The Art of Running a Cyber Security Business CIFC Episode 147

Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to episode of Coffee is foreclosures. It's me, Matt. Pat's not here. He's fucking dead to me. But we have Adam. Adam's one of our clients at sales sniper and successful business owner and entrepreneur. So I thought we'd get him on, you know, and we'll have a chat.

Why not?

Yeah, why not? Ex special forces sniper turned entrepreneur. I've scaled numerous businesses to eight figures. My name is Matt Ryder, this is my podcast and I'm telling you to put that coffee. So how you doing?

Good mate, good.

You?

Yeah, not too bad. Just go back from the States, did the challenge, sold some people, made some money, came back.

I have no doubt.

Yeah, back to. Back to the more mundane things. How's everything go over in cyberland?

Cyberland's going well, as you know. You know, we've. We've been going from strength to strength, but you know, the landscape in cyber has been a pretty frantic one over the. I'd probably say the past 12 to six months. Yeah. The awareness within Australia has just gone gangbusters basically, which has helped us.

Okay.

And explain to the people what you do is you're not a coaching consulting company.

No.

You're a real company.

Yes, we are. So we are a purely a cyber security training and education company. Online training. We focus on not only getting our students the right skills, but also focusing, a huge focus on getting them placement as well. So my background, I've been in education. I'm a teacher. Qualified, qualified teacher for about seven or eight years ago. Went into the registered training organization space. Okay. Been in training and education.

Were you there during like the rogue days of vet and all that kind of stuff?

2016.

Yeah, yeah.

When they were giving away iPads at Send links.

On the record, I was not giving away iPads, but I was, I was in the industry.

You didn't want to make money then.

That was crazy.

Yeah, walk us through that. Actually, those of you don't know. So like VET funding was a government organized funding scheme for registered training organizations, which is like government sponsored coaching programs essentially. Yeah. So like a lot of it was like cert for and crane operations, like all that kind of stuff. And the funding was. It was in my. From my. My sister was an auditor in the RTO space. So I haven't know a little about it. She was basically telling me that like this company would get the contract and they would contract to a contract to a contract and it would be like 10 contractors deep.

Yeah.

And then it would Just be a bunch of like rogue boiler room sales guys just offering up iPads to everybody at Centerlink.

Yeah.

To like go, hey, if you do this course you'll never have to pay it back. Have an iPad.

Centerlink. And this is the ultimate flaw in the, in the idea. The scheme and the idea on paper, minus a couple of major flaws. Was good.

Yeah.

Just didn't take into account people's greed.

Exactly.

Or.

And a couple of other things. So.

Yeah.

So I was working in the RTO space in a sales, in a sales team and it was building construction. So cert for diploma of B and C. Yeah. This new thing came along called vet fee help. Essentially the government would, you know, loan you the money like a hex interest free, which is great. And so a lot of companies, the company that I was working for, would optimize that their RTO and their operations for. You're laughing at me here. For future growth. And so they put a lot of money into it. A lot of other, you know, whether you call it smarter or dodgier companies decided this is a great opportunity. Let's, let's just go.

Let her rip.

Let her rip, boys. And just hire as many salespeople as possible and incentivize the hell out of them. So 20, $30,000 courses. But the, the major flaw was the consumer or the student didn't have to pay back the government fees until they hit $52,000 of income from that industry.

Right.

From that industry. Like and so what you could do and what imagine and you're getting like, you know, two and a half, $3,000 commission per sale.

Yeah.

And so these guys are going out doing 10 a day and they're just knocking down doors of retirement villages. They go, hey, do a certificate four in leadership and management to 85 year old grandmother. And she'd go, why the hell would I want to do that? And she goes, oh, you're probably right. We'll give you a free iPad. I don't know how to use an iPad. We'll give it to your kid for Christmas.

Okay.

So she'd sign and as soon as they'd sign, the government would release the funds to the training organization. They'd never do the course.

Never.

Course complete. Took them maybe six months or four or six months to cotton on to what was happening. And hundreds of millions of dollars later, they just decided, you know what, we're just going to pull the funding. And all RTOs basically went from, you know, doing very well to nothing.

Yeah, my sister wasn't. Was like the CEO. And then she quit and then became like the head auditor for a rather large. I think it was called Ashley. I can say the name, I don't give a fuck. I'm sure they're not listening is Ashley. And there was a certain component of that business which I think was it was doing some of that and she ended up going like, whoa. And then like kind of dipping out and going like, I can't be a part of this. Yeah, it might have been, I can't remember. But it was very interesting to hear kind of the stories. And when I was like, oh, man, what a rogue operation.

And so the company I was working for, you know, we went from 140 staff nationally down to 20. And I was in the Canberra head office, which is where I grew up. Everyone's getting made redundant around me. I wanted to, wanted a redundancy to move to Sydney. And everyone's getting the tap on the shoulder. And then it got down to two or three people within this huge office space that we were working in in Canberra. And the director of the owner of the company tapped my shoulder, tapped me on the shoulder. Come to the boardroom. I'm thinking, thinking, yes, perfect. And he sits me down and he says, we actually think you're the right person to turn this around. We can just sell cybersecurity. Sorry. We can just sell what was asbestos awareness training. And I said, no, mate, I'm out of this, like this cowboy show. I'm done. So unfortunately I left that. Left that company. And that was the first time I actually tried to start a business. I started a digital marketing agency for the few remaining RTOs that were left.

Okay.

I figured, you know what, they've never. There's huge companies and there were some, some still that stayed afloat, but they never used digital marketing to sell courses because you could just. It was easy to sell a free course.

Yeah.

Now there was no free courses, so did that for two years. Basically did everything wrong. But we got a couple of decent clients, but it fizzled out massively.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I kind of learned what not to do in, in business. I still didn't know. I didn't have any sales training because didn't need it in the RTO space at all.

Just get on AirPods, right?

Yeah, exactly. So it's just.

No.

And so, yeah, that was kind of my entry into trying to run and start a business.

Yeah.

I think it's actually similar to the way that they're running shit these days. I mean, like, if you have A look at like the coaching and consulting industry. Like, I mean, there's. Everybody gets approved funding, right. Which we don't use in any offer. I sort of refuse to. There's sub, subprime lending. Like, so to me, it's like, it's not dissimilar to where they're going, like, hey, learn this skill. And you see all these people on fucking Instagram going like, learn how to make 10k a month from your living room or whatever it is. They're, they're spruking. It's like they're giving them no real tangible skills. They're doing an everybody gets approved subprime lending model. Like at some point, I mean, like, something's got to go. Something's got to get like, Kevin David just got done by the FTC. Yeah, they $53 million he had to pay back. He was like, I have $53 million. So they were like, okay, you got to pay back what you do have, which is 2 million. And they said, if we ever find any hidden money, you got to pay back the whole lot. So like. And there's another person, which I am not allowed to talk about, but I had some fairly serious government organizations call me about right in the US.

And.

They'Re going down like, so people in that space are going to be going to jail soon.

Right.

In the same way that some of these guys had vet funding and some of these went to jail. Like, I mean, some of the shit they were doing was raucous.

I don't know whether they did in Australia.

Yeah, I think they got away with.

Because technically they weren't doing anything illegal. They just found a loophole in, in a system that was flawed. So, you know, they brought it back.

Out, didn't they, didn't they revamp it and then bring it back out?

Yeah, after, I think, just recently, a couple years ago. Wolf of Wall street guy.

Yeah.

Jordan Belfort.

I think a Queensland company hired him when it was all kicking off 2016 or 2015, and he might have done quite well out of it too.

Yeah, I know a few guys who paid him. I know a few guys who paid him over half a mil just to come out, Just to come out and say hello.

Basically, I'm not too aware of what's going on in the, the business and consulting space in Australia. But then from that RTO space and then, you know, running a failed business, I, I actually dipped the toe in some consulting and coaching space. I guess, trying to educate myself as a, as a business owner here in Australia. Ended up then working for a business and consulting, you know, business coaching company basically here in Australia. And that was the first introduction to actually.

Oh, yeah.

Another one. Yeah.

And I'm like, this is actually a skill. Do you know what I mean? Running business, marketing, sales. And yeah, there is a process to it. So that. That was kind of, I guess, cutting my teeth there. And an apprenticeship for. For a couple of years.

Yeah.

Sweet. How did you come to meet us?

Ironically, I think there's potentially the podcast.

Yeah, right.

Or YouTube. I remember watching this is two and a half, three years ago.

Yeah.

Okay. I had they say, never meet your heroes. Here you are. What's it like?

I'm a. I'm a. I'm a product of what I'm trying to replicate now.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, so I finished up at the company I was working with and thought I knew a fair bit about how to run a business or a sales process and then just started following as much as getting as much information as I could around sales. Came across you and came across sales sniper. Implemented some of the stuff within my sales process. I started the business. It was just myself, got some. Got a couple of other people involved.

It's a cyber revolution.

Cyber revolution, Yep. So then started the business, created a sales process and tweaked it with some of the stuff that you would recommend.

Yeah.

And then Covid hit. I guess the original idea was to have a traditional business where you would hire. You'd build a process, get it to a point where you'd hire another sales guy who would hire another sales guy, and you'd build your own sales team just the way that I thought it was done. Then Covid hit, and you obviously couldn't, you know, hire people or have an office. And that traditional style, you know, for me, anyway, went out the window. And so just kept listening to the podcast, realized that you did a done for you process. And I actually reached out and I spoke to James, and he goes, it's probably a little bit too early. You know, you need to get it to a little bit more, you know, within. Within revenue and then have a chat to us. And I thought it was ready. I thought it was perfect for what you guys, the skill set that you had.

Where are you at then?

I think we're at about maybe 20 or 30amonth revenue.

Yep.

And so a month passed. I'm like, no, this will work. I'll reach back out to Matt directly. Like, he'll. He'll probably say yes because, you know, James, I thought was a little Bit more conservative and it was great. And he was probably right. It might have been a bit early and in looking back, it might have been because it did take, you know, it took a few months for us to get it to where it was working really, really well. But spoke with you. Yep, yep, you know, looks like it could work and the rest is history.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we lost money on it for a few months too.

I knew you'd sell me. I knew, I knew you'd be like, yeah, let's do it.

Yeah, we lost money on it because we, we, we, we like, we speak to Anthony. Like we saw the potential but we kind of over infrastructured it like to the point where, because we were paying like all those setters and all that kind of stuff and we're like, well, all right, we'll just, we'll figure it out.

I remember I had a chat, I was on, I was on holiday or it might have been.

We're losing like maybe 6 to 8k a month.

Yeah. It might have been right before Christmas 2021, I was on holiday and Marco and Anthony had a meeting and yeah, it was, wasn't. Yeah, it was. Again, I, I was, I knew it had massive potential, it was a great fit, but it just wasn't really getting all that much traction. And Marco said, look, we're losing money. We're going to give ourselves another six weeks to turn this round. Yeah, this is what we need from you. And so rolled up the sleeves and got it done.

Yeah.

And now it's doing quite well. Yeah, it's doing pretty well. I think it's doing like 15 times what it was when we started.

17.

Yeah, 17.

1700% growth.

It's not bad.

In 14 months that'll be like you.

You would definitely be fastest growing company in Australia.

No idea.

I mean we like, we got on the list and it's nothing like that.

I, I don't even know. I didn't even know there was a list.

Yeah.

Afr. You should definitely put in for it because it makes the CEOs look good.

Yeah, okay.

Like it's, I mean, you know, it helps, it helps the company gets more press.

Yeah.

You'll probably get audited though, if you do do it.

It's like, it's like it's not accredited training space. I don't mind if someone can, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just like that's if I was an auditor list, I go for it.

You know what I mean?

You guys are something up.

1700%.

Yeah. Yeah.

No but, like, legit, especially if, like, if that continues, I mean, like, not that it'll continue at that pace, but, like, that goes up, you know, like, that'll be miles ahead of any other company. I think we had, like, we were in, like, the top. I think we were 21st in the country.

Yeah.

And we had, like, 450%.

Wow.

And like, the number one was like, maybe 6 or 700%.

There you go.

I mean, you know, what it would do for the business is a big part of us. We go up against the universities. I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about traditional education and the unis. And the whole point, you know, of starting cyber revolution was to not just focus on the skills and the certificate, get them a job at the end of it, a genuine focus on getting them a job, which is what we do really well. But one issue that we always do struggle with a little bit is credibility.

Okay.

And so I guess that would help.

Yeah.

I mean, like, I think the education system is a rot. Like, I don't see any point in going to uni. Unless you want to be a doctor.

Yep.

A lawyer.

Yep.

What else? Yeah, like, what else do you actually need university experience for, like, an mba? I could not think of a more garbage. A more garbage thing to have. Like, Like, I'm sure it's great, but, like, like, I just. I'm sure, like, you learn vernacular, you know, and people with MBAs, you can probably have really interesting conversations about a business you'll never run.

Yep.

But I just, like, same as, like, a marketing degree. What a waste of time.

Yeah.

Everything you've learned is totally and completely irrelevant by the time you graduate. And, like, the. The things that you learn in, like, an MBA are not, like, it's the sort of same. Same as, like, high school. Like, high school doesn't teach you how to have a life. Like, you don't learn how to do your taxes. You don't learn exactly, you know, like, how to go to the grocery store, do all the kind of things that you learn. But, like, I understand, like, the point for me of education, at least, like, with my kids.

Right.

Is I don't. As long as they. They learn a work ethic and they learn how to learn. That's all I give a shit about. If they walk out with great grades, fantastic. If they walk out with mediocre grades, I don't care. I'll tell them to put effort in things they enjoy and that they're going to do moving forward. And if they come to me saying they want to go to university, I'd be like, sweet. You're more than welcome to.

Yeah.

If they say I don't want to go, I'll be like, sweet, do what you want. I don't because like I, like, I didn't go to you. I went to university for a year and I dropped out because I hated it and I joined the army. I make way more than anyone I know with a university degree.

Yeah, I went to uni and I think university was good for me because I wanted to go to uni.

I.

And I, you know, I wanted to become a teacher. So you have to do an education degree, but do you feel like you have to, to become a teacher? Yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah.

No, I mean do you feel like you, like if you could, do you feel like you could just design on the job training?

Oh, the only useful part of my four year degree was the on the job. The, the prac. Yeah, the eight week prac, unpaid, that you have to do.

Yeah. Right.

That's where you learn all of the skills and that's where you implement everything. And we see it the same in cyber security. When we have someone come to us and they've done a MA in cyber security, four years, 50 grand, 60 grand, they'll come to us and be like, okay, great. What roles you want to look at applying for and. Or what roles have you applied for? Because they've usually tried to get in the industry first and they're like, oh, just anything, I don't know, like you've got no idea what, what specific role you're eligible for and what you want to apply for after you've spent all that money and all that time, like, no, I'm not.

So what tangible skill would they come out with from an education degree that they could actually apply going to westpac and going like, I can provide this for you.

Look.

So they'll it, it's just if for cyber security, the basic skills, Right. In regards to hardware, software, networking, you know, the coding and programming side of things, because university goes deeper into that. Although again, that's redundant because you don't actually do that in an entry level cyber security role.

Yeah.

And then some analytics as well.

Yeah.

So it is, you know, it is useful, but that's only half of it. Like getting the piece of paper is only 50% of the way getting, getting towards a job. And the way the cyber security industry is working at the moment, it is strength in numbers and we need more people desperately. So if you're thinking about it and you go and do a three year degree or four year degree, not actually applying for roles for, you know, to get into the industry, then you'll probably miss that wave. And so that's for me, if I talk about my experience at university. I went there for four years, enjoyed myself. It was the right time for me. I wanted to go to uni, so that was great. But I was a physical education teacher, was told, yep, great industry, you'll get a job. Finished my four years and was then told that there's, you know, zero PE teaching roles in Australia. Basically you think about a PE teacher, they finish, they sit there for 15, there's only a certain amount of schools, but they just, yeah, they get comfy and they just sit there for 10, 15 years. Someone gets pregnant, there's an opening and there's thousands of people in front of you. So for the. When I finished uni, the first 15 to 18 months, I was working, glorified babysitter, doing history, maths, French and just hopping from school to school and I was like, this is like, I'm never going to get a job. I don't want to be a, I don't want to be a maths teacher.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know what I mean? So that's where the whole, like, all right, this, this industry, this, this education.

Industry, there's an overabundance of teachers, there's just massively so all these people.

There's an overabundance of a lot of things that you get a university degree for.

Yeah, okay.

So, yeah, yeah.

I've just never really understood like, I think educating yourself is really important, but I just think like it should just be the pointy bit. I just like underlying foundations I think are important for a lot of stuff. But like, for example, like when I was in special ops, I became like a very particular type of medic. It's called a pafa.

Right.

So it's like an SASR Patrol Advanced First Aider. And you learn like most of the life staging surgeries.

Right.

So like I could do them, I practice them, I did them in real time. And a doctor, I would have done more than the 99% of surgeons will ever do.

How long would that did that take?

An eight week course, right?

Yeah.

I mean, or maybe it was 12 weeks, I can't remember.

But.

And then like at the end of it, like we went to University of Wa and they'd have a bunch of sheep's fucking stab the sheep. They go fix it, right? You're like, fuck. So you're kind of doing it, doing the thing in real time. Went over to seas, working with like CAG and Oda went out, started shooting pigs, fixing up the pigs, you know, I mean then we go out and do it for real life and like we were good at it. Like we could do it. Do we understand any of the underlying anatomy? Not really.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

But we could do it and we could do it effectively and I could do it better than most of those fucking doctors could do because they never got a chance to do it for real ever.

Yep.

You know, surgical airways, the whole box and dice. And so it's just like, man, like for a lot of this shit, like you just need the pointy bit and then from there like you'll go in and you'll learn the rest. I'm not saying surgery, a surgeon should be an eight week course, obviously, but I'm just using that as kind of like an example of like even something as complex as that. We learned that shit in 12 weeks and we were fucking good at it. We were good enough to save people's lives, like, which is the whole goal of it to life saving surgery. Right. So like we fucked them up a bit like fully. Like those people who got surgical airway is never going to talk the same way ever again. It wasn't quite as nuanced. Right. But they're alive.

Yeah.

You know. Yeah. So, yeah, like it's just, you know, that's why, that is one of the good things about the whole coaching consulting industry is they kind of do shortcut some of that. I just think that most of the people teaching it are of.

Yep.

You know, like I see all these companies and they have all these C suite positions and they got a bunch of chickens with their head running around going like that, pretending to run a business.

Well, it's just, you know, you've just got to have the experience doing it. You learn so much more in. We're all about just getting someone the opportunity once you're in that role. Yeah, you'll learn so much more in the first six to 12 months. I even say it to our students, I go, all we want to do is get you into the industry. And I don't want to downplay the skills that we give our students, but you'll learn 10 times as much in the first three months working for these companies than you would with us in the six months you've trained with us.

Which makes sense.

Yeah.

So you're the, you're the CEO Yeah.

Right.

Where do you see. Let me ask you a question. Do you see yourself running this company? Let's say it gets to 100 million bucks a year, do you think you'll be the guy running it?

I haven't really thought of it. I think so, yeah. Yeah, I really enjoy it.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

I. Yeah. I can't see myself wanting to step away from the Australian, you know, the Australian entity. I. I really enjoy the educational side. As I said, it's a passion of mine. Cyber security is not my passion. You know what I mean? But education and education that provides outcomes is. And so at the moment, yeah, I think I can't see myself leaving you.

Going to branch out from cyber.

Potentially. Yeah. There's so many other options. Right. Like this whole AI thing that's coming at Chat, GPT or whatever it is, that little business where does someone teach.

You how to hack? Yeah, that'll be interesting.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, there, there's options there to, you know, branch out into ar, AI, but at the moment we're just strapping on and.

Yeah.

You know, enjoying the ride with sober.

Yeah.

I have a different view about, like, my role, like, as CEO. I reckon as soon as it hurts 100 million, I don't reckon I'm the guy. I think it'll be too big for me.

Yeah.

I think, like, I'll have to. I didn't get it. I think I can comfortably get it to 100.

Right.

Like, we have that within reach. We have the plan. It's not like a coaching consulting, it's like.

No, no.

We have a series of subsidiaries and no business has to get so enormous that it becomes unmanageable. But I don't feel like I have the capabilities at the moment to run a business that big. No, I think that there would just be like. What I would do is I would like go and steal someone from like GoDaddy.

Yeah.

Or something like that. Right. I use GoDaddy because he's like that guy who was the CEO of that was like a rock star. They got bought by BlackRock, I'm pretty sure. And then they use that guy to every single new acquisition they do. So I reckon what I'll do is I'll get it to like $100 million and then I'll go and find someone to replace me as CEO and then I'll sit on the board because I think, like, what I'm good at is probably getting a business to like 10 to 20 million dollars a year and then fucking bouncing out so I think what I'll do is, like, create myself a little team of people who want to grow businesses, and then we'll go and buy them, grow them, and then pass it off to the head headquarters. Buy them, grow them, pass them off to headquarters. Not just sit on a board.

Yeah.

Because being the CEO of especially, like, it was funny. Like, you know our client Ryan Sirhant, the real estate guy, I was talking to him in New York, maybe like in November. I was at his office and I was like, you ever gonna go public? He's like, that's a good question. And he's. And he said, I don't think so. He goes, I might change my mind. But he said, like, he's never met a happy CEO of a public company.

Yes.

The scrutiny involved would be horrendous.

Yeah.

And I just. I don't see that being a fun job.

That's a. That's a good point.

Right.

Like I said, I enjoy what I do at the moment with the business.

Yeah.

And it's impossible for it to be the case, but if we're operating the same way at that revenue, then of course.

Yeah.

Sweet. You know what I mean? But you're right, like, if it's complexity, if you go public and. Yeah. You've got to write all that, get all of that scrutiny, write all of those, you know, reports. Again, that's not my skill set. And where I want to.

What I want to do. Yeah, yeah.

So that would make sense.

Yeah.

So I remember us having a chat with, like, all of our hierarchy and, you know, like, career development chats. And they were like, so I want to be this and C level this. And I was like. I was like, do you want, like, the. The conversation. Right. Try and convince you to stay here forever, or do you want, like, the real answer? Like, the real answer? I was like, if you want to be a C level executive here, you'll probably have to leave. And they're like, huh? And I was like, yeah. I was like, let's say, like, I had a chat with our financial. Our VP of finance today. Phenomenal. Like, one of our best friends. Great at what she does. She was like, what's the role to cfo? And I was like, the role to CFO is probably leave, like, VP of Finance. Then what you would do is you would try and put together enough of a CV here and learn enough over the next few years to then go and be the controller of a much larger company.

Yeah.

Then from there, you learn how they operate. You learn a whole bunch of shit. Like you go to a billion dollar company and be one of their controllers or one of their departments, then you come back here as like cfo. And that would like. That's a really good. That's where everyone hops.

Right.

I think this like insular internal promotion thing. You ever heard a thing called the. I think it's called the Peter Principle, so. Peter Principle, I think it's called that. It could be called something else, but it's a thing in business where you internally promote to a state of incompetence.

Right.

So let's just say like, let's say you're a rockstar sales guy and you're like, fuck, you're killing it, bro. Let's make you sales manager. First of all, terrible idea. But anyway, then they're like, man, you're a really good sales manager. Let's make you VP of sales. You're a pretty good VP of sales.

Right?

Then we make you like chief of sales and you're like an average chief of sales. And then we go, you're gonna be the chief revenue officer and you're a fucking horrific chief revenue officer.

Right? Yeah.

Because like it's just the war of attrition.

Exactly. Then they've got no experience. They have no idea.

Yeah.

About. And if you only internally promote, then everyone has the same decision making process and it's just the business never changes.

Yeah.

So like you have to bring people in, people have to leave and they can come back. Like I was telling Tori, I was like, I was like, I don't want this to happen. But I was like, if I look at you as a friend and I go, like, I go, you probably cap out right now at this level. But if you left for two years on like a sabbatical and we obviously were very good friends, we stay in touch and we know it's for a purpose.

And.

And you have like for two years, I'm going to go do this. And you come back. Like, that's a really good way to like for that. For the company to then like experience and get a whole new skill set and a whole new way of doing things.

It's tough. I find it tough to know when to make those big hires. I've never, obviously I've never. This is the second business I've run and the first business that is at this stage and we've got a team that's growing now. It's like, okay, we've just hired a business manager, but at what role do you look at really building out that that org chart where you've got ahead of all six department.

Well, I think. I think people do it wrong, and I know I did it wrong. I built it like a reverse pyramid where I had like a really heavy hierarchy in C suite. And then it got thinner as you went down, which is not the way a business should run. But it's how most people build their business, though. Get the big hitters in and they'll try. What you should do, I think, is just hire shitloads of doers. So what. What I've recently. What I've recently done is I've done like pay banding. So it's like these designators. So we have coordinator, manager, VP and C suite. Now I could add in director in there as well, which we below vp. That's a very traditional hierarchy. C suite, vp, director, manager, coordinator.

So.

But I was like, we don't have that many people. So I was like, so I'm gonna make it into a pyramid. So there's only 3C stuff in the whole thing.

Right, Right.

And then from there it's like I have a shitload of doers. So, like, it just. Right now we're only hiring doers. That's it. Coordinator roles and coordinator roles have a specific pay band. Managers have a specific pay band. And it's like a pay band, let's say it's from 8 to 10,000 or whatever a month. And it's like less than three years experience is 8, 3 to 5 is 9, 5 plus is 10. So there's no wiggle room. Like, it's like, that's your pay band. Like, and then when you cross over that threshold, your pay goes up.

Yeah.

Right now there's bonus structures and stuff like that. But then from there. So what I'm doing at the moment is like, we're having a look at each department and we're making sure that like, we have more doers than we do managers.

Yeah.

So it should be like five, two, one.

Yep. Yep.

That's a good department. Finance. VP of finance, like two managers, five doers. We're Gucci.

Yeah.

Just do that in each department, make it into a pyramid, and the whole thing's a pyramid.

Yep.

You know what I mean?

And what's. What is the goal? 100 mil?

No, like, I do. I think we can do that in 2025. What year is it? Yes, 2025. I think we can do that. So, like, as a group, I'll use US dollars because I just. I work in US dollars. We did like, like 30 million yep. In 2022, I think we'll do 40. I think we'll do 38, roughly.

Yep.

38 to 40 in 2023, I want to do 65 in 2024. Then there's a reason for that jump and it's the way that we're running the business this year is like, super lean to store cash. So I can go that.

Right.

Because in order to grow, you need money. But I'm really against fundraising.

Yep.

Like, because it's just seems especially if.

Especially if you're making money.

Yeah.

It's a Ponzi scheme.

Yeah.

Just feels like a gross way of everyone. And then you got people on your board and it's like, fuck you.

Yeah.

And I just. I want to avoid, like, not that I want to avoid oversight.

Yeah.

But I just, like, it's my business.

Your business.

I'll do it.

I want.

That's exactly where I'm at.

Let me do what I want.

Yeah.

Fuck you. If I want to pay myself at 90% of the profit, I'll do it.

Yep.

I can do what the fuck I want.

Yep.

I gave myself a massive payout in the last year. I was like, fucking.

Yeah.

So we're like, hoarding cash this year.

Yeah.

So that we can have a massive 2020 big drew up in 2024 and that should set us up for 2025.

Yep. Right. Yeah.

But, like, we're gonna go into branding and all kinds of stuff. So, like, we're gonna have to, like, hire external creative directors, you know, I mean, which is gonna be like. They're gonna be expensive.

Yeah.

They're gonna have to have, like a 2,3 million dollar Runway to get the brand sorted to where it can, like, move in. And then I just want to bounce out and just go and open up random businesses. Like, I'd love to open up some tanning salons.

Tanning salon.

Phenomenal business.

Really. Yeah.

I've done the numbers, I've got the business plan. It's hell of a business if you do it right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right.

Barber shops are another really good one. We can do brick and mortar. I wouldn't mind figuring out a way to do gyms profitably, because that's your background, isn't it? Yeah. I'd love to, like, now do it with my acumen and money and be like, how do you like. And just sink everyone.

I reckon I could do it because that's what you've got, especially in that. In that business type, that business model in the bottom. You've got to Go to market and just.

I want to have like 80 businesses.

Do as much as possible and then.

Have it as a big fucking group.

Yeah.

And then just sell that bitch for like $5 billion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's sort of the goal.

So in the sales space in the US you guys are taking over Cardone.

I would say, like, not on like a gross revenue standpoint because Cardone capital. I would say in a sales training, I'd say we'd probably do more.

Yeah.

In like pure sales training.

Yep.

Not on all this other stuff. I think all up. They do 75 million a year.

Yeah. Okay.

Like that. But like, you know, their sales training. I think their sales training is like a lost leader, if I'm perfectly honest. Like, I feel like their sales trend, like their guys are on all of our challenges. You can see them all. Yeah, they're everywhere. They're on our lives challenges because, like, they're obviously keeping tabs because, like, we. I, like, I would, I would. I would think we're the biggest B2C sales trainer out there. I don't know of anyone bigger. Like, zoom hit us up. Really. I was like, hey, can you come train our team? Yeah, I guess so.

That's now you more so in the B2B spaces.

We're definitely not, but we would like to be. Like, we get hit up randomly by big companies, but we don't have a really solid go to market strategy. It's also like a really. It's just a difficult space to navigate. So, like, I think what we'll do is we'll probably cap our B2C coaching at pretty much what it is now. Like, we closed inner circle for the next two months. It's just full. Like, I can't fulfill those people.

Yeah.

Good issue.

So we sent out an email. It was like, no more. And people were like, I'll pay extra.

Yeah.

And our sales guys were like, is this real? Are we like pretending? I was like, no, dude. Like, it's real. Anyone is anyone. You sell a refund.

We. I never thought I would do this, but in November last year when we went on a run.

This month's been a bit wild.

Yeah.

But like, we'll have a record month this month. But it really. Thankfully we got some free marketing from Optus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I owe some Russians some money.

Yeah.

But then late last year, like, the business, the beauty, the way that the cyber revolution runs is we can help as a lot of people each month. It's a very scalable model and Anthony always joked like, oh, well, we're going to break the business.

Yeah.

And he came close.

Yeah.

Like, long days in November. But we're all good now. We've enabled it and got a lot more support staff in.

Yeah.

And I think you're right. Like, it's cyclical. You want to be able to, you know, make a lot of money, drive growth, to be able to reinvest into the business. And I think we're, we're at that stage now to be able to go, okay, let's enable ourselves for the next stage of growth that's coming.

Yeah.

What sort of financial methodology do you use, if anyone.