Leadership, Stoicism, and Franchising Wisdom with Michael O’Driscoll

I learned the power of creativity in problem solving and that you had to take a risk to be creative. And what you were doing is inviting your clients to go with you on that journey of risk.

And we're live. Michael o'. Driscoll.

Jeff Duden.

How are you?

I am well.

Awesome. Awesome to be on with you today. So what's going on, Michael? What are you up to?

Well, I'm sitting here in Charlotte, North Carolina, this lovely sunny day, waiting for spring to get here and reflecting on the week that was another gigantic week. But that's what we like.

It's exciting. It's an exciting life, isn't it?

It is. Particularly if you are in the. The act of building something. My favorite pastime.

Yes. I, I had a great coach and he would say he's looking for people that are up to something and going somewhere.

Up to something and going somewhere.

Yeah. That always makes life so rich. Well, so Michael, I, I'm so excited to. You have been an incredible mentor to me over the last couple of years that we've had the opportunity to work together. Your life story is fascinating. You, you are a well traveled entrepreneur, executive, You've been all over the world. You have a deep understanding of cricket, which I have not fully come to appreciate.

I don't think I have either.

If I could just package up all of the things that you shared with me over the last couple of years, it would be hours of, of meaningful and exciting things. And so would you mind, for anybody who's dared to join us today, just maybe unpack a little bit about who you are and where you're from and, and, and a little bit of your life's journey.

Well, firstly, thank you. Very kind words. Much appreciated. I never think that of myself, interestingly enough. It's not a low self esteem issue. It's just not something that I necessarily covet. But the idea of being of help to people is a very motivating thing for me and I, I do enjoy that. So where am I from? That's a good question. I am indeed from Australia. I was born in the city of Brisbane in the great state of Queensland, which is a tropical northern state of Australia. Some people in Australia refer to Queenslanders as banana benders. I still don't know why, but they do. Banana bender and banana bend.

Are they straight somewhere?

I don't know. There's many connotations in that description that I've never been comfortable with. Or otherwise known as mad as cut snakes, Queenslanders because it's the, it's the Hot humid weather that does it to them. So that's, that's where I'm from. I'm the eldest of three in, in my family. I have a brother and a sister. Mum and dad are Patricia and Brian. Pretty normal story. Working class parents who worked very hard, had children when they were very young and left school when they were very early and became self made people. Largely their story is one of struggle, but struggle for all the right reasons and you know, people I deeply respect and you know, that largely responsible for getting me to where I am today. Frankly, like all grateful people, it's important to thank one's parents. So we always thank one's parents for what they've done and. But yeah, I grew up in Queensland, went to a Catholic boys college again, a very humble college. It was run by Franciscan friars, one of the great missionary orders. If you're into Catholicism, you'll know who they are. Learned a great deal from those guys. Funny bunch. Had intentions of going to university but never got there in the end. Actually went and worked for my father who was the founder and ran Australia's largest residential building franchise in the 1980s. So there is a long thread of, in my career of franchise business models and it largely all started there.

Well, it's a good place to pick it up. Now as an American and admittedly not as well traveled as I would like to be, we have a certain view of Australia which I have shared with you is very positive. A big country, lots of wild spaces, lots of ways to die over there.

Oh, millions of wallets.

Shared some stories with me about putting some fences in in the desert and you know, every crew had to have a shotgun because they had these snakes that were so fast and so aggressive that it was, you know, it's like a video game. When you unearth one of these snakes, you've got a certain number of seconds to protect yourself.

But zombie snakes, they just come at you.

Yeah. So what's it like growing up in an environment like that? And I guess as a follow up, man, what's it like growing up in, you know, a country where you've got so much wildlife and stuff? I mean, were you exposed to that or were you more of an urban guy?

Oh yeah, look, I was a city kid, but yeah, I have friends that own many what we call cattle stations in Australia. What would be called a ranch in, or a ranch in the U.S. look, Australians are very unique. It's a unique place with a unique people. Right. So it's probably one of the most culturally and racially divergent places on Earth. It's also one of the most ancient places on Earth. So the original inhabitants of Australia, the Aboriginal people, as far as they can tell, there is a continual line of them that goes back something like 40 or 50,000 years. They lived in isolation for so long, sometimes they're described as the most, well, the oldest, but in some respects the most primitive is a word that people use, but that's not the word that they would use, obviously. So it is indeed a incredibly remote and wild place. It's down the bottom of the world. It's, you know, even if you go on my plane, it takes a long time to get there. But when you think about how Australia was actually founded and the character, it sort of speaks to the character of the nation, how it got to where it is today. I mean, it's a former British colony. It was founded as a convict settlement by the Brits in 1788. The first ships came in the first fleet, led by Captain Arthur Phillip, who became the governor of the colony of New South Wales, where Sydney is. And basically, I think it was five ships full of convicts and soldiers. Right. So can you imagine that environment? You know, you got a map from a guy called Captain Cook who turned up in 1770 and he said, it's somewhere over there. And get it, get in a couple of ships and spend God knows how long getting there. Probably a year or more getting there. The disease and the agony of that journey would have been incredible.

Right.

Just that era of the world, that great exploratory era, fascinates me actually, how they just got in ships with not exactly a clue of where they're going and got there not knowing that they were there. So Australia was built as a convict or a penal colony and it kind of speaks to the character of the nation now. Right? So if you met the average Australian, they're a little bit anti authoritarian, you know, they're, they're a little bit like cynical and skeptical of authority.

Is that where the ruggedness comes from?

Yeah, and look, they had to do it all on their own. I mean, those supply ships from the UK would take months and sometimes years to get there.

So they were just dropped off. Literally just dropped off, man.

You're done.

There you go. You've misbehaved. And as a result of that, we're going to, we're going to put you on this country. Yeah.

And look, the British should run the world's biggest empire for nothing, right? They knew how to do things, usually in a pretty bloody fashion, but they knew how to do things and the character of the nation is built on that. A lot of people will comment that Australia is an incredible experiment that shouldn't have worked. If you think about all of the things that were stacked against establishing any kind of settlement there, that it grows into this incredibly wealthy and well respected country. It's not perfect by any means, but you know, I, I get a warm welcome literally everywhere I go when the accent tumbles out of the mouth and people say, are you from Australia? It's a very privileged place to be, frankly. But most Australia is pretty resilient a lot. They're very culturally diverse, right? We have massive Asian community, massive Eastern and southern European communities. We have people from all over the world. Look at Australia, it's been a nation built just like many others in the modern world on immigration. It is obscenely minerally wealthy. Some of the biggest mining companies in the world are based, started in Australia. Bhp, Rio Tinto, these types of names that are known all around the world for their global mining operations had humble beginnings in Australia and Australia has benefited greatly from its mineral wealth, like just vast. It's mind boggling the wealth that has been created in Australia. So it's, you know, it's a small nation, it's like 25 million people. It's a big bloody desert in the middle and then people live around the coastline, right? So like 98% of Australians live within 100km of the coastline probably, right? So it's, it's that very high standard of education there. You know, there are hard working people in my experience, whether they're the, the blue collar worker or the white collar professional or the small business owner, particularly hard working people. But there is a wonderful informality to all of that which goes to the heart of our slightly anti authoritarian sort of state. There's an old saying, you know, if you think about the alliance with America, which is a very long standing one, probably one of the longest alliances in modern political history. Australians, you know, started their modern identity, some people will say, on the shores of Gallipoli and Turkey in the, in the First World War where Australian and New Zealand troops, often referred to as the Anzacs, was led into battle in Gallipoli in World War I. It was a disaster of a campaign, it was just a retreat, right? They just got wiped by the Turks and it kind of forged a certain type of national character that still sort of carries on today as being these stoic, resilient, hard fighting people. We won't start the fight, but if you need a Hand to finish the fight. We might step in and give you a hand.

Well, I'm a World War II, World War I buff. I find myself as I get older, reading more biographies and watching more documentaries and really trying to understand, you know, I love an eight part on something that, that talks the five years before something happened and what are all the factors that went into it.

Yeah.

And observationally, Australians show up in those situations like whatever. If you've only got 25 million people, I don't know what the armed forces look like. But you're always there and you're always part of it. So, you know, maybe that's part of the positive connotation that is conferred upon it. But, you know, Crocodile Dundee didn't hurt.

No, that helps. That helps. Paul, Paul Huggin did a great, great service for Australia. You know, it's a, it's a good thing. He's an example of how an Australian can do well. Right. He started off as a. What did he do? He worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge maintenance crew. Seriously, in this, in the 70s, late 60s, early 70s. Right. He, you know, and he was a bit of a laconic, funny character around there and I can't remember the story, but he broke into television somehow as a, as a comedian and as you know, because you like your comedy in the 1970s, most comedy was pretty, by the modern standards, utterly inappropriate. Yeah. And he, he built up a very big following on evening television in Australia and made his name there. Right. And then got into the whole Crocodile Dundee thing. But he, very humble beginning working class guy on the maintenance crew of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, running up and down that, over that thing, keeping it, keeping it going and then just by sheer weight of personality and probably ambition, got into television and, you know, got to where he is, is today. So he's a, he's had his fair share of controversy, Paul, over the years, but he's still, I think, a much loved figure in the sense of someone who probably defines the larrikin side of the, of the Australian character.

Well, I, I think if you, if you look at a lot of people that have become notorious and maybe well, well liked and they, they're out on the edge a little bit and he certainly was personally and professionally out there. So a life lived well, for sure.

Oh, yeah, no, I'd say is, I'd say that is true. And you know, Australia, again, coming back to the idea of it as an experiment, I do think it's important because it does define me somewhat. Right. So it's not so much I'm proud to be Australian, but I'm proud about what it has given me and the opportunity that it's afforded me. It was a safe place to grow up. Even though every animal was trying to kill you, it's, it's still, it's still a safe place to grow up. What's that stat like 8 of the top 10 most poisonous snakes in the world are in Australia?

Absolutely.

Something crazy like that. Probably most of the spiders as well. But it's a place that just is. It was safe to grow up. You had a good standard of education, you lived an outdoor lifestyle. So people generally were very healthy. And it's still to this day is still like that. Like any modern nation, it's got its fair share of problems, but in terms of the possibilities that it afforded people, it's been vast and I'm very appreciative of it.

So are people immigrating today or are people more emigrating?

No, I think, you know, there is a very large group of Australians that have moved and live around the world. You know, there's many, There'd be well over a hundred thousand people, Australians living permanently in the United States, you know, or converted to American citizenship in the 50s and 60s. People looking for adventure. 1950s and 60s would head to England, get back to the motherland.

Yeah.

And for that more cosmopolitan lifestyle they thought. Right. Because 50s and 60s England was a really interesting place to be. Just like the United States Post World War II, getting out of that the doldrums of the Second World War and when respective economies really started to take off and you know, the younger people were, were getting old that were born at the end of World War II. You know, it's, it was, it would have been an exciting time. So many of Australia's great artists and writers and journalists ended up in the uk. Yeah, the arts, yeah. The answer these days they tend to get to the United States in my opinion. And I do think whilst the Australians can be a bit derogatory about certain cultures, more in jest than anything else, you know, like we commonly. Which Americans hate Americans are commonly referred to as Yanks in the United States, in Australia, even though that's a northern term technically. Right. You're a Yankee. People in the south might not fully appreciate that, but it's, it's. They were just commonly referred to Yanks but there's a healthy respect for that long standing alliance and the cross cultural exchange that has existed that is both in the arts, sport and business and politically of course. Right. There is a Great sharing of an exchange of ideas and thoughts. I think. Whilst China might be Australia's largest trading partner, America I think is Australia's largest investment partner. And there's quite a distinction. Yeah, those things. So that and I, I've always wanted to live and work in the United States but it's always been a place that has attracted me. It's got a lot of, just again like any other modern nation, it's got a lot of kooky stuff going on but you know, from the political to the social. But it's, it's still a great place to live, work if you want to be successful in something. It's a, it's a good market to come and be successful in if you want to be.

Opportunity abounds. Which leads me to something I'd love to unpack a little bit. You grew up in an entrepreneurial family, your father and mother owning the largest residential home building franchise I think in Australia and New Zealand, if I'm correct, you were the firstborn. So I'm interested to know what that was like for you and how that shaped you because you've had a diverse career, a successful career and I'd love to understand what was great and challenging about that.

Yeah, I think my father, he was a self made man. Right. He left school, I think. Oh, the stories range from 12 to 14. I can never tell which one's right. But it's, it's, it's about 12 to 14. He was a pretty bright guy and I. Fuck. If you indulge me a minute, I'll just give you a little background story there. He, he was the second oldest of six or seven kids, right. Very poor family. My grandparents were not wealthy people. My grandfather was a jeweler and a self taught artist. A little bit of Alaric and himself. These are depression era people, right. So that as you know, shaped a lot of that era very much in terms of their stoicism, their approach to money and family and all those types of things. So dad grew up, he left basically because I think he just had to provide for the family. He was of an age where he could go and work. Right. There weren't as many rules about how old you could be before you could go and work back then. Right. So he just jumped ship and work and dad was, he's a pretty tough guy and he, he didn't have any designs on being a builder then or had no idea what franchising was. So he just sort of staggered from one job to the next, whatever it was, you know. That he could get a job, provided he ended up sleeping rough in Sydney, you know, for a period of time because he couldn't afford any accommodation. So he used to travel around, trying his luck, basically.

So sleeping. Sleeping rough means you're homeless?

Yeah. You're homeless, Basically. Yeah. He just didn't have the money to get a hotel room. He didn't know anyone. So he'd spend a couple of nights on the streets in Sydney. He was a. He was a pretty knockabout sort of guy, right. And he found him. He was actually pretty good at selling jobs. So he got involved in all kinds of selling jobs. One of my favorite ones, he was selling American fire extinguishers for a while in the late 60s or in the mid-60s. And he was a young man and he met some famous American guy who sold these fire extinguishers, came to Australia. Dad had to drive him around in a company car or something, taking him to appointments. And he tells this really funny story how this guy would be really dressed up and he was really articulate and, you know, he was wearing gold. Obviously very successful. He had the American accent, was all very slick. And they were selling these fire extinguishers, right? Which was literally door to door sales. That's what it was. Dad's driving him around. This guy's just. Every time he pulled up at a set of traffic lights, this guy just rolled the window down. Remember the old hand winding window? He'd look out the window and just start smiling at the person in the car next to her, you know, like just smiling away, nodding, like this. The other person smiling back. And I think after the third or fourth stop, dad had to ask him, like, what are you doing? He said, I'm practicing my smile to.

See if he could get people to smile back.

Back, get the greeting going and start the whole sales process. And so this intrigued dad.

Only slightly creepy.

Yeah, it's only slightly creepy, right. I wouldn't do it. Now, someone might sort of take. Take great offense to that.

Smiles are universal.

Yeah, they are. It's a great. It's a great doorbuster, really. And then dad ended up in all kinds of things. He was what turned him on to building. And the whole thing about new steel homes is what the business was called, Nu Steel. It was the idea of prefabricated construction. So new steel was steel wall and roof, wall frames and roof trusses made in a factory with a sales office out the front. That was the franchise model. If you wanted to get it built by someone, you could either Be an owner, builder, or you could have it built by someone. So that was the model. Right. And then it would be delivered in stages, prepaid.

Did they manufacture on site or did you have.

Yeah, the wall frames and trusses would be manufactured on site.

So they would assemble them. Yep, got it.

Every, every factory, every franchise was a little manufacturing plant out the back and a sales office out the front.

Nice.

And then what dad got into was he actually was got into a crew that was building coal rooms for funeral homes and he would travel around outback Queensland, often sleeping in the funeral home because they didn't want to spend money on a hotel. Imagine that, sleeping at a funeral.

They have, they do have some comfy beds.

They do, yeah.

As long as the lid doesn't close.

Yeah, as long as the lid doesn't get stuck. Yes.

You're good.

Yeah. Can anyone hear me knocking? There was, but. So he, he got onto this idea because the cold rooms were prefabricated construction, so the walls were made in a factory. They were actually light gauge steel frame walls with insulation in them. And then the guys would get shipped to a site and the guys would assemble them and move on to the next town, the next funeral home and where they go. That sparked something in his head. And then he started getting into construction. And then in the 70s, steel frame construction was around in Australia and he started working for the manufacturers back then. He got to like foreman, right. So they're welded together in a factory and dad got to foreman at some point. He just had this burning ambition to be better, to provide for his family and be better. And he was a thinker, right? So he spent time thinking about things and he read, he educated himself, right? He, he was always into guys like Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie and he turned us on to that Think and Grow Rich and how to win friends and influence people. You know, classic books for self development. And he was well into them very early on and passed them to my brother and I. And you know, when I started working for him in the 80s, we'd find these names started to come across my test. Tom Hawkins, Zig Ziglar, these types of things. And dad was always into learning because he had to learn. He had to teach himself in order to be better, to provide for his family. That was, that was just his thing. So that absolutely rubbed off on me, this idea of being always inquisitive, always learning, always listening, always focusing on the quality of your output and your ability to get on with others. Right. And give everyone a fair go.

When did you first, get into Stoicism, because I know that you are a. I don't know if it's appropriate to say you are a Stoic, but I notice in your approach and also declaratively that you borrow heavily from the Stoics. So when is that something that was in your family? You said your father was stoic.

He was. Right. Because his life is a story of continuous setback, frankly, like many other stories, right. It was always set back. He had business partners die on him and businesses fold. He had business partners to fraud him. You know, he was put in hospital by the union movement in the early 80s. You know, there's all kinds of terrible stories I could share with you, but he. He never allowed defeat to beat him. That's one of the elements of Stoicism. Stoicism talks about the ability to be resilient. Right, but in. But in a. In a good way, in a positive way. Some people use defeat in a more vengeful way, in my opinion. But Stoicism I've always been interested in. I didn't know it was Stoicism when I was looking at going through experiences with dad. It was later in life that I started to get really interested in the whole idea of philosophy. Not as an academic pursuit, but as a way to explain the world around me and my place in it and how I wanted to live in that world. There's an English Belgian author by the name of Alan de Botton who modernized philosophical understanding in the 2000s. And he. He wrote a great book called the Consolations of Philosophy and with humor reintroduced classical philosophy. Philosophy to modern. The modern world. Right now I really sunk my teeth into it. And there's lots of different schools of philosophy, if you will, but Stoicism is one. But Stoicism is one of the most ancient. You know, it's one of the ancient Greek philosophies attributed to Zeno, most famously promoted by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor.

Right.

But what does it really. It talks about virtue, the pursuit of virtue. And what is virtue? Virtue is wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. Four things that if you really want to have a good life, it's about managing the mind. And if you can manage the mind, then you can live a good life. And by theory, that is virtuous. So that doesn't mean you have to be a religious person. You don't need to be pious, you don't need to lack emotion. You know, it's not being emotionless. It's. It's about managing those emotions and being the King or queen of your mind. And that is not something, frankly, that humans do generally very well. I like to try and practice stoicism in my everyday life, but I can tell you, just like anything else, it requires great discipline, it's very hard, and humans generally just aren't good at that stuff on a consistent basis. So it's a great thing to fall back on. It's a framework for living, is the way I say it. Do I get it right all the time? Absolutely not. Am I a deeply flawed human being completely? Can I fall back on stoicism to help me make sense of what's going around me, clear my head of clutter, make better decisions, try and strive to be a bit better every day? Because it's more like incrementalism rather than dramatic change, then. Yeah, that's why I embrace it. I could have embraced anything. If you can elevate your practice of it, then I do think you live a virtuous life. That again, that is not pious, but is one that people would look back on and say, well, that was a life well led. This was a good person to be around. And net. Net, they did better than most other people.

You know, that decision making and discernment is a, is a buzzword for me in my life. And, and it is really about making principled, intentional, grounded decisions with some basis by which, or a lens or basis that you are, you know, you are, you are laying this against to decide, is this the best decision that I can make for the people that I care the most about around me? As you said, wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. Those are words that could be deeply unpacked. But I, but I'm fascinated by it. So would you say that then your life philosophy is stoicism? You know, maybe, maybe it's time to get into like a little bit of your journey because we're in Australia. You went to work back for your father when you were 18 years old. You had a variety of, of jobs and, and exciting stories and event, I'm going to say adventures.

They have been, they have been adventures. Yes, they are.

Where you were very adventurous. You weren't, you know, you didn't, you weren't a suburban Chicago kid that, you know, that rolled around, you know, to the candy store and stuff. I mean, you were, you were out in the desert and, and traveling around and doing all these amazing things and, you know, made a, made a lot of money as a young man learning the family business and, and then, and then what, and then, you know, what caused you to Jump on your journey and maybe maybe just run through at a high level kind of the different things that you've done in your life and then, and then maybe how you got from one to the next.

Yeah, sure. In the late 80s or maybe maybe early 90s, can't remember now, dad sold the business. So it had been going really well. I think it was, I think system wide revenue in that franchise model was somewhere around 300, 320 million back then. That was a lot of money.

Wow.

Remembering it's a big ticket item. You know, there were many successful franchisees, very profitable, very happy. Some of those businesses have been bought and sold. Some of those franchisees were turning over 10, 10, 10 to $12 million per annum. You know, great business, won many awards. It was great. So dad sold it with an ambition to take the business global and they chipped away at that for a while. And I'll come back to that story, but I stayed on for a while, which was a little bit uncommon probably for the o' Driscoll name to hang around in that business. But I hung around for a little bit and then I got approached by a guy called Graham Bauer. Graham is an ex television journalist and a very gifted writer. He was providing communications services, so PR services to New Steel at the time and he was instrumental and the creative person behind a lot of the great and first time marketing things that you still did in, in the 80s. Graham and I just hit it off really well. I, I really respected him. He was a fun guy to be around, right. He's, I like the creative people because they live on the edge, right. They look at the world differently and to be creative you have to take risk. And he was just one of those guys and still is one of those guys. He's a much older man now but I went and worked for him and that was an incredible eye opener for me because he had a lot of franchise clients but a lot of other clients and there's a lot of things I learned there. I learned more about client relationship management. It was a B2B model obviously. Right. So it was client relationship management. Most importantly, he taught me how to write. I thought I knew how to write, but this guy knew how to write. So you know, he's, he's the author of many books. He went on actually after he, after he left he sold his business in Australia. He's an interesting guy in his own right. Went to Malaysia and he was the Asia Pacific head of creative for great advertising. You know, he, I think he won three Golden Lion Awards, if you know what they are, they're like the. The pinnacle of international advertising awards. A real raconteur, right? He could just come up with poetry on the spot. He was that kind of guy, right? And I've always admired that type of thing because I can never remember a joke, right? And the jokes I can remember are ones that aren't worth repeating. So I had a great run with him. Lots of franchise clients in a creative environment. I learned the power of creativity in problem solving and that you had to take a risk to be creative. And what you were doing is inviting your clients to go with you on that journey of risk. That's why I'm really big, as you know, on storytelling. But you can flash up business presentations and all that kind of thing. But what's the story and how are you telling the story? Because Even if it's B2B selling and not B2C selling, you need an emotional hook, right? You need to give people a reason and you want them to buy into things. So I learned a great deal from Graham. So I did a few years there. Met a girl, classic story. Young man met a girl. I was living in Brisbane, she lived in Sydney. And I went, I need to go to Sydney. I took off to Sydney and I got a job as the first marketing manager for what was then called the Franchisors association of Australia and New Zealand, which is now called the Franchise Council of Australia. So it's very much like in the us, the International Franchise Association. So I got a job as their first marketing services manager. They had a database of members, very tiny. It was probably like 300 members back then. Australian franchising was booming, all right. This is early 90s stuff. Like it was here, just booming, right? Going ballistic, and everyone wanted a piece of it. So my job was to sell the publications, communicate with the members, help them organize conferences. And I was lucky. I had the experience from working for Graham and working for my father, because by the time I was like 23, 24, I could speak well and talk and write well about franchising and what were the drivers of it. I kind of understood it. It came, I'm going to say, almost egotistically, naturally to me, but only because I was so probably deeply immersed in it that it felt natural. Actually, I went and did an executive MBA while I was there, right? Because I had a need for. I thought, should I go back and finish my undergraduate degree? No, I've got advice that says, don't bother with that, given what you're doing. And Trajectory you're on. Do this executive MBA thing. So pay an exorbitant amount of money to sit in a room with a bunch of guys that are much older than me, who are all CEOs of firms or senior managers, and get this MBA. So that MBA I completed while I was at the Franchisors association was based on the principles of action learning. And action learning is the active use of academic theory in a working business model. You actually used your business model and your assignments and your tests and your presentations and your research were built around that. So while I was there, I thought, what am I going to leverage this? How am I leveraging this? So I decided to do my Master's thesis, all 30,000 words of it, on an international franchise strategy. So no. 1 international franchising was becoming popular, but there wasn't a lot written about, right, that was deeply researched. So I ended up surveying 85 Australian franchise companies that I thought were exporting their franchise system. Out of that came my master's thesis, which was on international franchise strategy. That kind of made me a bit, because that got published. It was picked up by the community, franchise community, and people got interested in talking to me about what I knew. And one of the things I had to do was what I call commercial liaison then. And banks would come to me and say, we'd like to get into franchise lending. We need to know about franchising. Can you help us research? One of those banks was Citibank. So I spent six months helping them out. And Citibank back then was a rising giant in the Australian banking scene. They really wanted to get into franchise finance because the big four banks in Australia were smashing it in franchise funding. And they came to me. They went away after I helped them out. About three months later, I got this phone call saying, listen, we really want to get into franchise finance. We think you're the guy to run it. And I'm like, what me? I don't know anything about banking. You know, I got a. I got a credit card I can't pay and a bank account with not enough money in it. What's going on? You don't want me in banking? And it's not about that. It's about running a business unit that puts a great franchise funding offer out there. And you've got the credibility because you know all these franchise laws and you can get it done. We just don't know exactly how the program's going to work and everything. So I wasn't sure about it, to be honest. And I. We Went through all of the remonstrations of the program process but then they dangled the salary in front of me and I went, God damn, I'm going to do that. I don't know anything about it. One of the best career decisions I ever made.

If you're willing to pay it, I'm willing to take it.

Yeah. And I didn't know anything about corporate life because I'd always only been in small business, right. And it opened my eyes working in a global public company at the time, at the time I was, I was at Citi for 10 years. It became the world's largest, largest listed company while I was there. Its net profits quarterly were 5.2 billion US quarterly. When I was there, it was on the best run going around. I happened to join it at the right time. So I helped the bank, the risk guys in the bank establish a 180 point risk rating system for determining how much money you would lend unsecured or cash flow lending to a franchisee in an accredited franchise brand. So I used all of what knowledge I had and my networks to create that system and it went gangbusters. Like thousands of franchisees were financed, thousands of franchisors and we rolled the product program, they called it out to 14 other countries. So that wasn't the only thing I did at Citi. But that certainly established me as someone who was making a contribution to the franchise sector and someone who could be relied on and could be consulted in the franchise sector to prove it. While I was at Citi, the franchisors association became the Franchise Council of Australia. And I got elected to the board of directors of the Franchise Council of Australia. And I was chuffed to do that. Did that for three years. It was really interesting period of. Because it was moving from self regulation to regulation the sector in Australia. So it was an interesting time to be a part of that and experience that and be involved in senate committee meetings and all of that kind of terrific experience for young men. I went on at Citibank to be a director of marketing for the mortgages portfolio which was all acquired through mortgage brokers. There was no branches network in Australia for City back then of any substance. So it was all required through there. I ran a call, multilingual call center there. I got to do lots of things, travel the world, do all of that. Ended up with lots of options. Fantastic. Took a redundancy right before the banking crash came in 2003. I took a redundancy so got out when the shares were ridiculous pricing and the currency was in my favor. Met another girl. Is there a theme of it emerging? I met another girl.

Oh, a redundancy is like a severance, like a package.

Yeah, it's like a, like a. Yeah, it's like a. Yeah, it's like a severance package. So. Only time I've ever done it in my life and I met a girl, lived in New Zealand and I thought I need, I took a year off, traveled the world, goofed off with my mates around the world from Monaco to England to America. Just, you know, just wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Yeah. Realized that I probably, I had an ambition to run something, you know, I wanted to be a CEO. I want to be the guy that runs a business right and sets the strategy, inspires the people and applying for things, using my network, all that kind of thing. I got a job as the CEO of fastway Couriers in New Zealand. Now for those that don't know, fastway Careers at the time was the world's largest career franchise network. It was in something like 14, 13, 14 countries. Big business started by a bunch of Kiwis in a little town in the southeast corner of the north island of New Zealand called Napier in Hawke's Bay. It's like a town of 50,000 people. They were running that network out of that town. So I got a job to be the CEO. There was something like 350 career franchisees, 20 something master franchisees or regional franchisees you would call them. It was a big network. And that was my first job as a true, what I'll call franchise executive leader. And from there I went on to be the CEO, coo, board director of many different property services, rental model and consumer rental, building materials, placemakers. I was this large the GM of operations. So like vice president of operations if you will, for a company called Placemakers in New Zealand, which is a joint franchise, joint venture franchise model that was a $1.2 billion company. It was the biggest building material supplier in New Zealand. Really, really big motor. This thing had very complex. I joined that just before, just after the GFC and the in New Zealand went into deep recession and the housing industry collapsed. And I can tell you there was a lot of reforecasting in the first six months of my job. And that was exciting. But that's, that's the journey I've been on. I went back to Australia, got divorced in New Zealand, met another girl who happened to be living in America and here I am living in America.

Well, you know, we, these are inflection points in our life all have triggers. Triggers. They have, they have a trigger and they have a decision. Yes, some people let those pass them by and other people take advantage. So now you've, you, you come ashore here in the United States, you've always wanted to live here. You end up in New York. You got incredible partner there, very, very experienced, works for the World bank, the.

United Nations Federal Credit Union.

So that's a great opportunity. So you come here, you've got all this franchise experience, you're in the United States, you've for years have helped bring companies to the United States and also export, I believe, export brands from the United States all over. So you're kind of a brand ambassador international. You understand all the different markets. You've got a deep expertise in how money works and what economics look like inside of franchisees and franchisors. So you come here. What do you see in right now in the United States as the opportunities for entrepreneurs through franchising?

It's a good question. So from somewhat from the outside looking in and obviously I'm a little bit biased about franchise business models because like you, I'm a great believer in what, in the transformation, transformative ability of these models. Right. You can have a little bit of capital, invest in a business, grow it, get more businesses and transform the life of yourself and your family and your community. Right? That's it. It's nothing could be more noble, frankly than doing that generally, in my view. And I look and I'm thinking around the world in the way franchising works around the world universally, it has to be, and you and I have spoken about this before, it's got to be in the top three wealth generating models for the average person anywhere in the world right now. Right. We all know E commerce and the Internet and everything is very sexy, all that kind of stuff. That's fine, it's all good. But you know, in terms of being a business owner, you know, starting somewhere, starting small and building up to something big and you know, transforming the way that you, you live and the way that you can make your family live, I know a few things that are better than this. I do think though things like the pandemic have hastened what I think was already a trend around people looking for more meaning in their career. Whether it's business ownership or the job that they do. I think there is a lot of search for meaning. When things become more uncertain, I think people become more questioning and they start to really be very critical and you know, or do a Deep critique of what do I want out of what life I have left on this earth? And that's a little bit of a philosophical question, but it's, I think it's an important one. A lot of people avoid it, frankly. More people avoid it than address it. Because if more people addressed it, they'd live differently.

Yeah, you know, you get, you get it. We get in our echo chambers. And the one that I'm in now is very entrepreneurial, tip of the sword, franchising franchisors, franchisees, people interested in franchising, franchise mentors. You know, maybe, maybe it's not a trend, but to me, I have more and more conversations with people about, like, what's the trade off? What, what am I trading for? What am I getting? What am I trading my time for? What am I trading my expertise for, what am I trading my dollars for? And, and how does, how can I improve my existence? Not my life, right. I mean, but really my overall existence. Whether some people care a little bit more about impact than others, some people care more about personal experiences that they have, that everybody has something that matters the most to them. And so many of these people now are like, and how can, how can what I'm looking for, what I, what I desire be served through entrepreneurship? And, and, and if I want to make, if I want to increase the certainty and reduce the risk of getting the outcome that I've decided I want, because that's what matters to me. How can a franchise business help me do that? It's really, it just seems like that's a conversation. I see people, people that we train, people that come through brands for training and they are very introspective about like, where they are on their timeline, what they got left. Maybe it's the Internet, maybe it's social media, just, you know, maybe it's all these memes that, that smack us in the face every day about purpose and whatever. But people, I, I agree with you. People seem much more aware and, and franchising is the greatest wealth creation business model that I'm, that I personally believe in.

So. Well, it's been, it's been. Look, I'm a living example. It's been good to me, athlete being good to me. When I was young, I like a lot of young people. I had no idea where it was going to, what am I doing and how's it going to turn out to a degree. And I'm, I'm pretty transparent about it. I, I didn't have the answers. And there are some days where it's been. The experience has been pretty bad, you know, and you, and you, you have to quite literally start again. You know, there was a period of time in New Zealand where, you know, that through divorce and poor economic circumstance and decision making, I, I pretty, you know, I had to start again when I left New Zealand, I had to, I had to pick myself up. Think deeply about, you know, who am I, who do I want to be and what will I do next? And it was tough. I mean, I. The journey that I, we are speaking about here has had, frankly, more low lights than highlights. And, and that's why I like franchising. Because for me, I, I have found when I have walked out of that sector in my career, I've always come back to it because it's something that works for me and I know it works for many other people. Right. So that's, you know, I'm, I'm not a franchise business owner. I'm an executive. Right. I know what lane I'm meant to swim in. I think my greatest contribution to franchising is as an executive leader in franchising or an advisor. There are people out there who I admire greatly. They walk in the door and only after a few meetings, they cut you a check to invest in your business model. And then they basically are passing the trust pattern to you and saying, I trust you to work with me to grow this thing. And I think because there is not only the legal responsibilities that come with a franchise relationship, I think generally most franchisors and the people that run them hold a strong level of accountability about doing right by those franchisees because it's symbiotic. You can't have one without the other, and you've both got to be successful. You've got nothing. People that do it responsibly, it's a fantastic business model. It really is.

It's a high degree of accountability. When you look somebody in the eye and you say, you know, you've spent the last 20 years amassing these dollars that you have, and we want you to take a percentage of those and we think that you should invest them in a business that we are going to help you grow. It's a big, it's a big responsibility. I know you don't take it, you take it very seriously. I do not take it lightly. You know, you said something about most of your life has been low lights. I tell you what, man, if we didn't have the low lights, the highlights would not be so sweet.

Oh, yes.

If you spent your entire life on vacation like you. You would, you would hate it. You know, there's nothing to look forward to.

Nothing to look forward to?

No, I mean, we've got to look.

There's the beach again.

Yeah, there's the beach again. How many more pina coladas can I have? Yeah, the answer is 11.

11? Yes, maybe 12.

So now tell us what you're doing now.

Okay, so right now I have the great privilege of working with you at Homefront Brands as the Chief Operating officer. It is probably what I'll call the most thoughtfully put together franchise brand platform that I've seen for a long time. It's in a sector that is just like for the people that we've just been talking about, how do I make myself a better life through business ownership? So I'm the chief operating officer of that. As you know, we've got six businesses in there, six brands in there, all in the property services space. It's, it's a strong sector to be in, particularly in this country. It is true in many countries, but in this country it's a, it's a very robust business sector. It's. We often use the word durable because it can survive the highs and lows of economic performance very well. You know, our job is, we're looking for thousands of great franchise partners to invest in our, our property platform and do that transformative thing that we know franchising can provide them.

Wow. Awesome. It is my greatest honor and everyday pleasure to get to work with you and to learn from you. Just an incredible wealth of knowledge, a well traveled and hard earned life that you have, that you have lived and you give so freely of it to all of us here. So it's just, it's been one of my greatest joys to get to know you. Here's the final question of the day. If you had one sentence to make an impact in someone's life, what would you share with them? This might not be as good a question as I thought it was.

No, no, I've got one for you. Don't die wondering.

Don't die wondering.

You know, don't, don't live your life wondering if you should have or could have done something right. I, I think the most interesting life is the life where you challenge yourself the most. And all the time, right, you're not going to win on everything. But you know, there's that, there's that old saying about growing old gracefully. I'm kind of in the school of old growing old disgracefully because it means I've been up to something. So I would say to people, you know, be present and participate in every part of your life as best you can and just don't die wondering. If you wonder if you should do something or try something, well, you know, act on it and you'll find out.

That is a mouthful of truth and a beautiful bit of wisdom. I can't believe you said it, because I actually just typed into my. I keep notes on my phone and I woke up in the morning and I had been dealing with somebody who had been dealing with a sickness. And I made the comment in my notes, I said, people that don't live their lives to the fullest are much more fearful of sickness and death.

Hell, yeah. That is the truth.

I mean, people that are rolling all the time, none of us. None of us are ready. None of us want to face any of that. But, you know, if. If I got the call today, I would. I would have the solace to say, you know, I tried pretty hard. I didn't back away from opportunities. They didn't all work out. But no, don't die wondering. Thank you, Michael. It's been a pleasure.

As we say in Australia, have a go. You mark.

We'll leave it there. Michael o', Driscoll, thank you so much.

Thanks, man.