Embracing Risk: A Billionaire’s Secrets to Obsessive Success

Roden, what's, what's the passion?

I wanted to build a car quicker than the Formula One. She could kill Formula One. It's not really honest. It was really pretty pathetic. I was never one of these, you know, budding young entrepreneur types. I never got into any of that crap. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When there's more money, you can do stuff. Sales last year were, I don't know, 3.2 billion. And I never expected to get into that position. People don't even understand what risk is.

Do you see Rhoden being NF1?

No.

They won't let you in.

Would you like to know the inside secrets of how billionaires think? Well, I've spent the day with one and he was mind blowingly clear on what he wants. The one thing he shared with me that I want you to think about in your life is to get clear on what you want and then be radically obsessed with it. That was the words he used, be radically obsessed. So please get out there and get after it. This episode of the Lead On Purpose podcast is proudly sponsored by NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at nzmortgages.co.nz David, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thanks.

Glad to get some time with you. I know there's a lot going on. You've got a business you run, you've got an amazing company here you run. And no doubt there's other things I don't know about that you run as well. But I'm here to chat about your vision and also to chat about how you've enabled yourself to be in this position to do what you do. So, I guess, first things first. Why cars?

I like cars.

And is that a childhood thing? Does that go back?

Yeah. As soon as I started driving the car, I thought, this is fun. Yeah, that was it. Nothing too complicated. The backstory was I started racing small boats when I was 14 and they're a lot of work. They're like racing cars. You know, you spend miles more, you know, you got a two hour race once or twice a week and you spend all the rest of the time working on the boat or practicing. So huge amount of work. Whereas when I started to drive, I could just get in the car and drive around the block and, you know, it was fun without all the prep that you have to do. Of course, once you get to the cars we have now, you're right back in that thing. But at the time, you know. Yeah, and they're fun, you know, like, I mean, driving's fun.

I just like driving passion and childhood influences. Mum or dad, were they into cars or.

No, my father was dead against cars. He was one of these cars for transport, A to B guys, and he was always constantly on it. But yeah, it didn't work.

Wow. And so you've done exactly the opposite of what he was into.

Well, he just wasn't into it. I think he was a terrible driver as well as well, and he just wasn't. I don't know why, you know, who knows, like, especially for guys his age, I mean, it was a dream back in those days. No speed limits, hardly any cars on the road, no coppers would have been great. So it's a bit strange really, but I don't know.

And in terms of we're sitting here in Canterbury, but that's not home for you where you grew up initially. So you're from across the ditch, I believe.

Yeah, I was born in Sydney. I grew up in Connells Point.

Okay.

Which is a suburb about, I don't know, 13k south of Sydney. And. Yeah, and it was great, you know, like it's, it was a real nice area. Old, young kids, tons of young kids my age and you know, all that kind of stuff and. Yeah, I mean, I had an idyllic childhood, really, you know, amazing. Didn't have a worry in the world and.

Yeah, and to go down the entrepreneurial route, I mean that's a risk, it's a challenge, it's for a very small percentage of humans. Not everyone can handle it. What was the step to move that direction rather than do the nine to five thing?

I don't know. I was never one of these.

I was never one of these budding young entrepreneur types. I didn't even care about money really when I was a kid. Well, I didn't have any. So my parents idea of giving me, making me understand the value of money was to not give me any. That didn't work very well. But anyway, that was their, their plan. But no, I mean, I can remember having a job.

Putting leaflets in mailboxes for an electrical store that was down the road and it used to take up all the free time I had between school and dinner. And of course, yeah, paid nothing like any of these jobs do and after a while just I'd rather have the time. So I gave it up. So no, I never, I didn't. I was never one of these.

Budding entrepreneurs and I've never been a deal maker either. You know, I've. I've always had a problem with the idea that you know, like say you're a used car salesman. So someone comes in with a car and you're going to tell them it's worth say eight grand and then when someone comes in to buy it, you're going to tell them it's worth 12. I just philosophically I found that very difficult because I don't. It's not really honest and you're not. If you add value it's a whole different story. But there's no value added there, so never really been like that either. And.

Dicker Data has always been a high volume, low margin business, which I guess is more ethical.

Not that I'm really that ethical in that sense, but you can't be accused of exploitation when you've got a less than 10% gross margin. So. And I only got into it by accident anyway and it wasn't like it was some grand, you know, you know, vision of oh yeah, whatever, nothing like that.

So you kind of fell into it or you kind of find your way into it. So how did that come about?

Well, I was working in my father's business. We used to make these metal connectors for timber roof trusses. And the bits of wood in a roof truss are all different lengths and angles for every house. And there's only about 20 or 30 trusses. Well it's probably more now because our bigger but you know, there was only 20 odd trusses in a, in a typical house but they'd all be different. So.

They used to do it by, you know, patent style approach, you know, market out in full size, which is pretty slow and that. So our consulting engineers started working it out on these small calculators and we decided to buy one to keep an eye on them because obviously consulting engineers are super expensive. And I started writing the software on it and I was soon going much better than they were. So I just took it over and you know, you develop it and work on it and you quickly realize that you need more powerful hardware than what we'd started with. And these microcomputers were sort of coming onto the market. We tried to buy them in Australia without any real success. So we started buying American magazines and you know, obviously all these companies advertise in them. So.

Cut a long story short, I went to America, bought four computers that I figured to do the job for this software. I wrote the software, we sold it to about, I don't know, a dozen or so the customers we had in the other business. But it was obvious that there'd be a market for these computers in General. So it wasn't that difficult. So, you know, we just started to sell them and Fiona and I were in it and that was basically it. We just, you know, so.

Just took it off from there and you just do whatever you think you ought to do.

Amazing. And so it's not this, hey, I'm gonna go to uni and get a BCom and I'm then gonna go to Harvard and do the HBR thing.

And no.

Amazing.

Although I did a lot of work on the designer computers in the. In the early 80s and I would have been quite confident to go and do the computer science exam at university and figure I'd pass because I'd read all the same books that all those guys had and, you know, the only difference was I taught myself instead of having some dude do it. But, you know, I've always been, you know, that's always really been. My approach is to get a background on it rather than just wave it off to the experts. That approach doesn't really appeal to me. I think if you don't have a basic understanding of the things that you're involved in and you just rely on other guys to do it, you won't get a great outcome.

100%. And when you think about business. So Dicker Data. So you had this a mindset where you understood computers and programming, but you'd possibly never run a business before and you'd possibly never been in a large business prior to that as an employee.

Yeah, Well, I was only 24 when.

I started, still a kid.

So Beyond. It was 19.

Wow. Two kids starting a business.

And my father had a business, obviously, but obvious he didn't. There was. There wasn't any marketing component to his business and he only had 30 customers. Wow. So it wasn't really. I wouldn't say it wasn't a real business. It was a real business in terms of it made money and everything. But you get very few businesses that have only got 30 customers.

So, yeah, you know, obviously we didn't know anything. I mean, I would have picked up a lot of stuff via osmosis from the old man over my whole life. But.

No training or qualifications or anything like that.

And any. In those early days of you and Fiona starting that, was there any points where you fell on your face and screwed up and it was all looking like it was going the opposite way?

It was. No, not really. It was all pretty. I mean, who knows? I mean.

Microcomputers were completely out of the mainstream of the computer industry as it was in those days. And all the mainstream guys just poo pooed it and said, oh this is bullshit and these things are going nowhere. So they're not even serious computers. Blah blah, blah, blah blah. And as well.

We were in Carringbo which is down south and all the computer guys were in North Ryde, which is on the north side of Sydney. So we were completely, and we didn't know any of these guys or so we were completely out of it. And so we just advertised and you know, we got sales and we got doodlers and we just worked it up basically.

I love how you take a common sense approach and common sense often isn't common practice.

Yeah, well, you know, it's, it's sort of. Yeah. I mean, look, my approach to anything is to just analyze the situation and try to get an understanding of it. And then it's usually pretty easy to work out a response. Doesn't mean it'll be the correct one.

But that's, you know, and people, I feel like when I'm chatting to people, I'm working with different people that have businesses scaling is their priority. They want to scale and scale fast. But what's the danger of actually not having all the nous and the knowledge around how the thing works and trying to scale it before, you know, all the detail.

Yeah, but see this is what I mean. I never went, I never got into any of that crap.

Yeah.

Like our original, the only aim that we ever really had at all was to sell 10 computers a month. And that was a completely, that was just a completely random figure that, you know.

And we used to have a chart on it so we could see what we were doing. But this whole like, look.

Look, these entrepreneur guys that are sort of like, oh, we're going to do this and we're going to do that and this is going to happen. That's going to happen. I mean most of it's garbage because when you get into an early, a market that's small in the early going and you can imagine how small it was and now it's the biggest industry in the world, then no one's got any idea where that's going to go. Yeah. You know, so having some grand plan about we're going to do this, all we tried to do was get sales and you just adjusted the demand and.

You didn't actively try to find a small market. You stumbled into it, it was a passion.

Well, you have a product you identify like, you got to remember this is 78.

Yeah.

So you identify the magazines that you think are the appropriate ones and you advertise in them and then you wait to get inquiries and you get them and then you deal with them and that's it. You just go along. Like you don't, you know, we never.

I like to have a one year time horizon on everything and I'm violently opposed to things like, well, let's spend 10 million bucks on, on a marketing program to do X, Y and Z might work, but I just don't like it because just never the way I wanted to do anything, you know, like. And if you've got a product that people want to buy.

All you've really got to do is let them know you've got it. You don't really have to sort of manipulate them into buying it. You only really need to do that when it's a product that people don't really want. So if you got a product that people want to buy, all you got to do is handle the inquiries efficiently and you'll get sales and away you go.

Incredible. And where's Dicker Data sitting now in terms of how, you know, it's grown a lot obviously since the late 70s to where it's sitting now. So.

Yeah, well, our sales last year were, I don't know, 3.2 billion. Incredible. Profit was after tax, I don't know, 86 million or something.

Amazing. You know, how does that make you feel? Like just for a moment to step back and look at yourself as a human who wakes up every day, has his breakfast and gets on with work. You started in the late 70s with a very small company and one other person. How do you feel now that it's sitting there?

Very satisfying. But like I said, I never had a grand plan and I never expected to get into that position. And look, I can remember I was 50 years old.

In the car park at where we were at that stage and thinking to myself that.

We, we'd almost sold the company for 10 million bucks and thinking to myself that I was barely worth 5 million bucks and it was really pretty pathetic. So, you know, you can still, there's still hope.

Even, you know, even when you, you've already been in, like I'd already been in it for then, what, 25 years and that. But the thing is like I let Fiona basically do all the running. I sort of set the strategies, but she did all the day to day running and you know, hired the staff and all the other stuff and she just wasn't that ambitious. She liked going to work and she liked to work hard and she was a hard Worker. And she's one of these people that can work, you know, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I could never do it. She could, but. And so I was happy to just go along really. And I spent nearly 10 years trying to build my own computer. So that sort of wasted probably the best 10 years of my life. And in terms of the market, because the market was still pretty small and there obviously would have been a ton of opportunities that we never took up because we were trying to do something else. We kept the business going. I mean, other guys tried to do what we tried to do and the only real difference between us is we all failed. But we didn't go broke. You know, we didn't. All the other guys went broke their businesses, you know, we kept the business going. But.

So, you know, it was again, no grand plan and you just went to work and did what came up and whatever. But like I said, I mean, I spent all that time working on stuff that in the end just cost us money and never made a dollar. So not great. Anyway.

In February 2004, Fiona I was, I used to sleep at the factory and I'm asleep on a Sunday night, she rings me up and says, oh, I won't be coming in tomorrow because she was leaving the second half husband and acrimonious and she was going into hiding or some, I don't really know what the story was, I never did find out but. And I said to when are you coming back? She said, I'm not sure, maybe a month or two. Well, she never came back, so. And of course she'd been running the whole thing for years and we got divorced in 96, so she'll deny it, but she really tried to push me out. But obviously I'd started it and I didn't want to go, so that didn't sort of really work. And I'd started trading the US stock markets at the end of 97. So I was doing mostly just getting the orders out and sort of the strategy and the business and then trading the US Stock market. So that's, you know, the market opens at either 11:30 or 1:30 at night and shuts at 6 or 78 in the morning. So I was doing that. And.

So I was out of the business in any day to day thing. I didn't really know what was going on, I hardly knew any of the customers and blah, blah. Anyway, cut a long story short, hired a few people on to run it. Had a few issues at the start. Got a few dudes on there and Then we just pressed ahead and without the sort of the. I mean, Fiona did a great job, but I just stepped back and let her do it. But without her sort of in the way, that's not really fair. But without there, I just did whatever I thought had to be done. And I'm more ambitious than she is, although not in a, not in a gung ho way. It's just more of a just it's there, do it sort of way. And so we just started to grow. Like we did.

What she left the year she left, I think we did 125,140 million in sales, made about a million bucks. And then we just started a press ad and.

We went to the. I'd always wanted to make it a public company, so we went to the public market in 2011.

And.

I managed the whole float myself.

Wow.

Because I had a very clear vision of how I wanted to do it. And in most IPOs you get screwed over by the brokers and they'll tell you that, you know, you got to sell 30 or 40%, you got to do this, you got to do that and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just didn't agree with a lot of that stuff. And you know, by this stage, I'd been trading the US markets for, I mean, it took us about three years. Well, Jesus. I started working on the flat in terms of the basic work in the 90s, but.

I was, you know, because I traded the US markets for so long, you get a good understanding of markets, brokers and all the other stuff, so you could, you see how it works. And.

So I managed it. And we still used a, you know, advisory guy and everything like that, but he only did what I told him to do rather than me just sitting back and doing what he told me we were going to do. And we. That worked out all right. And of course Piano was dead against the public flat.

So we listed the thing at.

20 cents a share and it's been as high as 16 bucks. It's currently trading at 1150 or 60. So obviously it was a massive success from, you know, a capital standpoint. And obviously.

That propels you into a very strong position. Like she's one of the. But she's in the top 10 of the richest self made women in Australia because, you know, and, you know, so that helps you. And then obviously the company gets bigger and you make more money. So there is more money and when there's more money, you can do stuff. And that's where you know, all this comes from.

Incredible.

Yeah. That was basically it.

Thanks for giving us that depth of background on it because I think a lot of people look at what you're doing with real wrote in go. How can someone do that? But actually what you say is very logical. The one thing I'm interested in is your risk appetite. How would you describe your appetite for risk when it comes to business, investing, finance?

Well, obviously it's high, but I wouldn't, it doesn't feel high. I'm not, I'm not really a risky sort of guy. Like I never.

I was one of those kids that did what I would have thought were crazy things as a kid. I didn't take drugs, I didn't drink a lot, I didn't smoke. My father smoked 100 bags a day. It probably put me off but you know, I didn't, I wasn't a tear ass or any of that kind of thing. But obviously.

As you get older and you spend more time in it all and you see other people, obviously I've got a much higher threshold for it than most guys, 100, you know. But the other thing about is that people don't even understand what risk is. I mean a lot of people think that oh well, if I take a crazy risk, I'm going to get a result. Unfortunately those two things are not connected. You know, like that just doesn't, that's.

And look, what is a risk? A risk is having to make a decision when you don't have all the information. Because let's face it, anyone can make the right decision when they got all the information. But nine times out of ten you never have all the information. So that's when it gets risky. Like to give you an example.

We bought express data in 2013-14 and the reason for that was they had Cisco and we wanted Cisco and there was no other way to get it.

So it took about a year to do that deal. But part of the agreement with them was that we had to sign the contract to buy it without being able to speak to any of the vendors. So there was the risk that we wouldn't get those vendors across the line. And the business I'm in, vendor alignments are the entire game. That's what it's all about. If you've got vendor alignment, it's the correct vendor alignments, you're going to be in good shape. And if you haven't got them, you're going to be screwed. So we had to sign the, the deal to buy it, 65 million bucks without any guarantee that we'd get carryover on the vendors. So that's, that's a risk that was risky.

And was there a gut thing that was directing you or could you look at the lay of the land and go, I'm willing to bet on this one?

Well, yeah, I mean, we wanted to do this deal right. We obviously didn't think there was any reason why they wouldn't do it, but most people just wouldn't have done it. Of course, they wouldn't even been able to do it. They would have been, they would have felt sick in the stomach with the idea. And I do recall Mary and I, she's my cfo, we did go over to have a meeting with Cisco after we signed the deal, but we hadn't got them completely across the line. I can remember there was a, just a, just a small part in this meeting where I thought for a minute, oh, we're not going to get it. I did feel a bit sick in the stomach there momentarily. But that's what it's like, you know, 100%. And you have to.

You know, if you do those things and you pull them off, you're going to be in good shape. Because we were a distant.

We were a distant sort of number five, four or five in the Australian sort of pecking order and buying express data catapulted us into being able to contend for number one on the commercial side and number three, when you combine them all together in a close, number three. But the other thing was the guys, like, from number four down, they were so far behind then that they were never going to be able to catch up. And you need to consolidate your positions if you want to get an outcome because, you know, that's just the way it is, 100%. So, yeah, that was risky, but, you.

Know.

Is motorsport risky, in your opinion?

Well, sport's not the same as business. Yeah. Like, it's.

It'S, it's, it's, it's different. You know, the.

No, I mean, look, I've, I've only ever played sport for fun. I was never good enough to be able to be a professional sportsman. And to be honest, I wouldn't be real keen on it. Like, my ex stepdaughter was a professional cyclist and she won the Commonwealth Games road race in 2010. She won a lot of World cup road races and World cup on the track and she was second in the World championship on the track twice and all this sort of stuff and. But, you know, she never really got any money out of it. Like, she got a bit of money out of it, but it wasn't a.

A great living. You got to be in one of those, you know, sports that really kick ass to make real money. But the thing about it is that I still make more money than almost every professional sportsman in the world, just on a yearly basis. So it's just a different type of business.

Is your sport.

Well, the other thing about it is they've all got a short lifespan.

Yes.

And once they're out, you know, they're out.

They can become irrelevant quite quickly and they struggle to find an identity outside of the sport.

Well, you know, look, I.

I played cricket as a kid and I've always followed the Australian cricket team and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, we used to go to computer industry guys, organize functions with cricket all the time. And you go out there and you see some of these guys that, you know, when you were younger and you thought, wow, these guys are great. But now they're like 40 or 50 and it's like, oh, God. And of course, you know, none of them have really got any money. Well, and, you know, like, yeah, the one thing about business is that you can keep doing it no matter what. Whereas as a professional sportsman, you know, by the, you know, if you can get to 40, you're doing exceptionally well.

And I see athletes, I spend a lot of time with different athletes, and they get joy and fulfillment from it. How much joy and fulfillment do you get from business?

Well, I've always said to guys that it's.

It'S very much like sport, but you don't have to win to be successful. And that's the real difference. The problem with professional sport is if you're not winning, it's not very satisfying. You might be getting money, but if you're, if you're, you know, say you're a professional tennis player and you ranked 10th or 20th or 50th in the world, you're not going to win a lot of tournaments. And so there's not going to be a lot of satisfying moments. And as well, you're going to face, you know, if you're going up against Federer or something, you know you're going to lose. Chances are, you know, you might pull off a miracle win once every 20. You know what I mean? So there's a lot of, there's a lot of downside there. Whereas in business, it's not like that because the competition isn't, isn't as is harshly, you know, applied. So if you're successful and you make money, that's it. That's it, that's a success. And it's not like we compete against the other guys. I mean, in our particular industry, we do make more money than any of our competitors because we have better strategies and we implement them better. But that isn't actually relevant. We don't get any reward for that other than, you know, some perverse satisfaction. But it's. So it's a different game. It's a, it's really a lot better because.

It can be very satisfying without you having to be the best. And let's face it, I mean, business is so big. I mean, computer industry is one of the biggest industries in the world and we're a reasonably significant player in Australia, but that's all. Australia is a very small market and this one's even smaller because we have an operation here as well. So you're never going to get the sort of worldwide recognition that, you know, a big shot sportsman would get. But then again, do you really want it? Probably not. You know, no, I agree. Like it's, you know, even I get sort of recognized by dudes from time to time and it's okay. But if it was happening all the time, you'd start to get a bit tired of it because you sort of, unless you're a real outgoing type of person, which I'm not, it'd soon get rather oppressive and sort of, you know, and all that stuff. So.

No, I'm with you 100%. And with Roden, what's the passion? What are you trying to achieve with Roden?

Well, I really started this project because I wanted to build a car quicker than the Formula one.

So what are we talking in terms of miles or kilometers per hour?

Well, lap times.

Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Racing cars are all judged on lap times and really we've sort of got a bit sidetracked on that. But I'm, I'm gonna pull in a small team of guys to get back on right back onto that. I mean, that, that car out there is our sort of prototype for this project and we've got a build a Mark 2 version of that and press that ahead because that's always what I wanted to do.

And in terms of you've got a lot of young talent I can see connected with Roden that are racing all around the world. So a couple that come to mind is Liam Lawson, you've got Louis Sharp. What's your hopes in terms of Roden and their journey?

Well, our connection with Liam is a little bit tenuous. I mean, it's mostly financial. I put more money into his, his career than Red Bull, but he's contracted to Red Bull and they get all the upside and. And really, I wasn't really looking for any real upside anyway. And with Louis, I mean, look, I just thought the kid was fast because, you know, we tested him here and he's a nice kid and.

So we just sort of thought, well, you know, why don't we see what the kid can do? I mean, hopefully he gets to Formula one, but there's no.

It'S not a commercial venture in that we're going to get anything out of it. If he gets to F1, we might get our money back. That'll be about the best you could hope for. And if he doesn't, well, we. And it's expensive, you know, like, he's.

He done GB3 this year and I think the seat's £440,000. And even though he's running in my own team, we, we run it arm's length commercial, so I'm paying the 440,000.

Wow.

So. And that's only, you know, domestic British F3, like the, the international F3 seats about 1.3 million euros, and the F2 seat is over 2.

So this rules out so many young people. The access is almost impossible for most youngsters.

Yeah, basically.

Wow. Do you think that could ever change? Is that a model that could ever change or. The nature of the sport is that.

Motor racing's always been expensive. I mean, look, I was keen on it when I was a kid, but I couldn't afford it. I couldn't even think about affording it because the only motor racing you could do, like on a wage, is carts. And, you know.

If you want to move up in cars, you got to be out of carts by the time you're 12, 13, 14. Yeah. Otherwise you're not going to, you know, you're not going to be on the ladder to get up. So, yeah, it's very expensive and that won't really change. And the FIA doesn't do a thing to make it less expensive, despite the fact they're always talking about making it less expensive, but they constantly make it more expensive. So, no, it'll never be cheap. And the other issue is that.

Their sort of baseline approach is to get big manufacturers into motorsport. They're not really interested in sort of club sport or teams that are just motorsport teams like, say, Williams. They're only interested in manufacturing teams. That's where, like, you know, Mercedes is their favourite because they've got. Mercedes has got so much money that the money they spend on the F1 team, even before the, you know, the budget cap stuff came in with such a small percentage of their budget and had such good marketing gains that they could write that off with that, if you're giving it a second thought. But, you know, like, it's way out of the. The realm of almost anyone else, especially an individual. So, no, it'll never change.

Do you see rhoden being in F1 at some point?

No.

Why not?

Because they won't let you in. We tried to get in. You know, we. We applied when, you know, Andretti applied and we flew over to Switzerland and we did a presentation and we put the whole presentation together here in about two weeks from start to finish, which was an absolutely herculean effort.

We spent €300,000 with them just on application fees. And.

They were never going to let us in, even though we said we were going to put a woman in one of the seats and we were going to do this and we were going to do that. And I reckon we had a better bid than Andretti from a technical standpoint, but they were never going to do it. And the fact that they didn't even let Andretti in makes you realize how strongly opposed they are to new teams, because that's a major mistake. So I couldn't imagine us ever getting into F1.

Do you. Did you get feedback from them as the way.

You know, they dealing with the fi is like dealing with the government. So of course you do. You get an inch of paper back.

But, you know, but it makes sense there's anything valuable in it that you could action, or is it?

Not really. I mean.

No, because they, they. Look.

We didn't represent what they wanted, so if you don't represent what they want, you've got very little chance of getting in there. Andretti doesn't represent what they wanted.

What do they want?

They want a big manufacturer.

Right.

They'd like to say, like, if Toyota rang them up tomorrow and said, oh, look, we want to come in in 2026, they'd make it happen. Because they're the sort of companies that, you know, were Nissan, you know, any big company that's not in it, that's what they want. That's their vision for motorsport is it's all big manufacturers.

It's money, it's dollars and cents. What do you think is potentially the risk for Formula one, for racing by then, taking that approach and not letting a company like Rodent in?

Realistically, it's low. Yeah, because they've got a good Product. People like it. It's got worldwide. Look, their only real risk would be if someone started up a competitive thing. And I was actually going to do it.

A thing based around drivers. You build a car quicker than a current F1, which is not tremendously hard, and then you run a series with, you know, all the cars are the same and we'll find out who the best driver is. And I think if you ran something like that for five or 10 years, you could kill Formula One.

Well, you look at the Live Tour, that caused a bit of an uproar, but that was actually, I think, a good thing in many ways to create some change. So that could happen in this industry as well.

Oh, it will happen. And the thing about it is the incumbents always lose. Remember World Series cricket? Packer. Yep. Super League in Sydney.

The Indy car.

The breakaway guys. And if it won the IndyCar war, the breakaway guys nearly always win because the incumbents always think they can't be beaten and that they. They've got a real solid position and they do nothing until it's just too late and they're screwed.

Yeah, that complacency. Right. And do you think there's any way that you could collaborate with an existing manufacturer to get in and be a part of.

Well, I suppose you could, but I'm not really a collaborative sort of guy. I like to have my own way.

Fair.

And I just, you know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't enjoy that, you know, because once you get into that, that corporate thing, you deal with people that have just got different, completely different mindsets about how to go about things. And look, I'll give. I'll give you a good example.

If I've got a problem that I want to solve, I'll try to read up on it and figure out something myself. But most people I know, that's not what they do. What they would do is try to find someone who's already solved that problem and get them to solve it for them. And. But so that is a completely different philosophical approach.

Yeah.

So, you know, I'm not going to work well with that. And that's the approach that most people take, because that's just the way it is. They'd rather just get someone else to solve it for them than solve it themselves. And then build a base of knowledge from solving the problem.

Yeah. And I think there's this instant gratification nowadays where we want things instantly and we would rather pay someone for it or download the app or chatgpt it, but you think there's value in still going slower and actually gathering data, questioning things, reasoning things.

Well, the real problem you've got is if you get someone else to solve all your problems, you're still a child. That's what your parents do when you're a kid. You don't, you don't actually get, you don't gain any knowledge. And if you don't gain knowledge, you're not going to basically grow as a person in any way. So, you know, it's a real bad approach. But the real issue is, is that the attitude is I will go to university, get a degree, probably doesn't really matter too much what it's in, but just as long as you got one, you don't have to learn another thing for the rest of your life and you'll just, you know. And you know, to me that's just garbage, isn't it? And it's not effective because.

You know, knowledge goes out of date, especially in technical fields. So if you don't stay up to date, you're very quickly off the. Off the. And look, you know, I've got engineers in that here, obviously, and.

None of the engineers we had, especially in the early going, probably now, none of them were interested in Formula one. Even though we're building racing cars, none of them subscribe to the racing car technical magazines, which I've been reading for like, you know, 20, 30 years. So how are they ever going to increase their knowledge? Because they don't come at it from that point of view. They come, they come at it from, oh, well, I'll find someone else to solve it, point of view. So in that, with that approach, there's no need to learn anything else. But the problem you've got is that.

What'S your value? You've got no value. Yeah, so I like what I like.

And what I'm hearing is that you go deep, you find something that you're passionate about, whatever it might be, and you go really deep researching it, questioning it. That's not the usual approach.

Well, the problem you've got is that, look, you can't do everything yourself, but if you don't have a basic understanding of all the stuff that you're involved with, you won't be able to manage the guys that you do hire to do it. Because, look, you can't manage people to do a job that you can't do or that you don't know anything about because for some starters, they quickly pick up on that and give you no respect and you, you can't see where they're screwing it up. And, and so if you don't have a, a pretty deep understanding. Look, I remember talking to Fiona when we'd been only been in the business for, I don't know, five or 10 years and telling her that if she didn't learn more things, all she'd ever be was a salesman. Well, she never learned more things and, and so she didn't, you know, grow in, in that way. And like I said, when I wanted to do the public float, I read up about it to find out what had to be done and what was required. I didn't just go to some guy and say, I want to become a public company, I'll leave it to you because I just don't like, I like to know what's going on. So. And it's the same with all, you know, all this sort of stuff. I mean, I'm interested in it and I like to be involved in it. And you can't.

You can't, you can't work if you don't have a basic understanding. Because, look, everyone you meet's not right. People up all the time, regularly, and especially if when they're in sort of.

No, no responsibility positions. I mean, look, let's face it, how many people get fired from their job from incompetence? Very few. Even though obviously there's. Incompetence is with us every day of the week. But I mean, in Australia and here, you can't even fire someone for incompetence. Now, you know, like if I had someone and they just up something, I can't even just say, well, you're fired. Even if it might be something that cost us 100 grand.

So.

And they all know that, even if only subconsciously so takes away any, any requirement to really, you know, there's no, there's no downside if they screw up. And if there's no downside for you to screw up, you've got very little incentive to, to have to perform because you're going to get paid and that's it.

Do you have to find a way? Because what you're doing at road in is very high performance and obviously the people that you have that are doing things with the car and all the things that go with it are very skilled. But is there a way that you lead them or you have leaders within the team that inspire them to aim for high performance, aim for 1% better every day.

Well, they never take much notice of what I say, so I don't know who's doing it. It's one of the issues I have here. You know, like, I designed the F0 myself. You know, I did the whole thing on computer and.

And I. I hired guys to sort of basically implement it, and.

They sort of redesigned virtually the whole car because they thought that they could do it better and they didn't, and so it wasn't great, you know.

Back of the drawing board.

Well, we, we learn a lot from the car we got now, and obviously I've learned a lot from all the bits there. But, yeah, I started with a whole new CAD model based on it, based on the ideas, but all new. And we will. The car will be the same concept, but, yeah, it'll be a whole new car.

Incredible. And a question for you around Formula one, do you think a Kiwi could win the work, the World Championship?

Oh, yeah. All you gotta do is find one quick enough. No issue at all.

What's the obstacles that could be in the way for a young Kiwi that's watching this maybe gone, hey, I'd like to be that person.

Well, first of all, they've got to be born with a huge amount of talent, because being quick in motor racing is mostly about talent. You can't learn to be fast, you can't. You can do all the mileage in under the sun, but if you haven't got the basic talent, you're still not going to get there. It's like any sport, you know, you've got to have a lot of talent and you need to work hard, but if you don't have talent, you're going to struggle. So they need talent.

They need mileage. That means getting into karts early on, so you can get the feel, because it's that feel that's the talent. You can probably develop it to some extent at a young age. It's much harder as you get older. And then they've got to find some way of moving up the ladder. And that means winning races and coming to the attention of people that got enough money to keep sending them up the ladder. That's really what it comes down to, because, like I said, it's expensive. Yeah. And. And those costs I'm talking about, that's just the seat cost.

That's not all the extras, the travel. Travel, the accommodation.

Flying from New Zealand to the UK is halfway around the world, so you can't fly any further. So the flying's expensive and accommodation is expensive and it's expensive.

100.

And the other issue, of course, is that, you know, the European and UK guys are going to fundamentally favor their own guys because that's just human nature. So for a New Zealand kid to get into F1, he's got to be very, very good. But you know, I mean, I've still got a lot of faith in Louis and look, Liam, he's done it. Yeah. So it's definitely possible, you know, and I mean, look, Red Bull made a, made a huge mistake not putting him in the seat this year.

This was the time in terms of his trajectory and his age and his time talent to get him in.

Well, look, Ricardo's a guy with a limited future. He's a nice guy, very affable.

Yeah. Very friendly and funny.

He's got a limited future because you only, you can see that from his, his history. It doesn't matter what anyone says about it. So he's got a limited future, so why put him in the seat? And.

Sinead is a Honda guy, so they're getting money from Honda and he's going to aston Martin in 26. So I would, I would have put Liam in head of either of those guys. And then Perez, well, I mean, Jesus, like you got to go half a second to let off his teammate and you know, like it's, I mean Perez just barely won the, came second last year. And if you, if you look at it from a different standpoint, despite how good Verstappen and the Red Bull was last year, if Verstappen wasn't in the, in the, in the whole thing, Lewis Hamilton would have been world champion because even though Perez ended up beating him by a couple of points at the end, if Hamilton was in, in a couple of points of a sniff of winning the championship, he would have won it because he's just better than Perez. So that gives you an idea how important the driver is.100%. So why are they sort of battling on with these guys that they know don't have any real future when they can try someone else is just beyond me.

Yeah. And I think that takes a lot of confidence to take a risk. In their minds, their appetite for risk and investing in the youth might not be right where it needs to be. Time will tell.

If I'd have been Red Bull, I would have taken Bottas. Yeah, he would have been the ideal number two. He's quicker than Perez and he's a much better teammate and he would have been a much better bet in my mind than Perez. But my understanding, which could be wrong is that again, Perez brings money. But for a team like Red Bull to even consider that I think is weak No, I agree.

It says a lot about leadership or lack thereof.

Agree.

Now David, I want to be mindful of your time. I've got one last question that I always like to leave to the end. So if you and I were to fast forward many years into the future, you are highly aware that it's your last day here on earth. Someone very young came into the room, someone who you cared dearly about and they said, hey David, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

Who knows? That's never going to happen. Young kids think old people don't know shit.

But do they?

Oh well, no, most of them don't. I mean, look, most old people are just young people that got old. That's the reality, you know, like it's. And look, when you reach 50, you just become invisible. You can see it in the supermarket, you know, and then just the. In general life. So.

No, look, I. Look.

The only advice I'd give anyone who wants to get somewhere is that you've got to have a commitment bordering on obsession. And if you do, if you have that and you've got, especially in business and you'll only need a modicum of talent, if you've got that commitment, you will succeed. Because while the other guys are doing that work, life balance stuff, you know, barbecues on the weekend, getting married, having three kids, spending, you know, those guys who. Look, Fiona and I work seven days a week for 15 years. Wow.

Like she'd do all the work, she'd just do a normal work during the week and then on the weekend we, we had a printing press and she used to print brochures and I used to just do stuff, you know, so, you know, we used to.

Leave for work at 7 o' clock in the morning and get home at 8 or 9 o' clock at night, you know, all during the weekdays and then on the weekends we'd take it easy by maybe getting to work a little bit later and knocking off in time to go to my parents joint for dinner at 6 o' clock and we watching the football, you know, so when you've got that level of commitment you just pull ahead of the other guys and after a few years you're so far ahead they just can't catch up. And that's, you know, and even now, I mean, look.

You know, I don't let any day go by without doing all me mails and all that kind of stuff. And you just, you've got to have the commitment to do whatever's got to be done and that's it. And you can't just. And sometimes it's a bit of a drag, you know, like it's. But if you want to succeed, that's what you're going to need to do. Because, look, business is just competition and that means beating the other guy. It doesn't really matter what you do. In absolute terms, it's just being better than the other guys. If you're better than the other guys, you'll succeed, even if. If you're technically quite crap. So really they're the two things, you know, you got to compete and you got to be committed. Most people just won't make that level.

Of commitment and that's why it's not easy to win. But when you talk to people who are at the top of their game, they say, well, it's actually not that hard. You just stay committed, you stay the game and you go hard for a long time.

When you move into, look, the deck of data, we're in such a strong position. Position in terms of, you know, the vendor portfolios that vendors come to us now, of course, it was always the other way around.

You were only bound, reaching. Now it's inbound.

Yeah. And you're in such a strong position that you can only lose it by screwing up. As long as you perform, the other guys just can't do anything about it. So, you know, once you're in that strong position, you just, you just keep doing it and very difficult for anyone to get ahead. Great advice.

Well, David, thanks a million for joining us and creating the space today and I'd love to have a wee look around if I have a few minutes, but thanks a million.

Yeah. Go beauty.

Cheers.

Thank you.

This episode of the Lead On Purpose podcast is proudly sponsored by NZ Mortgages. You can check them out at nzmortgages Co NZ.