Jeremy Cabral on AI, Scaling and What Founders Get Wrong

Today we're joined by Jeremy Cabral, who is one of the co-founders of finder.com, and now he's kind of pivoted to really getting deep into AI and then also helping founders grow their businesses and scale.

I think I was like probably 13 years old. I was like, I want to launch a business, like I want to have my own business. I was a soccer referee at 12, working at Big W when I was 14, working in the greenhouse and all the kind of shitty jobs.

What did it take for you to take that leap?

I feel like right now AI is— I just can't explain, man. Like anybody can code now.

It's wild.

Like you can spin up You can have an idea in like minutes, test it with an ad to see if there's demand before you've even built the product. Build a kind of book a call. If the call's in 3 days from now, then you've got 3 days to build a solution.

What is the legacy that you're trying to leave behind?

My legacy is really my kids, I think. Sharing my values, sharing my stories. I've been transcribing a lot to really give them as much context as possible around.

All right, welcome back to The Quest for Success podcast, and thanks for tuning in once again. Today on the show, I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation because today we're joined by Jeremy Cabral, who is one of the co-founders of finder.com, which I'm sure most of you have heard of. And now he's kind of pivoted to, you know, really getting deep into AI and then also helping founders grow their businesses and, and scale. And so really excited to really dive into your story, Jeremy, and then see what we can learn from you.

Thanks for having me on, guys. Um, gonna be a fun conversation.

So Jeremy, this podcast is all about success, and so I want to start with a very fundamental question, and that is, what does success actually mean to you? Yeah, wow.

I think, um, many things over the years, uh, but from my values outwards is kind of how I think about that, like where I start my day and if I make decisions based on my values, it's been a successful day. I've got 3 values, connection, growth, and helping people. And it's kind of my compass really. If I'm confused and there's multiple pathways to making a decision, I just go back to my values and it is what it is. If it's the right one or wrong one over time, who knows? But I think that's kind of for me a big thing. And yeah, in kind of a long arc, I think that the goal is to really leave the world a better place than when you kind of entered it sort of thing. And for me to get more specific, I think around in my family, my kids and my siblings and so on, if I can be someone that's provided for them in some way, shape or form over my kind of lifetime, I think that's Powerful. But in a selfish sense, I think freedom is the ultimate form of success. I think that's the opportunity to choose what you do each day, whether you do anything at all, productive or not, is something that I think is a very awesome place to be. So I think that's ultimately whatever I'm chasing. I'm very driven my personal development and growing and learning all the time. As you mentioned, I'm going deep on AI, so that's been a heap of fun. But yeah, I think having the choice of kind of how you spend your days is key.

Yeah, that's awesome. There's so many things to unpack there. But before we kind of dive in a bit deeper, I'd love to go to your early life because I always find that so much of a person is shaped by their formative years. Can you take us to your early upbringing and how you think it shaped who you became?

Yeah. I mean, I'm just going to riff on some of the things that come to my mind when you talk about that. So both my parents are migrants, came over from Portugal, literally not Portugal mainland, both islands. One was the Azores and my mum's from the island of Terceira and my dad is from Madeira and literally middle of nowhere. But they're not like, it's like halfway between the US and Europe, essentially.

Yeah.

But they both met in Australia and my dad didn't speak a word of English. But I think growing up in a situation where my dad left school young, always worked very hard, for me, that was kind of, I guess, my normal. And so yeah, from a very young age, I've always pushed myself. My dad had a very successful career in sales as well. And so I think that also defines you a little bit if you're kind of around watching someone negotiate, watching someone like—

Grind and—

Yeah, grind and get to outcomes and be very target-driven. And then also rewarded. At times I felt very fortunate and lucky that my dad would win I don't know, like a sales competition or whatever. And probably one of the most impactful moments was when he won an Amstrad computer. And I was a very young guy. I don't know how old, to be honest. It was like, oh geez, it must have been like, I would've said like, I don't know, year 1 or 2 or something like that, maybe a bit younger. But yeah, being around computers at a very young age was pretty unusual. I grew up in southwest Sydney in Campbelltown. And so for me, amongst my friends, it wasn't normal to kind of see people like with computers. And so people would come over and play the computer at my house. And I think my dad just kept on winning these things. And so that was really cool. And that kind of normalised being around computers at a young age. And then for me, I wanted to do more things with them. I got the internet again at a— I think I was the only kid in my school that had the internet. I used to go and buy dial-up internet from the local computer store every Thursday. I can't remember how much it costs, whatever. My mum would be like, yeah, every Thursday you can get the internet. And so, I look forward to that day, run out of the internet, go and buy it. And yeah, I was just like, so always online, always tinkering. And that just kind of kept happening. I just felt like there was these kind of early exposures to whether it be technology or kind of ways of working. That I think really defined who I am.

Yeah. What were your early interests when you said, uh, in, in computer?

Yeah.

What were you looking at or what you're working on?

Yeah, well, I mean, one of my earliest memories of using a computer was like there with my grandmother researching Portugal and showing her like history of the island she was from, which is like someone had built this website and I hadn't— like the internet was largely for academic purposes at one point, like literally like It just made no sense for companies to have websites and no one was using the internet. And then, so I'd research a lot of stuff. I learnt HTML and how to build websites at a pretty young age. I don't know how old I was, maybe like 14 or something like that.

Nice.

And then I also, so I was building websites. My sister had this assignment, she was a school teacher. And she needed to build a website for the Sydney Olympic Games. And I built the website, put on a floppy disk and she handed it in and got perfect marks. I think it kind of sent her on a career kind of trajectory down the IT route of the Department of Education. So, yeah, at one point I was fixing servers at random schools. I'd just be like, hey, this server's down, can you come check it out? Like, cool. And I'd go there on a weekend or after hours and fix some school network or something. Yeah, online, I think I just always had a thirst for knowledge. And that goes all the way back to like very young age reading encyclopaedias every night. Like, I just used to love like flicking through like from A to Z, like every single— we had a Funk and Wagnalls encyclopaedia collection, like a big— I don't know how many there are in there. There's a lot. And then I'd read the atlas and like memorise like cities and where they were and like whatever you learn in an atlas. There's some pretty interesting kind of cities I probably know about in the world, which is a bit random. Yeah, I just have always, I guess, been early to kind of these moments, learning things, and then eventually had a use case to apply it when it came to my parents starting a company, I guess.

And what did young Jeremy want to do when he grew up?

Well, I think I was probably 13 years old when I started hassling my mum and dad for— I wanted to register an ABN. I was like, I want to launch a business. I want to have my own business. Things like lawnmower repair, selling bath bombs was a random one. I think I saw it on Oprah or something like that. I was like, I'm going to sell bath bombs. Building computers, selling computers. I actually did that in the end for my teachers and friends and my dad's kind of— I remember I built a computer for some— in the promotional products industry, there's the supplier of mugs and his son, I built a computer for him when he was 12 years old. The crazy thing is I ended up hiring him probably about 15 years later. So he would've been learning how to use a computer and then I hired him to use one at my work. It's just kind of crazy.

Full circle.

Yeah, full circle. Yeah. So yeah, I just always wanted to launch my own business. I definitely wanted a job and got employed at a very young age. I was a soccer referee at 12 and working at Big W when I was 14. I think the law is like you have to be 14 and 9 months or something like that. I was on the day I got my job at Big W and I started working in Knightfield over there. So I was working in the greenhouse and all the kind of shitty jobs basically, which meant I got more shifts. And yeah, I just loved earning income, I guess. It was just the thing that I was unusually into.

And what was that first taste of entrepreneurship like? When did you go, okay, I'm going to build something?

Yeah. Well, I think the first time I really made money on my own was when I was selling computers. That was like, I'd go to my school teachers and like, hey, I can build computers. Do you want me to kind of set up one for you? And I remember I'd profit $200 on the making it, like making the computer, but buy all the parts.

Yeah, go to computer markets.

Yeah. And literally just make these epic computers and go to the teacher's house and set them all up and whatever. And yeah, that was like kind of pretty good because you made a couple hundred bucks and it was like all a bit of fun. Probably spend the money on buying computer parts anyway to play games, but like Yeah, that was, that was really my first taste of really, um, doing something my own. Um, and then my family's business for sure was the next thing.

So your family, uh, your mum and dad had a business in, uh, promotional product business?

Yeah.

And you're involved in that business as well?

Absolutely, yeah. So, um, story goes like my dad had, um, kind of left his job, um, and was kind of spending a couple weeks thinking like, what do I do? Um, watching the cricket and, um, like not speaking much. I was like, oh, this is not good. Then eventually he comes out of the family room and says, I'm going to start a promotional products company. I was like, I have no idea what that is. And it's like, because I'm gonna get people to, uh, I'm gonna, you know, things like, you know, printed rulers and, and what I was like, people buy that stuff? I was like pretty concerned.

Yeah.

Um, and if they do buy it, like surely it can't be that, that, um, lucrative. Um, anyways, he commits to it. And I remember in those very early days, like I was doing everything from like setting up the accounting system to the quoting system and whatever. It was, you know, 2001. So yeah, 19 years ago. So yeah, pretty young dude. And you just hustled in every way possible. I remember one of the problems was like he actually never had the product supplied directly. Like it was like through somebody else.

Oh yeah. So he's a distributor.

Yeah. And I was like, that doesn't make sense. And then I remember one day someone on a label like, you know, got some catalogues or samples or something sent to him and it had this label of a supplier. And I was like, I'm pretty sure that's the company that's gonna supply it. And it actually was, right? So then we ended up getting, you know, an extra, I don't know, 20 or 30% margin to play with. You know, kept on doing the same little hack to kind of find out who the supplier was.

Yeah.

And yeah, but the thing that really changed the game was when I built their website. I was like, what sent the business, I think, in a big way. So, back in the day, people used to distribute images of these products on a CD.

Yeah.

So, if you wanted to look at a photo and it was high resolution, they'd be on a CD. And then there was an Excel file with the prices and descriptions of these products. And I had this idea to basically put the 2 together programmatically but put on the web. And I did that and it went, literally built, I think it was millions of permutations of combinations, like printed blue pens with a retractable clip or something like that.

Yeah.

And it's like all these combos went to Google. And the other thing I did was I scanned all these catalogues, which are printed catalogues, which for whatever reason they only had printed catalogues, not even digital files were distributed. And I put them on the internet and I optimised the PDF file with metadata so that it would turn up and rank in Google number one for things like printed rulers, sports drink bottles, whatever. It was sometimes some very niche things, but yeah, that ended up getting us to a position where we were doing, I think it was nearly 20 new companies would contact us a day, like 20 leads.

Wow.

And our competitors were getting maybe 1 or 2 leads a month. So the biggest problem with the company was really just keeping the sales team because it was such high volume of leads to be serviced. that people just didn't want to do it. It was just insane.

Wow.

So yeah, that was the early days of really learning about internet marketing.

And what was in the gap between doing that and then Finder?

So I went and studied, I studied business marketing and my sub-major was in electronic marketing. Electronic marketing, e-marketing is what they called it. And I think it was like, I don't know, For semesters of whatever, for this elective, whatever it is. And as part of that, I did this, it was almost like a mini thesis really. I produced a, I don't know, it was like a 40,000-page report or something. Page, sorry, word report. Page would've been like, that'd be another level. Yeah, a 40,000-word report on internet marketing And there was a lot of things at the time in probably 2007 were not yet defined. It was literally like there was just things happening and tactics and whatever, and the industry was forming, but not everybody had agreed a way to describe what was being done. So you hang out in these forums and there was some really influential people in these forums, as in the ones that had the most karma points and whatever. And so I DM'd those guys and like, hey, what do you think? I'm doing this assignment. Would love your thoughts. And we kind of came together and I guess I defined a few things for myself, which gave me a really strong academic knowledge of internet marketing that I was then able to take on to ultimately then go and build Finder.

So yeah. Such a fascinating story. And I want to know, I was doing a bit of research and it sounds like it was a tweet that initially got you into Finder. Can you take us back to that?

Yeah.

So When I was at uni, you get these perks and one of the perks was, I don't know, it's like a free or cheap subscription to Marketing Magazine. So, I used to read the magazine and in the back, Fred Schebesta had this column on marketing and I'd kind of, I loved the column actually. And sometimes, most of the time I agreed with what he was saying. It was always quite cutting edge. But a few things I was like, I wasn't sure if that was something I agreed with or not. Anyway, I went to Twitter, found him on Twitter. And I joined Twitter in 2008, I think it was. It's so early that they used to have these things called tweet-ups. So, like, early users of Twitter would hang out in person. Oh, no way. I remember going to a tweet-up in Surry Hills. Like, it was like, you know, these early Twitter members or whatever, which is kind of ridiculous. But yeah, I remember, you know, connecting with Fred. Then we— he asked me, Oh yeah, the tweet, that's right. The actual tweet was like him asking about, should I get like a Nokia N95 or something like that or an iPhone? There's something along those lines. I was like, iPhone, hands down, it's like game-changing. And I bought the first iPhone that was released in Australia probably a few days before. But I'd had a whole series of smartphones prior, like iMate K Jam and all these other things which were like okay but not very good.

Yeah.

And yeah, I think he valued that tweet. And then we connected on LinkedIn over DMs and then caught up at a conference together. He was talking about me initially for the first minute joining an existing company that he'd sold. And then he said, look, I'm starting this new thing and the goal is really to build huge websites that will— I mean, what he said very specifically was like, take traffic back from the Yanks. from the Americans because the Americans were taking a lot of traffic in Australian search results. There was just no answers from Australian websites. And so that was the thing and it's like there's about 27 experiments of which one was Credit Card Finder. But yeah, that's kind of where that was the breeding ground where we really found the opportunity that ultimately Finder was born from.

And what was it that you saw in that partnership that made you go, yes, that's what I want to work on?

Yeah, I think Fred's a bit older than me, not by much, probably like 6 or 7 years. And interestingly, for my— when I was growing up, I was lucky that my brother was also like similar sort of age gap. And so whenever he would learn something new, I would learn something at the same time, like, you know, gaming and all this stuff. So I was like benefiting from his mates, which were someone like, you know, pretty nerdy computer guys. Yeah. And so yeah, I think with Fred, he had kind of been in a similar situation. He had learned things prior to me learning it. And so he had a better idea of what the commercial opportunities were on the internet and really spotted that opportunity around Finder, which was effectively affiliate marketing in the finance space in Australia. And instead of kind of helping out the brands, which were clients of ours, Fred and Frank had a couple of agencies that were doing marketing for like telcos and so on. And I was helping out more of the SME space like online. And yeah, instead of helping other brands, like building our own essentially was the goal, building our own platform. So yeah, from that I joined as a co-founder.

And so do you know why they choose you to be partner?

Yeah, I think Fred in particular has a knack for finding people with high potential that don't believe in themselves. I really felt like I had strong academic knowledge of what I wanted to do, and I'd never really had an opportunity to go and test myself. My parents' business was cool, and I'd done some great stuff with that, but I wanted to push the boundaries. And I think with Fred, he's got a high risk tolerance and was really able to spot some of these opportunities early and jump on them quickly. And so, yeah, for me that was, I think, probably why I was attracted to working with Fred on the business. And then I think in choosing me is like, I get pretty obsessed, like I go deep and I very rarely have a problem I can't solve. And so, yeah, he initially said to me like, hey, Credit Card Finder is penalised by Google. If you can unpenalise it, then I'll pay you a bounty effectively for getting it done. I was like, all right, cool, it seems like a fun challenge. And I spent a couple of weeks working on it and he just called me up and was like, hey man, what's your BSPN account number? I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, I need to pay you, the website's unpenalised. I was like, this is crazy. And so, I was like, oh wow, this is legit. And did that, got it unpenalised. And then, yeah, basically ended up in this business where I think it was just a series of problems that needed to be solved over the course of a very long time. I just always find a way to get it done.

And what is the, I suppose, mental model or framework that you go about in those kind of, I suppose, crisis situations?

Yeah, I just think about who's at the table, right? It's like, so you've got a Google engineer that's penalised Finder. We're the actor, we're the one that caused the issue. And you've got your competitors and the competitive set. And so I'm like, I run a simulation. I was like, if I was a Google engineer, what would I do if I was designing the algorithm to score these websites? Cool. And so I was a competitor, what would I do to game it and try and win? And it's like, what have we done? And I kind of look at all those things and I'm like, what will force a response from Google basically, where it's like just can't be ignored? And so I just chose the variables which I felt would be important and just over-indexed on like making sure that I built really high quality signals to Google to reassess the website and got, yeah, pretty good at fixing the problems with the website, like we'd get penalised because we moved pretty quick as a business, like always launching a lot of content, getting a lot of links. And I'd get the website penalised and then we'd unpenalise it within a few days or sometimes as little as 24 hours, which is crazy. And yeah, we just kept going and going and going on this growth cycle in that way.

And when you say penalised, you know, some of our listeners might not understand what that means. Can you explain?

No traffic to your website, it's done basically. And for most companies, if your website's penalised, you literally never get it back. But I probably unpenalised Finder a dozen times or something. So yeah, it just became an art and a bit of science, I guess, to getting it done.

It seems like Finder was really reliant on Google.

Yeah.

And so I want to know, we might be skipping ahead a little bit, but especially with all your research that you're doing now in AI, I want to understand what you think are the biggest trends businesses should be focusing on now that we're shifting from SEO to now more AEO or GEO. I'm not sure what you want to call it.

Yeah. I'm I'm still bullish on SEO because I think there's a window of opportunity right now where if you can publish content, it defines what AI will say about your brand. So it's the bridge between traditional search and answer engines. So a lot of people look at this and go, I'm not going to publish any more content. SEO is a channel that's being disrupted. But the second people take their eye off the ball, it's an opportunity there. It's like, wow, people are publishing less content. Perhaps there's way more opportunity than we can recognise in this. And so I'm still very bullish on SEO and I see it as more like a path towards getting performance in answer engines. And so I think it's really critical that companies really come to master that because I think people look at it as like, well, there's going to be less traffic to websites and so on. I'm like, I think what's going to happen is ultimately more tasks will be completed by AI. And so how do you train AI to want to complete those tasks on your website versus another? Not even on your website, with your AI agent or whatever, MCP, pick a technology. But I think that trust is the thing that's been forever a constant in the way that things are ultimately looking for trust signals. So if you're not publishing content, whether it be on your own website or externally in the media or whatever, I find it pretty hard to influence what AI is going to say about your company or whether or not it can trust your business. So you need these references online for it to know what your business is about, whether it can trust you, and whether or not you're ultimately the company that they want to recommend.

So, uh, with, uh, founding finder.com.au and now finder.com—

Yes.

Um, what was the problem that you're thinking of solving?

Yeah, I think, um, it's, it's interesting because with AI, it does a bunch of things. It synthesises answers into a whole bunch of pages into a singular response. And here's the answer. Back in the day, what we ultimately are solving for is trying to get a whole bunch of tabs open in your browser and show them in one structured way.

Yeah.

It's pretty simple, but doing the research on behalf of people and showing it in one structured, sortable, filterable output. And so that's what comparisons about. And it's like, beyond that, it's like, now I've got this information in the structured response, like a table. How do you trust— also, how do you come to prefer Finder over other sources to be where you want to do your comparison on? So I think that there's a way of rating products and giving products awards, providing a unique perspective and angle of reviewing these things that I just think it's about ultimately helping people make better decisions. And having high confidence that you are, I guess, a service that people can use to make those decisions. So yeah, the focus has definitely been on finance at Finder, but we had hundreds of comparisons on the website and I mean, I just think there's a big ambition and we could definitely compare more and more. But yeah, ultimately wherever we can help people save money or make money, I think is the goal.

And I want to know how you scaled because I know that you've gone global now. How did you take this largely Australian product and then replicate it overseas?

Yeah, well, I think, man, My way of scaling is again, like that simulation, like as a Google engineer, what would I value? As a competitor, what would I naturally do in this situation? Like the majority of people, kind of the typical human, if employed to do the task, how might they approach doing that task?

Yeah.

So, I'm like, cool, that's the simulation. And so, for me, it's like, how do I do it differently and better? is the key. And so when you are looking at Google's algorithm, ultimately it's indexing content. I read all of the patents. I read every day. I used to have Google Reader and I don't know how many articles would come through every day. It was definitely hundreds, but I would scan through every headline and tap into and read the articles that I felt gave me new information and new approach on how to do things. I wish I still had my old RSS reader, but it's gone. I was meant to recover the account at one point when I was shutting down, but Anyways, so yeah, I think the goal is to identify the inputs.

Yeah.

Do more of that thing at a high quality and that produces scale. If you have a predictable input, you have a predictable output. And so the path was really like going, okay, cool, we need to create high quality content and we need to have better links than everybody else because links are a trust signal towards a webpage. It's like another website on the internet is effectively voting for what your company does by linking to you. It's like an endorsement. Also, highest quality endorsements you can get is from the media, it's from organisations, it's from relevant websites in your industry. So, we built a method to getting these links and a method for scaling out content production to be high effort but scalably produced. And we just kept on doing it and doing it and doing it. We also, I think, innovated on a couple of fronts. So, the way we drove conversion on the website, the way we had partnerships as well. And yeah, it really just allowed us to unlock traffic, especially search engines, paid and organic, to get to a repeatable formula that allowed us to not only win in, say, I don't know, home loan comparison, credit card comparison, but replicate that across all the categories here. And then the only thing that was stopping us was really a domain name. And so we bought finder.com and allowed us to grow internationally. So yeah.

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What were the hardest things in early days building this Finder?

Yeah, I mean, I'd say, um, super hard was like, I've been working hard. Like, it was like physically very difficult to operate at that pace. Um, so like 7 days a week, you know, not much sleep, but like I felt like it was a bit of a race and it needed to get to a point of escape velocity where you just had this distance from your competitors and large amount of thrust at this kind of opportunity. And so yeah, we went for it and we got to that outcome. And then I think, yeah, what else is hard? I think being a better version of yourself every 2 or 3 months, that's hard. Because you come up against a new problem, you have to be, firstly, have to be more productive. You have to learn how to operate at scale. Suddenly you're managing all these people and you're responsible for their lives and their lives, at least income and a lot of their happiness is from their work. And so keeping the company growing and sustainably growing is important.

Was there many competitors?

There definitely were. We went through different phases of who our competitors were. In the beginning, it was a whole bunch of fly-by-night random websites. They all disappeared. Then brands emerged and there's probably a handful in Australia that are still, I'd say, the big brands in the space. And then we had some international entrants into the market. And then now it's like, is the competitor just a comparison website? Is it Google? Is it ChatGPT? It's kind of everyone's trying to eat everybody's breakfast at this point.

And with that competition, did it make you realise something about the importance of branding? Because at the end of the day, that's how you—

100%.

Yeah. I was in London and I was at this conference and I was the last person. I was about 4 of us at the end of the night, like 6:00 AM in the morning or something. And basically, I was talking to, it was one of the competitors, one of their agencies that represented another competitor. And basically, they were like, you got to invest in brand. I was like, okay, this is really cool. And I came back to Sydney, I spoke to Fred and Frank. And Fred had already been on that train. He's a big brand kind of person. But that kind of, I think, propelled us to really go and invest in building the brand, creating this jingle, which is kind of pretty well known in Australia. And I think that brand is the thing that allows you to pivot through time. I always find it fascinating, Samsung as a company originally launched as a textiles company.

Oh, wow.

So they have a brand around manufacturing. And their brand went from textiles through to electronics, obviously. I think they even make tanks and all. It's just a company that its core has a strong DNA around manufacturing. And yeah, I just feel like brands can really live through time. So I'm massive on branding. I think it's the most critical investment and asset for a company.

Yeah, for sure. And then I want to know, Finder kind of built your reputation a fair bit, but you still managed to stay quite behind the scenes.

Yeah.

I want to know, to you, was that something you tried to do on purpose?

Definitely on purpose, yeah. I internally inside Finder really wanted to push Fred's brand. I felt that he publicly facing was the most interesting personality. I think he was able to speak across so many topics. And for me, I was really seeking like a Branson effect where it was like Richard Branson had all these companies. And if you have an interesting CEO, I think that's a— I mean, Branson was able to launch all these companies, I think largely because of the Virgin brand and his personal brand.

Yeah.

And people are like, oh yeah, Virgin Galactic, Virgin, whatever, Atlantic, Virgin Records, Music, whatever. It's unlimited. So yeah, I think Fred became ultra well-known. And so anytime there was an opportunity for externally facing press, I think for me it was really important to keep stacking onto that and growing that. And then I think I only did my first podcast, I think probably, I don't know, August last year or something. So yeah, kind of crazy to be 17 years building this company and not Speak externally. I'd done one podcast back in COVID or 2021 or something like that. I think it was in Chile and the guy kind of did the podcast, but it never went live. So, it just kind of just sat there. I was like, that's cool. Yeah. And so, yeah.

No, I definitely can vouch for that. I remember the first time I met you, Jeremy, it was at this big event and I was quite shy. So, I was kind of lingering at the back of the room and there was one other guy at the back of the room who was on his computer doing some work. And so I went and said hello.

Oh yeah, I remember that.

And I was like, we were having a chat and I said, oh, what do you do? And you said, oh yeah, no, I co-founded Finder. And I was like, oh my goodness, who's this big dog just hiding away in the back corner? So you definitely live in the shadows, but definitely doesn't take away from what you've built.

Yeah, you'll find me with my laptop working anywhere, man. I used to take it to the cinemas when I was early days Finder, just in case. And one time it actually saved the day because That's when I found out about a Google penalty. And, um, so I just had this habit of like always being like, if I'm needed 24/7, 365, like you can call me. Like you're probably a favorite on my phone if you're important, and you'll get through like the do not disturbs, and, um, I'll be internet connected and able to solve most things.

Yeah.

So what was your main role at Finder?

Yeah, I mean, I did a lot of things. Um, so Initially, I was very focused on content and building that machine, the growth engine, which meant things like compliance and product data and all these things were a part of that. And then after that, I shifted to solving for the publishing technology because that was a key part that I felt we needed to solve for. And it led to me probably for the last 8 years or so, really focusing in on products, technology, data science. Obviously growth and operations are important, international expansion. I kind of just like, yeah, it was all over the park. But yeah, it was—

The real founder's journey.

Yeah, dude. I just like, I had a lot of people reporting to me and I think without that kind of strong leadership bench that ultimately drove those areas, I don't think I'd be able to have that same Kind of breadth.

Um, sure.

But yeah, I'm kind of like a technical guy, not a programmer, um, but able to kind of understand the technology. Yeah, exactly.

So, um, when did you really realize this got potential to go beyond Australia and a global opportunity?

Well, I used to look at the charts and I'm like, okay, like, we're growing. And I'd be like, again, I'd run these simulations, like, I have a feeling we're going to cap out at some point. And so I was like, I remember I was behind Frank's computer. I was like, I think we need to buy the .com. We need to buy finder.com. And he was like, okay, cool. Go and find who owns it. Because there's no public record of who owned the domain. It's literally like a privacy record. That's it. I was like, that's a quest. That's really interesting. And so anyways, I went, I don't know where the search began, but I essentially found somehow a public court case for— like a domain that Seinfeld— that seinfeld.com, basically somebody was squatting on his domain. And so that was very public. And so the lawyers in that case, there's some connection somehow that I figured that they might be related somehow to finder.com. I can't remember the exact data point.

Yeah.

I remember going through all these court cases, found this thing, then eventually found a lawyer who knew another lawyer, I think, who knew the guy who was on the— he lived in the Cayman Islands, basically. Oh, wow. And so we bought the domain and that was kind of critical to be able to grow internationally. But yeah, I think that was kind of one important part. And then I went and studied. I remember, you know, the stock photo company Getty and there's Shutterstock. So I went to the US and I met with the SEO team at Shutterstock and the SEO team at Getty, and then the agencies at each of them. So I was the only one that had all the data basically, like, but in this one trip met with everybody and then I kind of cross, like, kind of reference what their strategies were for internationalization. And interestingly, Getty was winning on the big head terms in SEO, but Shutterstock was winning internationally. So I was like, oh, that's fascinating. And they both had different perspectives on what was working, what was not. Um, but yeah, for me, I just wanted to replicate our content base into these other markets, into other languages at one point as well. And yeah, I feel like when you have early evidence of that working, you can really build upon that. So for me, there's this random thing where we built a Netflix TV show and movies index, which ranked in a whole bunch of countries around the world globally, which was like, wow, we ranked for Netflix TV shows number 1 in, I don't know, every market basically. It was kind of crazy. And then off the back of that, we had cryptocurrency took off and I was able to build a cryptocurrency comparison off the back of that same early traction. And that really, in about 23 countries, we were like a top cryptocurrency comparison website. And yeah, it was just pretty early. I think Bitcoin was like $900 USD when we kind of started working on that. And yeah, just kind of I don't know, man. It just like was—

Yeah, keep going.

Yeah, keep going, keep going, keep stacking. But I just think it's always about signal. So for me, I remember this one story, it was like we were launching promo codes. I say we're launching promo codes, that's not even— yeah, I guess there are dedicated promo code websites like retailmenot.com and so on. We put one page live, we ranked number 1 in Google. We're like, that's pretty cool. The next day we put another page live, we ranked number 1 in Google. We're like, that's Wow. Then we just were like, so we just have to keep publishing and we keep ranking number 1. We just kept on doing that and then we suddenly became one of the major promo code players in Australia. So I just think it's like with every brick you lay, if you have enough signal of like that thing worked, you just keep doing it until you kind of exhaust the opportunity and you have to find the next way to grow. So I think for me, it's like when I started seeing the kind of pipeline of content that we could produce in Australia kind of getting to the end of its cycle, for me, I felt Yeah, it was important that we find another way to grow, which I felt like sometimes starting from scratch in another country is one way to do that.

Yeah.

And before you mentioned you were leading a team, I'd love to know from your perspective and your experience there, what were some of the greatest lessons that you learned about leadership?

Oh yeah, that's such a journey, man. I love the crew at Finder and everybody I worked with. We had over 1,100 people work through the company over the years. And I think at our peak, nearly 600 staff members. or crew is what we call it at Finder. I think for me, the thing I've said often is like, I'm looking for that perfect Venn diagram between what the company needs and what the employee wants. And if there's a perfect overlap, there's this total satisfaction for the company and the individual, right? And often the way to get to that outcome is making sure the company's growing because with growth comes opportunity.

Absolutely.

And so for me, I tell myself is like, somebody needs a significant change every 12 to 18 months. Whether it be responsibility, like they need new responsibilities or more responsibilities, they want to lead or manage something that's important. Everyone thinks that management's the only way up, but it's not the case. You can lead an initiative without managing people.

Yeah.

On a kind of knowledge and skill perspective, they can upskill. I remember countless examples of getting someone that was an office manager to become an engineer, for example. Things like that, we just pay pay for a 12-week immersive to be a programmer. So kind of giving opportunity for people to upskill. And so I think for me, that was the way I led and managed was really through a place of empathy and going like, I want that person to be happy and make sure the company's getting what it needs as well. And just finding parts of that happening all the time and having those deep conversations with individuals to really make sure that they are able to vocalise what matters to them, which requires trust and them being vulnerable, was I think part of the journey.

For sure. That's some great advice. Empathy-driven leadership, I think, is a great one. And I think it was last year you made the decision to walk away from Finder.

Yeah.

And I remember reading that LinkedIn post going, this is— I could tell how much that meant to you.

Yeah, it was pretty emotional.

What did it take for you to take that leap, I suppose?

Yeah, look, I think, man, I mentioned in the earlier part of this conversation that what were the moments that I was working on computers at a young age or building computers, building my parents' website early to the internet. I feel like right now AI is I just can't explain, man, like the speed of how much it's changing the way we work, changing society. It's like a civilisation-level shift really. And so, I had access to GPT-2, which was like a preview edition as an API. And I think it was 2021. I think that's about right. Thereabouts, 2022 maybe.

Yeah.

And I couldn't do much with it, but my friends were. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like they were generating content and Yeah, I felt like when ChatGPT hit, I was like, whoa, this is crazy. And then there was a package, what was it called? GitHub repo where it basically allowed you to create what now became the precursor to AI agents. So it was like AutoGPT, I think is what it was called.

Right.

And I remember installing it and you could basically in the terminal give a goal to this thing, it was like this agent effectively before we had the term, I think, for it. And it would go and execute these tasks automatically on your computer. I was like, that's crazy. This is wild. And yeah, for me, I really felt that to better understand this kind of what was playing out and not only that, really master it, it required total immersion. And so I've been on this journey for a while now. I don't know. Yeah, for a while, for 18 months or so. really pushing hard on AI, just upskilling and kind of meeting a whole bunch of people, learning what's possible. And yeah, I just think for me, it's like I always like to harness the technology to the fullest and I needed the time and space to do that. So, yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And as you mentioned, you've kind of gone all in on AI.

Yeah.

And I'd love to know because I think there's a lot of debate still out there. I think people are still unsure whether it's actually going to change the world or is this just another big hype cycle? I'd love to hear from you some of the incredible applications you think AI has and how that's going to disrupt the world as we know it. Yeah.

Oh man. Well, I'm using it for so much, mostly personal productivity in terms of my initial focus because my goal is to really not clone myself, but give as much context to AI as possible to be able to execute on my behalf. So it's definitely not hype. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding. People, when they talk about AI, it means lots of things. And I think people talk about ChatGPT and they're using AI. Sure. Yes, I get it. But there's a lot that can be done. I think the agentic coding is probably the most impactful thing that I've witnessed in the last 12 months is like anybody can code now. That's just wild. It's now fairly commoditised. And I think that what comes with that is layers. It's like the orchestration now of AI is a new problem. And I think that the engineers that did computer science degrees and whatever are best placed to orchestrate AI. That's kind of the first thing, probably would never expected the speed by which that was going to happen. Right. So yeah, that's massive. I think There's still a lot of things that AI hasn't figured out and probably can never figure out. It's like the context around certain things, unless it has guidance, I think it's going to take its own direction and decisions on things. So I think that's really what everyone needs to be focused on is like, how do I give as much context as possible for AI to do the things that I need in my way? And otherwise we just become this converge on this kind of blob of one AI method of doing things. So that clearly is not going to be a good end outcome. So yeah, I think getting your mechanisms, your methods, your IP into AI to be able to effectively augment you is a huge and important thing. But I do think that there's always like 2 camps and they're probably always wrong. It's like, it's a hype thing, whatever. Um, and it's like, you know, the, the other camp is like it's going to solve everything and whatever. It's always somewhere in between. Um, but like progressively it's more about the time span. Um, I don't think that directionally it's unable to do a lot of the things that people talk about. Um, it's, it's honestly just a time thing. Yeah.

So if you have to start, uh, uh, Finder again Would you do it in a different way now with AI?

Yeah, absolutely. I would focus on datasets only and making them the most incredible datasets and making them available for AI agents to leverage. That's like one. I would focus on effectively processes and pipelines that were integrations into financial institutions. So having information on a customer and understanding what a bank or an insurance company needs to process applications on behalf of people. I think it's critical to go alongside that. And I think building those first and foremost, the things that Finder still does today are critical, like the marketing, the kind of education and so on. But I think if I were to start today, my focus would be on the data and making that as available as possible. And I think the interesting thing is around the business model. It's like, what is the business model? Because presently nobody, pays to use Finder. It's a free service. Yeah. Banks and insurers or whatever pay to advertise on there through a commercial relationship, which is pretty much driven by an outcome. If a customer successfully gets a product, we get paid. But I wonder if there's some new models that are available that need to be considered. And yeah, I think that for me, I would love to see an AI agent that did a lot of these tasks on behalf of people, did the comparisons and took away the time effort so that you could put your comparisons on autopilot. I think that's the exciting opportunity for sure, where it's like, you know, no one really wants to spend the time doing this stuff. So take away the time component, I think everybody will do it. So yeah.

What about in terms of people? Like, would you hire less people or like more technology too?

I'm not necessarily a believer in like the kind of, um, less people is the answer. I think hiring the right people whenever there's a constraint is key. So my goal would be to try and create more constraints through growing quickly and hiring talented people that can really do things scalably, I think is going to be important. Obviously with AI, you don't want to start with things that can be automated as part of the default way of executing. For a short period of time, it still probably makes sense. But yeah, I think building in a new way that's much more scalable, I think, be smart for most people to kind of start from there as an assumption. But yeah, I do believe that for an opportunity to scale, there's just so much context that a singular human can kind of take in. So it does require probably more people than we kind of give credit to. And yeah, there's some impressive things you can put into AI agents. But as I said before, there's a lot of hype around those in particular, where people think that they can just do everything. And I think there's a little bit of work before that's the case. But Directionally, probably true.

Yeah, for sure.

And I know you're also doing some work coaching and advising startups to, you know, help them scale. You know, I'm sure you've seen quite a few now. I'd love to know, what do you think, uh, you know, one or two of the biggest, let's say, mistakes that you see that are inhibiting the growth of these companies?

I think people overthink their product, um, and don't go live fast enough. they kind of run all these simulations and whatever. I think getting a feedback loop of somebody actually trying to sell something to someone and seeing if they'll pay money is the biggest thing. And even if that means selling where you're at, it's not complete, but doing the— being the bridge with a human in the loop to get it done, I'm a big fan of that. And I think that people have less runway the longer they wait. And so I think that's my encouragement is always to start now and generate revenue. Because then it kind of just buys you time. And then I think that everyone strives for the perfect product and just, I think often it's not necessary. Sometimes you could be just great at distribution, great at marketing, great at sales or whatever. And it's not about the perfect product. And I think that by starting getting revenue in, you can progressively get a better product in that process. So that's my style of executing.

Yeah.

I'm just not the sort of person that's going to wait until it's perfect. And I love launching and iterating as I go.

And do you think AI is making that easier or harder? Because now it's like, but it's almost like it's so easy to iterate on your product, you almost want to get it perfect first go.

Yeah. Well, my thing is you can spin up an idea in minutes, test it with an ad to see if there's demand before you've even built the product. Like build a landing page, build a kind of book a call. And if the call's in 3 days from now, then you've got 3 days to build a solution. It's like, I just think it's like, don't waste it. That's how fast I'd be executing startup ideas at this point. And it's like, wow, that was a good one. I spent my $50 on ads and it's got a really low CPA and there's high interest. Maybe I should spend more time on that startup. But maybe launch a whole bunch in one weekend and see what gets traction.

Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Literally. Yeah, I just, as I said, I think if you can get to one of the ideas live and with interest, I think you can, it doesn't take long to build the features you need or build the pipe, whatever it is, like, you know, every part of it's fairly solvable. So yeah, I think that it makes it far easier for sure.

Yeah, so when things are getting easier, how do you keep apart from the competition, like differentiate?

I'm a big fan of personal brand. especially founders having their own platform to be able to launch from. I mean, I wasn't anyone that had any personal audience, I'd say. Probably had some level of authority in terms of what I'd built at Finder. But for me, having distribution is the key. When you can day one write a message saying you've done something and then people start using the product immediately without having to spend a single dollar on ads, I think that's key. And if you can have trust in you and kind of interest in what you're doing, it's kind of an unfair advantage. So yeah, I think that's, um, that's probably what I would say is the most important thing.

Yeah, personal branding.

Yeah, yeah. And, and you've also kind of taken a step back because you mentioned there, you know, you're virtually always on, and now you're a father of twin girls. Yeah, I'd love to know what that taught you.

Yeah, honestly, um, they are amazing. Um, I think the first kind of period of time. I was really lucky they were born during COVID And so, um, to kind of be around them for that period of time and like, you know, throughout the day and really witness as much— like, it was like a— I wasn't on parental leave as such, but like I had an extended period of time where I was at home, um, and around them, which was amazing. Um, I think that my wife is amazing, and I think, um, just without someone like her supporting me, I think would be really hard. I think it just gets infinitely harder as they grow. more real things to solve for. They just started school recently. And so there's 2 WhatsApp groups because they're in separate classes. And so there's twice the amount of social activities and things to solve. It's like even just the WhatsApp probably needs AI to synthesise it. It's like I can't keep track of it. I just can't. It's a lot. But yeah, I think it's just like the— definitely you think I go through moments of time where I work really, really hard. I'd say I went through one of those Recently, we're just trying to master this next iteration of AI post-Claude Cowork launching. And I really wanted to figure it all out. And I spoke to my coach on Monday and now I'm going to pull back a little bit and spend a bit more time making sure I'm available and experiencing those moments. I think it was a necessary sprint, but my priority is my family. So, And yeah, my health as well, like just finishing off the game that I started there.

And is there any particular thing that you hope that your kids, you know, learn, like values that you want to impart on them?

Yeah, I think mental models. Like, I think that's the most scalable thing. Like, I think that a lot of people are constrained by rules unnecessarily. I don't understand that. It's like, for me, it's like a human created a rule, so a human can break one. I think that's kind of or at least bend the rule or whatever it is. Because I think that, yeah, a lot of people just accept like a no, or they accept like, oh, that's not possible, or like, you know, that's too hard, or that's, you know, no way that could happen. Like, I just think like mental models are important and they're the principles by which decisions should be made. And, and yeah, I think mastering those is critical. Yeah, I just I don't know how or why I kind of became obsessed with like always finding a way to get things done. But yeah, I feel like if they can get to a position where they can kind of learn that there's lots of ways of approaching a problem and if you want something bad enough, you can do it. That's the kind of meta goal I have for them, really. Yeah.

Amazing. What motivates you every day?

Yeah, I'm really driven by learning. Like, absolutely. I get such a kick out of it, just kind of seeing myself able to do things I just couldn't do before. I love challenging what something someone or the world would consider to be normal and kind of doable or whatever. It's like I just am so motivated by that. Like, I just, yeah, I don't know, man. I just, it really fires me up. I don't know how or why I got to this kind of obsession around that. And yeah, I love I love enjoying life as well with friends and family and kind of having the downtime to kind of reflect. So yeah, just very motivated by having those moments with my friends and just, yeah, like I can't wait for like a couple months from now, hopefully go skiing with the girls in—

Amazing.

Probably more like 3 months to Queenstown. That'd be nice.

Beautiful.

It's a goal I've kind of set. So seeing my kids probably see snow for the first time, I think it'll be. And then like learning something new and watching them go through their own personal growth as well is really cool.

Yeah. Do you have like sort of a routine that you follow daily?

Yeah. When I'm on point, I would say I'm at the gym around 6:00 AM. I'm normally doing like a cardio session so I can read or text at the same time. And then I go home, have breakfast with the kids, head in to drop them off at school. Then I go into the city every day. I still, despite not having my operational role at Finder, I'm still amongst the city. I think it's— I love networking. So typically every day I'm meeting something, somebody new, someone interesting, and expanding my mind on new topics or kind of existing topics and challenging my thinking on those topics. So that's kind of my priority. Always looking for opportunity to really expand my reach. So if there's ways to, you know, a new Content channel angle, whatever. I'm really thinking about that a lot. And yeah, then I head home. I'm the guy that mainly cooks the meals at home. So yeah, I love barbecuing a lot. So I make dinner, hang with the kids, put them to bed, and then I'm on my computer till often pretty late. But as I said, when I'm on point, I probably try and allow myself to get to bed at 10:30 or something. But when it's like times like now, I've been averaging like 2 AM, 3 AM, just cooking with AI at this point. So it's a bit crazy.

And I want to know, do you look back and think being always on, do you look back at that with a fond memory or do you kind of wish that it wasn't like that?

Love it. I haven't watched TV since 2008.

Wow.

Yeah, I don't watch movies or anything like that. I think I allow myself to watch Billions, the doco. As soon as I said documentary, because it's like I'm learning. It's a great TV show. Loved Billions. I haven't finished it all, actually. I think there's a last series or something like that. What do you call it? Season? I don't even know the terminology that goes with TV. And I go to the cinemas occasionally, a couple of times a year. My wife's, you know, she watches a lot of TV, but I, um, I just can't do it because like, I'm like, I need to— I just like just calculate that like every day, like, you know, how much the opportunity cost of that is kind of my thing. Um, I do like spend time on Twitter and Reddit and stuff like that kind of end of day to kind of make sure that I'm getting like tidbits of information. Um, but yeah, I don't know, it's like, um, I definitely don't have regret in terms of being always on. I definitely would love more special moments. I think so. For me, I told myself this year I'd love to have more structured moments around family holidays and stuff. And with Finder, it's hard to know, is this the best timing? Is there going to be something bad that's going to happen or something I need to figure out or whatever? Whereas I think I have a little bit more control around when I'm, I guess, chilling with my family. So, and it's like, you know, I can work remote as well if I need to, but in a new location. So, I'm really keen on that.

Yeah, for sure. It's a great new chapter. And on that point, like, I want to dive into it a bit more because it's definitely something which I'm grappling with as well, where it's like, you know, you might need Twitter or whatever for work where you're posting content, but then they're so artificially designed to like draw you in. So that one, I go to post something on Instagram for the podcast and then 20 minutes later it's like, oh, what just happened?

Yeah. Well, I mean, when I'm consuming on these platforms, I'm also analysing how their algorithms work. So it's like, I'm like, I love it. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. That got me hooked on that thing. I'm like in this loop and like, how can I leverage that? How can I build something that works well in this platform? So I'm often zoomed out enough that I can really understand what's going on. So yeah, I actually am totally down with it. I love seeing like when an algorithm is doing its thing.

You mentioned the freedom, right? So it's important to have that freedom to even spend some time and play with that.

Yeah, totally. It's like my one guilty pleasure is like spending 20 minutes on Twitter every night and just reading random things and it kind of sends you on different paths. Yeah. But I actually didn't even watch any YouTube until about 2 or 3 months ago. Wow. Yeah, I kind of occasionally would turn on YouTube and watch something, but never really had or never allocated time to it. But now my 6:00 AM cardio sessions, I'm actually there and I have a YouTube video open. I can go deeper on a topic, which is really cool. And what I've done actually is like when I favourite it or share it or whatever you call it, I share it to Readwise and it basically then sends it into a pipeline to extract the transcript and store it for my AI. So, I have this knowledge base which is kind of auto Updating based on what I'm learning every day. So yeah, it's pretty cool.

Excellent. There's a good one to watch, The Quest for Success.

Oh yeah, don't worry, man. Actually, I built a pipeline where whenever I'm on a podcast, there's something called Podcast Index and I've got an API and it searches for my name and then it auto-extracts the transcripts, stores it as text files and then uploads it to Google Docs for me. And then I use it as a connector into Claude or whatever to write LinkedIn content and stuff. I definitely will be getting on this.

And Jeremy, right now with everything that we've spoken about, what are you most bullish about?

I think people really need to spend the time to learn and upskill. I'm so bullish in kind of, it's a turning of the tables, like a recalibration of what's possible. My mate's a pharmacist and I would say if you went back 3 months ago, he would describe himself as not technical, not great with computers. He's got 5 Mac Minis with OpenClaw and is obsessively building every day. So he was actually in my phone, the person that would message me the most. So SMSs every day, literally sometimes probably 100 plus, we're just back and forth all the time. And with Telegram, or if you're speaking to OpenClaw, it's messaging. So he's really fast at messaging. So I think For him, he's naturally in the zone, just really building. And so I'm just bullish on people upskilling, learning the technology. And then I think once you've got the tech in your hands, you've really understood anything's possible. It's about ideation and taste. It's great ideas and choosing the right ones to execute on in the right order and then having the taste to know if it's good or not in the way you execute it on it and how it needs to improve.

Yeah. That's my And for some people there's just so much AI and it's almost a bit overwhelming. What would you say is the best place to start or if they want information to learn about?

Learn by doing. It's like, I think it's like you probably don't need to read much more than how to install Claude code, that one page. And then you kind of through doing it, you can actually ask and learn as you're doing Claude. Like, hey Claude, how do you do this thing? So it'll tell you. in plan mode, here's how I would do it. And you have to just agree with it and then it starts doing it. So I think that's the interesting thing is the learning and the doing are kind of in the one interface really, which is so interesting.

Yeah, for sure. Now it's become the mentor on how to do itself.

Yeah, exactly.

And before we wrap up, I want to know what is the legacy that you're trying to leave behind?

Yeah, I am— this documentary, a Netflix one that Finder was featured in. And Luke A'Nier from Safety Culture managed to make me cry. I don't know if I actually went onto the doco, but in the filming at least it was there. And he was like, what do you want to tell your daughters? Or something like that. And what I said was basically like that if you work hard and you make some sacrifices in life, people are going to really appreciate that. And sacrifice for good reason is something that's so critical. So for me, it's like passing on my values to my daughters, I think would be my first and foremost priority that they value helping people, that they're generous, that they really care for people and have high empathy. In just an hour or so just before here, About a year ago, I met— oh no, it's November, 23rd of November, 2024. I remember the date exactly because it's in my phone. I met this guy. He was homeless on George Street and he was living in the Central Station tunnels. And that night I asked him to have some dinner with me. So we went and had some dinner and I've been raising funds for homelessness for 11 years. And so, kind of through the process came to understand the importance of engaging with homeless people and to really try and make sure they remain part of society. Anyways, we remained— well, actually we didn't remain in touch. I kept on bumping into him in the same location over the course of the last, I guess, since then. And I saw him last Saturday and I probably had dinner with him 3 or 4 times. Last Saturday, he told me that— oh, it's like a few days ago, literally, that just passed— that he's now got his own apartment and he's moved into an apartment in Marrickville. And I was really stoked. Like I said, he's been in a home for 3 months. He wasn't able to pay his energy bills. So that night, I kind of pulled some money out of an ATM and gave him that. But I gave him my phone number and he just called me an hour ago, like before this pod actually.

Wow.

And, you know, I'm gonna catch up with him on the weekend and, you know, get him a phone, his own phone, his own phone number, um, and start really helping him out on that journey. So for me, it's like, um, I just think being like grateful is like also really important. There's like, um, people that are really, you know, doing it tough, and, um, if you can give back in any way, shape, or form, that would be key. Um, but yeah, my legacy is really my kids. I think sharing my values, sharing my stories. I've been transcribing a lot to really give them as much context as possible around how I think. You know, I think that's hopefully, and again, it's like, you know, they may not listen to these transcripts and whatever, but like, you know, part of why I'm doing so much content is I'd love for them to be able to watch, you know, and hear and understand like, you know, how I thought.

Yeah.

Because if I've made mistakes, I'm probably gonna share them. And I'm not saying that my kids, I don't want them to have any mistakes in life. Actually the opposite, I think they should have many and learn from that. But my goal is to just see them be happy. And if I can do anything to really support that outcome, making sure they're fulfilled, that's really it.

Yeah.

Given that your definition of success was largely around your 3 pillars, connection, growth, helping people, And then also, you know, having freedom and kind of being a provider for those around you. Looking back on this journey we've spoken about, do you feel successful?

I would say if you asked me 15 months ago, I would struggle to say yes. But I think right now I will say yes because I think that I'm— I have a lot of self-belief and I've allowed myself to be selfish. Like, it's some— this unusual kind of journey I went on where I really couldn't prioritise myself and always put others first. Like, my values maybe sometimes get in the way of that, but realising that, you know, when you are selfish, you can really look after yourself and then you can help more people. So it's like, you know, that's critical. And I think, yeah, success is really setting out to do things and being able to do them, complete those goals. And yeah, I don't feel Like, I've not, um, kind of been able to achieve anything I've set out to do at this point. So I would say yes is the answer.

Absolutely. And I mean, you know, in order to fill other people's buckets, you have to fill your own first, right? And so I wouldn't even say it's selfish. It's like you're, you're filling your own bucket first so that you can have a greater and magnified impact.

Yeah, I think the word selfish gets a bad rap. I actually think it's a very positive thing, like that, you know, people need to be looking after themselves. And I think that That's the key. Like, you know, all the nodes of the world— so of the word self, right? Self-care, selflessness, self-awareness, you know. Um, I just, I just think there's lots of positive, um, nodes of that word. So yeah, for me, I'm, I'm pro-selfishness.

Awesome. No, I love it. And before we wrap up, I've been trying to jot down what I think are some of the core traits which you embody, and I'd like to share them. The first one is— it's so clear throughout this discussion— it's like your innate curiosity. You, you know, even as a young kid, always trying to look at the next big trend, go deep, reading encyclopaedias, you know, learning how to code and doing all these different things. Just not really going, oh, I don't understand that, cool, whatever. It's like, oh, something I don't understand, cool, I need to know how it works, right? And like, having that drive to learn, I think, is such a fundamental trait that we're seeing across a lot of successful people, it's that continuous learning. And I think that curiosity really drives that continuous learning. And it's something you've kept up until today. And I don't think that will ever die. The second one is drive. You always want to push boundaries. And I think it's potentially linked with curiosity is you see something which is impossible. I know that some of your founder colleagues called you the unstoppable man. Or the Unstoppable Machine, you know, because, you know, you saw something which was, you know, what society deems maybe impossible to do, but to you that's a, that's a challenge. Yeah, yes please, bring it on. And, you know, you, you have the drive to see it through to the end and find solutions. And then the last one which helps with that is you're very data-driven. Um, you know, I think that shows throughout your story, you know, multiple times when you went and talked to Getty and Shutterstock You were collecting data and then using that data to make informed decisions. And I think that also comes down to your mental models of like being really clear and logical about how you approach decision-making. Make sure you get the right information in before you go ahead and take that leap. And so, Jeremy, thanks so much for this conversation. It's been incredible.

Thank you for that insight. That's really cool. I appreciate it.

Just want to add to what Dylan's discovered. From this conversation, like, I think you're also very purposeful, like, you know, everything that you do. And, um, you kind of realize, you know, from the early days, you know, you need to help others, right? So that's why you became a really, uh, problem solver, trying to solve problems. And, um, that you also have the interest in others, right? So just thinking, and you're talking about the homelessness, you know, so that's a such a big topic. And, um, you know, I was myself like homeless for a while when I came to Australia, so I know it's not about a choice. It's just, uh, you know, like, uh, a challenge people sometimes go through and helping those people. So, and again, I like what you mentioned early, you know, you want the world to be a better place because you exist. And so that's where you link your purpose. And Jeremy, it's a pleasure talking to you. And, and I know, I, I mean, this is only a short discussion, but I feel like, you know, we, um, we just touched the surface, right, of you. You know, it's a pleasure having you in our podcast.

Oh, thank you. And for all the great questions and giving the opportunity to share my stories, I really appreciate it.

And Jeremy, if people want to learn more about you or what you're working on, where's the best place for them to find some more info?

I definitely post a lot on LinkedIn. You can find me there. My website, jeremycabral.com. Instagram, I'm slowly building. You can find me there. I think it's jeremyjcabral is the handle. But yeah, keen to engage with you. Drop me a DM and we can chat.

Awesome. We'll put the links to all of Jeremy's outlets in the show notes below. And if you've gotten something out of today's episode, it would mean the world if you can like and subscribe. It helps us to get to more and more ears. And you can see all of our inspirational content over at our website, thequestforsuccesspodcast.com. And with that, we'll catch you guys in the next episode.

Thanks for listening.