Let’s Be Mates Podcast – The Customer Happiness Business

Let's Be Mates Podcast | MATE | 7 January 2020

In this week’s episode we discuss how the Mate business started in our Aunties backyard to where it is today. We talk about how we do things differently from our recruitment policies, our customer happiness philosophy of Head, Heart and Hands as well as touching on the challenges the Telco industry has encountered during the social isolation period that COVID-19 has brought about.

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You can learn more about Mate internet and mobile plans at www.LetsBeMates.com.au

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Transcript:

Faz: Welcome Australia. It’s that time again for another podcast from the Mate team where we try and get into your head with stuff that makes us sound smart, sit back and relax. It’s time for us to be mates,

boys, Bosco, Dom. How are we? Yeah. Good. Good. Yeah. Our first official podcast, pretty exciting. Yeah. With the fans have asked for it and we’ve delivered. I think, well, we haven’t yet, actually we have to deliver. but what are we talking about today?

Dom: Well, we thought we’d kick off and, and, you know, answer some of the questions about the mate business.

We get asked a lot about, why mate, why internet, why, you know, how you guys are different to all the big guys. And, you know, we’ve got a pretty good business philosophy and some, some core values that we stick to. And, yeah, we thought we’d share some of them today. And, you know. I don’t know. Maybe Mark, you can give us an idea of how the business started and why the business started.

Faz: Yeah. Cool. Well, I think, one thing I like about the Mate business, I think we’ve got a really authentic and unique story to where we started and where we are today. And I think, with that comes a lot of learnings, a lot of frustrations that we’ve come across along the way. But a lot of the, a lot of the good things that we did as well, which I think that, you know, a lot of businesses or a lot of people can, you know, take on board and consider when they’re thinking about starting a business or even thinking about their careers.

And if we take a step back to probably, you know, sometime in 2015 when, you know, my identical twin brother David, David is our CEO of the business. you know, when I say CEO, I say that loosely because he has got a personality, but then again. That’s the reason why the, the culture is what it is today.

you know, it all stops, stops. It starts from the top down. Right. But, you know, David used to work for a wholesale business that sold networks to people like us at Mate. and so he’s goal was to obviously, you know, get partners on board to buy networks off him off the business he was working for.

And I think David. Had some challenges in, his in his life, for work and personally as well. And, you know, one of those being, being involved in a corporate situation, you know, you’re, you’re only, you’re, you’re, sometimes you’re handicapped by the, the processes and the rules of a business. And I think it may, I think what we’ve done well over the last couple of years is broken a little of the rules, right to, to be where we are today.

And I think that the corporate world probably gave a bit of frustration and. And, and, led Dave down a path of a bit of anxiety, which is probably not the best thing that you want to be with. especially when you, you probably work 90% of your week is at work. Right. And, you know, and David had the goal of, tackling the NBN market and that, and that time.

The, the big guys, the other telcos in the market weren’t really focusing on NBN, even though the NBN was being rolled out. They weren’t focusing on that because the margin that we’re making on the old technology like ADSL, and I think, you know, some people like Telstra and Optus, et cetera, potentially we’re making 70 points of margin with the ADSL networks.

And you know. There was time for change. And I think what David did, he saw an opportunity to jump on the NBN band wagon pretty quickly. you know, we’ve made, we went out, we’ve unlimited data, no contract NBN. And I think we were the first to bring that to market in the NBN space. And, and that’s sort of where it started.

And, and if I talk about the, where the business was located, and this is probably a funny story as well. And, The business started in my auntie’s backyard. And I think, and Ross, we’ll talk in a second about that as well, because he was there from the beginning, but literally we are, you know, David and I, and Ross and a lot of the business are from Italian backgrounds.

And so, at my auntie’s backyard, she had a big sort of what they call a cabana, which is the, the room that we use to useful family parties. And that room was ultimately turned into an office. And. David started the business with his laptop sitting on a filing cabinet. and the rest is history. Right.

And,  what, Ross, you were there and you, you experienced this firsthand, you know, what, what, what’s your, what’s your memories of being in my aunties back office.

Bosco: Yeah. It was, it was a funny time. So, yeah, I still remember Dave working on the filing cabinet, and I still remember the day I went in to actually speak to him about.

joining the business and look at what’s a big jump, because, you know, I, I had a pretty stable job and, you know, I spoke to Dave and, you know, coming in w you know, it was in my aunties backyard. Dave was on the filing cabinet. It’s not sort of something that’s, you know. That points to a secure job, but, you know, I guess we dove , we all dove in and started from there.

So look, I remember back in, you know, a few things, tripped my memory so that one of the first ones was, I remember actually building our sales form using Google docs. you know, we had, back then we had no systems or anything like that, so we pretty much built everything from scratch. so yeah, we, we had a Google docs document that I worked on over a few days, and that was, some of our first sales were made through that.

which was interesting to say, at least we had no, online, sales form on the website. We had a, we had a web, a basic website, but, there was actually no way to sign up online. So everything was done over the phone.

Faz: which is, which is crazy, right? I think we’re what, 60, 40 online, or was it 50, 50, nearly online with sales versus offline as well.

And if you think about internet, there’s a lot of questions. To understand a lot of answers required for nbn, you know, what technology you are and stuff like that. And to be a business, it was over the phone. It was pretty, pretty. I mean, I guess if you want to put it this way, at Ross, we did what we needed to do to start a business, right?

Bosco: Correct.

That’s right. Yeah. And the other thing we did was build a call center. I mean, when we get into too much detail, but it was actually, the building was extended eventually. you know, when I first started, there was only about three or four of us, and. You know, we grew, we grew very rapidly, very quickly, and, you know, yeah.

So we, we, we did expand and we eventually, we outgrew that. And we’re in our own office now, but, well actually we’re all working from home. They’ll do to do coronavirus. But, but yeah, so it was, it was very interesting times. And you know, it was only, it’s only about four years ago, but it feels like 20 years.

Faz: Well, I mean, I think apart from out growing the backyard, I think that the council pushed us a bit to, to move out as well. Right. Just a little bit. I think, you know, me being in, I was living overseas, working for Microsoft for the last couple of years, and, you know, and always had, it was always in touch with the mate business, obviously, because it’s a lot of the family work there.

But, you know, turning up one on a trip back from Singapore and. You know, using swap cards to get into my auntie’s house because there’s now an office in the backyard. There was a, it was funny, but also quite inspiring to, to grow something from nothing literally in your auntie’s backyard. But I think the good thing about that is that, being, being in my aunties backyard and also, being from Italian heritage.

The lunchtime bistro was fantastic.

Bosco: It was, yeah.

So we, back in, back in the day, we used to actually go inside to eat. So we used to leave the office and go inside the house in our auntie would cook for us every day and there was a hot meal, usually pasta. And. meatballs and things like that. So yeah, we would look, we were looked after.

We still are, but we well looked after from day one. So,

Faz: but I think that one tradition we kept live and, is that when we moved to the new office, we kept, we brought the auntie with us right here. And I think, I think that’s a, I think that’s quite close to the culture and the sort of, the heart of our business as well, which we’ll, we’ll talk through as well.

Bosco: Yeah. And, I guess, probably a good thing to touch on there is, is why we in fact chose to start an internet business. I mean, Mark, you touched on it a little bit with David’s background, et cetera working at M2, or which is now called focus, but, yeah, why, why did we choose internet? And then can you elaborate on that a bit further?

Faz: Pass it on the Domo.

Dom: Yeah. So, look, I think Mark did touch on, the opportunity was there, the NBN was sort of starting to roll out and. And the big guys really jumped on board because they had this legacy product that was doing the job. And, you know, someone like Telstra, for instance, own a bunch of infrastructure that they not only had to upkeep, but they had to keep subscribers on to pay a bill.

So, you know, we saw an opportunity to. Not only get on board with the NBN, but to do it better than everyone else. You know, at the time, everyone was locking you into 12, 24 month contracts. you know, you pay for X amount of data, and once you went over that, you, you get, you have to pay more or you’d be slowed.

You know, and, and then when you had a problem, you had to call overseas generally. and, you know,

Faz: and based on all of that, right? Like I’ve been, I was once an outsider and as you were Dom as well, right? and you would think that that stuff is, you know, like, it’s not rocket science, right? But, but no one was doing it right.

And no one was doing it the right way. What we feel is the right way. And I think that, and that was the opportunity,

Dom: but I think customers were frustrated at. At that th that, that, but it was also accepted that that’s how you did business, the way you wanted to buy a new handset for mobile. You signed up for 24 months and they gave you a handset, and in two years time you went and got a new one when, when you upgraded.

so yeah, like, you know, we saw by doing some simple things like taking away contracts, Giving unlimited data to everyone and basing our call center in Australia that we could do it better and differently and things like contracts. You know, we, we back ourselves that our service and our quality, our network and our pricing is good enough that you’re happy to stay with us.

and yeah, I was saying recently during , the COVID situation that. Lots of our competitors have had challenges with their, overseas support and, and even with their local support. So, you know, long wait times, even just getting in touch with people. And, you know, one of my biggest frustrations before joining the business was when you did have an issue with anyone that is based overseas that, you know, you talk to five or six different people, you explain yourself five or six different times, you may not get a resolution.

They call my dropout. And, you know, walking in. So to Mate and telling people that I joined, mate, that was the first thing I tell people and everyone resonates. So everyone’s got an experience like that and it’s an easy sell from there.

Faz: Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the head. Is that the right word for it?

There you go. Right. And I think there’s a bunch of things you called out there, right? I mean, and the challenge is that the reasons why we started, mate. still some of the reasons why we do it today. and I think that, a lot of, a lot of people, I think personally and, and you know, I’ve lived in Asia for a couple of years as well.

I think, Australians don’t adapt as quick as other markets. And I think there’s a couple reasons for that. One is that, we don’t have to adapt as quick because there’s not that urgency or that. Desperation to do so, like in other markets where, you know, the economy is much lower or, or things like that.

so a bunch of that, and two, I mean, Australians, don’t like change, right? I mean, that’s what I find and you can see that from online sales in Australia, we’re probably the slowest in the world, one of the slowest in the world to adapt to an online, sales sort of scenario, even though. Online sales are huge in this market, but compared to the trends and across the world, we’ve probably gone slower.

Right. And, and so, and that’s, that’s part of that as well. And i just think that, we’ve, by keeping to our core over the last couple of years, keeping to our strategy, I think that’s really driven the success of our business.

Dom: I think the NBN itself has, and the confusion around the NBN and. The bad press that I probably got at the start has complicated that even feel for people, you know, we send Frankie out in the streets to chat to some of the general public and our customers, and the overwhelming feedback is that the NBN is a bad thing or they’re not going to change or, and people don’t understand that, you know, if they haven’t already, they’re going to have to very soon move from existing ADSL networks.

or cable, onto the nbn. you know, we try to make that process as smooth as possible for people. you know, maintain that consistent communication. You know, making sure that whatever happens, people get the best experience possible and, you know, take away some of those myths. And, you know, we try to educate our customers and also people that aren’t our customers yet as much as possible to, you know, give them confidence that.

Yeah. It’s not all gloom and doom and you know, they can be in safe hands with mate too.

Bosco: Yeah. And I think, look, I think to touch on that point as well, I think everyone that works for us has actually, almost everyone who works with us has NBN or has switched to NBN. So the customers that are talking to our.

employees have gone through the same situation as them. So when it comes to technical issues and, and, you know, issues, switching across to NBN, we feel like we can explain it better. And I think that if people can understand, even though sometimes it’s not always ideal when there’s problems, but if people can understand where we’re coming from and that we’re, you know, we’re here to help them, we’ve experienced that as well.

I think, you know, comparing that to an overseas call center where they may be reading off a script. for example, I think that’s a big thing.

Faz: I think the point that, yeah. To raise here is that overseas call centers aren’t the issue. It’s education of people in overseas corner centers. That’s the issue, right?

I think, you know, outsourcing people see it as an easy, a cheap and effective and easy way to get up and running. But what you leave behind is the education of those people in that call center for them to be able to service a customer properly. And that’s where the frustration comes in. You know, and a lot of people say, you know, Australians are racist to overseas call centers and things like that.

Look, there may be a fair, true, a bit of that, right in this, in this country. I get that. But if the person on the other end was delivering a solution for a customer, then that will not even come into into effect. Right? They want it to be a thought process. And I think, and that’s the reason why we’ve chosen to keep our service on shore, because we know that we’re going to talk to a customer and deliver them a solution that makes sense to them because we have experienced what they’re experiencing.

Correct. And that’s the difference.

Dom: Sometimes it’s just that little bit of context. And, and understanding from a customer’s perspective that I have been through it too. Or they know that this wire goes into this socket cause they’ve plugged it in themselves as well. And I think that’s one of the things that when I read our reviews and our customer feedback that, you know, it’s nice to see when people say, are they, the customer service person listened to me and they answered my questions and they.

You know, sat and thought for a second about what the right response was, or they tried something different as opposed to, you know, ticking a box. I’m sorry, we can’t help you too hard. Sorry.

Faz: Yeah, and it’s a good point. If everyone, if you want to listen to us, listen to our customers, and if you go to productreview.com.au and search for mate.

You’ll see where we come up and you, and you can hear firsthand from our customers. And the good thing about productreview.com.au is that it’s verified customers, Ross, is that right?

Bosco: That’s correct. Yeah. So anyone, any person who leaves a review for mate has to be a customer. So they basically have to supply proof that they’re a customer, choose like an invoice or an email saying they’ve signed up.

So it’s all legitimate.

Faz: Well, and I think that’s a good point to the listeners as well. So we, we absolutely product solves in our review and our service, and we know reviews are really important and they become more important each day. So just make sure you choose the right review platform to focus on, for your industry or for the type of product that you’re selling.

You know, we chose productreview.com.au to focus on, because that’s sort of. probably the number one place fold in a telco industry. And the other thing as well, we’re able to verify our customers. So whether it’s good or bad, the review, we know it’s coming from a place of truth versus a place of made up and getting all your friends to go and give yourself a good review.

Which challenging sometimes when Google, because Google is all open. Right. And, even a bit of Trustpilot as well. Even trustpilot, you don’t verify customers. So I don’t, I think in our world that we can put a rule, I guess, back behind the product review stuff cause we know it’s verified.

Dom: So

it talked about, you know, how we do different business business differently and, you know, you know, our customer approach and things like that.

But at the end of the day, it’s our people that. That drive that FAZ. Tell us a bit about why

Faz: people are different, and I’m probably jumping ahead here, but I think it’s worth to point out that we classify Mate as a customer happiness business, right? We classify ourselves as a customer happiness business that happens to sell to a Telco products like internet and mobile.

And so if you look at the market today, right? a lot of, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of providers now out there. So since, since December. 2018 you’ve seen nearly a hundred new providers in the market, some big, some small, some medium. And I think if you look at the comparison sites and things like that, there’s not much of a muchness when it comes to, you know, monthly services for, for your internet, plans.

You know, a lot of people doing unlimited data, a lot of people doing no contract. and you, you need to, you need to find a differentiator in the market, right? And obviously we view ourselves as our service being the differentiator in the market. And that’s why we start with being a customer happiness business and, and that, and that sort of, dovetails into the type of people that we look to get into our business.

And I think, to become a customer happiness business, you need to have. Passionate staff members, you need to have a staff members that are bought into the business and that are dedicated to, to the doing their job. and, and our job is obviously selling services, but more importantly, servicing the customers.

And when we talk about customer happiness and the reason why we, and some people say to me, well, why don’t you call yourselves a, are you not a customer service business? Or what’s the difference? between that, and customer happiness, and there’s a couple of things, right? One thing is that. We, we sell NBN and the NBNs made by somebody else.

We sell mobile phones. Right. And the network uses Telstra. So there’s always that last 10% that we don’t have complete control over. Right. And that’s, and that’s why, when you don’t have control over something, you can make some, you can still make somebody happy. Right? And I think that when it’s sometimes when, the little times where there’s some challenges with services and which is out of the control of mate for certain reasons, that’s where sort of service stops and happiness has to come in.

Alright, and do you need to make sure that the customer is happy with what you’re providing and what you’re doing? even though there may be a challenge with the service, if they’re happy, they’re going to be, they’re going to be part of your business and loyal to what you do. and I think, that dovetails into.

alot of the things that we try to look for when we look for staff. Right. And I mean, Ross, you can talk about some of our staff in the business, you know, like talk about some of the stories. Frankie, Rako. Yeah.

Bosco: Yeah. So look, we’re a bit, unique I guess, in our staff. So look, we’ve got Mo look, most of the people who work here, when they first started, they had no experience in the telco industry.

And I know. People listening will probably think that’s crazy. but pretty much 99, 95% of our staff that work here have had no experience in telco before. So, you know, I look at Frank, for example, Frank was a, is a, is a renderer by trade. he’s a hairdresser by trade as well. and he’s now in our sales team, and has also been in our provisioning team.

Before

Faz: that, let’s point out Frank, who’s frankly to our business. Dom. Who is frankie to our business.

Dom: He’s, he’s out face, he’s out. He’s the guy with a big bead and, you know, hitting people up on the streets, on social media. And. You know, Frank, he’s a, he’s the guy that we’ve used all our, our ambassadors and you know,

Bosco: I think we call him our customer champion,

Faz: a customer champion, Frankie.

we’re definitely going to have a podcast around Frankie just himself as well. I think it’s important. You know, Frank has interviewed, Samantha Kerr, Matty Ryan and so on and so forth. And so he,  Charlotte flair as well from the WWE. So he truly is the customer champion. Yeah,

Bosco: yeah. And then we’ve also got other people like Mark, Rako who, is a, was a form worker by trade.

you know, being a tradie all his life. you know, joints, starting to go. so an opportunity here and taking a by both hands, and he’s one of our, now one of our customer service managers. in the team. So, you know, there’s, there’s a lot more stories like that. I mean, people who have come from different backgrounds, if you, if you go around the office, everyone’s got a different story.

none of it’s involved in telco or telecommunications or internet or anything like that. So,

Faz: and I think there’s two key things to point out here, right? Yeah. I think that really speaks true to our values. And we have four key values that we live and die by in this business. It’s about authenticity.

Been very authentic in what we do. whether it be the way we treat our staff or our messaging, it’s about inclusion. Inclusion is big to us, right? And we spoke about an inclusion talks about all different things, right? And I think one thing that we spoke about there is that it doesn’t matter what type of experience you’ve got.

You’ve got an opportunity in our business. And I think inclusion is huge. we talk about simplicity. So our view is to make sure that everything that we do is as simple as possible. And. We know we’re not perfect, right? And we know we need to work at being, we need to workat being better every day. But the thing is we do work at being better every day, which is the difference.

And the last one is family. And, I think a family is huge, a huge to us. And whether you are actually family when you come into the mate business or you’re new to the mate business. By then, by the end of the, by end of the day, you’re part of the family. And that’s, that’s key. And so I think if you talk about, you know, ,my identical product being, our CEO has, my brother Ross being our cousin, or Bosco being our cousin Don, being working for 10 years.

And like. The poor guy keeps coming back. I don’t know why. I don’t know why, but, you know, from, my auntie cooking every day to all of that. And I think that’s one of the biggest values. And I think that drives the passion we have in this business.

Dom: In, look, it’s a customer happiness, but at the end of the day, if you don’t have happy staff, then, you know, you’re not going to pass that happiness on the customers,

Faz: or what’s our mission?

What’s our mission saying? We should mention our mission statement. Yeah. So our mission statement is that we are the everyday people providing products consumers want with the value and service that they deserve, right? The everyday people providing products consumers want with the value and service they deserve.

And I think that, that mission statement is probably, for us when we, when we deliver that as a business and decided to do that, I think it was future-proofing our business because. Look what happened in the last three months with COVID, right? It’s the everyday people. We are the everyday people providing products, consumers, one internet and mobile was the central services with the value and service they deserve.

And what we delivered was a Value and the service that Aussies deserve, right? And if you look at the stories and the nightmare stories from competitors and, and the big guys, if you want to call them that in our space. It’s a nightmare. People can’t get in touch then people can’t call them. People can’t, can’t never get in touch with them to get the service they require.

And I think especially in the last three months, we really delivered on our mission. So,

Dom: obviously the, the last few months have been a bit of turmoil everywhere, but we do have, you know, as much as things change, we do have a strategy around our customers. And, you know, we, we say our customer Strategy is based on three pillars of head, hearts and hands fast.

Faz can y ou give us a bit of a rundown of what that you say that is?

Faz: Yeah, I think, and if anybody is listening, listening to this that knows me, knows that I’ve used head, heart and hands. In over the last 10 years in, in everything that I do. And I, and I still to this day, it’s still, when it comes to, acquiring customers, supporting customers, and keeping customers, I still believe that the head, the triple H, I call it, is the most effective way and the head.

And as Dom says, triple H stands for head, heart, hands. And the whole purpose is, is that if you are unable, if you’re knee, if you. Able to get into a customer’s head with information that matters to them, right? And that’s the key. Providing information that empowers them to, to, you know, be better at what you’re trying to sell them or what you’re trying to deliver to them.

And that, that, that, that, that information enables you to get into their heads. Alright. And once you’re in their head, you can, you can get into their heart. And that’s with offering a value or a service or offering something on their birthday and things like that. And that will get into their hearts. And if ultimately, if you’re in their heads and you’re in your hearts, then they’re ultimately going to do something with their hands, which is buy your product or, or stick with you or be a loyal customer or buy something else from you.

And so no matter what strategies you put in place around service, what processes, what systems, what tools and things like that. If you always come back to the overall goal and the concept, which is head, heart, hands, you can’t go wrong. And I think that’s something that we deliver. Delivering our message to the our business today.

And I think every time you think about a new customer, come in, give them information that they feel is important to them, that they feel empowered, that enables them to, to choose you as a provider or as a service. Then once they’re in, give them a good price, give them a good, a good value. Give them something they haven’t experienced before that gets into the heart and ultimately what’s going to happen.

They’re going to buy something and do something with their hands and that

Dom: sort of filters that has to filter down from everyone. Right now, it’s not just the people at the top and the marketing spiel, everyone in the whole business. On that same

page.

Faz: Dom and it comes down to staff, right? I think staff that you have in your business as well, because if you’re not delivering that same message to your staff, why would they deliver it to your customers?

and I think that that’s crucial in every part of everything that we do. And I think when we talk about our brand and we talk about our messages, how we go to market, all that’s in there as well. It starts with information that makes the customer, enables the customer with what they want or understanding what they need to get.

Then it, it gets them in by the, the value of the service or the, the imagery or the message that you do. And then ultimately is a call to action, which is buy something. Right? And so I think, I think it’s true in every part of our business, not just in service.

Dom:  And I think, you know,

we’ve talked about all this, but our people keep coming back as that key thing.

Correct. Should we touch on why, you know, who we bring into the business and why we bring those people into the

business?

Faz:  And I think the recruitment strategies, my opinion may not be the most Orthodox way of doing it, but I think it’s, it’s the way that works for us. Dom do you want to  elaborate on that.

Dom: Yeah.

Look, you know, there’s lots of businesses where you need specific skills. You know, I want my doctor and my lawyer and everyone to know what they’re doing. but you know, one of our big beliefs in this business is that if we get the right people from a cultural and an ethic, hard work ethic, and you know, they’re on the bus, on the bus, as, as we say, then we can teach them the rest.

And, you know, you need some level of skills, but, you know, if you’ve got. If you’re keen enough to get to learn something, we can teach you how to do it, and that’s. No, no, not going to stop you in this

business

Faz:  ambition, attitude, and drive and drive and trust, right? That, that is a number one recruitment factor.

I think the rest can be taught in a lot of ways. And I think, like you said, Dom skills, obviously important. And you know, if you look at who’s running this podcast, you know, Ross, you come from a journalism background, right? and so, and you’re doing a lot of things that you probably haven’t done before, right?

And so, Dom, you’ve come from multiple backgrounds, you know, and on the agency side, and. you know, brand side when it comes to marketing, selling services, all those different things, right? I come from a very tech background, but not from a tech point of view, understanding tech. It’s about selling tech and marketing tech, and, and I’m not a technical person.

Now I’m talking about the trace routes and what else is there a CVC and backhaul and IP transit and all these things that I’ve learned and, I’ve, I’ve had to learn things from like things like SEO and stuff like that, right? And so I think, What it does, it’s probably, if you, if you’re a person with the right mindset, and we know the buzzword is growth mindset, we can take you to, we can take you on a journey in your business.

And, as long as you’ve got the drive to learn and, and to face challenges, you know, head on, I think our business can take you to, to any way you want to go. And that’s proven from, from Rako, who’s a tradesman. From a hairdresser who’s Frankie to where they are today.

Dom: And I think you mentioned, you mentioned trust, and I think that’s probably the big thing.

Everyone has to build that trust, but at the end of the day, if, if everyone has that confidence and trust in you, then. You can go anywhere. I remember the day that I came into, to have a chat to the boys about, about coming on board. And I’m a little bit different to Ross’s situation. The business was far more advanced by that stage.

And, there was no filing cabinets as desks. But, I remember one of our senior guys saying, you know, at the end of the day, I can, I know that I can get $10,000 cash and sit it on the table here and go away for two weeks. And every single person in that business, no one’s gonna touch it. It’s going to be there.

And I get back and you know, that’s the one that was his. yardsticks of, of of the business as well.

Faz: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it’s been, I think that’s probably given a lot of people, some insight through our business. We, we really do call it peeling back the covers. And I mean, there’s obviously a lot more to our story and, and especially the, the success hasn’t come from just us three right?

There’s a whole team out there in the office and working from home at the moment to, to deliver on our goals. And I think, I think the one thing. That keeps us on focused and successful is our system, is our, our brand values, our mission as a business and the process that we’ve done. And I think we should be proud of that as a business.

And I, look, I hopefully today you’ve learned something about, what it means to start up a business. I think the key things is that it doesn’t have to be what people think is normal, right? And cause we’re definitely not normal, in a good way. That is. It just, you know, do you write is the key and whatever you need to do to get it up and running, you’ll, you’ll get it done.

And then the next part is that it’ll evolve as it goes. And I think, I think that’s the sort of the message you’re trying to deliver today. Bosco, dom. Anything else you want to add

Dom: or, I guess just like moving forward, it’s aging. You’re not just going to hear from us. There’s, you know, we’re going to have some guests on, we’re gonna talk about different topics, you know, It’s not just, you know, you heard that the mates a bit of the main story and there’s probably some more to talk about that, but, I think this whole series is going to evolve and, you know, be educational and entertaining and, we’ll try and keep it fun and lighthearted as

well.

Faz: Bosco. Anything else to add before we go?

Bosco: No. had a, had a good time.

Faz: All right, well, thank you to everybody that listened. look, look out for the next podcast. they can find us on our, you can find us on Spotify, iTunes, and www.Letsbemates.com.au but it’s been great having you on board. Thanks for joining everybody and listening in and we’ll see you soon, mate.