I think, uh, distracted and have internal politics or a challenge around, you know, who should do something and remaining focused on something long enough to be able to get to traction. Um, It takes time to do something well. And I'm a firm believer in the idea that you have to have foundational capability and, you know, not just build for a short-term play, but instead go, okay, here's the surface area. Here's what we want to try and solve for. Let's go and build, you know, firstly see where we're at, look at the internal crew, bring in some specialists or an agency or whoever we need and build a program of work that is, it ultimately leads to you having another Parts of the flywheel, another contributing factor towards your growth. And, um, yeah, so it's hard to kind of keep focused and carve out the space inside an organization sometimes, but those that are doing it well are those that are extremely focused.

Okay. Yeah. Is, so you mentioned like almost having like a foundation. What is your, like, I guess, opinion on completely delegating out versus kind of like building, I guess, some level of knowledge internally in an organization before delegating out? Like if, say, if I was to like, I don't know, figure out Facebook ads. Do you think as a company it's better to get someone internally and figure that out? Or do you think straight up delegate straight out?

I think it hurts more when you're spending your own money. Isn't that, it's something actually a massive credit to Frank. Um, he really built out that paid marketing function inside Finder. One of, uh, he's one of the co-founders as well, um, of Finder and he would, go into these absolute battles with, you know, not only competitors, but big banks with like, you know, unlimited budgets. And I think it was just this psychology and this kind of his approach, like he's just so persistent and he will, he's going to win. Like he just doesn't stop. And so, yeah, I think there's something about a founder really being hands-on and figuring out the core growth channel. And if you look back and, you know, say a company like Eucalyptus, Tim Doyle, the fact that Eucalyptus did so well, I think is that, you know, um, Tim and Charlie, they were, um, ex-Koala. And so they had this creative ad engine where they could, you know, build like 40 to 50 variants for an ad very easily. And I think that gave them a massive edge as a company attacking a space where it was just so hard to compete with them because their ads just outperformed. So, you know, I'm a firm believer in the founder needing to understand the channel. Um, obviously. I don't think Tim at the end of kind of his journey there was like driving every single ad, uh, hiring people and kind of teaching them your method, but then also bringing in others that can challenge it and improve on it. Uh, at Finder, I remember we brought in a head of marketing, Jen Snell, who was phenomenal. Like she, she ran our marketing probably for about 6, 7 years, I'd say. Um, but built us into just this highly predictable growth engine. And I think combined with, you know, a great client services team that, you know, had strong partnerships to to underpin the traffic and effectively help us monetize better. It led to enormous amounts of growth for us. Finder did bring in agencies at times, but we were more the sort of business that would bring in specialist contractors to try and solve for a particular piece. Um, and yeah, though I think it just, um, even if you are delegating, you've got to stay close and I can see both models working. There's no right or wrong. It just comes down to really the founder caring a lot about the core metrics of the business.

Okay. Right. So there's gotta be a lot of care in if you do dilute. Yeah.

That makes sense. 100%.

What is, I guess, so now you're, I guess, almost acting as like a fractional, um, yeah, fractional co-founder in companies. What are you, I guess, seeing with AI that companies are doing well? And what are they doing wrong with AI?

Yeah, I'd say the companies that do well. have champions inside their business that are adopting AI and not just when it's a, AI is such a broad term, right? People would like use ChatGPT and like, yeah, I use AI. I'm like, it's every day. I'm like, yes, you do technically. But what I'm talking about is the people that are coding, the people that are building workflows, the people that are changing forever the way they did something to doing it a new way with AI augmentation or completely replacing the process with a totally agentic flow. And I think there's these quotes that go around. It's like, oh, you know, 95% of AI stuff doesn't work and whatever. And people kind of hang off these surveys, which sometimes are a couple of years old, right? The MIT study from whatever. What I'm seeing is there's plenty of AI being used day to day inside companies and it is working and it's working across all functions. So I do think that there's certainly a need for a human in the loop. But Growth functions using AI for B2B growth work. It's out there and working, like qualifying people on LinkedIn, producing messages, post-processing the information in a CRM and figuring out, you know, who should we follow up and so on. Like there's layers where enrichment of using AI is really, really powerful. Um, and look, a lot of this stuff existed pre-gen AI. It's more the fact that you can now, you know, an individual doesn't have to wait for time with an engineering department to get something done. They've got Claude Code sitting there on the computer and they can start building out these automations and workflows and skills.

Yeah.

that make it entirely possible and easy to do. The companies that aren't performing well in AI, in my perspective, I think it's when there's a lack of clarity on who should be leading, or multiple people internally trying to lead the same thing, the wrong people trying to lead that initiative. You know, the way I always say is the enemy of AI adoption is the org chart. It's, you know—

Really? The enemy of AI is the org chart?

Yeah, the org chart gets in the way of AI adoption. Engineering thinks they should be the one doing it. IT doesn't want to give you access and permission for security reasons. Finance doesn't want to approve it. And the employee struggles to build a business case that anybody will listen to. And so you end up having this shadow AI where people are buying their own Claude accounts and whatever. And they've got, you know, haven't even turned off the training data. It's kind of wild, but literally, and by the way, I am pro-shadow AI. Like if your organization is not approving your AI usage, like you can blame me, but like literally go and buy it and just start using, prove out the value and it might actually bring their attention to, to accelerating that investment. Um, but yeah, the companies that struggle, man, like their org charts just get in the way. Um, okay.

Are you seeing the biggest blocker as, as, um, kind of leadership not wanting to adopt it, or are you seeing it as more like employees not wanting to adopt it?

Or there's certainly some people inside an organization that don't want to adopt it, don't think it's a thing. Like, honestly, still today, um, which is crazy. You know, I was at a talk last night. whole bunch of people on stage, like more HR backgrounds saying, yeah, like, you know, it's just here to augment us. Like no one's going to lose their jobs and whatever. I'm not saying AI is going to lead to job loss necessarily, but I think it was quite a naive perspective. My view is that actually there's an enormous amount of evolution required for companies right now. And it's not about just going, okay, cool. It's really helpful to me right now that we're using AI. That's assuming that we're a human in the loop. What if when AI gets to the point of not having a human in the loop and it gets extremely good at doing the task without a human dependency? I think humans are throttling AI right now. We're actually slowing down what AI can actually do. It's capable of much more. The fact that we have to sit there and keep prompting and agreeing and whatever is the issue, the more it gets unleashed, I think it can do far more than it's actually allowed to today. And I think part of the issue there is that a lot of organizations have rules and systems and ways of doing things up until now that They're trying to get AI to replicate the way they've done it. If AI starts from scratch and didn't have a rulebook and literally was given a goal, I think it can do much more for organizations and certainly brand new organizations and do things in a different way. I'm not saying it's going to do it perfectly, but yeah, from my standpoint, it's able to achieve much more than we're giving it credit to, or at least able to harness today. Okay.

Yeah, no way. If you were to start a business right now from scratch and you could only use 3 tools, I'm curious what would be the 3 tools that you would use?

Oh, okay. I mean, obviously you need to have some level of coding agent, like choose your weapon, like a Claude code or a Codex or both. I think that context is critical. So some sort of data mining Um, ideally you're not building your own scrapers and like using like an Apify or something like that could be pretty powerful. So you've got this data source, proprietary data would be even better. Like you're paying for data and you're able to leverage it in a way where it's not public. I think that's like semi-defensible for a period of time. And then you've got to think about how do you get customers and distribution? Um, I would say content is critical. And so therefore, how do you go about producing great content? I think that most people ask AI to generate the content for them and they don't give it unique insight or kind of anything. So I'd argue some sort of transcriber is probably the most important thing you could invest into because I think the unique things that are in your brain, your own lived experience, that real-world grounding is what allows you to build differentiation in content and stories, extracting stories from things that you've lived and achieved is where I believe You know, feeding that over the top of that system, I think could be, that's probably the 3 pieces.

Interesting. Okay. What do you mean by extracting stories that you think extracting stories is the most important part about content?

Well, I mean, if we all went to ChatGPT and said, write an article about this, or I want to do a reel about AI, everyone is pretty much going to get a pretty similar response. And I think there's a heap of AI slop out there where people are just doing the same thing over and over again. But if you talk about a lived experience that only you experienced, That's something that only you can talk about. And that's true and authentic. And I think that's what AI really values. Also AI.

Yeah.

The algorithms value uniqueness. They value something that isn't just a generic thing that's out there, right? So if you can bring stories, story is a vehicle for being able to communicate an idea and having people be drawn into it. And I feel like that story extraction process is about lived experiences, you know, moments like this where you're asking me like, how's it like, you know, in the beginning of Finder and so on, right? And hopefully each time I try and answer it a different way. Um, but yeah, I think that's, that's what it's about. And I think that stories build connection and through connection you can have distribution where people are following you and want to follow your journey. And, and maybe that's how they want to eventually buy your product or service. So. I see.

So it's like it brings the unique connection to go beyond just the, I guess, tactical strategies and tactics, but actually make it stick.

Yeah, I think so. Like, you know, people, My belief at least is like what you see on your feed is, you know, maybe a representation of who you want to be, who you want to kind of learn from, who you find interesting. And so over time you're building these like micro relationships with your followers. And I think that you ultimately are influencing their decisions. And, you know, even if it's not that they buy your product or service or, you know, do anything that you've said, you somehow have trained them or kind of influenced their thinking on a topic. And, Yeah. So I'd say distribution, um, through using stories as a vehicle to get to that outcome is, is probably one of the most powerful things that people can do.

Okay.

Yeah.

Interesting. Cause yeah, I guess you've gone pretty hard into content over the last kind of, yeah, 9 months, 12 months.

Yeah.

Probably specifically the last 3 months.

I was going to say the last 3 is going to be, yeah, pretty nuts there. Yeah.

What, like, what brought that about? And yeah, like how did that all start?

Yeah. So I'm algorithm obsessed, right? We've been talking about Google. I've been talking about ChatGPT and large language models and how to rank in those answer engines. But for me, I had this idea in my mind of building a new flywheel that would work going into 2026 and beyond. This is kind of mid-20s, mid-last year I had this thought and I started thinking about my personal brand. Um, first and foremost, I pretty much had a private Instagram account with like 300 followers or something. It's a followers connection. I don't even know what it's called on Instagram. That's the level, right? I'm pretty new to the game. Um, and I was building into this crescendo moment where I was, you know, running a marathon. Um, and I was really doing that for the resilience that, you know, kind of comes with like grinding out 40-odd Ks. Um, I'm doing it again, by the way. I don't know how I'm gonna do it.

Oh, you actually know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's in like 9 weeks or so. Um, and, um, so started with documenting that and then it really was about sharing my story and my contribution to Finder. And so I've, you know, gone on a bunch of podcasts and I've done that. And then, you know, I built a LinkedIn habit of daily posting. And, um, the way I went about doing that was studying the outliers. For me, it's like in an algorithm, it rewards those that get above the noise. And so what I did was I, um, I scraped 1,000 LinkedIn posts and I was like, what's working? What's not? And identified the formats of what was working and what was not. And started using them as inspiration to go and post. And suddenly it started performing really well. Um, and from that you could also see what images are included or not. And is it a carousel or a PDF or a video? And you started to, you know, I guess just built this playbook around LinkedIn posting. So that worked well. I actually haven't been posting as much on LinkedIn, not on purpose. I just think I moved to the Instagram algo. Um, and yeah, with Instagram, um, Yeah, I've definitely got to give credit to, um, to Braith from X5 Carriers who edits my content and helps on that side of things, um, ideation and so on. But for me, it was the same process. I scraped 492 reels. I transcribed them all, identified the formats and templates across of it. And there was about 5 that I felt were the ones that did well. AI tool roundups, founder story, um, Uh, how-tos, uh, can't remember the other 2 off the cuff, but, um, from that was able to see, okay, this is how it works, this formula. Like the first 0 to 2 seconds, you've got this hook and then you've got the second hook and then you have to kind of do all these things. And, um, also started studying like, you know, some great creators, you know, people like Dan Martell, um, and others that have massive audience growth. And it's like, okay, what have they done over a short period of time to change things? And, um, Yeah, so built the rhythm. I film for 2 hours a week. Um, and, uh, literally the output is, is fairly easy for me to kind of work with. I should be posting once a day. I often build out the videos, but like, it's funny, like say we were just talking before, there was a release in AI called Claude Tag. Like I need to film a video about that this weekend, but then like I'm filming in advance of using it because I'm like, okay, now I need to go and upskill, make sure I've nailed it. 'Cause I'm gonna create a guide on this thing. So sometimes the video will sit there for a month 'cause I haven't had time to actually go and learn the thing. So that's why I've got this banked up content. Um, but yeah, I, I'd certainly, um, treat the upskilling process very seriously. I, I'm sleeping better now. Um, as in like, I have no trouble getting to sleep. That's not my issue.

Okay.

Um, I was going to bed at like 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM for probably about 7 or 8 months straight. going nuts, like applying things, learning things, looking for the edge and the alpha. Um, and then I kind of took a pause when I was like, oh wow, I can do that. That's really cool. And I think for me, um, yeah, where I'm at is at a point where I've arrived to, I guess, workflows and playbooks in AI execution across most functions in a business. Um, but especially the growth and, um, operation sides of things.

Okay.

Um, which allowed me to move extremely quickly. And so for me, I'm like, Now trying to share that with organizations and teach them how to do the same. Yeah.

Okay. So that, I guess, kind of lands at, I guess you've launched Executive Arc 2 days ago.

Yeah.

Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm curious. Yeah. What made you want to start that? And what's your vision for, yeah, what you want Executive Arc to become? Yeah.

So when I, when I talked about the flywheel earlier, for me it was like personal brand and really defining that, starting to post regularly. If you're producing all this content, I thought it was kind of crazy that people are giving away the guides and then you lose this ongoing relationship with the person that's decided to interact with you. And I am so curious around all these people, like, who, like, why did you comment my thing and why did you want this guide? And so for me, it's an opportunity to try and, I guess, create a space to interact with those individuals. I had a launch of another community about 5 weeks ago called AI Search Leaders with my friend Tom Critchlow. And that's, you know, focused on how to turn up in ChatGPT and all this stuff. It did well. It's, you know, probably 180 members in the first kind of 4 weeks. And I had this playbook and I was launching Executive Arc to do something similar, like where we're having conversations like this. And I'm like, man, like that would be so cool to document them and share them and have other people follow along and watch them, right? And so it's designed for the top executives in Australia to have a space to comfortably talk about AI with their peers and also get access to my network, access to playbooks and constructs, structures to roll out and adopt AI in their organization, but also for them personally. Because the thing is like the board's going like, hey, everyone needs to use AI and you to, you know, turn on this and do it today. But people are scrambling. It's like, well, how and where do I start? Like, do I follow the guide of the creator I just saw on Instagram or who do I trust? And so for me, I'm like, I guess gone through this process of meeting some really cool people, figuring out what's worked. And I'm also in a process of learning too. There's some really cool people that are joining the community. Um, and I'm really just wanting to capture all of that and make it something where, where people get a lot of value from it. So. Yeah.

That's awesome. So I'm curious, you, you have like this incredible ability to almost like obsess over something. Like when you like go into a topic, at least from what I've seen, you've been able to like dig into it and like properly like obsess about it. So like, I think I saw it like on Instagram with like the health stuff. You got like really into health for a while. Yeah.

Yeah.

And like, you obviously in the past, um, were like really obsessed with SEO and then content and learning AI. So I'm curious, like, how did you develop that, like, mindset to do that? Like, yeah, how did that—

Well, it's, I don't know the answer to how I developed the mindset, but I can, I do remember something I've never shared before, a random story, um, of the earliest obsession I had on something like this. So do you know what a biodome is? No, it's so random, but there's a movie with like Pauly Shore and I think it was called Biodome or something like that. And essentially it's like designed to be Capturing like the, the earth, like, you know, nature and ecosystem and like replicating the ability to have it sustain, um, ongoing, like, you know, biological natural processes running, but in a dome that's kind of protected from the outside world. So I think it was like a concept around like, you know, all this pollution, like, you know, issues around climate change and all this stuff. So how do we capture, um, I guess, this own system that can live on its own and be self-sufficient. Um, so I obsessed around that at probably like 12, 13 years old. And I used to design biodomes in these, these books and go and speak to my mom. My mom used to read, um, magazines and books and I'd go and lay next to her in bed and say, hey mom, like I designed this thing. And like, it was like a, I just give the rationale as to why I designed the biodome that way. I just have books of this and, um, So it's totally random, but how I developed the mindset and approach, I think, I, the thing that I think about a lot is, um, I've got 3 values, connection, growth, and helping people. The helping people one for me, I think drives a lot of my behavior. I, I really have had a, an incredible relationship with my grandmother. Um, and I wanted to help her in every way possible. Um, my grandfather had passed away, you know, a lot younger than her. And so she was alone, but lived close by and spent a lot of time with her and really just wanted to do everything I could to help her out. And I guess for me, the thing that kind of translates into some of these other things I obsess on is like, if I'm obsessing on, I don't know, answer engines and how to make that work, there's so many brands, so many companies that need help. And for me, my obsession, I know, leads to very tactical ways that they can apply You know, growth tactics to these channels and make it work for their brand. So I think that's kind of one thing. It's like driven from my values outwards and, you know, the connection and growth piece, right? Like I love seeing the feedback loop. I love seeing you did that one video. Like my first video on Instagram, um, I had 800 followers and using this outlier analysis tool that I built, it predicted that my first video would get to somewhere between 200, No, 150,000 and 500,000 views or something. And I think it got 370,000 views and I got 3,000 followers from the first video, which is incredible.

That is insane.

And again, you know, really Braith and the team did an amazing job with that. But for me, um, it just shows the power of having a, having a very data-driven approach, like using something like an outlier analysis, studying what's working already to ensure that what you do gets on the dartboard and ideally in the center of the dartboard, like right in the bullseye. And, um, that's just, that's how I think about things.

Yeah, that's awesome. I think like, I really admire that like obsessive mindset to like, like just line down on one thing and be like, I'm just going to learn everything about this. I'm going to document every single bit and like get it driven by data. It's like such a cool thing, I think. Um, yeah. Another thing I like wanted to ask about with your, I guess, mindset is you, so I noticed you have this awesome ability to, people will say no to you and you're like, no. I'm gonna like find a way. Like I noticed on your shirt it says impossible, but yeah, it's, uh, crossed out. But yeah, I think, um, so in my research I found you did a 10-day fast with no doctor.

Oh yeah, that was crazy.

Um, you ran a marathon when people said you shouldn't. So you've developed this, yeah, incredible mindset to just say like, hey, people have said I shouldn't do this, or people said it can't be done, but I'm gonna do it anyway. So like, yeah, where did that come from and how did you develop that as well?

Again, I don't know exactly, and I would love to, if anyone's out there and they can help me figure out the answer to this stuff, like reach out on LinkedIn or whatever. I'll pay for your time to help me deconstruct and figure out my own brain. But I think it's through necessity. Like I remember when my parents launched their company, well, my dad, the story goes like this. My dad was a successful salesperson. He became He didn't speak a word of English when he came to Australia. So as a migrant, you're kind of already a minority. I grew up in southwest Sydney, and for me, like, I was the, you know, the, the person from European descent. Like, there were very few of us in my grade. Despite being like, you know, great at soccer, I never got selected into the, the, the, what do you call it, the teams that were the grade above. I was like A grade or, you know, Division 1, but I never got into the, the regional kind of teams. And I think that it just was the My dad would say, you know, just pat me on the back. It's like, don't worry about it, Jeremy. Like, and like, it was like, oh, what? Like, so you don't just get into the team by being better. There's like this other thing that's going on. And I feel like that really bothered me. And I was like, that, that doesn't seem right. And, um, so with my dad, like, you know, he's, he went through enormous struggle. Like, you know, came here, it was like, you know, I think he was doing like metalworking and all sorts of things. And then ultimately, um, became a salesperson. Became a national, um, leader of this, um, sales team in mailing equipment. And then eventually decided to, you know, stop that and, um, spent a couple of weeks not talking to the family, figuring out the next thing. And he's like, I'm launching a merchandise company. I was like, I don't understand. And he's like, you know, things like printed rulers and pens. I was like, people make money selling that stuff? I was like, surely this can't be a thing here. And, um, he's like, yeah, I'm going to do it. I was like, oh my gosh. And I was like really worried for the family. And so at that point I had figured out how to build websites. Um, that was like an obsession back in, I don't know, 1999 or something. Uh, I'd read this book on HTML and just went for it. And I was like, I know how to build websites. I know how to build computers. Um, and I kind of just started building out the foundations of that business. I built the accounting system. I think I was about 15 years old. The accounting system, the computer, like the quoting, like the, I helped find the suppliers, like Just the whole thing. And I built this website that did very well.

At 15 years old?

Yeah, I guess. But I mean, dude, if you look at some of the young kids out there right now, like hanging out at places like Araya and whatever, like what they're doing, right, is phenomenal. Um, uh, but yeah, I think for me, I just, I got pretty obsessed with that. Um, and yeah, I started applying this skill and I learned how to generate a lot of traffic and leads, um, for my dad's business, my parents' business. And, um, I think it just came from like necessity, as I said, like it was like a, it, I don't know how I just, I felt like I needed to do it. And so like, you know, with the, if you take the health example, like I, I lost 20 kilos and ran a marathon, um, in 4, it was like 4 months of prep. Um, I prompted ChatGPT 3,092 times, but—

For that health one?

For the health one.

Oh yeah.

And like, I remember I sat with a doctor in Chile, um, in December, uh, a few months prior. And he said to me, you cannot run a marathon. There's no way you can do it. I was like, what are you talking about, man? He's like, you just can't. And like, I thought about, I was like, how does a doctor learn? What do they like? How do they construct their worldview? And they base it on research and they base it on kind of, um, you know, like there's these bell curves of like, you know, for most people he's correct. And I was like, but there's a small percentage, maybe like 0.1% of people prove him wrong. And I wasn't doing it to prove him wrong, but I just felt like if I focused on that kind of 1% or very small percentage of people that somehow pulled it off, And what they did. And, and, you know, I just started breaking apart the variables one by one to ensure I could do it. So for me, you know, I'm still overweight, um, but I was like, how do I reduce the impact as I'm running? So if you run on treadmill, you can run, um, with less impact on your joints by 40 to 60%. So running on treadmill means you have less injury. And I didn't run on the road until about 8 weeks out.

No way.

So all my training was on a treadmill, which is crazy. Um, then you start thinking about, okay, VO2 max, how do you, um, directly improve VO2 max? What are the things that you can do? And you just like, you know, I fed it everything, my, my DNA tests, my bloods, um, every exercise that I was doing, my nutrition, the whole thing. And, um, and I ran the marathon. Um, but it just came, yeah, as I said, I think the mindset just comes from necessity. When you want something bad enough, there's always a way. Um, and yeah, it's just something I can't, um, can't change about myself.

Yeah, no, that's really cool. I was, yeah, it was really cool to hear because, yeah, I was just asking because I think a lot of listeners, um, be like, you know, 20 to 30 and they're going, wow, Jeremy's done all these incredible things. How can I like go and one day go and achieve these types of things? And what is like the mindset that would be required? So it's like, yeah, quite cool to hear that. It's like, in some ways developing that like necessity mindset is something that is pretty pivotal. Um, yeah, which is so, so cool. Yeah.

It's never nice to feel forced to do something, but I think it's one of the best motivators. Um, and yeah, I think again, it's that, that piece on empathy. Like when I was deconstructing Google's algorithm, like we had this massive penalty at Finder and I was Like, if I were a Google engineer, what would I do if I was designing the reconsideration process and who would I take, you know, you apply to get your website reconsidered basically. Who would I say yes to and who would I say no to? And how do I construct a pitch so strong that you, in all scenarios, are going to say yes? And I literally had built this method of, um, getting Finder unpenalized because we used to move pretty quickly in the early days buying links and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And, um, it was just the, the deep empathy, um, kind of trying to be that person and understand how they thought and, uh, what this, you know, their decision-making processes is what, um, I guess drove that, um, that approach.

Yeah, that's really cool. Um, I wanted to ask a question on signals. So you've been an incredible early adopter of a lot of different things, which I think is really cool. Um, so I heard you, you bought an iPhone pretty early on.

Oh yeah.

Um, crypto, you were like pretty early on in, I guess, kind of like identifying that landscape. And, um, I heard you built like a really big crypto thing at Finder as well. What are like some of the signals you use to identify something before it becomes mainstream?

Yep. I think I'm pretty observant. So I watch people and I try and almost sit above it in a moment and I observe myself, my own behaviors. And I think that is sometimes driven from a place of lack of self-confidence. So I'm like looking at, you know, for like, um, approval or kind of validation or whatever. So like, I really end up paying a huge amount of attention to body language, which is an unusual thing. And I'm always like doubting myself and so on. Um, and so that kind of then, you know, like I painted that very, um, minute detail. Like, I used to be able to walk the floor at Finder and be like, oh wow, someone needs to have a conversation with person X. Something's wrong. It's not— the pattern is not the same from what I've observed over the last, you know, several hundred days or whatever. And I'd be right most of the time.

Um, so you'd see someone's like body language is slightly different to— Yeah.

Slouch, you know, um, they didn't, you know, say hello to me today, but the last 20 times they said yes. So what's going on there? And again, it's like, it's not It wasn't on purpose. It's like more, if anything, it was about me and my lack of self-confidence or, you know, the feeling of wanting to be accepted or something like that, which drove that behavior. So I think that underpins a lot of it. And then for me, I always think about like, why did that person react that way? Why did that person post that comment? What is the natural next thing that somebody would do given this stimulus? Like this bit of information is new in the world.

Yeah.

What is the next problem that person needs to solve? How can I help them solve it? And there are ways to get the signal before the rest of the world gets the signal. Like, I remember when COVID hit, it was really interesting. I, um, my wife, um, was pregnant at the time with our twin girls and around December. So it was, you know, hitting, um, March 20-ish or something like that. I think it was, um, December the year prior, we had built out these pages on Finder around, um, face masks for smoke inhalation. So basically to stop you, you know, remember the bushfires in 20— yeah, insane, right?

Yeah.

Like Sydney was like, we'd wake up and I was freaking out. My wife was pregnant. Like my, my room would be full of smoke and I was like, whoa, this is bad. So we ended up flying to Queenstown for a couple of weeks to let the bushfires, um, kind of pass. And, um, anyway, we had this page live on the website and then, um, on my birthday, uh, January 31st or thereabouts, January 30th, I remember, um, it was like, um, I was on Twitter and they had this kind of release of the, um, the news around COVID and they were like, it's more viral than a viral tweet. And I was like, wait a second, I'm reading a viral tweet. I was like, this is going to spread like wildfire. It's going to go insane. Right. And so I was like, okay, we need to pay attention. I started paying attention every day to the COVID cases. And I remember flying to New York and, um, I was so prepared for that, like, you know, in so many crazy ways, but I was buying like hand sanitizer and all this stuff. And like, just, I just started researching. Like crazy. I got obsessed with COVID basically.

Okay.

Um, and then, you know, there was something that happened where this web— this webpage on the, on the face mask from, um, December the year prior, that's the smoke inhalation stuff, started getting traffic. I was like, there's no bushfires right now. Why are people buying these masks? I was like, oh, they're buying the masks to work because they don't want to have spread of, um, bacteria and like, you know, this, this virus. And I was like, shit. And we pivoted the page and then suddenly it just went nuts. I was like, well, if that's true, what other things would people be buying right now to try and, I guess, avoid the spread of the virus? Um, and so if you go to a traditional search tool and see what people are searching for each month, it's based on averages and that's not useful. So how can you see signal around what's trending like right now? So I went to Google Trends and you'd see, you know, some things up, you know, with an uptick, but even Google Trends, the data needs to be, um, significant enough in volume to hit a trend chart. So like, how do I get to the actual source? And so I remember, um, Italy was one of the first places that faced a lockdown with COVID And so I scraped Amazon data on sales of what was being sold on Amazon in Italy to understand what people were buying. And then I was like, that's what people need right now in Australia. And so that's how we built up this, you know, shopping essentials, um, section on Finder, which did very well. And I remember there was a news story that hit, um, and it was like around 4 PM at the office at Finder. And I was like, in LA, they had sold out, um, All the toilet paper was flying off the shelves. I was like, no way. Like, this is like full doomsday prepping stuff at this point. I was like, I'm pretty sure they're buying it because they're worried that they're not going to be able to go to supermarkets. And so people were just hoarding things. So I put a page on, um, where to buy toilet paper online on Finder. And it was getting like 50,000 to 100,000 visits a day. It was insane. Um, but it just came from like, I guess that place of like observing human behavior, figuring out what the next most logical thing they might do would be and how do you help them solve that problem. And the same was true of COVID or Pokémon Go, all these random things that we kind of jumped. Netflix, when it launched in Australia, it was just observing a trend, figuring out the next problem people wanted to solve and being the solution to them in those moments in time.

I see. Yeah. Okay. That's really interesting. So it was a lot about observing patterns and then kind of trying to identify and extrapolate them out.

Yeah. Yeah.

What are, I guess, some of the signals you're I guess, seeing at the moment? Are there any kind of signals you're seeing at the moment or you're excited about into the future? Yeah.

Well, I mean, everyone's talking about AI, right? I think the concern there is this one aggregate term that refers to everything. And I think what I think about is like, okay, what comes next? What do people start talking about next in AI? It can't just, you can't keep loosely describing AI the way we do. And so So given that, like, what are the problems yet that companies need to solve next? And how do you start constructing solutions to those problems now? And, you know, so for me, I'd say, you know, there's so many sub-niches of AI that need exploration and education and problems to be solved and infrastructure built. And I think that's interesting. Also with, you know, back to answer engines, like, if you're trying to figure out how to rank in or rank or turn up in ChatGPT or Gemini, There's things that, um, we're treating it in the old way. We think that that's the way to win, but I'm like, okay, where does this go? If you combine the two together, turning up in an answer engine is actually the prerequisite for an agent to be able to go and complete the task on behalf of somebody. And that's where it's going to go. So what I mean by that is like, if you, uh, the pizza shop that turns up position 1 for pizza shops in Glebe, The chances of someone auto-buying a pizza from your pizza shop are suddenly now much higher because if you've got a website that can be agentically used or is directly integrated into ChatGPT or Google or whatever they ultimately build, you're going to win in that world. So it's a two-pronged strategy of like trying to turn up and be the brand that gets mentioned, but then also building the infrastructure so that you can be used by your new customer, which is an AI agent. It's not the human that's going to go and do that task any longer. It's going to be the agent that does it on behalf of that person. So. Um, I think that's a good to 12, you know, 12 to 18 month area of focus for most businesses is having both strategies in play at the same time. Because I think a lot of companies aren't paying attention to GEO and how to turn up in answer engines. And if you don't win that, you can automate your business, you know, 100%. If you, if you get there, that's great. But if you don't turn up and you can't be an option that agents are finding, you won't be chosen. And so it needs to be a 2-prong strategy. Yeah.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Okay. What is one thing that you hope AI can solve in the next 5 years?

I think there's a lot of really sad things that still happen, you know, people that, you know, unfortunately become unwell and lose their lives through critical illness and so on. So I'd love to see a big unlock on like major disease being cured with AI. And I think that's Something I'm very excited for. I think that there's also some people that are very lonely. And I think if there's ways that AI can help those individuals kind of navigate difficult moments, and we've seen data from Anthropic and OpenAI, like literally one of the number one use cases is people using AI as a therapist effectively. And so that's really, it's a problem for companies like Anthropic. They've got to be very careful. They're dealing with very delicate situations. But I think that's pretty amazing because you're making a service available to somebody 24/7, 365 at near to zero cost. And I think that's really cool. And I think it's just going to give opportunity to so many individuals in ways that it wasn't decided, you know, by where you grew up or who your parents were or any of these sorts of things. It's an equalizer. And if you've got a great idea and you've got AI in your pocket, I think you can truly build anything you want to. And so for me, I'm excited for that new world. I'm excited for what people out there that thought that it wasn't possible for them to do it because they didn't come from privilege or any of these sorts of things. They don't necessarily need the venture capital anymore. They can go and build that idea. It's more just about realizing that you can and just starting. And, um, yeah, just starting I think is, is the next step, right? So, um, I hope that's, you know, with your great content and my content and like, that's If we can achieve that outcome and like kind of encourage people to take the first step, that's what I'm really excited for. And, um, yeah, let's see what comes of that.

Yeah, I think it's, it's so exciting to see, like 5 years ago, if you wanted to build like an app or some kind of like platform, like a web app, it's like you either had to have like $100,000 or you had to like know how to code. And I think it's so like awesome to see that now it's like you can get an MVP up and running, like with Replit or Lovable or like Antigravity or any of those types of things. And I think it's like so cool that it's like anyone can now, like with a couple hundred bucks, get something off the ground. Whereas like previously they couldn't.

So it's like, yeah, totally, totally.

It's like so exciting.

And there's all these like micro problems with no incentive to go and solve them because it'd be, it would take too long, take too much money, too much expertise where you wouldn't go and hire an engineering team to go and solve that problem. But now these micro problems can actually be solved by people that, uh, I guess You know, passionate about it and can create something that always needed to exist and suddenly can. And I think that's really cool.

Yeah, just so, so cool. Because yeah, there's like those specific people who are experts in one topic. Yeah, like, um, yeah, I've got a friend who's like, she's, she's a nurse and she was like telling me about like a specific problem. I was like, I would have no clue that problem existed. Yeah, but you know that. And so like, you're like almost the best person to solve that problem.

Legit. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's like, yeah, super, super cool, that stuff.

Yeah, it's cool.

Um, what is advice that you hear all the time, but you disagree with?

I think the interesting one right now is around focus.

Okay.

Because everyone's like, oh, you should just do one thing at a time. And there's a lot that you can achieve through focus. I don't disagree with the concept of focus, but I think the fact that you can do so many things in parallel right now, There's a new breed of, of human that's really coming about that is conditioned to do 8 to 10 things at the same time. We all got conditioned to, you know, watch short-form content, right? Like, you know, scrolling and like, we just like the TikTok kind of effect, right? Imagine what it looks like in a few years from now when you're used to doing 8 to 10 tasks at the same time. Everyone said, oh, multitasking is really bad and whatever, but I actually think we're going into a world where multitasking could be the most incredible advantage and that we're all going to be conditioned to normalizing that. It's going to be really hard to get somebody's attention.

Yeah.

Um, but I'm a firm believer in that, um, that's actually genuinely possible. And I, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily one human that pulls that off, but you can have a number of, I guess, bets happening in parallel that allow you to not be all in on one. And I think it's exciting to use the signal from each of those bets to decide where to focus. Um, you know, we were just talking about like how easy it is to launch. And I think that the launch data is more powerful than the kind of simulating of the what might be. So I think it's really about giving it a go.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Multitasking will be the future. That'd be cool. Um, what, what is one piece of advice that you would, I guess, um, wish founders adopted more?

I think that founders shouldn't go it alone, and that doesn't mean that you need a co-founder.

Okay.

But there are incredible experts out there, people that are, you know, great sounding boards, very generous with their time, whether it be, you know, someone you can call a mentor, someone you can have as a coach. I've got an incredible coach, Craig Hall, who still even post-Finder, I see weekly. Like for me, he's someone that, you know, I let, it's like, it's like, uh, the way I put it is like, you know, you have a personal trainer and even if you know how to do that exercise, having someone there, there's an accountability piece. There's, you know, um, I think the, the fact that they're always looking for ways to refine and improve. So you don't just stop the training once you learn how to do the reps, like some people do.

Okay.

Um, but I think it's about an always-on and building that relationship with somebody. Um, so my coach Craig, like, he is always challenging me and always like unpacking different parts of myself and helping me better understand myself. And so I'd say as a founder, it's about finding help, and that looks like different things to each person. It's not all about doing it, you know, on your own. And, you know, start hanging out with other founders, start hanging out with people that are going through through the same thing or something different as well. Like, I think it's, it's valuable to have different perspectives. So yeah, I think—

What are like some of the things I'm curious, because you said like you, so you meet weekly with a coach. What are some of the things like where you, where you've like had to like work on or practically implement and like kind of grow through that?

Like, well, yeah, I think I mentioned before, like I'm often doubting myself or, you know, have a, a confidence issue. So I'm often simulating conversations with him. It's like, hey, all this stuff happens. So it looks like I'm, I'm probably an unusual client for him. Like, I spend like 30 to 40 minutes, like, just dumping. It's like, here's everything that happened. And I'm like, okay, I feel good now. Um, and then I want to leave with like 2 or 3 very practical frameworks on making a decision on something. Because he's not going to make the decision for me, but he'd be like, you know, this is you, this is this part of you turning up again. Be aware of that. And it's like, oh, you're right. That is that kind of piece. And like, so you can suddenly reach a level of, um, kind of understanding of that that allows you to then move forward and take an action on that decision or whatever thing that was kind of, you know, for me, I sometimes get in these loops on something. I was like, go back on the same thing. And then like, you know, he just unblocks that and moves it forward for me. So, um, it's often about conversations and not wanting to disappoint somebody or wanting to kind of express myself in a way that lands, um, with empathy. So yeah, that's, that's what it's about.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Awesome. Damn. Yeah, it's really cool, like, just hearing your story and how, like, it's funny, like, I see someone on social media and like you just see like the amazing things they've done or the things, but to actually see like how much you've architected your life around, like, whether it's studying algorithms or like practically implementing stuff with coaches, it's like really cool to see how that actually takes place under the hood. So it's, uh, yeah, it's really, really cool to see.

Oh, thanks, man. I think that, um, People talk about luck, and I think luck is really, you know, it's not my quote, but it's the perfect combination of preparation and chance. So you can manufacture luck. Just prepare yourself for moments in time and increase the probability of being, you know, receiving that chance, right? Like hang out with the right people, you know, network your way through and kind of get that kind of access. Because I think once you hit that point, you're manufacturing luck. And I think that's That's what I'm very fortunate in my life that I've been able to kind of manufacture moments where, you know, and often without, like, there's this concept of manufacturing serendipity. So things that you cannot predict in the future, good things that will happen to you. And I often, actually often, I always help without any goal in mind. Like, and it's sometimes the most unusual things that I do. But like, you know, I'll give an example, like Taryn Williams. She owns Wink Models, very successful serial entrepreneur. On Instagram, she said, I really want to find a copy, how to subscribe to Vogue magazine in the US. And I just had a bit of time. I was like, I can crunch this in 5 minutes. Found the way to do it. She ended up getting the subscription. She's like, that was amazing. Thank you. I've been, you know, on and off trying to solve this thing for a few months. It was like a, you know, shitty Vogue website you have to deal with or whatever. She's like, come along to this dinner I run called Season Opener. I was like, excellent. Let's do Let's do it. it. Go along. At the dinner, Tim Doyle from Eucalyptus was presenting. He was sat across from me. Taryn was there. And to my left was Hugh Griffiths from Airwallex who heads up enterprise sales. Um, anyway, great night. Had this dinner. I didn't actually meet Hugh till about 15 minutes before the end of the dinner. He's like, man, I've got to go. And I was like, um, what do you— he's like, that's cool. And I've got to go to this concert. I was like, all right. And he's like, um, I was like, which concert? He's like, you wouldn't know the band. I was like, no, no, dude, like test me. And he's like, oh, it's Less Than Jake. And I was like, Dude, that was one of my favorite bands, if not my most favorite band growing up when I was like 15, 16 years old. And he's like, man, there's still tickets, let's go. So we go to this concert together, become really great mates, and, um, it kind of kicked off this whole thing for me where I just connected with my child self almost. And it was like, wow, that really gave me so much energy. And, um, yeah, a whole bunch of really great things came off the back of that, you know, random moment in time. But it all started with helping Taryn finding this Vogue subscription. So for me, I think I'm a big believer believer in manufacturing serendipity. Ren Fishkin from Moz, you know, kind of made me aware of that concept.

Um, but yeah, that's, uh, manufacturing serendipity. Wow. I've never heard that before. That's actually really cool.

Yeah. Ren's got a great blog post on it. Um, you can check it out.

I'll check that out. Awesome. Um, well, I want to work towards finishing up. Um, cause yeah, you like unpacked an incredible story and like, it's so cool to see like all the lessons from your life and how that's all like come together in your story. So it's really cool to see. Um, and to finish up, have a, uh, I guess rapid-fire round. Let's do it. Have a bit of fun. Um, so feel free to answer in, um, one sentence, couple sentences, however long you'd like. Um, but, uh, yeah, however long you'd like to answer them. So first one is, if you could have dinner with any 3 people, dead or alive from any time in history, who would you have dinner with?

My grandmother. I was really so close to her and I would love to talk to her and kind of share about my life, ask her more questions about her life. I think that would be amazing if I could, you know, introduce my wife and my kids to her. I would do anything for that. Um, I think For me, there's some people that are phenomenal and you can learn from, but there's also those that when you meet with them, they always are inquisitive and ask the right questions and are able to, I guess, just help you solve problems. So I'd say probably my coach Craig, because he is someone that which, you know, is phenomenal. But there's a guy, Bill Campbell, who coached all of the famous Silicon Valley, you know, Larry and Sergey from Google, you know, Zuckerberg, literally everybody. And he was, I want to understand why.

Okay.

Like, what was it about him that made all these companies, you know, they're like battling each other, sharing the same coach, like in Silicon Valley, like it's a, you know, a war on talent. But why do they all use the same guy? So I'd love to sit down with Bill Campbell. He passed away, unfortunately. And, you know, this is probably more than 3 people at this point, but another guy who was also phenomenal was Andy Grove, the Intel CEO and co-founder. So he was a big systems thinker and he had this this quote, which I live by, which is, I don't want to butcher it. Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.

Wow.

And that's been such an impactful quote for me. And I, you know, I've read his books and kind of learned about him, but, you know, if he was around now, I think there'd be so much more content that, you know, we could learn about, you know, more podcasts and all those sorts of things. But he was such an early innovator. That, um, yeah, I think a conversation over dinner would be, over dinner would be really cool.

Wow. I would love to be a fly on the wall at that, uh, that dinner table. Damn. Um, if you could go back to any one day in your life just to relive it exactly as it was, what day would you go back to?

Hmm. I think, um, meeting my wife. Because, um, she's been the most impactful person for me. I, um, I still remember like, um, when I came up the lift and I met her like the first time and like I just had this kind of flash forward, which was so unusual, but like it was like me in a convertible car with my mate and she was at the back with my mate's wife and then like There was no reason to have that. I was like, my first initial, like, it was like, that was really weird. Um, and I didn't really hang out with her for, like, I kind of just caught up with her at that one moment. And then 2 months later, we actually started seeing each other, um, more often. Um, but that was an unusual thing. Like, and I just like to relive those kind of early, um, the early connection we had and, and just, yeah. Um, and always be able to tell them like, you'll never believe this, but we get married. We had twin girls. Uh, we do all this cool shit together. Um, I, you know, I became obsessed with her as I was gonna— I don't wanna— another obsession. Um, but I remember like when I realized I was into her and wanted to date her, um, we went out salsa dancing and, um, I couldn't dance. Like I dance in general, let alone salsa. Went out, I was like, nah, this, this can't, can't do this thing. And then I went overseas for about a month and I went to all the cities around the world and I learned salsa dancing in Spanish. So I went to LA, San Francisco, Seattle, New York. Um, Toronto, and I came back to Sydney. And in LA they said, you know what, the world champion for salsa dancing, um, he's an Australian. And I was like, what? And I came back to Sydney, I did these lessons with the world champion just so I could dance socially with her, so like doing salsa. Um, so yeah, I had a salsa obsession for about a month. Um, but yeah, I think going back to those early moments, meeting her would be really cool.

That's very cool. If you could know the truth to any one thing, what one thing would you want to know the truth to?

That's so interesting because I talked about, you know, the fact that I always— I'm always curious about what are people thinking, what's going on in their mind. Um, I don't know if it'd be a good thing or a bad thing, but I would love to hear the internal, like, monologue or dialogue or what's going on in somebody's brain. Um, and like, you know, are they agreeing with what I'm saying? Like, you know, and it'd be cool to have that, um, that ability. But, um, yeah, maybe I'm gonna hear things I don't want to hear as well. But, you know, I think I just loved it. I'd love that.

Yeah. Okay. It's almost like telepathy or something.

Exactly.

That's a very cool answer. Um, in 200 years' time, a school student is told he needs to write an essay on someone. He's given your name, He goes to Wikipedia to investigate who Jeremy was. What do you hope the first line says on Wikipedia?

Whoa. Um, I think that, um, the way to describe myself is I personally sacrifice a lot lot for others. And I hope that that sacrifice led to a lot of good things for people, because I really care for so many people in my life, and I am willing to go to lengths that most wouldn't to see them happy and, and, um, you know, having what they need and want. Um, so yeah, I think it'd be something along those lines.

And the final question If everything about you was erased from the internet and all you had was the next 60 seconds, what's the most useful thought that you would leave to the world?

I think that you need to realize that anything you want to do is possible. It's just about breaking down the steps to get there, figuring out what is required and methodically working out that you know, particular thing one day by day, task by task, minute by minute, and you will get to the outcome you want.

That's awesome.

Wow.

I'm going to clip that one up. That's awesome. Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast, Jeremy. It's been an absolute pleasure and it's been awesome to finally like meet you in person. Um, I guess to finish up, where is there anywhere in particular you'd love people to go to visit you?

Is it either your LinkedIn, your Instagram, Executive Arc, or Yeah, I mean, anywhere you like, but you know, LinkedIn, I connect with most people. You can DM me there. Um, uh, Instagram, I'm on there as well. If you search for Jeremy Cabral and like an orange profile pic, that's me. Um, but yeah, reach out. I'm more available than people realize. Like, I love having conversations with people.

Yeah. Awesome. We'll put the, uh, put the links down there for everyone to listen to, but thanks so much for coming on, Jeremy.

Thank you.