Top tips from Jason Lawrence.

1. Definitely look at Entrepreneurs Organization

I am definitely look at Entrepreneurs Organization, it really did make me think, how to scale how to me not not the smartest person in the room, but it also gave me aspirational ideas of what running a business could be like. And, and. And I remember very distinctly one of my former members working three days a week, and again, how on earth can you run a business that size three days a week, that’s what I want to be getting to.

2. Implementing EOS.

I know this is an EOS podcast. But honestly, it really has enabled me to let the business run and have the people following our values and, and leadership team doing their job much better than I can in a structured framework.

3. Get your data sorted, get your data in a single single place.

The future around your organization’s get your data sorted, get your data in a single single place. If you want to utilize AI in the future, and you don’t know what you’re going to be able to do in the future. We don’t know yet. But get it into a single place. And Salesforce. I’m a big fan of Salesforce, I read a lot of what they do, and sometimes they know what you’re doing.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

salesforce, people, work, eos, integrator, eo, good, members, customers, sales, business, leadership team, years, deals, board, jason, melbourne, months, data, team

Jeni Clift  00:02

Hey everybody, Jeni Clift here. Welcome to our podcast with a good friend of mine, Jason Lawrence, who is a fellow EO or Entrepreneurs Organization member from officially from Queensland. But it’s interesting today, Jason and I share one, I guess, commonality. And my husband and I, Nick and I sold our business a year ago. And we’re now living between Melbourne and Bali. So I’m coming from Bali today. And, and Jason hasn’t sold his business but has managed to put a leadership team in place and is in his caravan in Fremantle, Western Australia and been living in that caravan for close to two years now. So I’ll get Jason to share that story. But so Jason is founder of a business called sales fix out of Queensland, but works nationally. And they do big Salesforce implementations. So Jason, welcome. And I’ll get you to do a bit better intro of yourself than me.

Jason Lawrence  01:00

Thanks, Jeni. Yeah. EO member since all for about seven years now. So he knows SEF definitely made me think about scaling and how to employ people that are better at their jobs than I am. And I recognize that really early on, I was actually in their accelerator program. So to come through their accelerator program and stay in as a member for seven years. And grow through that. You and I met through EO and EOS actually. So we’ve been implementing ELS for about two and a half, three years, we’ve had a number of different into implementers. But we’ve got a really good leadership structure now. And we follow EOS very strongly. And part of that is down to another commonalities. One of my managers, Delivery Manager guy who used to work for yourself so when I saw that he was on the market I felt was a great fit and being aligned to EOS and and understanding EO really made it an easy, easy recruitment for us. So he’s doing very well at the moment. Good. So

Jeni Clift  02:08

It shows a level of trust probably through the maybe EO N D. O ‘s, but you know, for for that call to say, hey, we’re looking at guys, he is he a fish, and knowing he’s going into another EO member, for somebody that we’d worked with for a long time, or he’d worked for us for quite some time and going to you was was pretty, pretty exciting. Yeah,

Jason Lawrence  02:31

I think that reference is stronger than any reference you’d get from a recruitment agency. So thanks very much indeed. And I know we’ve had a nice, nice, nice bite to eat and glass of wine over over that. So thank you.

Jeni Clift  02:43

Cool. Okay, so tell us about your story. So you run sales fix, how did that come about? What is it that you What’s that value that you add to somebody who is implementing Salesforce such a big tool that comes with so many options, but actually getting it to testing is what you do?

Jason Lawrence  03:00

Yeah, thank you. My background is actually as a management accountant in the UK, so working for larger enterprise organizations such as piano fairies, Lego rock construction, Rentokil Initial pest control and their parcel, company at the time. And as a management accountant, always looking for systems to to automate and systemize and streamline especially on reporting I’m a, I’m a, I’m a numbers person, still, I’m a numbers person. So I used to log into Salesforce once a week or once a month and extract some data on moves organization and needed a CRM evaluated a number of CRMs and Salesforce came out on top and that would have been in in about 2008. So very early on in the Salesforce days. During that there was a migration process moving from Australia from the UK to Australia. And during that process, I was coming over as a management accountant as a qualify as a skill that was in demand at the time and was able to get my permanent residency before I came over. But due to slight delay, I ended up learning much more about Salesforce and contracting to some organizations in the UK. So when I got to Australia when I love Salesforce much more than love accounting, so I started contracting over here set up a brand sales fix very early on when I landed in July 2010 and started getting my own customers and really got busy so I employed somebody, Sandy was my first employee love her to bits. She left me after 10 years but still love her and we’ve got some adventures coming up and then just got busy, busier and busier and employed more people are not employed more people ended up with some customers in Melbourne so we employed some people down in Melbourne. And then we’ve got some offshore teams which we is essential small offshore team definitely not large. But it needs to keep that balance of costs down to make sure we cost effective to our customers and have grown to like year on year that we’ve had some stumbles. We’ve not grown every year COVID was an interesting time, we actually had more income and cash less. And profits were good. But yeah, revenue didn’t grow. But coming out the back end of that, it’s, it’s interesting times definitely, in that space. So we’re now about 25, staff mix of delivery, sales and marketing. delivery side predominantly is 100%, Salesforce, predominantly, what we call Sales Cloud, which is leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, lots of service cloud, which is case management and support ticketing systems. 50% of our customers are non for profit, interestingly, so

Jeni Clift  06:00

Deliberate or accidental.

Jason Lawrence  06:03

A bit of both, we very early on recognized we wanted to give back to the community through non for profits, and we offered a discount for those non for profit says we give a discounted rate we’ve employed Nicole, as one of our sales execs is passionate about helping minorities and Salesforce and non for profit industry. So she’s really kept that momentum going. And we’re really proud to be able to support nonprofit organizations through through the implementation of Salesforce. So keeping them lean, keeping them understanding their their customer base, but it might be members, it might be donors, it might be people that are in their advocacy space, so and what do we do with Salesforce, we help you make it sing, we simplify it as much as we possibly can. It’s making sure all the data our annual, you’re not just your customers, but all of those people that you interact with a centralized and stored and understood to in a secure way that your users and the users might be internal staff members may there might be external staff members, they also might be customers as well, using Salesforce to access their data in a secure way, and I think Salesforce is, I know it’s the best product out there. It’s not the cheapest product out there. But if people really invest in it and invest it through their entire trying to say if they investing it more than just a contact database, then they’ll get value for money out of it. If they’re just treating it as a glorified contact database in a glorified pipeline management system, they won’t get their value out of it. Yeah.

Jeni Clift  08:05

And it’s, it’s so much more than that. I have to use it for rum for one particular thing, and that that’s all I use it for. But I know, the back end, why they make us use it, it seems like overkill for what we do. But I understand the back end and the reporting and the data that they’re they’re getting from it so so I’ll get you to share. This is something we do in all of our podcasts, our best personal and our best professional now running under Eos, you’ll be very familiar with this. But in the last sort of, you know three to six months longer if it if it works, but what’s the best personal a real win for you?

Jason Lawrence  08:41

Personal is being able to facilitate a trip to Cambodia at the beginning of October to build a house. It’s actually we work with an organization called volunteer building Cambodia, I say we it’s Jonah myself predominantly we drag along anybody else that we can encourage to find some time or inclination to come out and helpers. So volunteer building Cambodia. VBC for short, is a Cambodian lead non NGO non for profit organization that builds houses for for people that are in need. They’ve got great social workers to establish who these people are, which villages should they be in. And we’ve helped builds we’ve asked myself and sales fix have funded five houses in total over the years. And Jane and I have been out there and built three of those houses. So this was our third house build. And over the years it’s the design of the house has changed the materials have improved dramatically. Safety has been improved. No longer we standing on ladders and wobbly, wobbly bits of wood. We now put a scaffolding thing so but it was just so rewarding to go out there and see a family transform, knowing that we’ve done it before and seeing what’s happened with those phones. He’s in the past. So from a personal when Absolutely. Helping out that families is amazing.

Jeni Clift  10:06

Nice. And you mentioned some of that you’re when we’re chatting earlier that some of your leadership team joined you with this time as well. That’s

Jason Lawrence  10:13

Correct. Yes. We opened it up to a number of team members that had been with us more than a few years, there’s a particular incentive program we’ve got for longevity. And that’s to come and join us in that house building Cambodia. And we took the opportunity of bringing along two of our new and newer leaders. guy in my delivery, who’s my delivery manager, and Matt, who is my sales manager are relatively new to sales fix. And they actually bought their partners as well. So partly funded by sales fix, partly funded by themselves, they came out and joined us. So it was six of us on that build, including my wife. And it’s really good way to see how Celtics his values are lived. And the rewarding for us all to understand more about the wider world. And

Jeni Clift  11:06

Great way to connect and build that that strong, healthy leadership team to the best professional tell me about something a real when professionally in the last period of time. Yes.

Jason Lawrence  11:18

So I think through EO and then implementing EOS a few years ago is to really get that leadership team to a point where I’m the visionary, I actually want to get to a point where I’m the shareholder, and not even the visionary, but for the time being, I’m the visionary. And having trust in the leadership team through the integrator we’ve got in the business, and the leadership team through that process to be able to leave them to do their jobs and do it better than I can, which resulted in me being able July to September this year to take three months off. Now, I’m also the finance director, as a management accountant, as you can imagine, all across the numbers. So I still do payroll, and I still pay the bills. The good thing about our organization is it’s pretty easy, that side of things, but it’s my way of keeping on pulse with all of the data. Yeah. So I was monitoring their scorecards, I had a monthly catch up with the integrator of the VI meeting once a month. And that was pretty much it. I didn’t attend the leadership held 10 meetings, I didn’t attend any of the team meetings. So we we kicked it off with the annual I then went away for three months. And I came back for the quarterly and was able to really enjoy relax, think about where does Jason wants to be for for the for the future?

Jeni Clift  12:47

So can you talk me through the process of getting to that point. So you know, we sold our business, we did a merger, we sold it, and we went through sort of a transition, but but being able to actually take three months off and and get that and I know some of those leadership team when you I know guy joins you what January, February, so it’s only a few months, and you know, still, you know, in the sort of, you know, the tech sector, but really a very different, you know, industry, we come out of managed services. So it services into Salesforce product that he didn’t know at all. And his service manager Tell me about that process of those few months leading into taking those those three months off, because it’s a big thing to walk away from your baby for three months and leave other people to babysit.

Jason Lawrence  13:36

Yeah, I think it had been happening for some time beforehand, actually is not it wasn’t just the three months up to that it’s really the three

Jeni Clift  13:43

Months it becomes reality. It’s from this is gonna happen to oh, what’s happening.

Jason Lawrence  13:49

And I think in the three months beforehand, it because I was already traveling a little bit, I was actually stepping down more and more. I was attending less meetings anyway. But I think it is having the systems and processes, the reporting mechanisms, the escalation mechanisms, implementing ers as certainly standardizing that to a point where it’s such regularity, such clarity on what we’re focusing on. In fact, half the half the time it will be it’ll be me because I’m the visionary bringing up the shiny objects. There’s the squirrel in the room and going oh, what’s that? Should we be looking at that rather than focusing on the day to day and the rocks that’s been agreed? So having EOS in met was I think, guy being from an EOS backgrounds really did help because he was able to immediately step into the ers world in sales fix. He actually pulled us up on a few things. We weren’t as strong as it is. You’re obviously that’s good to hear. Yeah, so he certainly He pulled us up and improved our ordinance a compliance but alignment to the best practices and that we’d probably let slip and slide slide a little bit. And then when guys, when Mark came on board, he had nothing. He knew nothing about EOS. So straightaway, go and read what the heck is EOS by the traction books? He’s got it there as we go, right? Okay, Matt, you now need to go and read about cascading messages and understand them better. Again, you no need to go and read about this. But guy helped him through that process. So he, he trained him when needed when he saw the gaps. He was training, Matt on EOS. And Matt has actually got a business ownership background, he used to run his own business. So he immediately saw the value of this and didn’t fight it. He he, he embraced it. And that gave us a lot of confidence. I Karen, my integrator she’s worked me for seven years. So trust her implicitly on all sorts of different things. So I knew that it was a good mix. I also follow a path, a lot of Patrick Lencioni, his work, and I’m a big fan of his work in genius model, which is quite a new model that has come out. And so we’ve done working genius assessments as individuals and as a team had we’d identified to make sure that we’ve got enough people in the wi is enough people in the DGS. And enough people in the T’s in the right spaces in the right spots. We knew we had a leadership team. That was good. And yeah, and balanced. So we’re very confident that actually me getting out the way was going to help them rather than than them come keep coming running back to me again, this is your problem solved. This is your problem to fix.

Jeni Clift  16:56

So those monthly vi meetings with Karen, yes. Not content, but talk me through what you what sort of things you cover in those sort of meetings, what are you looking for?

Jason Lawrence  17:14

So it’s a bit different bit between a pure vi because I am the Finance Directors, we end up rolling in like the finance some of the finance conversations unless they’re urgent, of course, we’ll we’ll pick up the phone and go what’s going on. This is urgent I need we need to solve this now. But more of the longer term finance conversations roll into that we, if I’ve read a blog post, so actually, for the three months that I was away, if I read a blog post and went, Oh, this is a technical blog post, I’ve actually put it on our architects issues board. Yeah, no, I’ve seen this blog post. Do you think we should be investigating this further? If it’s more strategic change of direction ideas? So seeing AI and seeing the AI consultant, and they even see the increase in cybersecurity and going well, okay, should we be doing more on this or seeing somebody posting about ISO 9007 on a on a EEO WhatsApp chat going, Oh, I wonder whether we should be doing something like that. I’ll put that all on the visionary integrator board. And then all of those high level things will have a conversation and go okay, is this something that, actually, and this is? Karen is quite good. She’s an E in a tea. So she’s not she? She pushes back along? Yeah, well, what’s, where’s the benefit? What would you want me to do? I go, I don’t know. Yeah. Well, she thinks oh, go away then. And, and what a

Jeni Clift  18:46

Great question by integrator. What do you want me to do about this?

Jason Lawrence  18:50

That’s right. Yeah. So and so then quite often, it will come back to me and either die, because it’s not that important for me to go and spend some more time and coming up with a proposal, or I’ll go away and go, and actually sit down and write up just like I had asked my staff member if a staff member came to me and said, I think we should be doing this. And that’s all I’ve done. I’ll go Oh, go away, write it up. And if you write it up 90% of the time, I’m gonna say yes, because you’ve spent the time in qualifying it yourself. And she was doing the same thing with me. And so it’s where we’re seeing should we be looking at this and quite often, some of those then would just die. Some of them would come on an issues list within just within the VI and some of them will be moved from our board. She would then move them from our board onto her leadership boards. It’s

Jeni Clift  19:43

Such an integrated to this to me recently of a her visionary who is very, very high visionary. And also I pretty sure ADHD. She said if he if he mentioned something, oh, no good combination. But I think there’s a lot of those As if he if he asks me something three times I know he’s serious. The third time he mentions it, I’ll go and look into it. But if it’s only twice, I just ignore it. And he doesn’t know that.

Jason Lawrence  20:14

It’s it’s very true. In in quite often I’ll put things on the board and people are going, we talking about and then I’ll go Yeah, you’re right. It’s nothing. And then I’ll the second time, and then the third time. So unfortunately, some sometimes they’ll go but I’ve told, you know, twice. They get frustrated the other way, because it’s like, well, we thought we’d already agreed that we weren’t going to do this. And you still you’re not let you’re not letting letting go. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Right. Yeah.

Jeni Clift  20:48

Now, you have I guess, what your team your business has sort of a bird’s eye view into sales at the moment. What are you seeing what’s happening in the industry? Or what’s happening in the economy? I guess, more than the industry?

Jason Lawrence  21:03

Yes, I’m not. So I can only say talk from our experience within our deals. A, it’s a bit harder, because we’re also growing up, we’re getting bigger deals, our average deal size is increasing, which is great. The size and complexity of customers are getting bigger. But what we’re also seeing and hearing through conversations is deals are slowing down. We’ve had things on our commit the salesperson of committing that we will win this job, where, unfortunately, is they think that they’re going to win it in September, and we don’t get the contract sign until the end of October have. Whereas we should have really have in the past that would have been done there. We’ve we’ve all agreed it’s the right thing, and it’s just the the board needs to sign it off. And that’s not a big deal. Whereas now it’s a big deal is there. It’s taking longer and more rigor, more why we should be doing this needs to be presented. And then of course, board members are gonna and have you thought about Microsoft, have you thought about Zoho, have you thought about? And sometimes they have but dismissed it? Because now it’s not the platform of choice? And sometimes it’s? Yes, we thought about it, we’ve dismissed it. And then they want to know why you’ve dismissed it more deeply. Because it’s a cheaper product. So it’s, well, those two are cheaper products at the moment. So more aligned to Microsoft more more aligned? Well, we’ve got office 365. So we should have CRM as well. And well, not really. So yeah, that’s right, exactly. So we’re seeing definitely a slower deal cycle, more rigor through that deal cycle, we’re having to jump through more hoops. But what we’ve done to to placate that is we’ve started for certain size deals implementing a mutual action plan. So earlier, we’ll actually sit down and go, here’s the steps, we think the timelines and the step we think we need to do to get this deal across the line. And actually present that to our exec sponsor and going Is it someone with you? And sometimes, who will be signing off this? Oh, I will. So you definitely got authority to sign this off? Yes. Okay. All right. We got to trust them. When they say no, but then sometimes they go Oh, actually, no, it won’t be me that signs it off. I’ll be presented it to the CEO and the CEO. We present it to the board, right. Yeah, at a month. All right. What does the CEO needs? Yeah. And instead of us presenting what does the exec sponsor needs his what is the CEO needs because they’re the ones that’s that signing off in that case. So that mutual action plan is really helping us to understand better the timeframe the the other people in the room, we weren’t trusting that our one on one and two people’s relationships and presentation and and just the the knowing that Salesforce is Salesforce, fired for buying Salesforce. So do you think that

Jeni Clift  24:20

Is the current climate or do you think that’s an you use the term their business growing up? So you you’re now talking to bigger business, they’ve got more, they’ve got more rigor, that you may have a board that they have to present, or combination of the two?

Jason Lawrence  24:37

It probably is a combination of the two but our sales people’s backgrounds have been working for those large organizations as well. So for the town, okay, yeah, yeah. Yep. So then to be caught out would would indicate that, yeah, they they’re going through that. I mean, and even some of the smaller deals as well. So smaller customers that Previously, we’d just be rolling over another few $1,000 worth of work now going well, yeah, we just don’t have the budget at the moment or we’ve got a we’ve got some cost constraints. And we’ve just let somebody redundant. So why should we be spending money? The fact that Salesforce helps processes and improves efficiencies to enable you to more efficiently have less? Sometimes? So yeah, it’s never the argument we like to put forward, but that’s what it should be doing it. So.

Jeni Clift  25:30

And certainly, that’s what I’m sort of seeing and hearing too, is there’s just a bit more caution. People are, you know, weary of what’s going on, I think, you know, Australia has always been reasonably unlucky going through these sort of downturns. I know New Zealand is in a much more difficult place. Us is pretty volatile. But yeah, it’s an interesting time of just caution is the word that comes to mind for me.

Jason Lawrence  25:59

Yeah, definitely. Just asking a few more checks and balances before they say yes, yeah.

Jeni Clift  26:04

So when people come to you, and looking at Salesforce, or your help with their Salesforce, are they brand new setting Salesforce up, we bought it out of the box, and it doesn’t do anything? Or are they down the path and going normal, let’s make it let’s get more out of it.

Jason Lawrence  26:24

It’s a mix. Our preference is definitely brand new, Greenfield implementations, they’re always easier because we can control what we’re doing. We don’t have to look at any technical debt. Even though it’s a very low code product, there is still technical debt or business process change. That needs to be considered carefully as we as we do any sort of like it type of changes. I actually haven’t looked at the numbers recently, but I’d probably say 40% of our customers are our repeat customers, we’ve got a good high retention rates. And then probably more of a mix now because Salesforce has been around for so long of people that have Salesforce to one degree or another. And it might be going through a new iteration. In fact, one of the deals we’ve just won is consolidating three, three instances of Salesforce into one. So they’ve, that organization has got three little versions of Salesforce running, and they’ve gone Yep, this is now our platform of choice as an enterprise level, let’s work out how do we bring this into a single solution. But it might be they’ve they’ve their business model has changed. So they implemented one thing one way and now we need that stripped out and replaced with something else, or they’re matured, they probably Field Service lightning is a new is, is not new. It’s mobile workforce management or field service. Lightning has been around for a while, but it they might have cobbled together their own solution for that. And now they’re looking to use a standard product to do that. So we’ve got to unpick their processes and align it to a standard product suite.

Jeni Clift  28:17

It could be any of those said about the company having three different incidents it was that through a merger, or was that through just disparate people doing their own thing?

Jason Lawrence  28:27

I don’t know. I don’t know enough of that. That. And that’s indicative of the sort of level of detail I’m in at the business right now. It’s, it’s our second biggest deal ever. And the first time I had a look at the statement of works was when I signed it yesterday. So leadership team all across it, it’s been backwards and forwards with their solicitors and from a find that between you, me and the finance on the finance person I looked at what’s the invoicing terms? Yeah. Making sure we’ve not not given away things there. What’s the what’s the rate making sure we we did not agree to write that I feel was unbearable, always going to start diluting our average rate. And one of the things I can’t remember what the third one was, but yeah, just company with a third almost, yeah.

Jeni Clift  29:31

Tell me about your team because I know you are remote and you’ve been you’ve had remote for a long time. So right now just you know, you’ve got an offshore team Philippines.

Jason Lawrence  29:43

Yes, yeah. So the team we’ve got a few members that are in Brisbane, where our head offices section on the north side of Brisbane in North lakes that room that office gets us about once a week. So again, we go forth, is it cost effective to have that up, but at the moment, we still keep it. We’ve also got some access to shared office space in Brisbane cities who have any team members want to go in there. So. So we’ve got, I don’t know, five in Brisbane, probably got about four or five in Melbourne, again, shared office space in Melbourne, we tend to move around a fair bit, but we’ve now got one in the docklands in Melbourne, as a shared office space. And again, I know a couple of members, a couple of team members go in very regularly, and others as and when they feel appropriate, or when there’s some activity that we’re encouraging them to go come into see, we’ve got a new member in Sydney, a new team member in Newcastle. So not because we were looking for a team member in Sydney or Newcastle, they just happened to be the best person for the job at the time. And in this remote workspace, we were happy to employ them that way. And we were very careful to make sure they were happy because we have any instances where somebody is gone. Yeah, I can work on my own. And then they’ve come on board and gone well with where’s my where do I meet up with people? And so that’s what remote working is you don’t? You’ve got to work that out yourself. Yeah. If you want a shared office space, and you find one that’s reasonably priced, we’ll certainly look at it and go yet will contribute towards it. But it’s your, you need to solve that problem, not us. And then internationally. We got about four or five in the Philippines, we’ve had Philippine members for a number of years through a number of BPOS. The moment again, they all work remote, we facilitate them coming together once a month, I think actually two of them from one BPO to another and one’s independence. So we’re not even it again, it’s the right person for the job, not because they happen to be living near that BPL are prepared to move to that PPO offices. And we’ve got a couple of members that we tap into in India, through an organization called i Birds. I’ve been working with Aslan Berry, who’s the founder of i Birds, since about 2012. So on and off, we’ve like tapped into them and not tapped into them. Depending on the work. We’ve got the workload, we’ve got the type of work we’ve got. So when it gets too heavy coding work, that’s where we tap into them.

Jeni Clift  32:38

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that you’ve got that real. And I love to hear this, that you’ve got that real focus on getting the right people and having them in the right seats and where they’re located. But also interesting that people and I’ve certainly seen this that, you know, yes, I’m happy to work remote, or I’m all on my own. This is not working for me. Well, that’s what it means. And you’re we had a right way course for most of our business. Actually, all of it. We started the business in 96, we actually had staff over the time that we’ve never actually met in person, they’ve worked for us for three or four years, but they were you know, so far away from me that from us that we never actually met them in person in a way before the days of zoom and that sort of thing. And, and it’s just it’s a change in mindset, where we coming into COVID We didn’t really have to do very much differently, because everybody worked from home at various times anyway. So very, very, very different mindset to having you know, the old you know, if I can’t see him working at their desk, then they’re not working. And most of us now have the tools to to know whether they’re working or not.

Jason Lawrence  33:48

Yeah, I mean, I’m a big fan of remote workforce, but I also feel a there’s a balance. Yeah. How do we learn from each other? Hear those anecdotal stories go? I didn’t know we we’ve done that before. And that’s something that we do Mr. Barrow work, remote work,

Jeni Clift  34:07

Organic Learning, overhearing two people discussing a problem and then going, Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s something new

Jason Lawrence  34:15

Organic learning. I just came up with that.

Jeni Clift  34:19

Very pleased. Yeah, it is. It’s such an important thing of just those conversations. And we actually had a team’s room during COVID that we called the Hokey Pokey room. And it was because you could step in when you’re free and step out if you needed to do some quiet time to work on a problem or to take a call. So and that’s what that room was about was just connecting when everybody you know, during Melbourne’s 17 years of lockdown or whatever it was that we had of people actually being able to just hang out together. And so it wasn’t. It was going in and being there. Virtually not not by text. Yeah. No,

Jason Lawrence  34:59

We were through COVID. We were strong fans of technology come and gone. So Remo was one, there was another one that worked well for a while. And then currently, we still got a subscription to over ice over the ice. And it’s it’s like that virtual room and it’s actually a virtual office. So you can actually move between rooms and Caesars in rooms and see who’s working together and not working together.

Jeni Clift  35:28

So who’s hanging out together? It’s

Jason Lawrence  35:29

Right. That’s correct. Absolutely. So through COVID Absolutely kept us together and helps definitely the Victorians they said they wouldn’t have survived if they hadn’t had that sort of environment. We’re struggling now to go how do we keep that sort of environment, that connectivity remotely because the impetus to use it is much reduce people. It’s, it’s not the same being in the room when you’ve got people literally talking in AP straight into your headphones. So it’s, it is a different experience. So and also from a customer’s perspective, I, I, I’m a firm believer that sitting in a customer’s office, you learn so much more than having that workshop, even if you have the workshop, in person in a customer’s office, and then you just sit in their office for the rest of the day, you will make up so much more, their relationship between you and then gets so much closer. And so getting that balance between and then they quite often aren’t in the office five days a week as well. So they don’t want the two days a week that they’re in the office to now be consumed by by a consultant with them. Yeah, because they want to be hearing the stories from their kind of prompts as well. So again, that’s the struggle, one of the struggles we were trying to get right, encouraging that face to face time, or in real life in real person. Time. Is getting that right. And he’s tough, tough one.

Jeni Clift  37:08

So what’s next for you? So you’re in your caravan, you’re coming up to yours, you’re in Fremantle. So what’s next for you when what’s next for the business? Yep.

Jason Lawrence  37:19

For the businesses to continue to grow to improve on our profitability. We’ve invested a lot in marketing and sales people with we’re beginning to see the fruits of that come in about a little always a little bit late. But and that’s where the profitability is, needs to just be ramped up a little bit. So improve that profitability. myself continuing to plan for that, Chairman type or, or or shareholder type board responsibility outsells fix, but I’m also looking at where do I fit in that consultancies? Could is this consultancy that I can do for other organizations? Whether it’s working genius, Patrick Lencioni, his model, which I love, whether it’s be on the board, would if anybody’s listening and wants a board member to sit in I’d love to just understand that better and go How do I help and advise and, and guide people keep probing questions? So for me, it’s more of a shareholder role at sales fix. Chairman shareholder, less hands on what less day to day. Looking at advisory board advisory roles, potentially you’re looking at Patrick Lencioni his work and genius model and game could I do that? I don’t think I’d be a good integrator for or sorry, implementer. For EOS two directs I’m just doing this yes, they do. But yeah. So looking at some other art things outside but to be honest, I still love helping small businesses getting my hands dirty. My love language is words of affirmation. So to work with a small business and instantly get gratuity and go wow, this is amazing days and we want more is just always fills my bucket. So how do I get more of that

Jeni Clift  39:26

Running quarterly with a client just in the last couple of weeks and I’m actually doing some additional work with them in sort of people and culture at the moment working with them to for people and cultural strategy strategy, doing some leadership coaching with their team and and I actually got a shout out in the quarterly as the implementer but for that additional work that I was doing and first time it’s ever happened and I thought this is actually really cool. I know takes me back to the days when I worked in our in our IT business have you know of that and and you kind of I’d forgotten just how good that feels to us. It’ll be part of that, that team. So I shall let you go go and enjoy Fremantle. But just to finish up, can you share three tips with the audience of what’s got you where you are? So could be resources could be, you know what, whatever you feel like sharing today?

Jason Lawrence  40:22

Yeah, I mean three tips getting me to where I am definitely look at Entrepreneurs Organization, it really did make me think, how to scale how to me not not the smartest person in the room, but it also gave me aspirational ideas of what running a business could be like. And, and. And I remember very distinctly one of my former members working three days a week, and again, how on earth can you run a business that size three days a week, that’s what I want to be getting to. So implementing Eos, I know this is an EOS podcast. But honestly, it really has enabled me to let the business run and have the people following our values and, and leadership team doing their job much better than I can in a structured framework. And lastly, for the future around your organization’s get your data sorted, get your data in a single single place. If you want to utilize AI in the future, and you don’t know what you’re going to be able to do in the future. We don’t know yet. But get it into a single place. And Salesforce. I’m a big fan of Salesforce, I read a lot of what they do, and sometimes they know what you’re doing. And then six months, okay, and then six months, oh my God, why didn’t I do that a year ago. But they certainly they’re all over the AI space in a trusted environment. And if your data is not in Salesforce, they can’t help you. And if whatever technology platform that you’re going to go with your data’s got to be in it for that technology platform to utilize your data to give you the best out of it, whether that’s GPT So Salesforce right now, they’ve had AI and data analytics and things like that for a while, but they’ve already got the ability to recommend the right service response based on other service responses. Utilizing a large language model that’s reading your data and it securely and safely that’s trust is number one in Salesforce is values. But whether it’s Salesforce or outside of Salesforce, get your data sorted, all of your data sorted

Jeni Clift  42:44

Fantastic, great tips. I think, you know, it’s I’m actually finding fascinating where AI is going I know a lot of people are scared about it and maybe I should but I’m just looking at it going oh my god this is just opening up a whole new world and, and just fascinated of where it’ll where it’ll take us where it’ll go. And trust definitely is key because I’m sure people will use it for for things that perhaps we’d prefer. They didn’t. There’s always going to be that sort of thing. But But Jason, thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. I know you’re you’re traveling, you’re on the road. So I really appreciate you taking an hour out of your day to want to have a chat with us today.

Jason Lawrence  43:27

Not a problem. It’s been great journey. Thanks for inviting me along.

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Debra Chantry-Taylor 

Professional  EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner

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