How to Grow a $100M+ Company with Jeremy Cabral

I think at its peak we were publishing about 180 articles a day.

And on ChatGPT.

Yeah. Another thing we had done as well was we hired a lot of grads. You'd have this ability to really mold someone day one. You know, they'd be still studying, not sure what they wanted to do next. They'd come to Finder and become really excited about what they were doing. Again, it just had this vibe about it, man. It's like it was not normal. Like it was not a normal company. We had this culture that almost became Spartan-like where I just would hate to have been competing with us.

Jeremy Cabral is best known as the co-founder of Finder, one of Australia's most successful comparison platforms. Over his career, he's been recognised for building high-performing teams, driving growth at scale, and shaping digital innovation in Australia's startup scene.

I struggled with the concept of selfishness. I didn't understand that being selfish was actually a really good thing. If you think about the word selfish, it gets a bad rap, but there's a lot of positive nodes of the word self. Self-care, self-awareness really underpins what's necessary for you to understand who Jeremy Cabral, welcome to The How Story. Thanks for having me.

Mate, I'm very excited to hear from you today. Why don't we dive straight back to you as a young kid? Tell me a bit about Jeremy.

I'm one of 4 kids. Um, my parents are Portuguese, migrated over, met when they were around 18 and got married pretty young. And so yeah, there's a bit of a gap between myself and my older brother. He's about 6 years older than me and my sister's a couple years older than that. I'm terrible with these sorts of things. Sorry to my family. And yeah, so I was, I guess, always pretty inspired by my brother. He, you know, being a bit older, like, you know, going through school, like he had mates that had computers or had, you know, he loved soccer, I loved soccer. We both were gamers. He gave me my, you know, taste in music, you know, a bit of ska punk and all these sort of things. So I was always the cool kid in my grade because I was bringing the cool music music and the things like that. You know, I don't think my mates had older brothers. So, um, yeah, I think about that first when you ask about me as a kid. And yeah, I always just really was quite a responsible kid is what I would probably say. I think I always took a step back and thought about things quite deeply. You know, I was a big reader. I used to read encyclopedias for fun as a kid, which is kind of a weird thing. Wow. Yeah. Um, just literally just like cycle through them next to my bed. And the atlas. I used to know like literally every city, whatever you can imagine, and country, whatever. And so yeah, I was just a bit of a nerd. And yeah, I think I kind of became a little bit more confident as I got a bit older. You know, I used to play soccer and all this sort of stuff, and my dad was a coach, which was cool. Like, he was a semi-professional soccer player and really took it seriously. And so yeah, like it was awesome training with him 'cause he just pushed me hard. And I think that's important, like having that discipline as a kid and turning up to, you know, probably more training sessions than any other local soccer club you can, you know, training rain, hail, or shine, like it was on. And so yeah, that was awesome, man. I think just having that influence as well of sport, team sport especially early on. And yeah, real sense of family. I was, you know, very close to my grandmother. She lived very close by and spent a lot of time with her and that defined a lot of my childhood as well. That's kind of the things that popped in my mind when you asked about my childhood, I guess.

Did you end up finishing school?

I did, yeah, yeah. So I grew up in Campbelltown in southwest Sydney. That meant for me that I really had to look inward in terms of being ambitious. I had some mates that were all really smart dudes and academically very intelligent, but weren't that into school as a concept. And I was lucky that I was in that group, and I think that I was like kind of friends with a lot of the groups in the school I was school captain in primary school and high school, so I knew a lot of kids. Um, but yeah, when it came to like the academic side, I really had to push myself because others around me weren't really pushing. Um, and thankfully my oldest, eldest sister Yvonne was, um, really studious and pushed hard, and I think that also kind of set a bit of a benchmark for how I should approach things. Um, and yeah, I, you know, kind of topped all my grades and— sorry, classes or whatever, studied a bit of, you know, business, business and computing alongside each other. And, um, I was quite technical. Um, I used to kind of help the school like with networking problems and all this stuff and build computers at a pretty young age. Um, but I chose the path of business, uh, and studying business at university ultimately to help my company, my parents' company. Um, it was a marketing business. So, um, you're right. Yeah, that's kind of a bit of the arc there.

Yeah. And so after uni, did you go straight to work or did you work with parents?

Man, the day I finished school, I went straight to my parents' office and worked every day after that. I literally worked around the clock and that was throughout high school as well. I guess I've always had contingency plans. Like, so during my final years of study, actually 14 years and 9 months to the day, I got a job at Big W. And I was working night fill through high school. I love the concept of earning money and working hard to earn money. Like night fill as a young, you know, whatever, like, you know, 15-year-old is intense. And like, I literally used to get bags of cow shit and like throw it up onto these racks in the greenhouse at Big W.

Jeez.

And then, you know, get off the rack, stack 'em all up and like by the end of the night, you're literally just covered in shit.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's just hustle hard. But because I hustled so hard and I was cheap, Yeah. Is get a lot of shifts. And so you'd finish sometimes at like midnight or a little later, roll into school at, like we used to start early. I think it was like 7:20 AM.

Like why?

Yeah. And yeah, you'd be pretty tired. But yeah, I don't know, I just kind of was always a working person. And I think my dad like always worked very hard, always still does.

Yeah.

And so that was really imprinted into me of kind of how to be, you know?

Yeah.

So yeah, straight after school, like literally worked through and then was studying full-time and working full-time at my parents' business. So how that works, it means you don't sleep much, you sleep under the desk.

Yeah.

And yeah, dude, it was, I chose, I think it's called Western Sydney University at this point. I could have studied at UTS in the city or Western Sydney University. I chose that because, well, A, it was closer to where I lived and it was more distributed around Sydney, but they had these night classes and quite flexible in terms of where you could studying when, and I went for that, and, um, that allowed me to work full-time and, and also study full-time as well. So, yeah.

Interesting. Where does your drive come from?

Oh, where's my drive come from?

Um, I mean, most kids weren't doing that.

Yeah, so I think, yeah, like my dad, um, he is a very good salesperson. Um, he became like a national sales manager at a bunch of Mainly, mainly equipment businesses, and ultimately ran like you know APAC and so on for these companies. But when he came to Australia, he didn't speak a word of English. And so as a young kid, I think he was even like doing like metalworking and some of this stuff. Like you know, the Portuguese community were like really known for like you know labor-intensive stuff and helped build you know Sydney in a lot of ways. And so he he worked hard at a very young age, and so that was normal for him. And I think It kind of set the tone of what was normal for us kids. When he kicked off that company, I remember he spent 2 weeks, came home, had quit his job. I think he just had enough and didn't speak much. Literally went and watched the cricket up in this family room we had and like just looked at the TV, sat there all day long. At the end of it, he goes, I'm gonna start a company, a promotional products company. And I was like, cool. I don't know what promotional products are. I'm worried. 'Cause our family needs to earn money.

Yeah.

So yeah, I'm gonna lean in pretty hard on this thing. And so yeah, I was like cold calling, door knocking, and all of that at, I don't know, they started the company I think 2001.

Wow.

So yeah, I was just all in, dude, at a really young age, just like hustling with him. We'd like just take a bag of catalogues each. He would do one side of the street, I'd do the other.

Wow.

Door knock, you know, someone would let me in. It's like, cool, we got a lead or whatever, you know?

Yeah.

And that was what I used to do.

And mum worked as well in the business, or she was—

She, yeah, she's from day one been involved in the company. Um, she was working, I think, retail, I think, for a period before that. Um, but when the company started as a family business, it's, um, called JEM Promotional Products. It's John, Jason, Jeremy, Eva, and Elisa Maria. It's like literally the family acronym.

Yeah.

So yeah, it's truly the, the like exact thing you'd imagine for a family company. And we've all worked in the company, actually, all of us siblings at some point. Yeah. Um, they're still operating now as well. I think it's probably 25 years on. So yeah.

Geez, that's very, that's very cool. Yeah. Take me to, uh, the moment where you meet Fred, or tell us the story of how.

Yeah, yeah. So, um, Fred used to write a column in Marketing Magazine, and, um, for me, having studied marketing, and I really, you know, wanted to understand like what What does the best look like in this industry? I, you know, have this style of learning where I need to go to the, do the course, the, you know, read the book, read the mag, speak to the author, whatever. And I just go deep. And so I was reading Marketing Mag. I had a subscription. I think as a student you got it at a discount or something like that. And he'd write this column and actually I just used to read it and decided to connect with him, I think on Twitter.

Hmm.

And he put out a tweet, which is like, I was trying to find it the other day actually. I was like, should I buy a Nokia N95 or an iPhone? And I had just bought, um, the first iPhone in Australia, and I was like, man, this is going to change everything.

The actual first or just one of the first?

It was one of the first. Like, it's the first iPhone that was—

yeah, yeah, first model.

Um, yeah, I actually bought the first iPhone in Australia, the iPhone 5. I slept in front of the Apple Store for a couple nights for that one, um, years later. But, um, yeah, not the first iPhone, but eventually did get the first iPhone. Yeah, so anyway, dropped this tweet. I responded and said, dude, iPhone, game changer. We caught up in person at a conference, and for the first few minutes he was talking about like, you know, hey, I got this company, you know, love to have you join, so on and so on. And he had sold, he owned 3 companies. I think it was like a digital agency, a web development company, and the third was this ventures arm. And he would talk— he was talking about the first 2 that he had actually sold. He's like, no, scrap that. I want you to work on this new thing, dude. And, um, so yeah, I've, I've got this vision, like, vision of basically what he said was like, let's take the traffic back from the Yanks. Um, because at the time there were no big Australian websites, and a lot of American websites were really, um, getting traffic here in Australia. And I think what he saw was like, he was early to identifying this opportunity to build—

Yeah.

Large websites. And ultimately, there's a bunch that we were experimenting with. One is in the personal finance space called Credit Card Finder. It was experiencing a bit of issue with Google, had been penalised, and I had a lot of academic knowledge around SEO. I'd built my parents' website, my first website in the late '90s. And so I had the skill around it and I was doing SEO, not knowing it was called SEO. And then started, you know, for my university degree towards the end, I did this, I think it's called a subunit or something like that, where it's like basically wrote like a 20 or 30,000 page document trying to define all the types of like marketing that there were and specifically focused on internet marketing.

Hmm.

And there's these terms that weren't yet defined and I was hanging out on this forum with a guy, Rand Fishkin, sending some messages back and forth saying, hey, I think it should be called this. What do you think it should be called? And so on. And yeah, we wrote all that up. And so, I had this deep knowledge having researched everything.

Yeah.

That experience with my parents' website, which had done really well. And I just wanted to see myself competing in the most competitive space I could. And so, when Fred said to me like, yeah, credit card finder's penalized, help me unpenalize it, I was like up for the challenge. I think he gave me 24 hours to prepare a plan. I didn't sleep, literally did not sleep. Got in a car, like drove to uni, like exhausted, like got it done. But I shipped him the document and he read it. He's like, yeah man, let's implement it. And I was like, cool. Implemented it, the advice, and got the website unpenalised within 2 weeks. And he called me up and was like, man, what's your BSPN account number? I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, I'm going to transfer you a bounty for getting this done. And I was like, wow. Um, and so at the time, I'd kind of— I was, I was working at another, um, startup that was built, like, basically had built the CMS, um, that ultimately my parents' company, um, migrated to. And, you know, I was at the point where I was like not sure if I should stay on and, and so on. And, um, through that uncertainty, you just had Fred like coming in like Like to his word, like literally like, what's your BSB and account number? Here's the money.

Yeah.

I was like, this is a thing and that's serious money for me.

Yeah.

And so yeah, decided to join the business from that point onwards.

How did, so how big was Finder at the time?

Well—

It was Credit Card Finder, right?

Yeah, it was Credit Card Finder. There's like 20-odd experiments. Credit Card Finder was pretty much at zero at that point 'cause I had no traffic, but it had been, He had inside the ventures arm a few kind of people come through and do some like, yeah, experiments and kind of build it up. And so there was one person working on it at the time, and I think there'd been maybe a couple before that as well. And yeah, so it was tiny. It was like, it was virtually like just not a thing yet.

Yeah.

But, you know, Fred had built that early traction along with Frank.

Yeah.

Enough to get a signal to know that this is a real thing. And yeah, credit to the guys, they really spotted that opportunity in the UK, I think initially going, well, no one's really done this at scale here in Australia. And yeah, I was really attracted to the idea and wanted to work on it as well.

That's a big risk for you. Was there any like payments agreements or employment or anything like that? Or was it just like, come work with us?

For the first few months it was pretty loose. But we ultimately, I was incentivized based on the success of whatever I was doing.

In what way?

Well, as in like I literally was paid like based on the performance of the business, right? So I only made money really if the company made money. And so that meant that I had to be like seriously like treating the numbers like as, you know, the numbers that would ultimately pay the bills, you know. And, um, so yeah, I took a bit of a risk on in that sense. And, um, yeah, it really went hard at it. And, um, and only really after like a year or so was I earning enough to really, um, cover my monthly expenses. So I went all in.

Yeah.

Um, and yeah, through that ultimately got sweat equity and, um, became a co-founder of the company. Yeah.

That's awesome. Why did you decide to take that risk?

Man, I just felt like why don't I take the risk? I think Fred believed in me and Frank as well. Up until that point, you know, as I said, I had this conceptual idea of what to do and I knew that I could compete. And to have someone that was successful like Fred, he had, you know, exited his agency and was running a magazine that I really had you know, massive respect for that magazine and, and the knowledge I'd been learning from it. And I was like, wow, I think, um, there's that piece for sure. And I think that, you know, Fred was different, Frank was different, and I knew those guys were really onto something. So it was about that, um, that partnership, I think, and the opportunity to work with them on something that was new and, and clear— clearly it was going to take off. So that was, for me, the I guess the, um, why, the why behind it.

And they just had the confidence in you that—

Yeah, they gave me massive autonomy. Like, um, we used to run the company off the spreadsheet and no expense could go through unless I approved it because they were in the earnout period of that other company, right? And, um, so I literally was making the calls like on everything you can imagine for the whole company. And it was at a point where the business wasn't big enough for them to go like into it all in.

Hmm.

And then by the time I'd grown it a few months later, like it had hit a level where, you know, I remember having a chat with Frank and Fred and we're like, yeah, like the 3 of us are just gonna do this full-time. I'd already, I think, transitioned to full-time for a couple of months. And, you know, really I was working night and day anyway on this thing along the side, the other company I was working at. Yeah, it just, it had grown to a point where we could all take a risk on it. So yeah.

Yeah. How did you guys go about growing it in the early days?

Man, it's—

Like, what was the magic?

Yeah, the magic. So I think there were a couple of inventions. Like firstly, the way to produce content at scale was not easy. I remember sitting there and going, okay, My competitor has 30 or 40-odd staff. They weren't really doing content well, but they had these landing pages. And I was like, all right, cool, how are we going to solve for this? Where I literally was doing everything, like from like every keystroke required to run that website, right? Um, whether it be updating the HTML or, you know, a product rate or fee or whatever it was. Um, and so The first, I think, was delegating and outsourcing. I had read Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Work Week, and I was pretty obsessed with that idea of like you know hiring in help and then scaling that out. So I hired this one virtual assistant, and then asked her. Her name was Naomi Jara. I still remember. And I asked her to effectively document every single. Process, and it was like almost one a day. Um, so I'd teach her once and then she'd write it back to me in a process and, and try to teach me. By the time I was happy with the way she'd done it, I'm like, okay, cool, now teach the next person. And, um, we just kept on hiring and teaching the next person, and, you know, it just became this system that ultimately led to mass scale of execution. Um, we did the same with our, um, freelance writer and effectively helped evolve her from a writer to an agency where she had all these writers underneath her and was editing the output and instead of writing it. So, um, and I think at its peak we were publishing about 180 articles a day. So, wow. Yeah, manually written articles, not, uh, yeah, not ChatGPT. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah.

And so she was based where?

She was in Queensland.

Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

So that was kind of like your first experiment with hiring at scale then and just pumping out content?

Definitely. And, you know, um, another thing we had done as well, um, which I think turned out to be a pretty key move was we hired a lot of grads. And so—

Yeah, right.

Why that was cool is like, firstly, I mean, it was lower cost, but you'd have this ability to really mold someone day one. You know, they'd be still studying, not sure what they wanted to do next. They'd come to Finder and become really excited about what they were doing. Again, they just had this vibe about it, man. It's like, it was not normal. Like, it was not a normal company. And I mean that in the best way. Like, it truly, this spark, something special about it. And I think that really attracted some cool people into the company that many ended up staying for over 10 years in the business.

Wow.

And why that was important, I think, is we had this culture that almost became Spartan-like, where this camaraderie, like, that when going up against our competitors, I just would hate to have been competing with us because the commitment level was just so high.

Really?

And I think that, you know, some of these early pieces, foundational decisions, the way we built the company, I think led to that success and a bit of the special sauce, I guess, that got us there.

I think a lot of brands aspire to have a team that's committed like that. Is there anything that you feel like made that happen?

Yeah, I mean, what made it happen? I think I can speak to my contribution to that. I really wanted people to be connected, so I invested a lot of time in, um, not only in the office but outside of like just socializing and getting to know people in a way that would build personal connection. And I found a way to kind of synthesize like and, and highlight the unique and cool thing about each, each person. And everyone was so different, um, and we all had a level of appreciation and gratitude for each other. And I think, um, That was really important early on. I remember one of the teams that I ran was called the publishing team. And I was like, all right, we're gonna have our weekly retro at the pub. Like, it's the, you know, and what I'd do is like, I'd go to the thing, we'd have our, like, you know, our win of the week and all this sort of stuff. Everyone would speak. And I'd have a different person chair that meeting every, well, chair, that sounds so formal.

Run.

Facilitate or whatever the meeting that week. And they'd choose the pub and all this sort of stuff. But I'd always buy the first couple of rounds of drinks. And I think that was enough to kind of grease the wheels. And then by the time I'd leave, everyone was still hanging out together. So everyone became mates. And I think that really became the glue, man, in our culture that, you know, so many people like end up becoming like each other's best man or whatever and like still best mates today. So it's, it was a truly special moment.

Yeah. Tell me about how your role evolved throughout the growth of Finder.

Yeah. So how did it evolve? As I said, I started off doing everything. I've always— the common thread has been growth and operations. I initially built out our content—

Unit.

Yeah, content unit. And so that was very much a big focus of mine and going, okay, we had this proven formula that we needed to scale out. And so hiring out that team, teaching my methodologies, ensuring that we can get to a high quality of execution and still have scale. was important. There's some early photos I still remember where I'd just be there at my desk and have all these people behind me watching me kind of execute on whatever the strategy was.

Yeah.

But yeah, we had a really unique structure as well, which I think was key. Like this kind of, these pods that we built around each individual, which were niche-focused, the niche being like home loans or credit cards, personal loans. It gave each person autonomy, and actually their title I think was business manager at the time. So if you were running a niche, you were the business manager. So it was your own little business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that was a really innovative thing. Titles really meant a lot and still do mean a lot at Finder in terms of the DNA of and why we chose the naming of those things. Yeah, content has been like a constant, and then I moved towards operations, and largely because they'd built out scaled operations for content. And this large distributed team, which was initially supporting the content production, then became supporting things like product data, our clients, literally every function in the business ultimately had some offshore crew that were supporting the operations. So, big team in the Philippines, We call it our distributed crew. Sorry. And yeah, it became again, I think, a big part of the secret sauce because we found a way to build a culture with this team and that level of inclusivity where, you know, a lot of people would, you know, call someone like that a contractor or like, you know, and treat it like the working relationship in a very different way. I would never be able to find this video, but I remember seeing this guy share some tips on how to build a culture with a team that's overseas and how to work in that way with a remote team. And it really defined a lot of how we did things. But yeah, from operations, then product, technology, design, I had a big contribution into people and culture and our company values. Pretty much everything except the finance department, man. That's like, that's not where I hang out.

Not into the finance stuff?

I love the fact that Frank is and he's got it covered. I just think I'm like, I love the feedback loop of growth, just the tactical things that you can do like right now and that quick feedback loop of like, oh man, that worked. If we do that 1,000 times, that's gonna work real well. Like, so how can I go and do that 1,000 times?

Yeah. Jeremy, where did you learn what you know today?

Where did I learn?

Like how does a young guy that just graduates out of uni all of a sudden become the CEO of a huge tech company?

Yeah, man, I think there's a really unique way that I learn. I, looking backwards, I've been thinking on it, about it pretty often lately. Um, and so whenever I want to learn a thing, I start with a book, and I'll start with several books actually if I can. Um, I remember reading something from, uh, Bill Gates where he was used to do these like reading holidays or whatever it was called, where I'd get 2 or 3 books on a topic and spend 2 weeks and just like mash them together and quickly be able to absorb the knowledge.

Hmm.

And so I was traveling quite a lot, um, and so on these plane rides I'd never turn on the entertainment system and just have lots and lots of caffeine, um, and literally just read on a Kindle or something that would like had light and just like mow these books. And then say it was on a topic that was quite niche, I'd go to the US where I knew that I could probably meet someone that was world-class if I could get their attention. So that's another part of the formula, like meeting somebody that's world-class in the space, often the author of the book if I can. Going to the conference where the best people in the world hang out on that particular thing, consistently done that. If there's a course, go and do that and then connect with the other people doing the course, build a relationship over time. And then often inside these, each discipline, there's an agency, someone that sells a service. I like to connect with the founder and then have a one-on-one coaching arrangement with that person and basically not pay the full-service agency fee, 'cause we often need to build the capability in-house, but build a connection with the founder in a way that we can, as needed, tap into that. And it basically de-risks the execution, right? You've got this really talented team you can tap into and kind of ride shotgun with your team on a particular project. So that's been another key thing, meeting those people over time. And then obviously, yeah, just being willing to test yourself and like, yeah, just the fastest way to learn is by doing.

Mm-hmm.

So like, just do more. Like, don't talk about it and don't, definitely don't overthink it because I think that feedback loop of going live quickly really does help in terms of crystallizing what works and what doesn't. And, you know, something that works for somebody else may not work for you.

And is there like a balance here around do we wait for it to be perfect and then ship it out, or do we just ship it out in, uh, in the instance of just getting it right and getting speed out?

Yeah, I think there's different ways of building. Um, Apple's a company that like has these big reveals and it's the perfect product, you know, beautiful finish, all this sort of stuff. And there's companies that are more scrappy and build in public, probably more like Google actually, like the labs and experiments and all the crazy things they've done over the years. Now not as known for that. Most of that stuff got shut down.

Mm.

But yeah, they're a lot more scrappy. And I think I lean towards that because I don't like allocating a lot of capital towards something which may not yet be proven. And I'd rather build on the momentum of something that's working. I like to kind of find the smallest unit of work that I can put live to test to see if it's a thing. And then if it's a thing, we just build on that thereafter. So yeah.

So are you basically looking for like product to market fit? If you see it, okay, let's invest heavily. But until we see that or identify that, we're gonna hold back a little bit.

Yeah, product to market fit for me sometimes comes after product to channel fit. And I really wanna solve for distribution first. If I can find a pattern that will repeatedly get traffic or, allows us to acquire a customer into something, then like, okay, now it's worth building the better product for it. And again, that's probably not the best way to do things, like to all the product managers out there that love product market fit. But yeah, I really think that there's so many excellent products out there that never get traction. And so you overinvest and like build this thing which just sits there on a shelf. And I think that, yeah, I'd rather have a good flywheel for acquisition in place first before building the perfect product. Hmm.

You're currently the CEO?

CEO, yeah. Chief Operating Officer.

Yeah. Do you have any advice that you'd give to yourself 10 years ago that you think would be valuable?

Yeah, man. Honestly, I think the key thing that I in more recent time have done is hire a chief of staff role. They become like a shadow. And I kind of, I mean, Bezos had some sort of example of this, like where he'd have people kind of follow him and kind of emulate his decision-making and things like that. Um, the chief of staff role is really, really key. And we had a program manager role for quite some time, but the chief of staff only really for a few years. And that for me was a huge unlock, um, just having someone that really understood how you, you know, think and could be you in the room when you're not there. Um, and so that's important. And I think that You don't have to wait to be a large-scale company in order to have a role like that. So I think that's important.

So this is just to clarify, this is someone that's basically emulating you and your decision-making and trying to just mimic that as much as possible.

Yeah, exactly. And they should complement you, like be good at things you're not good at, right? And I think that for me is what I've— I'm really drawn to people that have a skill set that, whether it be creating communication or slides or whatever it is, like crystallising my long-winded answer into something that's succinct. You know, that's, um, the sort of stuff that I, I really appreciate. Um, and they're going to be in the room when in the parts that I don't enjoy as well. And I think that's something that I probably should have realized earlier is like, what do I enjoy doing? What don't I enjoy doing? And, you know, really gravitating more towards the things I enjoy more, I think, is, is something that I'm doing more of lately. Um, and yeah, so that's, uh, I guess learning to be a little bit more selfish. Yeah.

Why do you think it's taken you so long to realize that?

Um, I think I carried a level of responsibility, um, having built so many parts of the company that I always had the absolute knowledge of the, like, every little nook and cranny and how something worked. Um, and I think that one of the things that we could have done earlier as well is find and invest into really capable people to take on that thing. And I think we've done very well in organically hiring and promoting, but also at the same time, you also need to bring in that experience when it makes sense to. And we probably left that a little bit too late with some of our functions. And we have a great team now, but I think that's like, in looking back over time, to scale myself personally, doing that earlier would've been key.

Mm-hmm.

And yeah, so that's it. A definite lesson in my career.

What's something most people don't realize about being a COO of a big company?

Yeah, being the COO of a big company. Well, it's different from one company to the next. I think it doesn't have to mean like, you know, dry operational things, which is what people often think about it as. I see it as like the chameleon in the company that like literally can adapt and do whatever you need to do at any point in time. I was really inspired by this concept called BizOps. And so LinkedIn, I think the guy's name was Dan Yu, had built a BizOps function inside LinkedIn. And this function was ultimately, had embedded individuals into each business function and would centralize through analytics and understand exactly how each function was performing and where to optimize it, but had central ownership of strategy. And so that allowed that kind of, that feedback and that information that you'd need to know where in the company do we need to have more optimization.

Hmm.

So yeah, Biz Ops I think goes hand in hand with, I mean, operations, but as a discipline that's quite specific in the way that Biz Ops operates, I'd really encourage people looking that up and learning more about it. I did one of these learning quests on it, went really deep in it. I was unpacking my— I think it was 2017, literally went to one of our biggest competitors in the US, looked at their current staff, their prior org structure by going to archive.org and looking at their talent pages and all this sort of stuff and stitching it all together and going, okay, so this is how you guys restructured and reorganized. This is the person you hired. This is why you did it this way. And just really was able to piece it together and took it back. I was like, yeah, we need to do this Biz Ops thing back in Finder.

Can you, can you explain it practically? Like, what does it actually look like?

The Biz Ops function?

Yeah.

Yeah, so, um, for us it started with program management. So what that is typically, and our definition of that, um, I know Microsoft have a separate definition which is more almost like, um, I guess owning, owning the program and like, you know, some of the sides like the P&L and so on. But I'm more thinking of it in terms of how to get work done. So a program manager is really good at running projects. They get in the room, they communicate upfront, here's what we're doing, here's the role everybody's playing, here's the cadence we're gonna be meeting. And they notice where to spot the kinks in the hose and like, that's a problem, we need to fix that. And how to escalate up to me or whoever it is that's the executive sponsor of that project.

Hmm.

And so they're the people that make sure things get done in the company. So we started with program management. I complemented that by building out an analytics function. I was like, all right, cool, data science, let's go learn data science. Did this course at General Assembly, literally learning my, you know, things like Python and, you know, R and all this sort of stuff. Tried to hire the teacher. He then introduced me to some guys which are really solid as well. And yeah, eventually hired this amazing person to run that function for us, data analytics. So combining the Ability to impact every project inside a company, having access to every single metric was key. And then, you know, really from there, hiring these individuals to run special projects. And that's how I, my definition of Biz Ops is that really, yeah.

What's a belief that you had early on that you've had to unlearn?

Ooh, belief early on that I had to unlearn. That's a challenging one. Um, I, well, I mean, I'll answer it in a, in a non-specific way, but I, um, struggle with the concept of selfishness. And, um, I, I didn't understand that being selfish was actually a really good thing.

Um.

Um, and if you think about the word selfish, it's about, like, it gets a bad rap, uh, but there's a lot of positive nodes of the word self. You know, self-care, self-awareness, you know, it's like this unlimited, like, and I think understanding more of your, your child self, and I appreciate those questions you asked earlier, really underpins what's necessary for, for you to understand who you are uniquely and allow you to be selfish in a way that's like self-giving and benefits you and others. So that's something that I had to, I only really recently Unpacked that, and it's been absolutely huge for me.

So yeah, why? Why only recently?

I have a coach, Craig Hall, absolute amazing guy. I think I've been probably coached with him probably seven years, and every year he gives me a word. We work together on choosing a word of the year. Mine this year was the word selfish, and it has to when you say the word feel very uncomfortable the first time because there's personal growth and development in choosing something like that. And so yeah, being on this quest around being more selfish so that I actually can give more, which for me is like pretty much defined so much of my career. I just, I love the people I work with and I've over so many years really just wanted to be in this situation where it was like a— how would I describe it? Like, you know, what would keep me up at night is like ensuring that what the company needed and what that individual needed were overlapping. And to do that well, you've got to grow the company to give opportunity to these people. So there's a real pressure around that. But you also have to be super empathetic and understand what's driving this individual. If I were them, what would I want? And almost being a few steps ahead for them in their career and understanding how you can unlock what they need and what they want. And maybe when they don't even know themselves what they want. So, I was, I've always been deeply empathetic and caring towards others and often at my own expense in a way that, yeah, like cost me a lot physically in the sense of just being, you know, giving so much, so energy giving. And I really, I think I'm on this quest where I'm wanting to build more energy for myself. And by being more selfish, I've found that I've unlocked this next level and I'm excited for this pathway I'm on.

It's quite interesting. I read a book a few years ago, I think it's called No More Mr. Nice Guy. I don't know if you've read it, but it's, it's that concept of just realizing that for you to be able to provide and help those around you to your full potential, you need to have boundaries. And it can't always be, yes, I'm available, yes, I can help, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It has to at some point have a no, and that will allow you to ultimately provide them a yes at a later stage.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I was, um, it sounds like a book I should read. I've definitely heard of it. Um, yeah, I was— what unlocked it for me was another book, um, on productivity by, uh, a guy, Ali Abdaal. Have you heard of him? He's like a—

he's got—

it's called Part-Time YouTuber Academy as a course.

Okay.

Um, and yeah, I was kind of going through it and he just really helped frame why objectively you should have things like hobbies and like really, really clear on why. Like find things that you get energy from and feel good about. And that was for me massive. I was like, right, now I understand why people have hobbies. I literally didn't understand it. And I don't really do too many things like that are, you know, just selfish in nature on that front. Like where I didn't have any kind of— I don't watch TV. I haven't watched TV since probably—

2010.

2008, I think.

Yeah.

I think I've watched like 2 or 3 Netflix series in that whole time.

Yeah.

And sorry about that, that's my Todoist alarm, which goes off every day at 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, sorry, so I think it's, yeah, 12 o'clock and 8 PM. It's like, look at the to-do list and then come back to it. Yeah, so I, yeah, for me, man, I just, yeah, I just struggle with the concept of choosing to do something for myself. And yeah, now I'm actually much more comfortable with that and have found that I get so much energy in return off the back of that investment in myself, so yeah.

Interesting. If this was your last podcast, Jeremy, what's something you'd want someone to take away from it?

Whew, last podcast. The last time I had a similar question to this was, it was the Founder documentary and Luke from Safety Culture asked me something like, you know, if you had one thing you could tell your girls, what would it be? I just started bawling my eyes out. Last podcast, man, I just think you've gotta believe in yourself. You are way more capable than you realize. And yeah, just don't ever doubt that you can achieve anything you really set out to do. But also then just think about it, actually do it.

Yeah.

And yeah, that's for me, man. That's the message always. Like I was just at this, Summit in the city talking to a bunch of startups. And yeah, there's this quote that I often say, which is, yeah, about, you know, well, I'll just say it exactly. So success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure, only the paranoid survive. Andy Grove from Intel spoke about this. And you just gotta take action every day, dude. Don't like, don't assume that what's working today will work tomorrow or even this afternoon. And so yeah, believe in yourself and act on it. Like, is really it.

Yeah, I love that. Couple of rapid questions for you.

Yeah.

Favourite holiday destination?

I love going to Fiji.

Okay, where in Fiji? I'm there in December.

Just one of the islands, wherever I can go. As a parent, that's become my favourite destination because there's lots of help there, the weather's generally pretty epic, and it's close to Sydney, so that's cool.

That's true.

But I've also been to Chile where my wife's from about probably 12, 13, 14 times, something like that.

Wow.

And love it because there's a lot of friends and family over there. So I love, you know, if I can, spending some extended time over there. In a, yeah. The hack though, I think for a holiday, if you, you know, it's not about kids or family or anything like that, it's probably Queenstown. I think it's like the best, man. Like a few hours on a plane, you end up in like fake Europe. And it's just amazing. Food's good, wine's amazing. If it's in ski season, you can go skiing. And yeah, it's just a good angle. So I love Queenstown.

That's true. Favorite book?

Depends on the day, but I probably say the most impactful book on me was 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I, off the back of that, defined my values and that became ultimately what drove us creating the values inside Finder. So it was massively impactful. I really, I probably should reread it again this year. But for me, it changed my life and it changed the course of our company as well.

Wow. What's a unique habit that you've got that you wish more people did or had?

Unique habit. I think I go to extreme lengths to help people. I, yeah, literally it could be the silliest thing. Like I was trying to find this blog post, I think it's gone. I, you know, forgot about some hosting account or something like that. I wrote this blog post which was called My Life Purpose V1. It was a long time ago, and I remember it had like a Banksy graffiti with like, with like, you know, the red balloon, like it's kind of taking up. Yeah. And I was inside a shopping center, Bondi Westfield, and I saw this balloon escape from a kid's hand and it went to the roof. And I was like looking at the parent, like just trying to go for it or whatever. I was like, they're not gonna get it. And I was like, I'm gonna get this balloon. I was just adamant. And I could see the kid crying, the parents like, it's alright, you know, because they just realized they couldn't get the balloon. So I just got my trolley, pulled all my groceries out of it, put it on the ground, took it over and stood in the trolley and just started jumping trying to get this balloon. And it was pretty unsafe. And then someone came along and was like, oh man, this guy's jumping inside his trolley. What's he trying to do? And they're like holding the trolley so I could jump up. And I'm like, I'm pretty tall but not tall enough. Out of nowhere, I think this guy must have been nearly 8 foot, just comes in, goes boom, gets in the trolley, grabs the balloon, gives it to the kid. And I was like, man, like just Obviously, the parent was super happy, the kid's happy. But I— it's a pretty ridiculous thing. I actually was with my girlfriend at the time and she had run off because I think she was a bit embarrassed by it. And but yeah, dude, that's what I do. I just in life love to help people and I just go to extreme lengths to help people whenever I can. So yeah, that's me.

Last one. What's a life lesson that's had the most or the biggest impact on you?

Life lesson with the most impact. Hmm. Yeah, I would say working hard is a good thing. Working beyond your limits for too long can be dangerous. I think that you can hit points of, of, you know, breakthrough in those moments, which is actually— it's pretty remarkable. But you have to have the system in place to ensure that, you know, whether it be, you know, like a— you don't want to become a burnout moment and you don't have that safety net where you can just fall from it and be, you know, able to bounce back. And like, yeah, when we had done our raise, I remember I was working like endlessly, like truly, like I think it was 7 days a week, sleeping for 3 to 4 hours a day, and it was intense, like around the clock. Um, I came back to Sydney and I was cooked. I was like, man, That was a lot, and the the time it took to bounce back from that, it really meant that I should have, despite being able to, I shouldn't have gone to that length and really found a way to execute on what I needed with more support. And just yeah, having a bit more of a pullback in that moment would have helped me a lot. Not losing time, kind of just coming back from that and just not having the physical energy to get through it. So yeah, sacrificed my health a lot during that moment and gained a lot of weight. I was having like 4 or 5 meals a day just to survive the, from an energy perspective, unlimited energy drinks because there's just so many coffees you can have. So you gotta go to the Red Bulls and then back to the coffees again. So yeah, dude, invest in your health, man. Like that's everything in life. And yeah, that's my life lesson for sure. I was like, you know, I've done a lot on that front recently, but I certainly wanna invest more on that front.

Good luck for the marathon.

Yeah, it's gonna be good, man. I hopefully get it done. I can't logically see how I finish it. I've run 32 Ks up until now, but Another 10Ks after that, which I don't understand. So if you're on the track, you can help me along, like drag me along. Do that, I'd appreciate that. But yeah, I should get it done and I'll be proud to be on the other side of it.

Thank you so much, Jeremy.

Thanks for your time, man.