Strategic Growth and Market Expansion with Robert Iervasi

Look, it's interesting, and as I said, not only have I come from an accounting background, but also a former lawyer as well.

Absolutely.

So I've always had sort of that risk-averse nature built into my DNA as I was growing through, through my career. And identifying those privileged assets that may be better than your competition and protecting those assets is how you stay ahead of the game.

Robert Avasi, welcome to The Mentalist.

Great, thanks for having me, Dave.

And it's E. Avasi, isn't it?

Well done, not many people can pronounce it, so that's a good job on your behalf.

I only know because I've, um, I was listening to your voicemail and I'm like, oh, when we do the podcast, I'll make sure I pronounce it correctly 'cause you never corrected me.

Excellent.

So Robert, I'm really pleased to have you on the show today. The theme is M&A or mergers and acquisitions, and I couldn't think of, you're like the godfather of M&A, and I know you've got something that's live and hot right now, and there's certainly some great use cases from your time at Asahi and running Asahi here in Australia and Asia-Pac. But I think maybe what we might start on, start off on, is just taking it back to fundamentals around strategy. So what is, if I'm a C-suite or an exec and I'm thinking about strategy, because it is thrown around and I've got a strategy for everything, maybe if you could share your perspective on what strategy actually is.

Yeah, fantastic. Look, you're spot on. I think M&A is an exciting topic and most people get excited by the concept of doing M&A, but sometimes struggle with finding that link back to the strategic intent of what you're, what you're looking to achieve through M&A. And then it comes with the question that you've asked is, so what is strategy? And I reckon if you took a poll of business people, you would get diverse and different answers as to what constitutes strategy. We all like to think about we have a strategy and every leader has a strategy, but sometimes it's a document that's written on a glossy sheet of paper and put in a drawer. and we say our strategy is complete and this is what we, what we live and breathe. So for me, you see lots of organizations talk about strategy being some sort of statements. A number of CEOs get up and talk about their strategic purpose and what they're looking to achieve. For example, they're looking to win with customers, our people are our greatest assets, or deliver long-term sustainable growth. And for me, I've struggled to find a company that's any different to that. Of course, we want to win with customers. None of us want to lose in that space. Of course, our people are our greatest assets. And I don't really know of a company that doesn't want to deliver long-term sustainable growth. And for me, organizations that consider that to be their strategy are probably missing the mark of what strategy— strategic development looks like.

Yeah.

So for me, when it comes to strategy, there's 3 core areas of focus that need to be articulated in that strategy. Strategy is all about choices. So the first area of focus is what are the choices that we're making for the future. The second part of strategy is what are the choices about what we won't do in the future, which is of equal importance to what you will do, but sometimes a little bit harder to achieve. And thirdly, how are we going to go about doing it? So strategy is the choices we make of what we will do, the choices of what we won't do, and then how we would do it.

And what about stuff that's outside of that? So we've made our choices, we know what we're doing, what we're not doing, then some new shiny object comes along. How do you deal with that in that model, or does that model actually take care of it for you?

Absolutely. We often like to fall into the trap of the new shiny object, sometimes being a new business that's coming out on the horizon that you have an interest in and might want to acquire. And often, because the acquisition is available, you find a number of leaders who then try to retrofit their strategy to suggest that the acquisition is part of how we design the future, or retrofit a strategy that meets the business case of that acquisition. So for me, there are two, there are two things to consider when the new object, the new business becomes available and it's in your radar. Firstly, when it comes to how you execute a strategy, you have to think about whether it's the best way to execute it organically or inorganically. And you might find that the capability you need to win in the market is actually identified through acquisition versus the organic growth you might create yourself. So when you're looking at the shiny object or the business, that happens to be on the side of you, something that might be available, you think about, is that the best way of how I can execute those choices that I have made and spoke about to the stakeholders of that business? So that's, that's number one. Number 2 is we live in a very fluid environment. No strategy is set in stone and exists forever in a day.

Yeah.

And we should be undertaking reviews and pivoting when the market dictates one of our assumptions is wrong or something different is available to us. So provided we can ensure that the M&A fits within those strategic choices that we've made, it's a viable way of how you execute on that strategy.

And running a company like Asahi where you're bringing in $5 billion, I mean, these figures are phenomenal, $5 billion a year and holding on to about a billion, maybe a little bit more, was it $25 25% margin or 20-25%, which is phenomenal business, by the way. I mean, it's huge revenue but huge cash that it's bringing in. And so I imagine running a business like that, you're well funded, you're in a category that did extremely well in tough times. What was my question? My question was, what is that cadence? You said, okay, we look at reviewing what the choices are running a business like that. What does that kind of look like? How are you doing it?

Yeah, look, For me, the principles of strategy and M&A are the same regardless of the size of business in which you would be operating in. You know, whether it was Asahi back in the day, and I'm a little bit more removed from that now, doing the CUB acquisition, whether it's the proposed merger that SPC is considering at the moment as managing director of that organization, or whether it's even M&A in a startup setting. the principles for me are the same. It just might have a few more zeros at the end, which is the main difference when it comes to M&A and executing on strategy. So for me, the principle that is really important is identifying the privileged assets that you're acquiring. We spend a lot of money on due diligence whenever you're doing an M&A, and it's typically financial due diligence, legal due diligence, environmental and safety due diligence, all of which serves a particular purpose, and it's a great thing to have. But equally, when it comes to strategy with M&A, it's focusing on those privileged assets that we're buying. What gives us the competitive advantage, and what is the game changer for us when it comes to consumers and products and in the market, and protecting those privileged assets in the future. So I'm not talking about necessarily physical plant and equipment that you're buying there, but the competitive advantage that the acquisition brings. That can take a whole number of forms. It could be route to market that's enhanced via the acquisition. It might be expanding your product portfolio, which is quite complementary to what you already have, by way of example. Or it might be giving you reach to a new customer base that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to have but for the acquisition. And so they're the privileged assets that I like to think about whenever doing M&A.

Because it's quite— and I know in a previous life you're an accountant and I'm also a recovering accountant. So it's kind of nice to hear this. That's a different perspective than you might pick up in a CA or CPA sort of upbringing. Where, how have you created or where did you get this from?

Look, it's interesting. And as I said, not only have I come from an accounting background, but also a former lawyer. As well. So I've always had sort of that risk-averse nature built into my DNA as I was growing through, through my career. But I quickly learned that the only thing that's giving you the ability to grow as an organization and actually deliver those incremental profits and be there for the long term is focusing on how you constantly put yourself ahead of your competition. The M&A mantra of the due diligence— legal, financial, supply chain, environmental health and safety— is all absolutely critical and needs to be done because you need to know what you're buying and you need to know what risks you're exposing yourself to by doing that acquisition. But ultimately, you need to stay ahead of your competition, and identifying those privileged assets that may be better than your competition and protecting those assets is how you stay ahead of the game. In my experience over the last 20 years, I found too many businesses like to transform or do things differently when times are tough. And we know over the last couple of years, times have been very tough for not only businesses but for the community in general, which brings about transformation and cost cutting and trying to address some of the issues that were previously existing in the business. That's a reactive strategy in my mind, and I prefer to be proactive, transforming when you're on top, when things are going well, so that you're always ahead of the game.

And just maybe teasing that out a bit more, so proactive is proactive in my simple thinking, proactive is not thinking about competitors, or whereas reactive is reacting to a competitor? Or are you— or is it not that black and white?

Oh, look, both, both of them relate to competition and what the market is telling you and what your consumers and customers are telling you. Reactive is— I like to describe it as being in an area of complacency where you're complacent about doing well, and therefore what do your competitors do when they see you doing well? They watch, they copy, and they try to take some of your market share or take some of your profit pool, and then you react to that, to that eventuality and try to do something different.

Yeah.

A proactive approach might be, I'm on top and I'm doing well. I know my competitor will try to catch up. So what's the next version of myself? What's the bigger and better business model that my business needs to grow to? So even when the competitor does play catch up, I'm already onto my next strategy, the next evolution of my business.

Yeah, yeah. And I remember when you were sort of finishing up at SAE, I think the highest growth category was the non-alcoholic one, which is just super interesting and different channels to market. And there's a bit of an arbitration going on at the moment, and it'd be interesting to see how long you think will that last. Like, I can't remember what it was, but it's like $6 for a non-alcoholic beer, which is kind of like a glass of Pepsi.

Yeah, look, and I think it's really important in any business to stay across consumer trends. And we often look to overseas and understand what the consumer of tomorrow might be looking to buy. And the, you know, the teenager today, when they have disposable income and become adults, what are their buying and consumption habits going to be like? So for me, strategy does look at the next 3 to 5 years, But there should also be equal reflection on what does the 10-year time horizon look like and understanding those data points that exist globally that might give you a sense of the consumer of tomorrow might be doing something different to today. I'm pretty sure if we were reflecting on 10 to 15 years ago, we wouldn't be talking about podcasts, we wouldn't be talking about Uber, we wouldn't— there's a whole host of business models that have evolved.

Yeah.

And each business should be thinking about how they might be disrupted in the future.

Absolutely. I think we might keep going with that, but I'm going to pull you back. You mentioned privileged assets before and you mentioned CUB as an example. You mentioned the live one at the moment, the proposed merger with SPC, but maybe CUB, I mean, being a non-alcoholic business buying an alcoholic business, is that the simple privilege, just moving into alcohol, a high margin product. I mean, it'd be interesting to, uh, to get your perspective on CUB. What was the privileged assets in that? Because I can see so much history and such a great brand and something to be a part of.

Absolutely. Look, and I certainly can't talk for the business now. I've been, uh, removed from that business for about a year and a half. But certainly at the time when the acquisition was explored, and it's in the public domain, where we did have the privileged asset of creating a multi-beverage strategy and being able to service our customers and consumers with an exceptional portfolio that cut across both alcohol and non-alcohol products, which was something new to the market, something different. And that created a privileged asset where we had a really good reach to be able to service our customers with a breadth of portfolio that's exceptional in the Australian market.

Got it. So, um, So you're able to go now to one customer with a, with a bigger sort of, you know, I can give you the Pepsi on tap, I can give you the—

Yeah, look, the customer has more choice when dealing with us. And often when you look at potential M&A opportunities, it's really important to reflect upon how does the customer or the consumer feel about engaging with you as an organization? What advantages are they receiving. It might be ease of trade, it might be a more simplified way of doing business, or it might be just access to a broader portfolio. And there's many examples of that in, in the market. The CUB acquisition is just one where the customer is advantaged by the fact that a piece of M&A and integration has occurred.

I found, I found that fascinating when you were sharing that in a mastermind session. You were talking about who had the touch points with the customer, and everyone was assuming that it was sales and account management. But if you could share that.

Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting. And most businesses start to think about how do you represent your business each and every day in the market when you're dealing with customers and consumers. And more often than not, we revert to the front end being the main point of interaction with, with customers or consumers. Of course, the sales teams for most organizations are out there every day trying to win new business, generate the accounts, and generate the sales. And marketing teams are there talking to consumers to try to create the emotional connection with brands and encourage that conversion at the point of purchase when you're in a competitive market. And most people believe that that's the main reflection of what our brands look like in, in the marketplace. But when you look at most consumer products and FMCG companies— SPC is one of them— most of the companies that provide goods to everyday people, we often discover that it's our logistics network or our truck drivers or the delivery arm that actually interacts with the customer more, more often than a sales or marketing team. Might. They're there delivering product each and every day, and as they deliver those products, they're representing your brand each and every day. And surprisingly, sometimes you'll find in many organizations that the second function that interacts a lot with customers is normally the accounts receivable department, when you haven't paid a particular invoice or you're about to be put on credit block for not filling in the right paperwork or exceeding a credit And I think businesses don't reflect enough on those interactions that happen on a daily basis and how those interactions can impact on your brand and the perception of your brand in the market.

Absolutely, because that would be the experience. And I mean, many businesses would sort of look to outsource potentially both those functions.

Absolutely.

And send the AP or accounts receivable offshore. And yeah, the logistics— well, we're not a logistics company, we'll bring in an expert that could do it for us. Very interesting.

And it's really important in those examples examples to whether it's onshore, offshore, whether it's outsourced or in-house, is making sure that those strategic partners that work with your business do also understand the DNA of your brands or the brands that they're delivering on your behalf or engaging on your behalf, such that they have a good sense of ownership and they're championing your, your brands in discharge of their own work activity. So investing some time up front in that education, training that ownership of brands is really important for those particular functions.

Uh, so, so Rob, just picking up on that, that thread, um, you've kind of got a 2-speed business. You've got a high-volume, uh, you know, Pepsi and all the other soft drinks, soft drinks brands. Um, you've got a— is it a low-volume alcohol business? I mean, I, I assume that if I'm selling booze to one of the pubs. Sure, different skill set than getting the aisles filled at the BP or whatever it is. So how did you go about bringing the businesses together? How did you— it's interesting being M&A because there's that stat out there that, you know, no one makes money. Absolutely, absolutely works. It's all about the integration, it always fails. So what's the secret?

No, that's a really good question. I think some of the data that's out there, you the majority of M&As and then subsequent integrations fail and don't meet business case expectations. But we're creatures of habit and tend to go out and do it time and time again and don't learn from the lessons of, of, of the past. And I've been involved, uh, in many acquisitions even pre, uh, my Asahi days where a lot is driven by justifying business cases on the basis of cost efficiencies and driving those efficiencies even where it might not be in the best, uh, the best thing to do from a business model or a consumer perspective. One of the areas I tend to focus on whenever I look at M&A and integration, it even relates to the various businesses that I'm a director or chairman of at the moment, is we focus a lot on what the differences are between the businesses, but we don't spend enough time focusing on what we have in common and what the areas of commonality are strengths. So being able to identify areas of strength, passion, where the sum of the two parts are far more exciting than them being apart, focusing on the positive as opposed to the, the cost reduction piece, is a really important way of changing the mantra as to why we're integrating. We're looking to enhance the positives as opposed to reduce the costs. One of the most difficult decisions to make whenever you're an M&A practitioner or someone involved in making decisions of how to manage an M&A is also knowing when not to integrate. I typically find that every business has its own cultural mindset, as it should, and they all operate a little bit differently. If you're great at running a big corporate organization. You typically struggle with the entrepreneurial, agile type businesses that are of a startup type nature that might be doing things a little bit differently and might take a little bit more risk in their approach to how they execute in the market. And understanding those differences at times can lead to the conclusion that keeping those 2 businesses apart usually delivers better outcomes than trying to integrate to deliver cost efficiencies. So each needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and not enough M&A practitioners think about it in that way.

And so is it fair to say that the CUB, it wasn't about keeping them as separate organizations, that was a full integral, you know, and there was integration components with that?

There were parts, but also the front end was very separate because maintaining that competitive advantage, being able to service various customers. We ensured that we celebrated the front, front end of that business, and where we could get efficiencies, we delivered efficiencies. So each, each M&A proposal needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. Certainly with the proposed merger between SPC and 2 other business divisions being to other businesses being OJC and Nature One Dairy. We're focusing on that acquisition being about growth. So the intention there is to have 3 trading business divisions that exploit the fact that we are able to grow each of those businesses in the market. Some of the privileged assets associated with that deal are, for example, being able to grow our brands in the Asian market with Nature One Dairy's doing the majority of its sales throughout 13 countries within Asia, which is something that SPC and OJC gets to enjoy the benefit of. Equally, we know that OJC is capacity constrained at the moment, so there's a lot of demand for their products, but they can't keep up with the, with, with the demand, so we're restricting supply. We're able to exploit our manufacturing network to unlock some of that capacity immediately and therefore being able to deliver more products to more customers each and every, every day. So it kind of gives you a flavor of the sorts of privileged assets that we're thinking about in the proposed SPC merger that will enable us to grow and be more sustainable in our growth in the future.

Fantastic. And this is slightly unrelated, but I'll share it anyway. So I was speaking to a connoisseur of orange juice recently.

Sure.

Come up, they can't— they shared this concept of double and triple pulp, which I never knew existed. But apparently, as you sort of progress down the appreciation of orange juice, the pulp thickens or something.

I don't know.

That's what I was told. So sorry, completely unrelated and not adding any value. We'll get back to M&A. But so let's talk about coffee because I'd be interested. There was the Allpress M&A purchase as part of Assai, which is, you know, in comparison, a very tiny business.

Sure.

So I'd be interested, how does coffee fit in with whatever the last, you know, board or where you made your choices, where you're, you know, this is what we're gonna do, this is what we're not gonna do. And then did coffee just come out of the blue or is it just being a Melburnian? No, of course.

No, I was hoping for it. Italian Melburnian with an Italian coffee brand is what I was targeting. No, not at all. I think it comes down to the three areas of focus that I mentioned in the outset: where the strategic choices of what you will do, the strategic choices of what you won't do, and also how you would go about executing that. So when a decision was made strategically that coffee participation is something that is critical for future future success, the how. Resulted in M&A being how we would execute on that coffee strategy or coffee category growth into the future. So it's a good example of where you can debate organic versus inorganic. And in the Melbourne market in particular and across Australia, the coffee category is highly segmented or fragmented. There are a number of coffee brands, so introducing a new one might not have made that much sense. So therefore, doing an acquisition gives you a natural route to market and entry point.

And was that a tough— was that, I mean, thinking about the size and scale of CEB, thinking about this, which, you know, multi-hundred million dollar, billion dollar business, that's keeping it as rough as possible. Then thinking about AllPress, which is much smaller in comparison, being sort of the guy running that business, was one harder than the other? Like, is it just, oh, that's a tiny deal, so that'll be easy, the board will just sign that off, that's only Sure, like they've each got their own different nuances.

And, um, you know, whether you're running a big business or a small business, it's important to identify for each of those businesses what the pockets of risk are, certainly how it fits into strategy, and then how those risks are looking to be mitigated. And, you know, a number of, uh, organizations, you know, in Australia and across across the globe are starting to think about acquiring smaller businesses that are starting to disrupt or encroach on their core business, business model. And you see that time and time again where you're the big corporate and you see these smaller businesses operating a little bit around the edges of where you seem to be playing but start to encroach on your, on your space. And rather than waiting for that for you to be disrupted by those businesses, you tend to do a bit of M&A or do something differently to say, how do I morph that into that core? So with the smaller businesses, my experience suggests that what we need to focus on is their unique cultural setting. Smaller businesses tend to be more entrepreneurial in nature, don't adopt the same rigor of governance principles that a big corporate business might, might have. And have a different risk profile by which they approach the market. And that is okay because you can't necessarily overlay the corporate mentality to these entrepreneurial-type businesses. So having structures in place that enables them to continue to flourish with what they do best, having structures in place that still provide you with comfort that everything's being done appropriately and consistent with what you expect to see, but But within guardrails that allow them to flex and move, having the right people surrounding them that have expertise in running entrepreneurial businesses and also not integrating is really important to enable that growth to happen and not stifle that growth.

And it's interesting having a Japanese owner who are very traditional, very, you know, stereotyping, but very sort of longer-term strategic view is typically what's said about how Japanese business runs. And one of our other group chairs, Mike Foster, talked about there was this sort of cost-out initiative that they were running globally in a business. And in Japan, they moved people out of this function, and then, but they kept paying them and didn't— no one actually lost their their job or anything like that. So how much influence was there from, I guess, the Japanese mothership or the beer-shaped tower in Tokyo on the Australian or Asia-Pac business that you run?

Yeah, look, each organization will have its culture and decision-making informed by its ultimate parent company, whether you're a listed company here in Australia where the investor and analyst community or those who own shares are informing through their share price whether they like what you're doing or not like what you're doing, whether you're owned by a European global organization, whether you're owned by another country throughout Asia such as Japan, which was a former Asahi ownership, or even when you're owned by private equity here in Australia. And certainly SPC pre the merger announcement is owned by a sort of private equity model. Each of those presents different approaches to the way you manage through business issues, different ways of thinking. And ultimately, as the CEO of the business, the managing director, you're there to deliver shareholder value. So understanding what is important to that shareholder is absolutely critical in the way that you govern your organization. So understanding what's critical to that shareholder in a private equity lens. It might be an exit strategy, it might be generation of profits, and being able to articulate how your strategy delivers on that ambition is normally a great way of getting all stakeholders on board. Certainly with my experience from a Japan perspective, it's a fantastic position to be in because, as you said, the focus is on the long term and that long-term sustainable growth. So to be involved in organizations where you're able to think about the long-term and not just the short-term deliverable is actually quite liberating to be involved with.

Yes, well, and I guess different timeframes as well. Now you're talking about sort of in the SPC proposed merger around, you know, PE involved, which has a very different timeframe from an Asahi, for example. Yeah, so do you think your approach will be— I mean, when you say deliver shareholder value, um, at the moment there's a shareholder of a PE, but I guess does that shorten your horizon or—

No, look, and what's really exciting about the proposed merger, and it's still subject to shareholder approval, is it gives SPC Global, as will be known in the future, the ability to be a true champion of food and agriculture in Australia on a global scale. We sometimes take for granted the quality of food production here in Australia and are often competing against cheaper imports that come in from overseas. And by bringing these 3 business divisions together, it's not about the cost efficiencies that it can generate. It's also about the sustainability of celebrating Australian food here in the local market, but also throughout Asia and the broader global network. We know that farming and agriculture in Australia has suffered quite a bit over the last 2 years with rising costs, cheaper imports coming in. And the fact that we can focus on growth for example, unlocking capacity for the original juice company that we can, we can do very quickly, buying more fruit and vegetables in the local market as that capacity starts to grow, and having channels in which we can sell throughout Asia does provide a long-term vision where we're able to grow the organization in a sustainable way. And that's, that's certainly my vision as managing director, which is to celebrate Australian-grown and produced food and produce, and celebrating that on a global scale, and doing it in a way where we're able to increase the sustainability of our earnings.

And you're absolutely right, because we obviously do have a great brand and image just as Australia in general. I mean, look at supplements or baby formula or whatever it is where they want a trusted thing, they'll come to Australia. Brandon, this is sort of a generic question, which, yeah, do you have a view on why some companies don't go, don't expand, or don't expand in the right way and retreat? Just, there's a bit of a consensus that a lot of Australian businesses don't have the international aspiration. So any advice you'd have for someone listening in that might be running a business like that?

Absolutely. And there's certainly many examples of companies that have done it brilliantly well and being able to create a global brand, you know, which might have started in Australia or might have started in Europe, but all of a sudden becomes a global proposition. One of the biggest issues that I think exists within Australian food and agriculture is the cost of doing business in Australia is disproportionately higher than you might find in some of the closest markets that we might have. So the ability to import cheaper products into Australia is quite an, quite an easy thing to do and creates competition for local grown produce or locally produced produce. So we see a lot of companies actually transitioning their supply chain or manufacturing footprint offshore out of Australia into overseas markets and then bringing products back into, into the country via an import model. So the cost of doing business is exceptionally high. One of the areas that we feel is a privileged asset, as if I bring back to that phrase, as a result of the SPC merger, is that we have a ready-made route to market in Asia, given that Nature One Dairy, you know, a vast majority of its sales come through the Asian network. So those relationships exist throughout Asia. We have the right portfolio that resonates with the consumer in those markets.

Yeah.

We need to remind ourselves that it's not necessarily the consumer of today that we're targeting, but the growth engines that are coming out of the Asian region and being able to use those assets to our advantage to actually defray some of the costs that we're incurring here in Australia. Because the more we can grow, the more we can sell, and the more of our cost base we can absorb as a result.

Great, Rob. Well, thank you for sharing. We're about to move into sort of some shorter answers or shorter questions. Well, they're all short questions, right? Um, but, uh, just before we do, was there anything I didn't ask you about today that you thought on your way in, you thought, I hope Dave asked me about that?

No, I thought it's been a really good discussion. It hits on all the relevant points that I certainly wanted to communicate. Um, the message that I would love people to take away is, um, you know, start with strategy first in everything that you do. Too many organizations start with people, then find the structure to suit that person, and then retrofit A strategy, you know, start with strategy, make those strategic choices, design a structure that's got the capability you need to deliver on that, and then find the people to fit that structure. And if you can communicate that in an engaging and vulnerable way, you know, half the battle's already won.

Make it sound so easy, Rob. All right, so just a question, um, was there any advice that you got, um, You know, whether you're— this is when you're a lawyer or an accountant or doubling as both, or earlier in your career that has sort of stuck with you that you'd be willing to share?

Yeah, absolutely. And certainly I started off my career as a lawyer, and in the first year after law school, you do articles here in Melbourne. So I was basically a lawyer in training, for want of a better phrase, and you're supervised by a partner of a law firm. And I remember, and I've remembered this, it's now 25 years later, but I still remember it. You know, some correspondence came in from the other side and I had a Post-it note and I put a Post-it note on the correspondence that came in and left it on the partner's chair saying, this came in and I don't know what to do next. She came and saw me and said, Don't ever put a Post-it note on a document that says you don't know what to do next, because it doesn't demonstrate that you're proactively trying to solve problems, and it makes it come across that you're not thinking about how to solve the problem and are passing it over for someone else to guide you. So I can assure you, from that day onwards, for 25 years, I've never presented a problem without a solution, even if the solution was not the right one or not adopted. But it demonstrates proactiveness in trying to solve problems, even in areas where you might otherwise not have the experience in doing so.

Well, that's a fantastic piece of advice that you've received and obviously adopted. Um, any advice for your younger self? It may be the same, but Uh, my, my younger self, it's—

it was what I, what I would say to my younger self is, um, don't have a predetermined future of what the future could look like. Um, as I got into law school, like, you know, I did commerce law at Monash Uni and then, you know, did accounting and did legal. I didn't ever contemplate that my career would potentially take me to being Managing Director of SPC Global as a listed organization in the ASX Stock Exchange. So I think I would tell my conservative self, as I was back in the day, to not put limits on myself or not try to predetermine the future, because you might be surprised with what comes your way.

Which is interesting when you bring it back to your sort of, the way in how you define your strategy. So if we took that into your career and choices for the future, you know, what you will do, what you won't do, and how you're going to do it. But then it's like you've come whilst you're on that journey, an opportunity's presented itself, or is that part of the course?

I can assure you it's much easier making strategic choices for business than it is making strategic choices on your own personal career. So give me a business problem any day of the week to sort out as opposed to Well, I think they're probably not so diametrically opposed. I agree.

All right, Rob, we've got 1 minute now of rapid-fire questions. This is where I'll ask you as many questions as I possibly can and I'll put the timer on here to keep me honest. All right, the first one's a bit of an easy one and then we'll get into a few harder ones. So Pepsi or Coke?

Pepsi, of course.

Beer or wine?

Wine.

Arigato gozaimasu or thanks, bye?

Depends on the situation.

Early bird or night owl?

Early bird.

Fiction or nonfiction?

Nonfiction.

Summer or winter?

Summer.

Cash or card?

Card.

Watching sports or playing sports?

Playing.

Buy or create?

Buy.

Entrepreneurship or corporate leadership?

Corporate leadership.

Risk taker or risk averse?

Risk taker.

Cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Traditional office or remote work?

Remote work.

Public speaking or written communication?

Public speaking.

Organic growth or strategic partnerships?

Combination of 2.

Long-term planning or agile adaption?

Combination.

Electric or petrol?

Petrol.

Continuous learning or proven methods?

Continuous learning.

B2B or B2C?

Depends on the product.

City? There you go.

I should have taken longer.

Fantastic, Rob. Well, thank you for coming in today and I know it's been, I guess, yeah, a long time coming because I've been—

It's been a long time in the making. We've rescheduled a few times.

Yeah, but I've been really interested to get Really excited to get this captured and recorded and shared. And I know there's sort of some things that have sensitivities that means we can't go as deep or as we might do in a sort of Chatham House type environment, but it's been fantastic and being able to share your perspectives and thoughts. And any closing remarks, Robert?

No, look, I've enjoyed the exchange. Most of the experience comes from learned experience, which is usually how we all develop as leaders and that continuous development as we, as we learn on the job.

Yeah, great.

Fantastic, Robert. Pleasure talking to you, Dave.