Nick Paine, Founder @ OpSpot

Nick, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me, I feel honored.

If you just start off by, uh, telling us a little bit about your company Opspot.

Yeah, so, um, I started Opspot in COVID. Um, we fundamentally, we're a restaurant optimization tech company, so super niche space, um, helping restaurants get more value for them through Areas that in themselves might not individually, might not be massive, but when, um, you add them together, actually create a massive impact for the restaurants.

Yeah, and see, when we met like a while back, we actually went to the same school, just for those contexts. Yeah, you're a bit older than me, um, but yeah, you were one of the first experiments for me in terms of networking when I was a fresher straight into university, and we were both doing very different things at the time. You were in a corporate career, still trying to do stuff for yourself, but, and yeah, like I said, I was a student at the beginning of my journey. So since then you've now started Opsport. Was that desire to do something entrepreneurial always there?

Uh, yeah, I think so. I think it's, it's interesting you mentioned school. Um, we— I think I've always had kind of a gift of the gab for selling stuff, whatever that might be. At school, we— I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say it, but we were buying things and selling things at school, which maybe we shouldn't have been, but I found it so exhilarating, like the almost the competitive side of selling to someone, which was massive. I mean, like you mentioned, I was at a few larger kind of larger companies and just discovered I'm a terrible employee. I just I'm not good at, I think, working for other people, if that makes sense. Um, and so that essentially took me down a path, um, of working, working for myself, I think. Um, and my dad actually is exactly the same. He started a company around my age and is doing it to this day. So we're quite similar in that regard. Yeah.

Was there an element of you having to wait for the right thing to start? Because I mean, what you're solving right now, like when I found out that you were doing it, is it's such an obvious problem that you presume would be being solved. But you obviously like had a eureka moment. You're like, nobody's doing this. Why is no one doing it?

Yeah, I think definitely COVID was massive for that. So kind of the first thing we started doing at HubSpot was helping restaurants deal with fraudulent refund claims. And so that's Generally speaking, that's when people order through apps like Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Just Eat, whatever it might be. And then it's somewhere along the line from ordering the food to the customer getting it, there's been a claim that something's missing or it's incorrect or whatever it might be. And what that results in for the restaurant is a loss of revenue. And that's down to basically the terms and conditions that the restaurants sign up to when they go on these platforms. But in real world, it means they lose a lot of money, whether that's maybe drivers steal food or customers take advantage of a very lenient refund system on the apps. I think a big part of it also from the customer side, when I started the company and told my friends what I was doing, they would say things like, "Oh yeah, I do that every time," or university students, for example. Um, finding ways that you can get free food, they're going to do it, right? And I think COVID, the problem was always there, but it maybe wasn't big enough for the restaurants to bother dealing with. COVID happened, kind of completely changed the restaurant industry. If the restaurant survived, they had to turn to full delivery, and it kind of blew up the problem from there. So from us, from my side, I've kind of always known I wanted to start something But I think it's having that, even if you don't know what you want to start, just constantly being aware of what's going on and being able to spot a niche and then act quite quickly when you see it. I think that's definitely what happened with, with Oxpark during COVID for sure.

Yeah, and you mentioned that you didn't think you were a very good employee. A bit about that time in the corporate world. What was it specifically that you identified in yourself that it didn't work working below someone?

Yeah, I mean, I think for me it was being stuck doing the same thing over and over again. I'm not particularly smart, but I'm fairly good at selling things. So being in kind of corporate sales, whether it be real estate, which is what I first started in when I first moved to Dubai, um, at 19, um, it was the monotonous cold calling, cold emailing, whatever it might be. And starting trying to sell something to someone that you kind of know they don't need or don't want. And for me, that was, that's really tough. It's just like hitting your head against the wall over and over again. And the upside doesn't necessarily benefit you, you're benefiting someone else. I think I struggle with the boredom of that and the structure of not being able to do what kind of I wanted to do, to maybe reach the goal using a different path rather than trying to smash down the doors kind of thing.

Yeah, and not to say that you don't have any kind of personal brand or any presence on LinkedIn, but people don't normally, you know, everyone presumes now when you start a company that you kind of need to be the face of the brand, and that you're a bit more old school if you like, where the company just exists and does something, and then there's always got to be someone behind it. And that, is that on purpose that you're not putting your personal brand out there? Is that something you're looking to improve?

Yeah, I mean to be honest it's not something I've really thought about. Everything's kind of happened so quickly with the company since COVID-19 and we've been expanding so quickly that it hasn't really been necessary or— I haven't really seen a need to at this point. Maybe something that would help in the future? And I think actually the company's getting to a point now where our team is growing quite quickly, we're hiring a lot, So maybe that's something I need to do purely for the company to help attract the best talent and things like that around that. But for me, I think we're— what Opspot does is we, we don't need to be public-facing for it. Our main goal is to help restaurants who have a pretty tough time with it anyway. So starting Opspot and being able to help them in a way that, that they can afford that massively, has a huge ROI for the— for our customers. I mean, I think our customers average about a 16x ROI on our, on our fee, which is massive. I don't think you can find that much of many other places, especially not the hospitality, restaurant industry.

Yeah, I think a lot of the reason why founders do build this personal brand is, is for marketing for their company. But I think the caliber of people you're helping out, yeah, the You can name a few of them yourself, but like that speaks for itself. That is the marketing. When you go into a new business, you don't need yourself to show something. Your company speaks for itself.

Yeah, exactly. I think we've been super fortunate with the customers we've managed to pick up already. And it's funny, I started during COVID I was working at my previous job, which was an automotive AI company. Again, I was in sales surrounded by people. Way smarter than me. So it was nice that, um, I was kind of managed to, I hope, absorb some of their kind of wisdom, especially around the AI topic, because it's now since then become so much more relevant. Um, but no, I think, um, ironically, working at there and also the companies before, that kind of tenacity of having to do the same thing over and over again meant that when it came to selling something that I really believed in that some— that people I knew people needed and I could provide it at a cost that they can't really say no to was way more satisfying. I think that just is proof in itself by the customers that we've got already. Um, I mean, we have— we've only been going under 2 years and we're now expanding to the US, across Europe, um, New Zealand, Australia, and it's, it's purely down to those initial customers we got gaining their trust and then kind of word of mouth, really.

Yeah, and you've said this a couple times now, but saying you're not the smartest guy, which is true. I mean, whether it's true or not, I mean, I also feel like that's something I would say, but I feel like one thing I've learned to sort of, I guess, appreciate about myself is if you're not the smartest guy, something that is intelligent itself is that identification of who to surround yourself with and building that team, right? And dedicating that— that's actually a skill in itself. So That process of like, for example, building that team, how did you go about doing that?

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, for me, to go back to your previous point, networking has always been like my biggest, my biggest thing. I think I actually quite enjoy it, which I know a lot of people don't. But when straight after school I moved to Dubai without a job or anything like that, like I started working in real estate and I knew that real estate wasn't what I wanted to do. So I made it my absolute mission to network as much as you can. And I think one of the really good pieces of advice I got given when I first moved there, which sounds pretty terrible, but your network is your net worth when it comes to that kind of thing. So I was extremely fortunate at a pretty young age to be able to get into some really big clients, um, through that. And then kind of knock-on effect, managed to meet a ton of really amazing people along the way. Being in Dubai 6 years, and I was in California for 6 months, and then back in London just before COVID being able to see different teams across different kind of tech companies, different industries, really helped me when it kind of— I knew the kind of people I needed. Whereas I think people who start companies for the first time maybe don't have that and think they might need certain people or job titles or what skill sets, whatever it might be, when actually you can run much leaner with the, like, critical people at the right time.

Yeah, and another way of saying your network is your net worth is you are who you surround yourself with, right? Like, you are a product of your environment. And I mean, you said earlier that you think you actually like networking, and some people will be listening to this being like, well, what do you mean? I go to these networking events and it's it's, you know, suit and tie, watching a corporate speaker give generic advice, and then you're just having the same old conversation with everyone. So how have you actually shaped networking to be something enjoyable for yourself?

Yeah, so the whole, the kind of corporate events, things like that, I think my kind of view of networking would be way broader than that. So like an example, when I was first into selling villas. I really didn't enjoy it that much, but what— I'm, I'm a big petrolhead, and so through going to, um, I, I don't know how, ended up at these like fashion events, um, and one of them was sponsored by Aston Martin out there, and met the guys at Aston Martin. And then I thought, again, I was 19, so I was like, how can I drive these cars? Obviously I can't afford to buy one or rent one or whatever it might be. So I said to the team there, I was like, look, I'm selling these expensive houses, why don't you give me a car to do the viewings in? I'll take the client in the car to do the viewings and also sell the car at the same time, because actually I'd much rather talk about cars than houses. Um, and so for me, that then was like an entry into the car world. And obviously the Middle East car world is a pretty big one where cars are such a central interest for people out there. You then meet people in all kinds of industries. And I think when you start talking to people who are at a certain level in business, it actually becomes a very small world. If you build that trust and make friends, like become friends with them, then introductions and things like that become way easier. So it's not necessarily like you're gunning to network into a certain industry. I think if you kind of put yourself out there and build your network through just the amount of people you know, then getting from A to B, you can find a much more efficient, effective way of doing that rather than, like I said, sitting in a conference room trying to read people's name tags to introduce yourself, which is obviously a way different way of doing it, but it's worked really well for me.

Yeah, and it'll be interesting asking you this question because earlier today I I had Joe Setton on who is basically a pioneer of social mobility, like what his company is doing is amazing and helping disadvantaged people. And, you know, like I said, we both went to the same school, we're privileged to have had the education we did and the opportunities that we have, but what I've noticed is that it actually, that doesn't equate to success at all. There's, in fact, there are so many people from our school that they'll get to the same university, socialize with the same people, and they'll never actually like really challenge what they actually want to do and been spoon-fed their career. I mean, you obviously, you know, your career speaks for itself. It doesn't follow that line. You've been doing a load of different things and you're doing something nobody else you're doing— your mates doing right now. Yeah. And yeah, what was your like driver for being different?

Yeah, it's good. So yeah, I was obviously— we're at school, um, the same school. I got my A-level results, I got the grades that I needed to the universities I had applied to. And then it kind of got to the point where I, at the time, I was absolutely convinced I wanted to work in the city, absolutely convinced that I wanted to put on a suit and have long lunches and things like that. And so I thought that 3 years of— if I started at the bottom, the equivalent time at university in the company, by the time I would have finished uni, I'd be way more experienced and kind of more valuable to, to the company doing that. So straight after school, I declined. I didn't go to university, I declined all the offers, um, went and did an internship with an insurance company, um, got offered to apply for a job at the end of it. I got to the final 2 out of 35 industry professionals and I was like, I've got it, sick, I've got all my eggs in that basket, I was like, this is going to be great. And then I didn't get the job and I went, oh shit, like it completely It hit me quite hard, I think, because I put so much expectation into that's what I was going to do, that actually it kind of disheartened me massively. And so I kind of had to take a step back and be like, God, what am I going to do now? And in the meantime, I was working in a local restaurant near where I live just for cash, and I was like, I should probably go learn a language or kind of reset to something completely different. So, um, went and attempted to learn Spanish, um, which didn't go very well. But while I was out there, a friend from school who grew up in Dubai said, like, stop messing around, like, come, come out, see if you can get a job, that kind of thing. And so came back from South America, worked so I could then get money for the flight, flew out, open-ended flight, um, and and the rest is history there, really. And I think it's just always being open to what's in front of you. And if, like, for me, I never— at 18, when I was convinced I was going to go to the insurance industry, it's because at school that was like the cool— what I thought was the cool thing, right? And what I wanted to do. So yeah, I think it's just being open-minded to opportunities that present them to you. But for me, I've always gone towards industries or areas I'm interested in. The AI company, for example, that was in the automotive sector, so building real-time human intent prediction models for autonomous cars. Now, obviously I wasn't building that, but I thought that's super interesting, working with car companies, things like that. And so that's what made me go for that. And then while I was working there, COVID happened and then saw the niche for, for Opspot and then spun that out. And while I was still working at the other company, um, just running around after work with a backpack full of cameras going into restaurants talking to them about the problems and things like that and kind of went from there really.

Yeah, and half an hour previous to this conversation, uh, my previous guest, uh, Rhys, he, he asked me a I hadn't asked or thought about it. It sounds like an obvious question to be asked by someone doing a podcast, but it was, out of all the guests you've had on, what is your one piece of advice that has like resonated with you most and has meant the most? And in the context of the conversation, it was Sam Horby said to me, who's, uh, the founder of Olsam, a very successful company, he, he said to enjoy the journey of entrepreneurship more, which was like his final words of the episode. And that really, to me, as someone who— if you didn't give me any work and a load of money, I could find a way to have a good time. I could travel, I could drink. Like, to me, like, that is what I kind of want to work to enable that lifestyle. Like, it's definitely a thing for me. But he made it clear that you can actually be really successful and put your mind to something and work hard while still enjoying your life, which was something I was a bit scared about because, you know, UCL, like it's so highly competitive, everyone's always in the library working, but it doesn't have to be that way. There are other ways of achieving what you want. What's your opinion on that?

I absolutely agree with that. I think especially now with kind of social media and the news, all you kind of hear about are people's success stories and like, oh, I sold notebooks on Amazon and I'm making a million pounds a year, or you hear about Musk or Bezos or Zuckerberg and you're like, 'Oh my God, I've got to create like the next biggest thing and make a billion pounds,' and all that kind of thing. But the vast majority of your time will be spent building what you want to do. So if you don't enjoy that, or you're not interested in it, or something like that, then it's a bit of a non-starter. And then you're even more likely to fail in the first place. I think that's what is quite a key point, is most of— most companies fail, right? And we only really hear about the ones, the success stories of or things like that. And so I think if you are enjoying the journey, then also, then maybe failure doesn't matter as much. Hotspot could disappear tomorrow, and yeah, I'd be upset, but I've learned an unbelievable amount building it in the last 18 months, 2 years, that it wouldn't be a bad thing. And it means the next thing I do, I wouldn't be able to make— I wouldn't make the same mistakes that were made previously. Um, and so absolutely, absolutely, I fully agree with that.

Yeah, yeah. Um, one thing you've been able to leverage very well with OpsSpot is the use of AI and the advancement of technology. And obviously that's something that everybody with their careers, their education, that everyone has to consider how they utilize AI. Like, what, what has been your experience with, you know, learning about it? Like, and did you have a bit of like pushback on the idea of it initially, and then it's actually enabled you to improve your business?

I was super fortunate that I was at an AI company beforehand, and I learned a lot of fundamentals about it. And I think for me, we have— so Opsort isn't an AI company. I'd say fundamentally we're a service company, but we have— it's all, as you said, it's becoming so relevant that AI, I mean, very simply, AI algorithms, whatever they might be, are only as good as the data that you give them in the first place. So for us, with the cameras in place, with the hundreds of locations that we're in, we're collecting a huge amount of data, image data, and also data around restaurants where fraud happens more, certain geographic locations that would make sense for restaurants to open over others, sales volumes, things like this. So I think it's— I would say it's not the be-all and end-all to have an AI company doing only AI, but recognizing within the kind of scope of AI itself where you might be most valuable. I mean, for us, like I was saying, with the data we're taking in, we can work with AI, other AI companies wanting to build certain models around It might be food packaging, it might be production in the kitchens, efficiencies, whatever it might be. We're set up to be able to either do it ourselves or collaborate with other companies that want to do it. And for our customers especially, it gives them massive freedom. If, say, they want to work with another company to develop a piece of software or system, we can work with them to provide the data that you have to have in order to— for it to work in the first place. So I think definitely being aware of it and seeing if you can use it in your business, but not kind of going down the rabbit hole of like everything has to be AI, whatever it is. I think humans are still pretty great at this point.

Yeah, and I mean, not to say that you started your entrepreneurship journey really late, because obviously people start companies at all different ages, but one of the things that, you know, if you're trying to do something at a really young age, like maybe I am, is this idea of imposter syndrome and getting over that, which I'm sure you would have faced even in the corporate world, at university, or whatever it is. Like, and I wanna— when your current company, like, you're not just speaking to any old restaurants, like, you're, you're speaking to the Burger Kings, the biggest fast food chains, and everything in the world. Like, when you go into these actual meetings to get these deals done, you say you have the gift of the gab, which can get you so far.

Yeah, yeah.

But there must be that element, like, I'm talking to them.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think probably the main thing behind it is I can go into the meetings, one, knowing that they have the problem. It's a massive issue for the restaurant industry, or the delivery, I'd say the delivery industry, not just restaurants. Instead of going in kind of blind and being like, oh, again, using analogy, property, right? You talk to someone and you don't know what they want, you don't know what the budget is, you don't know like what you're gonna try and sell them. I think with OpsSpot, we know the customer has a problem, we know we can solve it, and we know it's at a price that the biggest question I always get asked is, what's the catch with it? It's because I know I can run a successful business at a price that the restaurants love, um, solving one of their biggest problems. So I think, and I think those qualities almost come from going into a niche, like a proper niche like that, um, which is— it was just a benefit of, of a niche is that it's so specific that you can kind of go into these things almost knowing all of the questions that they're going to ask you and have answers for it rather than being super vague about whatever you're trying to do is and getting blindsided by some curveball question that just derails what you're trying to do. So I'd say that, that's a massive benefit that just gives you confidence anyway that you know you're fully prepared for what's going to come.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting you saying that when you actually have like something to offer and you know what you're offering, you know you can deliver on your offering, it makes these conversations much easier.

Yeah.

And to circle back to a conversation about networking, I think the same applies with that because initially it is a bit scary because you're kind of going into these conversations and you are taking more successful people's, well, at that current moment in time, you're taking up their time and you don't want to feel like, you know, oh God, like, do they even care about this? Is this going to be a relationship that's established in this? But I think obviously from the very beginning, a big lesson that I've learned is that you can leverage when you're young, you start young, which I massively think anyone should. Just that naivety and like ability to question and curiosity initially, and then as you get older, networking gets easier, doesn't it?

One, I'd say, I, um, at my previous company, I was super lucky to have an amazing boss who is an absolute wizard of sales, um, and he's taught me so much about like kind of approaching people and how to do it. And I think the most, the biggest success you can have when talking to someone is just saying, can you help? Like, if you don't— if you go with someone and you're sending them some like massive— it says like a LinkedIn message or whatever it might be, or you're just splurging out like this huge message with way too much information, then they're gonna be like, Jesus, I'm not answering that, or I'm not replying, or whatever it might be. But if you say, I'm I need some help. Like, one, people's egos get kind of massaged and they're like, okay, like, I know about whatever they're trying to find out, like, yeah, I'll help. Um, and that by far has been the best way of reaching out to people is saying, hey, I've just started a new company in the restaurant industry, like, you've been working in it for a number of years, I'd love some advice, can you help me? And it's had massive success rates for it, especially. So, so if anyone's dealing, having to do cold emailing cold LinkedIn, whatever it might be, I highly recommend just ask people for help and start the conversation there rather than trying to sell them something straight away.

Yeah, yeah. And the interesting thing about, about getting help is that, you know, with this podcast, for example, it doesn't really matter the reason why someone is coming on. Like, truly, when I started, like, I was getting names that were way above, you know, where we were at in terms of, like, listenership and everything. But whether they're coming on because you've stroked their ego and you, you know, and there may be a lesser-known person without as much of a voice, or they are just intrinsically like wanting to give back. And yeah, like, there, as long as you're there, it's a new opportunity to build rapport. Like, that, that's kind of the way you have to approach it, right?

100%. Just build the relationship from there. Don't try and get something or, or achieve a goal straight away. I think just start the conversation and then if they can't help you, maybe someone out there can introduce you to someone else who can help, and whatever that might be, right? Um, that's definitely the most important thing.

Yeah, I wonder, is there anything you would have done differently up to this point? Obviously it's all led to where you are now, which you're very content and happy with, but obviously, like, you know, being in the corporate world, you were probably there maybe longer than you wanted to, or did you feel—

No, I think It couldn't have happened any sooner. Like, I don't regret any of the stuff that I did before. I think that's— I think, like I said before, just being aware of what's going on around you and maybe seeing the kind of opportunities when they present themselves. I think if you're going out, if you're like, I want to go out and start a company, and you're like frantically hunting for something to do, sure, you can find it, but For me personally, it was more of a— in the back of my head, I was like, I know what I want to do. And I think as long as you're learning, then it doesn't really— you're still then benefiting, right? I think you can make loads of money and you can be learning and you can probably survive without one of them. If you don't have either of them, then that doesn't work, right? So I think that the learning thing is— I never, especially the AI stuff, I never stopped learning things. So that's why I think I wasn't kind of like on the edge, ready to jump out. It just, when the opportunity presented itself, it was like, okay, I'm gonna start. And I've always said, like, what's the worst that's gonna happen? Like, probably not that bad. So just start, basically.

Yeah. And I mean, I've been speaking to a lot of founders about their why, for why they're doing it. And, you know, some people say it's, you know, passion for it, others say it's a frustration of the problem that they're trying to solve not existing, so like a desire to make it happen. And, you know, you aren't a restaurant owner yourself, however, I wonder how useful that initial conversations with your initial clients that, you know, gave you this base and this opportunity to build, like, really understanding and get to grips with what their frustrations were, like, to replicate it, like, that become your main driver to help them?

Absolutely, to help the restaurants is the biggest thing. It's super satisfying, one, from like a competitive point of view that like you make the sale, but you know that the sale is benefiting the restaurants massively. I was quite fortunate, I came from, before I moved back to the UK, I was working for a Saudi family office, um, and we're investing fairly heavily in California-based food tech companies, um, and that's anything from dark kitchens, um, ghost kitchens, to facial recognition kiosks for ordering. And so I had always like been at it, well, when I was working there I was like in the space from afar, um, but definitely, um seeing the restaurant frustrations was massive. I mean, during— my sister's a chef and has a— had a catering company in East London, and so during COVID turned to delivery. And I think that was one of the big things that then exacerbated the kind of the issue, was she was seeing the food that she was going out— she was sending out by herself in the kitchen, so she knew every order— and then saw all of these problems coming back through the delivery companies. Um, that for me then reassured that I was like, we've got to do it, like, it's got to be started. And I think one of the other things was, is people shouldn't assume that like, I've got to quit my day job to start something else. I think there's a lot of time in the day. Um, I don't get up at 6 AM every day or anything like that, but after I was coming back from work, I was like, I had a backpack full of cameras and running around to like my local restaurants talking to them about it. And just seeing— I wasn't even sure I was going to start a company at that point, right? I was just seeing what the problem was, whether we could help, how we could help, how that might work. And then it was actually once we got to like a certain customer base that I thought, okay, I'm gonna do this full-time now. So I think you can dip your toe into these things and test out the market and what you want to do, or try it out. You don't have to just jump into the deep end straight away, which I think is another reassuring thing for people, that it's not as scary because you can do all these different things to see if it works. Yeah, yeah.

And you're saying that you've got more time in the day than what your work is, and I, I think that's true. But I don't know if this is the kind of old soul in me, but I have been listening to people— I've always like enjoyed speaking to older people because I'm Yeah, ultimately I think I've always thought they live the best life because, you know, when you've got a bit more money and a bit more knowledge of, you know, what you want to do, like, you just stop doing what you don't want to do. Like, if that makes sense. Like, if it's at uni, like, I've come to each year I've come to a realization where, whether it's one point I was going to too many festivals, or one point I was going to too many stupid club nights, or like those learnings, I'm just slowly getting closer to me just spending my days exactly on what I want to do. Um, and, and that really is what frees up that, that extra time, isn't it?

So yeah, with, with getting older though, right? Like, I was like, I was the same, same as you, and I just lost interest in going out and getting pissed and things like that. Um, but maybe I'm just really boring now, so I don't know.

Well, yeah, I mean, you can call it boring, but I mean, ultimately, like I think fulfillment really is the, uh, the main driver for happiness for me at this current kind of moment in time. I don't know what, you know, I asked on this podcast a lot of things about, you know, the practicalities of careers and everything like that, but I really also about understanding people's emotions and mental health throughout all this. I mean, how are you making sure that you get that like mental health balance right?

That's a good question. It's I think it's something people have to be super conscious of. And again, maybe it links back to social media where there's a danger of people assuming that they have to work ridiculous hours and grind the whole time to be successful. I just don't think that's true. I think if you're efficient with your time and if you check in with yourself, are you happy with what you've done? Or if you set yourself goals, then you can allow yourself to have that time off. I certainly like that a lot. Like, I don't feel guilty for— maybe I'll take not work for a day or something like that, right? As long as there's nothing urgent, also, or— and there's always things you can be doing, but there's definitely— you've got to be really conscious of making sure you do actually take that time off because it's not— it's just burnout. It won't end well. But I think it's— you have to be quite a lot more strict with yourself. I think if you work in a more traditional 9-to-5 job, you have those on and off times and you have the weekend. Whereas if you're working for yourself, you have to be conscious that, especially if you've got a partner or kids or whatever it might be, right, that you're not sat on your laptop the whole time. And when you are on your laptop, you're actually doing something useful and relevant rather than sitting on it to be sitting on it and kind of pretending that you're doing the work. So I think that's quite an important point.

Yeah, and yeah, and yeah, when you are doing yourself, you're something yourself, another thing you have to consider, as much as it's important to have that free time and everything, is that accountability, which, you know, in your, you know, in life I find you go through different stages. So at school you and you have your parents and your teachers very much holding you to account, whether it's your grades or your behavior, whatever. University, you lose that, then you have to relearn your relationship with accountability. And then you've gone into the corporate world and you do have deadlines, you have someone telling you what to do, and there is some accountability there. And now you've gone back to nothing again.

Yeah.

What is your relationship with accountability right now? How are you holding yourself to account? Because as far as I'm aware, you don't have a co-founder.

Oh, so It's interesting. I've, for me, I'm quite goal set. So whether that be, I have my kind of list of people that I need to try and talk to, or whether it be brands or number of customers I want to sign up by the end of the week, or me and the sales team. So I think that's, and I prefer doing something like that rather than, I've got to sit down for 10 hours today. Because if we're setting certain goals that want to have to be actually achievable as well, I think, setting the goals for kind of near, medium, and far means that you can, you don't have that pressure to kind of do this stuff every day. Like for me, for example, I could set a sales goal for the team and they could do it within 10 minutes on Monday, if you know what I mean. And then that doesn't mean that then they don't work for the rest of the week or whatever it might be, but I think doing it that way makes it more achievable and again being more efficient with your time, which for me makes sense.

Yeah, and that efficiency is kind of born out of the whole concepts of startups being streamlined and, you know, small teams, less red tape, quicker. I mean, obviously there'll come a time, you know, maybe it's every week, every month, where you're like, I can't possibly handle this much work, I need to delegate it. But what is your strategy for team building right now?

I've set up Opsworks to run it as lean as possible. I think one of my big goals was not to raise capital into the company. We can do that, one, because we're revenue generating very quickly, um, and cash flow positive very quickly, uh, which is extremely lucky. Um, but also because, um, of kind of how we target clients is on scale basis. So one client could have 500 locations, right? Instead of doing it that way rather than trying to get individual restaurant owners, which we do as well, more organically. That allows us to run leaner, move faster. I mean, since starting the company, we've built products that we— for problems we didn't know existed when we started it. But because we're kind of small and agile, we can move and adjust to help with those kind of things, which is, I think, a good benefit.

Yeah, yeah. And when you first started I'm interested in how this might have changed, but obviously you literally are after work going to your local restaurants and identifying if there's a problem there. And now that you have this basis to work off, the whole world—

there's restaurants all over the world—

is someone you could be targeting, be customers. So you've gone from a niche to— yeah, there's no niche.

Like, I mean, I suppose it's just our market is massive. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, the cool thing now is we've gotten to a certain point and we're working with, with brands. Well, we work with corporate, corporately run brands, whether that be like Tortilla and the Mexican food company in the UK, for example, where they have, um, 70 restaurants corporately run, or a company like CERNDONER KEBAB, which is franchised, where we work with a number of the franchisees. We've now gotten to a point where with GDK, for example, we have people reaching out to us, the franchisees, because again, within GDK, it's very small, small family, and they know that we're helping certain franchisees. And so the inbound now, I'd say probably the last 6 months, it's been really interesting to see that we've like hit that critical point where people are coming to us because they know the help that we're doing in the industry. And also it's a small world of people moving companies. We've had had it where someone was working for one of our customers, moved to another brand, and then got in touch with us to then help their, their company as well, which is, which is really cool.

It's good to see. Yeah, the obvious progression of the brand is more restaurants, more everything, but there are other ways, you know, maybe how it operates, whatever you want to progress. Like right now, what are you currently focusing on, like, uh, improving within the company?

Yes, the, the restaurant's always the key focus, so, and helping them however we can. So like I said, we kind of started with the helping them with the refunding side of things. And again, coming back to the data side, because we're getting so much data, we started at refunding and we're now having the ability with our customers to monitor when they do genuinely make mistakes, what those mistakes are, spot trends and be able to report to them kind of back-of-house elements that they can help with. So for example, one of our customers had— we were seeing a massive loss in their sides that were being delivered, and it came down to the fact that the labeling on the pots— the pots look the same, the labels look really similar. Basically, when the restaurants were really busy, staff were grabbing what they thought was one product and it was another one, and they have huge losses. But previously they weren't looking at that. In this case, it was customer evidence. They weren't looking at those images in the first place and they wouldn't spot that. They don't have time. They don't have time, exactly. And so being able to give revenue and time back to the restaurants is the focus. So however we can do that, we're doing it. And like I said, because we're working with these global brands now, we can develop that to be super useful and then kind of trickle down to our smaller, smaller clients.

Yeah. And as, and as we approach the end of this episode, there's a question I like to ask all of my guests, and I'll be interested to hear yours because, yeah, you've been very frank and, uh, honest about your opinions towards careers and everything.

Yeah.

And that's exactly what we want from these episodes. But it's one of these questions that you hear all the time, and, and it's like almost a cliché, but what is your idea of success Obviously when you first graduated from university, when you were a student, you have this idea of, you know, working in the city, being successful. Yeah. Now it will be completely different, I imagine. So what was it before and what is it now?

When I left school, um, I'm pretty sure Wolf of Wall Street had just come out, right? So everyone was obsessed with being a stockbroker or what, of that kind of lifestyle, which I think when you look at it now you're like, that's incredible. Well, he ended up in prison. Not great, right? Like, incredibly high stress load, and kind of, I think people thought that was like a badge of honor. Like, I get into the office at 5 AM and I leave at 10, and like, how awesome is that? It's like, actually, that's not cool. Well, at least I wouldn't enjoy that. And so I think for me, the biggest thing, one is that you're like, satisfied in what you're doing. People always say like, enjoy it. I don't mean like you run into the office, if you have an office, like skipping and having a great day, but at the end of the— not hating going, doing the work on Monday is massive, um, and that you actually enjoy it, whether that be for me like the competitive side of the selling it or knowing that you're helping brands. Um, I think I've said it earlier that people like are obsessed with looking at Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and like, success is millions and millions and millions of pounds. Now, that'd be great, right? But I think if you can enjoy what you do, take, um, take some worry away from your life, like whether that's making more money or whatever it might be, I think that comes. Um, but I guess that's cliché, but for me, like, helping people, helping the restaurants is is huge. So when I left school and chose not to go to university, that I never would have thought I'd be doing what I'm doing now in an industry that I'm in. No way. But it's all come from just saying yes to everything, really. What's the worst that can happen?

Nick, thanks so much for coming on.

Cheers, mate.

Cheers, man.