Will. Thanks. How are you?

I'm good. Let me just work out why my. Why they can't see me. So.

Why we can't see you.

Yeah, my camera is not showing for some reason, so I've just got to sort that one out.

Okay.

How was your weekend?

Pretty good, thanks. How was yours?

Good. We had. Yeah. Tiny. Emerson's four out, our son's five. So we had kids, sports and parties and then just. Just preparing for

Christmas.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you. Are you in Melbourne?

Yeah, you know, Bond Beach?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Planning for the 41 degree day.

Exactly. We've got the sprinkler on in the front yard at the moment.

You know, it's. Yeah, yeah. Our AC upstairs, we just had a new one put in about three months ago. Yeah. Broke a few weeks ago, so.

Oh, of course we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah. Brand new system and it's. Yeah, so, yeah, we're not looking forward to it. Looking. Not looking forward to tonight because.

www.sembly.ai Page 1 of 14

Right. Yeah, yeah, I'll be sleeping downstairs. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, I think that's. That's what will be happening. I don't think we got any. Did we get any 40 deg days last summer?

Maybe not. Maybe not.

It is what it is. You're looking forward to the break.

Yeah. Yes. We. Yeah. Getting a house with, you know, the wife's family and my family. We're all going to sort of get together down at

Aries Inlet for about a week, which will be nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You.

We're. We're going camping in Inverlock. Oh, great.

Great. Yeah, yeah.

We haven't done done that over Christmas before, but. But some. Some friends said. Yeah, they wanted to go. Yeah, that sounds

awesome. It'll be a good family tradition.

Yeah, that's good. And just your family, or there'll be. A couple of families involved?

Yeah, there'll be a couple families. Erin, my partner, has been camping once in her life. It was when we climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, so.

Wow.

Yeah. So that's literally the only time that she has camped.

I mean, that's. A pretty good introduction. I mean, this will be a walk in the park. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. Camping in the. Camping in the snow at altitude. The. The first night that we camped climbing

Kilimanjaro, the altitude was higher than any point in Australia. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And you. Get up to about 8,000ft. That sort of thing.

www.sembly.ai Page 2 of 14

Let me just double cheque. Like it's hot. Just slightly higher than base camp. Yeah. So what was it? Just short of 6,000 metres, so.

Oh, metres. Okay, right, yeah. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. So I'm just checking. So, yeah, so it is. Yeah, 5,892 metres.

Okay.

Which is higher than base camp.

Yeah. Right. And did. Did you have any, either of you feel the effects of the altitude?

Aaron had to get rushed down, so we. We didn't actually get to the summit. We got hot on summit night. We got partway up and Erin

was taking one step forward and two step backwards. And they said, yeah, it's no good for Erin to keep going. And she told me to keep

going up. And I'm like, no, we're going back down.

The same thing happened to a friend. Yeah, you shouldn't push through. No, yeah.

So we had two guides. Carrying, basically carrying her down or rushing her down. So it took six days to get up and six hours to get

down pretty much.

Oh, God.

Yeah, yeah, so. But yeah, and then we just relaxed down the bottom for the next couple days because. Yeah. Have you, have you done

any climbing?

No, no. No, I've been, I. Look, I do a bit of skiing and I've been up at about 4,000 metres skiing, but that's about as high as I've got.

Yeah, the views are amazing. So. Yeah, so we were above the cloud line and. Yeah, like, if you think so, Mount Kilimanjaro is the. Is the

mountain that's in the background of the Lion King. Yeah, yeah. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredible. Yeah.

Aaron's a big Disney fan so, like, we didn't, didn't do it for that, but yeah, it was cool. So. Yeah. Let's get into the interview. Like, we've.

We spoke about it last week, so just be it basically a casual conversation. Yeah.

www.sembly.ai Page 3 of 14

Good. And you're happy with the way everything is here?

Yeah, I'm pretty casual. So at the end of the day, it's the conversation that matters. And I got. We don't have to have perfect video. The

audio. Your audio is good. My audio is good.

So. Okay, I'm. I'm not pedantic about making everything perfect. It's about. It's about the conversation. So just bear with me. I will turn

on record.

So what I'll do is I'll just do a quick introduction, and then I'll throw it to you to get you to introduce yourself, and then I'll just ask

questions as we go and guide the conversation as we need, so. And. Typically, they go for 20 minutes. And if we find something really

good, we might go a tiny bit longer. Also cognizant of your time as well, so don't take.

No, my time's no problem. Tristan. All good.

Let me just get the record going. Welcome to the growth equation, where we dive into the real challenges and triumphs of scaling and

marketing, branding or creative agency. Today we're talking with David Hayes of hbk. Welcome, David.

Thanks, Tristan. Thank you.

I'll throw it to you, mate. Tell us a bit about who you are in your journey. So we had a chat last week, but, yeah, I'd love to hear your

story.

Sure, sure. I've been in the. Started off on the creative side of the advertising industry. I've been doing that for a while now and worked

in various multinationals and local agencies before I started HBK, which is now a bit more than 25 years ago, so it's been a while.

So you would have seen the ups and the lows, the highs and the lows. You would have been through lots of different iterations of the

business. There would have been fun times, there would have been challenging times. All of the above.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you tend to remember the fun times more than the challenging times because the industry was a lot of

fun and not just frivolous, but you actually, it was a very creative industry to work in in the 80s and 90s. I'm not sure it's still as creative

as it was.

Yeah, I imagine it's changed a lot. So when you started, believe it, I was still in school when you started your agency.

Now, now.

Sorry, man, I had to state it. Why did you get into studying it? Was it HBK to start board.

www.sembly.ai Page 4 of 14

No, at the very beginning it was with a fellow called Michael Berry, and that's the B in HBK who's now no longer in the business. But

Michael and I worked together creatively at Grey Advertising in Melbourne and, I mean, worked on TAC and a few other bits and pieces

there. And I was just approaching a time in my life where I thought I'd like to have a go at doing it myself. And that and that, you know,

have to do with its own. You can't wait forever. Was that, that sort of thing. And we started with a few freelance projects and sort of

borrowed a little bit of money and made it work for about six months before we got an ongoing piece of business and then another

and then another and it.

It sort of went from there.

Awesome. So what. What type of. What sort of jobs did you have back in the early days?

Oh, look, we. Yeah, some. Some sort of fashion industry stuff. Michael Berry's background was in fashion and retail. We did quite a bit

of work for Chadstone and for another shopping centre up in Sydney called Chatswood Chase. But our first real client was part of the

Dulux Group of businesses, which was Cabot, who do timber coatings. And we worked with them.

It turned out for about, certainly more than 20 years. And we're still working very closely with the Dulux Group on other assignments.

Now. What's the.

So 20 years is a long time to have a client. What's the secret sauce to being able to stay with a client or have a client for 20 years?

Gosh. Well, I mean, it's always been something we've prioritised. I think if it's fundamentally the way you want the business to run, then

you organise things accordingly, I think. I mean, I've always thought that relationships are just like. Just so important. And if you've got

a good relationship and you're doing good creative work that helps their business, you should be able to keep it going. There's always

bumps to the road.

There's always. I think while we had the Cabots business, there were probably about four or five different marketing managers came

and went. And so you've got to navigate those. One or two of those were difficult, but we got through it. But we've had quite a few

clients for more than 10 years.

I imagine there's often competitors sniffing around and trying to get in and undercut. So they've got better creative or can get better

results as well.

Well, yeah, they probably are. Look, I think that that probably happens more on the more obvious big, sort of the big glamorous brands,

and Cabots wasn't one of those. So eventually it moved because there was a change in marketing manager, which is often what

happens. We'd had a good run, but look, I'm sure that there are more people sniffing around for the Dulux business than they were for

Cabots. And we did at one point, they were struggling to get sort of work that they needed from their agency of record, and so we

swung in and launched one of their new interior paint for them that was really successful. They for a long time said it was their most

successful product launch ever. Wow.

But the. Now my. My dog's about to come running into the room, so that's all good.

Bring the dog in and we can all meet the dog.

www.sembly.ai Page 5 of 14

Yeah, but. But it's funny, as soon as it was in the trade press that we were doing that work, we got phone calls from. From agencies

that wanted to sort of buy us and all that sort of stuff, because we were. Because we were doing work with Dulux.

Wow, that's amazing. And we haven't spoken about this, but did you get other outside investment in, or is it all still privately owned by

you and the partners right now?

It's all still privately owned. Yeah.

I must have been a. Must have been an amazing thing to have other agencies or other people come to you saying, hey, we want to

invest or buy out.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. We had. I don't think it's never been my intention to set the business up to sell because I like the work and

I'm a lifer, but clearly. But it does make you focus on getting an approach like that, makes you focus on aspects of the way you're

doing business. And so look, if we. If we had been setting anything up to sell, what would our. What would our.

What would the money side of things need to look like and should. And should we think of it that way? So it did get us thinking. About

some of that.

Yeah. You. Yeah, it's probably a good way to look at how to optimise or make the business slightly better, even if you're not looking to

sell.

Exactly, exactly.

I want to go back to the start of the conversation. You mentioned that you feel the industry is not as creative as it used to be, so.

Yeah, well, look, there's obviously some really good creative agencies doing really good work, but I think there's more of a. An unequal

distribution, if you like. I think that there used to be in Melbourne a lot of good, solid, medium sized agencies that were all doing good

work. And quite often the bigger agencies back then tended to be seen as sort of a safe pair of hands, but not necessarily as

interesting as the smaller agencies. Yes. And I think that just the nature of the market has changed a bit. I think there's a big obvious

banner, agencies that are known for doing really good work and long may that continue.

But I think we're obviously sort of getting into talking about the effect of digital advertising on the industry. Yeah, yeah. And that has.

That has had a huge effect. Yeah.

I don't know if you're seeing it, but. Traditionally, an agency would be full service or closer to full service. And now there's a lot of point

solution companies that are, that will just focus purely on meta ads or content, but they're not actually considering the whole gamut or

considering the brand or the creative across everything. Are you, are you seeing that or how are you managing that?

www.sembly.ai Page 6 of 14

Well, look, we've always tried to provide full service, and for most of our clients, we do, we don't, we don't buy, we don't buy traditional

media, but that's about the only thing we don't do. And I mean, our view is that the more. Coordinated marketing effort is the more

effective it'll be. So that if you've got all the different pieces sort of working together and complementing each other rather than

competing with each other, you'll get a better outcome. And so we do a lot of digital marketing. We do a lot of very high end digital,

almost technical work with ecommerce builds on a large scale, even some infrastructure stuff around technical trade warranties and

things like that. And if you can make all of those things work together such that you've got a way that you want the brand to be seen

and a message that you want it to everything to keep sort of referring back to and reinforcing.

Particularly now when media is so much more fragmented than it was having continuity of messaging is more important than ever, but

at the same time you're getting more fragmentation than ever. So, I mean, that's our view.

Yeah, and that's what I'm seeing as well. And it's. Yeah, a lot of the end consumers, we'll call them end consumers, businesses are

hiring an agency to do paid ads versus a different agency to do. To do a different component. And they're not. They're not talking from

the same hymn book almost.

Well, what you're doing, you're creating competitive suppliers so that. So one supplier will tell their client that what they're doing is the

most important part of the equation that should be prioritised because they want the budget and you've got somebody else who's

saying that they're part of it. So, yeah, it becomes sort of. I mean, look, I've been through a lot of that with, you know, particularly with

media agencies where we're in competition for the relationship and it's not productive. And you're right, there's more and more

specialists around all these different aspects of particularly digital marketing. The relationships are getting torn apart all over the

place.

Yeah, totally. Now, you've been on, obviously, 25 years is a decent journey. So I want to hear about a couple of the. A couple of times

where. You almost threw the towel in or you've had some challenges, because I'm sure there's been some highs and there's lows and,

like, you forget about the lows because you're in a great time now. But, yeah, I want to hear about some of the real big challenges that

you've had.

Sure. Look, I think. We weren't very good financially to begin with. I think that was really our main stumbling block, probably a couple of

them first time around, I think, when we brought in a third partner who's now no longer with the business, but who helped us a lot at

the time to sort of look at our books and tell us that really we weren't making nearly as much money as we thought we were making.

And in fact, we were in a bit of trouble. And he juggled and he helped, he organised for some of our suppliers just to sort of be patient

with us while we got through that situation. Took us about six months, and there were a couple of suppliers in particular who funded

us essentially for about six months before we got through it.

And that's really something when people that you work with are prepared to help you like that.

When you say suppliers, are you talking about businesses that you are buying media from?

No. Back then, it was people, it was printers that we were using and we were doing a lot of print work, and they said, look, don't worry

about paying us, keep giving us the work, and we want to try and help you sort it out.

Yeah, that's amazing. Obviously, you've been loyal to them and they knew that there was an opportunity to keep building the business

with you.

www.sembly.ai Page 7 of 14

Yeah. I could tell you a story. My dad and my grandfather were both in the industry. And when my. When my grandfather died, my dad

had been training at an agency called usp. Usp? United Services Publicity.

That became. Eventually became what DDB is now. And. When his dad died, he got a phone call from the head guy at USP saying,

you're going to have to get your head together, basically, and get a lot of things in your life organised. Why don't we send over a couple

of our account directors to run your agency for you for a month or six weeks or two months? They'll have the blinkers on. They won't.

But you go away and you look after your. The things that you need to do with your family, and we'll look after your agency for. You for a

few months.

That's amazing. Like, they obviously saw something in the agency, so.

Yeah. Yeah. But that sort of camaraderie amongst competitors, I thought was pretty impressive.

Yeah. Yeah. For me, the way I see it is there's so much work out there and there's so many clients out there, like. There's no

competitors, businesses are going to buy from you, the individual and your point of difference. So the way I see it is work with what we

traditionally know as our competitors.

Yeah, I agree, absolutely. That's a misconception about the industry, I think, is that you're all at each other's throats the whole time and

it's not the case. Maybe we should be a bit more like that in my business. And look, we keep to ourselves as a business pretty much.

And yeah, I think it's interesting the perceptions that people have of the industry.

Totally. What's your headcount at the moment?

Roughly 23 or 24 people, something like that.

So you would have had some challenges with talent acquisition and retention. So I imagine there would have been times that people

have grown, felt like they're outgrowing the business or have been poached. Has that been a challenge for you over the years.

We've certainly, you know, we certainly hired some people that we shouldn't have hired and that's, that's, that's a whole separate issue I

suppose but the people that have been really key in the business, we've, we've made a lot of effort to keep all sorts of incentives to

keep them in the business. I mean you're probably getting the idea that the continuity in a lot of ways is pretty fundamental to what we

are.

Yeah, making it a good environment to work in.

That's right, exactly. So continuity of staffing and retention is a really big thing for us. We did go through a period where we, we weren't

hiring as well as we should have been and we reviewed that whole process with the help of a friend who was at a senior role at a big

national business who said look here's a template for how we do it in our business. It's exhaustive the detail that they went into but.

Overnight, we got better results. Just much, much better results. I'd say we're about twice as good now at hiring as we were.

www.sembly.ai Page 8 of 14

What were the learnings you took from that? Because a lot of my clients will see will have hiring issues, and they're like, is it me? Like

they're saying, is it me, the leader, or is it we're not attractive?

Yeah, look, I think. For us, the issue was really whether the person that we were talking to was really going to deliver in the way that

they were presenting themselves. I mean, were they. I mean, everybody presents this sort of, you know, the ideal version of themselves

in an interview situation. So is that real? Are they going to actually be the person that we want and need in the business? And I'd have

to take you through this particular hiring process, but it's basically this really rigorous way of working out whether they're for real or

not.

So is it like a set of questions? Is it tests?

It's questions, interviews, Structured interviews. Yeah, yeah.

It's not just going on gut feeling. It's actually having a form of questions.

Exactly. The real structure to it. And it was gut feeling that was bringing us undone. Just.

Yeah, yeah. And what about personality profiling? Is that involved with it?

No, it's not. No, I know what you're talking about, but no, we don't do it. Yeah.

So it's. You've got a set of questions that you have to ask each individual, that structure for each individual.

And we sort of. I suppose we kind of. Stole the process. It was proprietary and it was sort of snuck to us under the table. And we've

sort of, we've changed it over the years. We've been doing it for about 10 years now.

You've implemented, refined it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we keep it. Probably shouldn't talk about it too much, but that's what it is.

I'm not asking you to go into the secret source detail, but like at the end of the day, having a structured set of questions isn't anything

groundbreaking. Like a lot of, a lot of businesses, there's a lot of processes around that. It's just actually making sure you implement it

and follow.

That process also. I mean, this is really exhaustive. This is about an hour and a half process and there's a couple of rounds. And look,

to be honest, I don't think we do the whole process. I don't think we spend as much time on it now as we did initially because I mean,

for most people to be off putting, you'd look at it go, gee, we really have to spend that much time talking to these people to work out

whether any good or not. Especially if you're used to doing it on gap. It's actually the depth of it that's the work.

www.sembly.ai Page 9 of 14

Well, imagine the cost of hiring the wrong person. I guess you got to invest time up front. It could be tens of thousands, if not

hundreds.

You can lose clients over that stuff. When we have an expectation that we'll keep clients for five, 10 more years, then start to think

about how much money that is.

Imagine a client, let's just say an average client, I'm not sure of the size of yours, but a $10,000 a month client, 120 a year times five is

600,000. Imagine if you lose them at year two out of a five year, like average lifespan. Yeah. That's hundreds of thousands just by the

wrong person.

That's right, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So it's worth putting in three hours up front as opposed to 30 minutes in a process.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

I've got a client in New South Wales. He's got, he's got a, a binder with a process like this. It's not. He doesn't have it online. He got it 15

years ago. And so. And he just follows through that written process every single time.

We've been working together for four years now and he's not made a wrong hire at all because that process.

Yeah, it sounds very similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So across the entire business, like we're just talking hiring here, but if we think about it, across the entire business, having a process

that is proven and followed. Makes sense for, like, your entire business. Like, if you don't have a process, that's where, that's where

you're going to get undone. So I imagine 25 years, you've, you've built out pretty solid processes. Like, being creative originally, you

would have hated processes.

Yeah, look, and the truth is, I probably still do. To be fair. I mean, I think that's been really. What we've looked for in the people. That

we've surrounded ourselves with over the years is people who can do all the things that need to be done that we're not good at. And

that's pretty fundamental. That's pretty fundamental.

Yeah. Don't hire people that are the same as you. Look for the gaps.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

How do you measure success? This is a total different thing. Like business wise, personal wise, how are you measuring success for.

www.sembly.ai Page 10 of 14

Business and personal are probably two separate things. I mean, they're complementary. If there's a Venn diagram, there's a fair bit of

overlap for me anyway, because advertising has always been what I've wanted to do and I probably think of it as being part of who I

am, really, which probably sound weird to anybody that's not in the industry, but anyway. But I do think that having a business for the

long term, where the culture is really good and a place where, I mean, it's a long way from being a sweatshop, you know, people, there's

some stresses from time to time, but people. I think broadly. Broadly, it's a pretty good place to work. And you mentioned culture five

minutes ago.

That's all. Part of what it's all about is producing something that feels like it's actually decent, if you like. But as far as clients are

concerned, I think there's two parts to it. Hopefully they'll see the values of our business. And I think that's really important. But at the

same time, we have to be able to produce work that's interesting in a way that's interesting in a way that's appropriate. You don't want

to just be sort of crazy for the sake of being crazy, which you can do, and then have that marry up with the substance that we're getting

now out of.

The measurable stuff that we can get out of digital advertising and make a really kind of compelling sort of story.

Yeah. Amazing. So think 2019. So six months before COVID compared to today. What are the changes that you HPK have had to go

through, whether it's being more responsive, faster turnaround, office structure?

Well, the working remotely thing is obviously the main thing, and I'm sure everybody says that. And, you know, our business is entirely

collaborative, and it works much better when people are face to face. And so we've got people back in the office now Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday. And we've said that we'd like to have people back in the office one more day a week, because the more of that

there is, the better it is in all sorts of ways, not just productivity, but also, I think, as part of the same phenomenon. People's

communication. People tend to sort of rely a lot more on email and sort of. Rather than just getting on the phone and talking to people,

which, look, when you're all in the same office together and all on the same floor, it's so much easier to get up and talk to somebody

that's 30ft away rather than emailing them.

And look, I understand email is a great way of formalising and sort of saying, well, this is what we agreed and here's when we said that

would happen, etc. But a lot of the time I think it's used just to get a job off your little list that you're running. So I've done that, you

know, so you achieved something. Achieved something when you haven't really. And I mean, you know, everybody. There's a lot of so

many conversations you've had online with people where things have been misunderstood and things have actually turned into often

not a great experience because of those sorts of misunderstandings. When a phone call would have dealt with the same thing in 90

seconds and everybody would have understood each other perfectly.

Totally. And something that could be. Could be resolved within under an hour. Takes three, four, five days.

Exactly. Just backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards. And there's all the simmering sort

of tension on the other end, you know, and you do not want that.

Are you seeing any pushback, like thinking different generations and different ages, that are you having different feedback about

coming back into work or work style or work structure?

Yes, I think so. I think those things are all connected. Yeah, I think. For a lot of people maybe just naturally it's a bit more intimidating to

pick up the phone in any situation and actually talk to someone rather than emailing them I mean it used to be that that was

essentially what the business was all about but we've now got a way for people to do all of that without the apprehension, without the

tension of picking up, actually talking to people and yeah it is a generational thing for sure that's a big part of it.

www.sembly.ai Page 11 of 14

And I'm even starting to feel like, yes, I'm younger than you but I'm feeling the generations that are younger than me are doing things

totally differently and the way you need to engage with them and get their attention is very different.

Yeah.

Thinking, thinking five years ahead, what do you see for the industry and the way work's delivered and outputs? What are you. I can see

a smile on your face no.

No a funny thought on this which is I've always thought that. There's been this huge. A huge rush towards measurability, which is all

well and good and you can justify money you spend in that way, and it all sort of makes sense. But I would much rather have an

interesting message going out to people, I think. Interesting messages. So I just. Inherently more effective.

And I'd always thought that people would spend an awful lot of time getting used to the new technology and then realise after a little

while, in an almost Darwinian way, that you can use all of that technology, but if you actually make the message itself interesting, you'll

get a much, much better result. And so that's. That's my little. Sort of. My little dream scenario for five years from now is that we'll start

move more back in that direction.

So we'll go. So you're hoping that we'll go back to more needing the human mind as opposed to AI or.

Yeah, well, yeah, AI is a whole. An interesting and separate subject, but. And it's hard to pin it down because it's changing and

improving so quickly. So the stuff that you can see now that is so obviously AI and is going to. Is currently sort of handicapped

because it's so obviously AI. In a couple of years, and literally it'll only be a couple of years, it won't be so obviously AI and the images

will have lost that artificiality, the voices won't sound as sort of stilted and artificial as they do, and it will start to become more and

more effective as it becomes less obvious, I think.

Yeah, totally. And I'm imagining if you don't adapt to that and be at the forefront, your agencies will go backwards.

Yeah, yeah. Especially, I mean, there's two things. There's using it to take costs out, but also just day to day efficiency with the

document writing and presentation creation and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, totally. If you were to give a an up and coming business owner one piece of advice from everything that you've learned through

your journey, what would that, that one piece of information be?

Someone starting, starting a business.

That's why they've been in business for four or five years. And so.

Oh, well. Well, hopefully at that stage, they love what they do already, so. And that's not something that you can. You can create. But if

you focus on relationships, then I think everything else flows from that, because, I mean, it's not just about making sure that your

clients like you. You could say even more important is that you're doing work that's really working for them. So good relationship

implies good creative work.

www.sembly.ai Page 12 of 14

So that's as far as advertising is concerned. If your question was broader than that about businesses more broadly, it'd be just make

sure you got the money side of things worked out. And you cannot have too many good people on the finance side of things, because

you could be in a very dark place and not even know it.

It's amazing. Like there's so many agencies that are getting great results for their clients, but the owners have got no knowledge

around finance. Like They've got year 11 level of knowledge and they're managing multimillion dollar businesses and they don't know if

they're in debt or if they got correct cash flow.

Yeah, yeah, we have financial skills are. Over represented. In our business, let's put it that way. Yeah, yeah. And not with me. Right.

I'm sure it wasn't always that way. I'm sure like a few years back, like you were underrepresented with financial skills.

Oh, early on. No, it was after that first wake. Up call, which is about three years into the business. So it's a long time ago. We have, we.

Have really loaded. Up with financial help.

Amazing. Yeah. People wanted to get in touch with you just to have a conversation. What's the best way to connect with you?

Emails. Fun. Or even a phone call is fine.

Awesome. And I'll share, I'll share those contact details in, at the end, in the podcast, in the, in the show notes. So thank you very much

for your time, mate.

A pleasure. No, it was fun. Yeah. Have a great day. Righto. Thanks, Tristan. Thanks.

Done. Okay, Ripper. Is that all right?

So I reckon that a few people will get something out of that, so. Greatly appreciated.

It was okay from your point of view?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. There's not a lot of business owners in advertising marketing space that have lasted 20, 25 years. So,

yeah, other agency advertising business owners will take a lot from that. So. Yeah, it's really greatly appreciated.

Okay, well, you've got my details there, Tristan. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'll. I will. Before I publish it, I will share it with you to have a. Have a look, to have a listen, get, so you can have the

final. Okay.

www.sembly.ai Page 13 of 14

And yeah, it'll probably be like, late January now because obviously Christmas in a week's time. Yeah. And if there's anything I can ever

do for you, just let me know. You've given me an hour, hour and a half of your time, so. Yeah.

Good to know. Thank you. All right. Okay.

Anything I can ever do, just reach out.

All right. Thanks, Tristan. Thanks. And then. Thanks. Thanks for getting in touch in the first place. It was fun.

That. You have a great day.

Yeah, you too. See you.