Transcript 

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[00:00:52] Germaine: [00:00:52] Hello, Future Tribe. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. On this episode, I’ve got Adrian King from two different businesses. Actually tell us a little bit about what you do, Adrian.
[00:01:56] Adrian: [00:01:56] Hey, Germaine. Uh, yeah, look, uh, I’ve got two businesses, which is, seems like a crazy thing to do, but, uh, you know, one, one of them is very new and one of them’s I’ve been there for about 20 plus years and you know, the one I’ve been.
[00:02:06] Doing for most of my career has been animation and video production, more focused on the animation. And, uh, it’s kind of led to the, the new business, which is really, really exciting. So the first one’s called bread boats, which is the animation business, and we do a lot of animation for government, for technology, for science explaining tricky, complicated subject matter.
[00:02:27] Sometimes very, uh, abstract ideas or complex ideas and distilling them down into really condense, smart, concise messages that can be transmitted to huge audiences in an animated format. And so I’ve had this career 20 plus years in video. And animation production. And what happened was it led to this new business because I had a client come to me and say, Hey, can you put all this sort of animated intro bottle onto our videos for us?
[00:02:57] And we’re going to make 30 videos every single week. And they’re just a single shot of about 90 seconds. And we animated logo at the beginning and a call to action at the end and some branding on them. And I thought to myself, wow. That’s really great bread and butter. I’m just going to make a killing out of doing this is great.
[00:03:15] Just like, but then it’s going to be really boring, right? Somebody is going to be sitting down, it’s working. I’m going to have one of my team members working on this stuff all week, punching out the stuff, and it’s going to be how I’ve got to be able to automate this. Right. It’s got to be something that I can find a way to make this simpler and faster.
[00:03:31] And that set me off on this path, which has now become revealed, which is a separate business. And, and that’s, uh, the one that I’m kind of working pretty hard to promote at the moment, too.
[00:03:41] Germaine: [00:03:41] Yeah, right. So red boat is a bit more of an established, um, business. And then you’ve got Brivvio how old is Brivvio?
[00:03:48] Adrian: [00:03:48] About a year and a half, but we only really released, uh, on the app store in February, on Valentine’s day, this year.
[00:03:56] Germaine: [00:03:56] So Breo is, uh, an iPhone or an iOS app at the moment. Isn’t it?
[00:04:00] Adrian: [00:04:00] Yeah. So Brivvio is an app and a, uh, it’s kind of growing into a bit more of a platform, but at the moment you, you you’d download the app on the iPhone.
[00:04:08] And what it does is it enables anyone with zero training, zero skills. There are no how or anything like that. Pretty much anyone can do it to create branded and captioned videos really, really fast and really easily. So. Puts your tops and tail was you with your branding on it and add captions across the bottom.
[00:04:29] Germaine: [00:04:29] And then where does the footage come from? Is that, can you shoot, just shoot that on your iPhone? Or can you bring in different bits and pieces of footage or
[00:04:37] Adrian: [00:04:37] a mix? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you can film within Brivvio so you can film a single shot. Let’s say you want to do a 62nd or two minute video on your phone.
[00:04:47] You film it in Brivvio or you can import a video that you’ve created elsewhere.
[00:04:51] Germaine: [00:04:51] Right. And we were sort of really jumping into the, to the meat of the episode already. But tell me a bit about how you, like, did you get a team together to build the app? I know maybe the craziest sort of dropped off a little bit now, but, um, a few years ago everyone wanted an app for everything and you know, there’s different qualities of.
[00:05:11] Apps like there’s and there’s different types of apps. There’s apps that you can download from an iOS store, but then there’s, what’s essentially a web app that you just use through a window on your phone. Tell me a little bit about how you put it together and who you use.
[00:05:25] Adrian: [00:05:25] Yeah. Great question. Germane, because it was an Epic journey to get there.
[00:05:28] Like we were really spent a year and a half developing this and I have no idea how hard that was going to be to, you know, to do the development. Bit of technical background in my skillset as one of the creative and stuff with the animation. But, um, yeah, certainly a journey and we tried several different technologies to make it work, including progressive web apps and, you know, Mo like multi-platform, but we ended up having to rebuild the technology from scratch in order to make it work, um, because, uh, it requires a lot of heavy video processing.
[00:06:00] And so. Yeah. Some of, some of the initial attempts once a good, how it all started was I had this idea because this client said to me, we want to do this. I said, well, maybe I can automate this. And I had a bit of conversation with them. They said, yeah, that’d be great. If we could just kind of like upload the video and it just comes back to us.
[00:06:15] That’d be great and thought, right, I’m going to make this systematized. And because I’m sure other people are going to want this. And so I built a prototype. I mocked it up. I did a little bit of basic. Prototyping, you know, actually the first thing I did was I built, I did the lean startup method.
[00:06:33] Everybody’s probably heard of the lean startup, if you haven’t much definitely a book you should read. And so I did the lean stuff. I built a web form and I said, and it kind of mimicked the process of how to like field. So upload video here, putting your title, uh, uh, putting colors, choose a background and that kind of thing.
[00:06:51] And it didn’t really do anything. It just pretended to be the process of putting, and I showed a few people, I said, yeah, great. I can use this. And so that was kind of my first sort of validation. So then I’ve built a proper prototype and brought a developer on to help with that. And we built this very, very rough prototype and I realized, you know, I probably need to get some funding to develop this properly.
[00:07:14] So. I started on that path. And I then met, uh, the Canberra innovation network and, uh, heard about the Griffin Accelerator. And so I applied to be to get on to that because they, they sort of mentor the people that get, uh, get into the accelerated program and then put a bit of funding into it. And. Uh, and I got in, we had to pitch it’s a bit like shark tank except friendly.
[00:07:38] And this is like 20 investors and mentors there. And I had to pitch for five minutes in front of them, answer all their questions and go, that was nerve wracking, but really worthwhile. And then I got in and so I spent like three to four months in an intensive incubator space or accelerator program.
[00:07:55] Validating. The, this was a viable product and building the first expanding on the first prototype.
[00:08:02] Germaine: [00:08:02] Yeah. Right, right. Wow. Let, let’s rewind a little bit. Um, give me an idea of first of all, cause I’ve got a bunch of questions that I’ve just noted down. Um, but the, the first one is. How, how old are you if you don’t mind me asking you’ve had a business for 20 years.
[00:08:17] So I would assume you’re at least 21, but how old are you?
[00:08:21] Adrian: [00:08:21] Yeah, I am at least 21 enough to know better and young enough to not really care that much.
[00:08:30] Germaine: [00:08:30] So, so you got into, did you start a business as soon as you left sort of traditional education?
[00:08:37] Adrian: [00:08:37] No. I look up go way back. I grew up in the UK and although I’ve got family, the origin here in Australia, I was born in the UK and know family from both sides and do dual citizenship.
[00:08:49] And I did uni in Leicester in the UK. And, uh, I was always fascinated by tech and design that kind of. Crossover in that. And I ended up getting a job in London, doing animation for computer games, which was really the dream job for a kind of. Early twenties, young guy, right. It was just back then. It was fantastic.
[00:09:13] So, but then I kind of got a bit tired after a couple of years of doing that and, um, of London really, I was just it’s England. And so, you know, I’ve been to Australia before and I knew I got family out here. I was like, I want to go and live in Australia for awhile. And so I moved out here, immigrated here and, um, did a bit of traveling on the way and ended up in a job out here.
[00:09:32] So. It was two years of working in London, two years of working in Sydney, in post-production for TV and film. And then I. Then I set up my first business and it was like, ah, you know, what really set it off was I was always maybe a bit arrogant or ambitious. I just was like, I can do better than my employees.
[00:09:53] And the way they’re treating me is terrible. And I always thought, this is not the way it should work. Uh, I work, I found out how much money they were making from this project we were doing. And we were all working crazy hours and I was just like, no, that’s not fair. So I went out and I set up that it was.
[00:10:10] Back then nobody was really doing this kind of stuff and I just went right. I’m just, yeah. Am I allowed to swear?
[00:10:15] Germaine: [00:10:15] Yeah, we’ll just bleep it out. It’s all good.
[00:10:19] Adrian: [00:10:19] All right. So, uh, I just went and set up an ABN and started and I just started asking people, Hey, do you want some animation done for your TV thing or whatever it is, and, and started building up a client base.
[00:10:31] And I was really lucky because I had a part-time job teaching animation. So
[00:10:36] Germaine: [00:10:36] you’re still in Sydney
[00:10:37] Adrian: [00:10:37] at this point. This was back in Sydney. Yeah. Because I lived there for 18 years and so I had this part-time job and that was what helped me get started in my own business. Yeah. That, and then it took off and it was like, okay, I can’t keep the part-time job now.
[00:10:52] I just have to focus on my business.
[00:10:54] Germaine: [00:10:54] Yeah. I mean, that’s. That’s a lovely way to do it as well. Right. Have a bit of, um, and, and, you know, I guess a few points to touch on there first it’s I don’t think it’s arrogant to think that you can do it. You can do a better job. It’s sort of what drives everyone to do.
[00:11:08] I think all companies exist because you feel like you can do a better job. And, and, um, I, I talk about this a lot where some people sort of put their hand up because I think business exists to serve. And ultimately whoever serves. Better we’ll we’ll win. And some people might put their head up and go, no business exists to make money.
[00:11:26] And you know, it doesn’t matter how you make money. That’s all that matters is that you make money. But I would argue that it sounds to me like you wanted to create a better way of doing something and. There’s a reason that you would win out or, or you’d continue to like, you’ve, you’ve been around for 20 plus years in the business, and there’s a reason why people would pick you over and over again.
[00:11:47] And that is, that is because you provide value versus sort of necessarily just, you know, some other sort of, I guess, aspect or element to what you do. And then as an extension of that as well. Um, you talked about the fact that you essentially used a job to fund your ultimate goal and what you wanted to do, which I just think.
[00:12:06] You shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be neglected. I think nowadays there’s a bit of a culture of dump it all, you know, just, just go into your business tech, take all the loans that you can. And, um, and, and, you know, people talk about, Oh, in my first few years I was, I had five credit cards and I was maxing each of them out.
[00:12:21] But there’s something to be said for, for actually, you know, it’s more sustainable to take money from one thing and pumping into what what’s your, what your real passion is. Is that how you were thinking about it at that time? Was I’m just going to do this. Until I can move into this full time.
[00:12:36] Adrian: [00:12:36] I look, I think my idea about why I set up my own business and why I was doing it changed and it evolved over time.
[00:12:45] I think when I first started in it, I think it was partly about the money. It was like, well, I know I’m good at this job. And I enjoy doing it. So why don’t I set up a business where I kind of make more money, basically doing the same thing and the challenge. I think those are the reasons why a lot of people go into business for themselves is.
[00:13:06] Is they’re good at what they do. And so, and they wanted kind of more, have more control over their own time and not be their own boss. And that was kind of partly it, I didn’t really like working for other people. I just wanted to be my own boss and have more flexibility, but it actually turned into a situation where, and this is what happens for most people who go into business for themselves is you own your own job.
[00:13:25] You still have a job, right? So you don’t have an exit plan. You don’t have a way out. And that was something I started to realize after a couple of years. And I realized, you know, I I’m still doing the same stuff. Uh, I just have a bit more flexibility with my time, but then, you know, that’s kind of got a downside too, because I kinda ended up working in the evenings and gets really busy and stuff.
[00:13:49] And you know, what, if I. If there’s no work on then and no clients come in the door, then, Hey, I can’t go on holiday because I don’t have money yet. So it changes the dynamic. And I think what a lot of people don’t think about when they go into businesses, what’s the long-term vision, you know, with a, with a job, you’ve got a salary and at least it used to be anyway, on these days, it might be a bit different because.
[00:14:12] Jobs are not as secure as they used to be, but the way it used to be as you have a job and that’s your security set, whereas people get into business, there’s less security, but you have a goal which is to build a business out, to bring on investors, to sell the business much, like you would build a property and sell that, and then you retire.
[00:14:32] And so that, so after a couple of years of two or three years, I think I started to get that picture of, yeah. I kind of need to think of rethink how I’m doing business. And, and I brought on a close friend at the time who, uh, to become a business partner and we, we sort of changed the structure of the business.
[00:14:48] We built it up and we did really, really well for five years and doubled our turnover every single year. For five years straight, which was pretty impressive from a garage thing. We didn’t have any investors, no capital investment. And then we just totally bootstrapped the business. Um, but we did the classic thing, which is to overcapitalize and sort of over diversify too quickly and had overheads that weren’t sustainable and, and in there was a downturn in the market and things.
[00:15:17] Got really competitive. And then we had to sort of propose the business down. And so I scaled it back again. He went off to go and do something else and I scaled it back to what I was doing before and had to rethink the business completely. And then, and I’ve read this amazing book back then called, uh, what was it called?
[00:15:36] The network economy or something like that by. Uh, I always forget the gods and I think he’s a smart guy started like a wired magazine, I think anyway. So basically the concept was that the future of business is networked businesses, not these monolithic businesses, that own lots of staff and have big overheads.
[00:15:58] The future is flexible businesses that cooperate and collaborate and that picture just stuck in my mind. And so I reformatted the animation business too. To be really low overhead, really flexible, really agile. And it let me travel that me live up in the Northern rivers for a couple of years, travel for three years whilst I kept this business going.
[00:16:19] I traveled all over new South Wales and act how sitting and traveling and exploring a lot of Australia. And, um, Yeah, that was really interesting having this lean agile business model. But the problem with that, it was not as scalable. Yeah. So there’s, there’s all these different ways you can approach business.
[00:16:39] But the thing that most people forget is to what’s the end game, where are you going to go? What do you want to get out of this? Where you want to be in 10 years, five years, 10 years time. Do you want to build it
[00:16:48] Germaine: [00:16:48] the way I always. Put it is, you know, you would never leave your house without knowing your destination.
[00:16:55] I can’t think of an instance where, where anyone could actually say no. That’s exactly, exactly what I would do. And businesses are the same thing. But instead of thinking, you know, where am I going in the next 10 minutes? You’ve got to think, where am I going in 10 years time? And how can I sort of. Yeah.
[00:17:11] What are the, what are the directions, whether it’s the exact directions that I believe, or, I mean, not, not obviously business, you talked about how it’s unpredictable, you’ve got control over everything, but the beauty of that as well is that there are things that you can control, of course, and you control as much as you can.
[00:17:26] And. If you, you know, there’s no, there’s no ceiling to what you can do where in a traditional job for 10 years. Okay. There’s that you can, you can get promoted and you can sort of move up the ranks, but at some point, unless you challenge the owner, um, you’re not going to be able to keep moving up. Yeah, exactly.
[00:17:45] And that limit is not really dictated by you either. It’s sort of this, um, it’s dictated by the parameters around who you work, for which to some people’s. I mean, you know, if you like predictability, it’s, it’s wonderful, isn’t it? Because you, you can map it all out and there’s a fairly, you can, you can say, you know, every, every X, X, period of time, I’m going to get X promotion, which will come with.
[00:18:08] X pay rise, which means that, you know, at this point in my life, I’ll be on this much income and I can have this many dependents and this kind of learn. And it’s beautiful. But if you like a bit of chaos and I’m predictability, you have to get into business and sort of, no, I think it’s also always a fine balance of knowing that it’ll be okay and it’ll be fine.
[00:18:30] But also wanting to work so that it’ll be okay and it’ll be fine. You can’t just sort of dump it all and go tomorrow. I’m going to start a business and it’ll be fine. And I’m not going to work towards it. I’m not going to put a plan around that.
[00:18:43] Adrian: [00:18:43] Yeah. Yeah. That’s really a really insightful germane. Like, it’s it, it, you know, and when I first started having that job on the side really, really helped.
[00:18:51] So, you know, jumping into stuff like if you, unless you have. The funds to be able to do it, like, you know, to be able to survive. And you’ve got like a year’s worth of runway or more, and you’re sorted, then you kind of have, just have to find a way to manage the chaos. Like you said, you know, you got the, the reliable income of a job or salary and, and that you can plan for life with that, you know?
[00:19:17] Get married, have kids have a mortgage, et cetera, et cetera, have two holidays a year, all that kind of stuff. But when you go into business for yourself, it’s harder to plan that kind of stuff. And so. You know, it’s a challenge. And, and so being able to manage that is really, really important part of, part of actually running a business, being able to manage your life so that you sustain yourself is really important.
[00:19:37] You know, a mentor said to me, years back, uh, one of my mentors back in Sydney said there are three rocket ships to enlightenment. He said the first one is to have your own business. So it’s kinda like rocket ship. Number one, you want to get in alignment, have a business. The second one. Is to have a relationship.
[00:19:58] So that’s like rocket ship number two goes faster. All right. I guess high, third one is to have kids have a family rocket ship. Number three, these are the three rocket ships. I’ve only done. Number one. I’ve had, I’ve had rugged jet number two, but we crashed and burned a couple of times.
[00:20:17] Germaine: [00:20:17] Hey, this is that a
[00:20:19] Adrian: [00:20:19] couple of times too.
[00:20:20] You know, that’s number one. I haven’t had rockets number three yet. But we’ll see. Anyway, look, those, these are the things, you know, you go for the ambitious, like how much am I going to grow in my life? If I just keep doing this sort of pretty have a predictable, predictable life. It’s great. I’m going to enjoy it.
[00:20:38] It’s going to be mapped out, map it out and I can. Create all of these, these things have a comfortable house and a life and all of that stuff. Or do I want to embrace the chaos and go for my ambitious dreams and goals and see what I can achieve. And, you know, it’s not for everybody. I don’t think, I think, um, there’s pros and cons to both sometimes I think, yeah, it would be great to have a, just, you know, had a, a much simpler life and be able to predict all these things I could still do have great adventures.
[00:21:09] Um, But, um, just different sorts, you know,
[00:21:12] Germaine: [00:21:12] do you think that the people who feel like, you know, their goal or like part of their, not necessarily their calling, but you know, part of their purpose is to have a business, do you think. It’s almost then, like, and I sort of feel this way. So I’m interested to hear what you think is I feel like it’s almost my purpose.
[00:21:33] It’s almost like it’d be incorrect not to at the very least explore it. Like, okay. It can crash and burn. That’s fine. But I, I, you know, if I feel like I’ve, I have that potential. It’s it’s almost, you know, unfair to myself, let alone the potential impact that I can have and therefore unfair to other people.
[00:21:54] If I don’t sort of explore it and to, and tap into it. Do you sort of agree with that? Or how do you sort of look at that drive that you might have that sense of entrepreneurship? Expiration innovation?
[00:22:06] Adrian: [00:22:06] Yeah, I like that too, man. That’s great. Um, I’m being unfair to oneself. Yeah, I think. Yeah. In some way. I, I agree with that.
[00:22:15] It’s like, if you have a creative desire, you have a burning desire. You want to do something. You want to create something, whether it be to make a piece of Marco sculpture to put on the wall or, you know, or to grab a family and create a wonderful stable environment for your family, or to create a business and to.
[00:22:35] Do something like that, or to create a charity and do something great for the world. Uh it’s if it’s strong enough desire. And, you know, I think I come back to desire as far is where it is. People say desires as bad things and evil, blah, blah, blah. And it’s the fruit of all evil and all this stuff. Rubbish desire is actually motivating us.
[00:22:53] It drives us to do great things. Uh, sure. It can, you know, the wrong type of. Approach to desire can lead us astray, but it can be,
[00:23:03] Germaine: [00:23:03] can just jump in there. It’s it’s more, what you’ve got to explore is the root of that desire. That could be a bad thing, right? Desire itself. Isn’t a bad thing. It’s it’s if the root of it is to, you know, global domination that might not be, um, that might not be the best, but if the root of it, that desire is to help more people or to create a safer home for, for your family.
[00:23:26] Like that desire then is. Oh, it’s fine. Obviously then becomes a matter of what actions you take to make that, that desire reality. But, you know, that’s what I would argue and sorry
[00:23:37] Adrian: [00:23:37] to cut you off, but no, no, I think you’re right. And this is important distinction, but I think also if your desire is to put world domination or to enslave the human race, then I think you’re just missing the point.
[00:23:46] Right. So just, you know, get with the program, uh, because. That’s not the point and it’s probably not the root desire of these. Yeah. That’s probably coming from fear or anger or resentment or whatever it is, will control or that kind of stuff, you know? And when you do enough work on yourself and you clear your emotional.
[00:24:06] Baggage and stuff you find that actually desire is a beautiful thing because we all actually have love in our heart and we all value contribution and get a real, real hit and a real buzz from contributing to the world and having a business with vision and purpose is know, and this is something I hear a lot recently over the last few years, is people talking more and more about the importance of having.
[00:24:33] A mission or vision and a purpose purpose led businesses. And so, and how that really is powerful driver for business, not just a business model or a great product or great customer service or great marketing, but actually having something which is purpose led. And I think that’s resonating a lot more these days with customers, consumers, the younger generation.
[00:24:56] Having a purpose is very important.
[00:24:58] Germaine: [00:24:58] Yeah. Well, I mean, they also look at it, I guess, the younger generation and with this freedom to access so much information, you can look into a business and a company and understand whether their values aligned with yours. Whether, you know, just, just yesterday I was talking to at a family dinner and we were talking about ethical sourcing and the freedom or the, the, the, the information that we can tap into these days that lets us educate ourselves.
[00:25:24] On on the supply chain. And so ultimately even that, that level of transparency means that, um, I think businesses need to be better just, just even if, even if they were like, you know, I love Nike for example, but I think we were looking through how Nike defines what they do and why they do it. And you know, this might be, um, Improper of me to say, but I think what they, the way they’ve defined themselves is in, in a positive way so that the younger generation will keep buying Nike, you know, talking about sustainability and innovating in products to sort of enable everyone.
[00:26:02] And, you know, um, Nike is for athletes and then there’s an asterisk. And the asterisk says, Nike believes that if you’re a human, you’re an athlete and you know, it starts to get to me, that’s commercially driven, but when you’re starting a small business, You don’t really have that freedom. You have to be good from the ground up because, um, you know, one or two customers can, can be 10% of your whole client base.
[00:26:27] Adrian: [00:26:27] Yeah, that’s right.
[00:26:28] Germaine: [00:26:28] So there’s sort of, sort of this importance for you to have be purpose led and truly purpose led as
[00:26:32] Adrian: [00:26:32] well. That’s right. And, and, and being purpose led, uh, not just for marketing purposes, you know? Uh, because like you can go. Yeah. Well, we were going to be a purpose led business, uh, because that’s really good for marketing and it’s going to get us more customers because customers want purpose that businesses.
[00:26:50] And then, you know, you’ve just. Kind of shoot yourself in the foot, because all you’re going to do is be trying to appear purpose led. And it’s like, you got to tap into something which is more human. We got to tap into, you know, the business owners have to have their own personal reason for doing this and the same applies for the team.
[00:27:06] You know, you’ve got to, if you’re. If you’re running a business, to be able to instill a vision and a sense of purpose to the team is a very powerful thing. If it’s just done for marketing, then it’s just not going to carry as well. You know, it’s just not quite the same when you’re maybe at a, uh, when you’re global corporation, you can get away with that kind of stuff.
[00:27:30] But certainly if it’s small businesses, it doesn’t resonate. You know, the thing about. Like some, some of the stuff we did for Brivvio is with helping small businesses to connect with audiences, to reach out and create branded videos really quickly and easily. Right? So we have a lot of conversations with small business owners is about branding and reaching out to and connecting with audiences and.
[00:27:53] What that means. And some of the interesting things about things that people have said to me as well, what is branding? What branding is the logo? Well, it’s your color scheme or it’s your image or it’s your tagline? Is it, but then the really interesting conversations come back and there’s like, no, no, it’s none of that stuff, actually.
[00:28:09] It’s your promise. It’s, it’s your vision and your purpose and, and the, the message like your future theory and the promise you get to people, which you told me. Yeah, you’re on.
[00:28:21] Germaine: [00:28:21] Yeah, exactly. Just to make your goals come true, essentially.
[00:28:25] Adrian: [00:28:25] Exactly. Yes. They’re having a reason for doing it. Um, and that really is powerful on a small business level because the people that you, you reaching, whether it be through social media or your networks, Uh, putting out videos or social media posts or being in podcasts like we’re doing now are going to trust you if you’re a small business, because you’re part of the local community.
[00:28:51] There’s an there’s a much, I, what I’m trying to say is it’s easier to trust smaller businesses who you are closer to than it is to trust a brand, a brand that is
[00:29:02] Germaine: [00:29:02] that’s just everywhere and ubiquitous. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:29:05] Adrian: [00:29:05] Feel closer to the people of the business. And so, especially on social media and you’re more likely to get a response from the business that is personal.
[00:29:16] And so it’s easier to build that level of trust. And so. Yeah, there’s much, it’s a very different experience to, uh, you know, approach the social media and brand and brand message if you like
[00:29:28] Germaine: [00:29:28] well, and even having and having that purpose, I’ve found at a, at a more even operational level, um, makes it really.
[00:29:36] Easy when we’re making, trying to make decisions. Um, for us internally, we were on a mission to use sort of pre recording of this episode, um, that we look at rebranding and sort of explaining our position and, you know, making decisions along the way. One thing I turned to is. How does it sort of answer, how does it serve our ultimate goal?
[00:29:58] And it becomes very easy. For example, like part of, part of it is that we, we want to employ people locally, get people on the team, get people in person. I think moving forward, especially there’s this, this is huge thing. We’ve probably, you know, every generation has heard it where technology is going to.
[00:30:16] Kill X amount of jobs or get rid of X amount of jobs. And, and we’re seeing that, like we do, um, you would have, you would have seen that from, from sort of the animation side, because people are gonna say, well, technology means that, you know, you can just outsource it to X, Y, Z, or you can just automate it for us.
[00:30:34] That’s websites, companies like Squarespace, who just go do it yourself. But for us, what it comes back to, and I would hazard a guess that if we use the same, is that. We want to assemble a team of humans who want to help humans and who want to communicate with humans. And ultimately, no matter how good AI gets, no matter how good software gets, they can think like a human, but they can’t.
[00:31:00] Think as a human, if, if that sort of is a distinction enough. So for us, it becomes, you know, serving people fundamentally is going to mean that we, we will serve people and therefore we can’t be removed because, because it has to be a human in this equation. And for you, you’re using software. Yes. Uh, through abbreviate, but.
[00:31:23] Ultimately that is designed for people and there’s going to be a limit to, you know, in skilled hands preview could be, would be much better than in less skilled hands because you still got to get the, get the message right within the video. You’ve still got to identify who you’re talking to and talk to them how they want to hear you.
[00:31:43] Versus just making a video because that can be anything, right. I’m sure you’ve experienced the whole spectrum of good to bad videos. Hello, feature tribe. I just wanted to take a break from this episode. Talk to you. Yes. You about the fact that you are listening to this episode, but you’re not subscribing.
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[00:32:38] Adrian: [00:32:38] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I’ll tell you a little story. When I first started, I got, my whole career has been behind the video camera or looking through the lens of the screen and editing and post production. And so I scrutinizing every little pixel. And with Rubio, I started to have to put myself in front of the camera to actually show how this works and do my own little videos.
[00:33:01] And, and I go on the first time I put myself on camera, I was terrified I was doing an interview for something. And I was just telling I was, I froze up. I couldn’t speak properly. I sounded weird. I was like, I don’t know what to do with my hands. Should I look at the lens. I was just like, Oh crap. And so, yeah, even with it’s career of directing and so on other people, it was hard and it, because there’s, there is that human element to putting yourself in front of the camera.
[00:33:36] Um, and so, yeah, it was definitely a journey to be able to present and put your camera. And there are a whole bunch of things that you can learn and tips and tricks, tricks, and techniques, and to learn that stuff and anybody can do it really. It’s just a matter of going, you know, going through the process of getting comfortable with it, learning a few tricks and tips.
[00:33:56] Tips and techniques, but yeah, that’s, I think what you were saying, going back to the AI sort of thing about, you know, replacing people’s jobs and things is you can’t really replace the why y’all don’t you can’t, I don’t know. Maybe you can, but maybe one day we’ll be able to, but I don’t think at the moment you can get things like artificial intelligence and machine learnings to kind of really have a fully conceptual reason reasoning or understanding of why.
[00:34:19] We should be doing something. Why would you do this instead of that? Or why X, Y, Z is better than this. And that’s where the human judgment comes in. And it’s a very subjective thing. So yeah, I think those types of jobs where that level of reasoning come in, creative reasoning things that will be very hard for AI to, uh, to replace, um, Going off on a tangent here where they are, but Hey, it kind of still comes back to that human thing of, of purpose and you know, why are we doing stuff?
[00:34:51] You know, what are we doing here on the planet? The more we connected with Y like, okay, can I just start verge into another little story, go for it. The animation business. Thanks. I love this is another little one that I was doing a, I’ve always been doing lots of trainings throughout my life. I’ve always been.
[00:35:08] Putting myself into new learning experiences, trying to kind of advance myself and grow personally. And one of the ones I did was in Sydney, out of. Five or six years ago. Uh, I did the entourage training with Jack Delosa team in, uh, in Sydney. And it was great. It was really, really good. I mean, people, some people love it.
[00:35:31] Some people hate it. I had a great time. I went through that whole training. One of the most important things I got out of, it was the. Connecting with, uh, the vision for the business. And so the previously right back, we did a lot of advertising marketing. We were studied a little bit of technology stuff, a little bit of science communication, and.
[00:35:54] Um, when I connected with the, the real vision for the business, this sort of sense of purposefulness that changed the business. And I’d always had this conflict with me as like, yeah, I’m good at what I do. I grew up good at running this business. We do great on emotional, got a great team of animators designers and people that we rely on and we do great stuff.
[00:36:15] Right? Skirt, riding, all of it’s fantastic. But. A lot of it’s marketing, it’s been sort of like, you know, selling stuff. And I had this push pull of like, well, there’s something else inside me as a person that wants to express itself, uh, that wasn’t feeling like it sat perfectly well with the business, which was about communication and marketing.
[00:36:37] And when I resolved that it all clicked into place and that was getting in touch with this one little set of words. And that was why. Why am I doing this? And that is to move human thinking forward. And I have, sorry, somebody’s pinging me on Slack. That’s right. When I got those words and I was helped by the team and the entourage to kind of connect with that, it was like, Oh yes.
[00:37:03] If I can make my business a manifestation of this purpose, it’s kind of like my personal reason for being here on this planet to move human thinking forward, it felt. Emotionally like, ah, I’m fulfilling something in myself personally through my business and the business is creating value for the planet.
[00:37:23] The people, the customers, everything it’s a win-win win, win, win all around. Yeah. It changed the business and. Over the next couple of years I had, I, without even really trying, just having that statement present for me and repeating that and even putting it on the website. That’s my vision. That’s the vision for the business.
[00:37:42] Just seem to attract different customers. And we started getting really big, interesting projects that were about, um, Uh, the great barrier reef or environmental staff, um, helping people with, uh, understanding government policies or, uh, the Marine parks or blockchain or technology, really interesting things.
[00:38:06] And the marketing and sales stuff, which was more advertising type stuff for products and things started to just drop away. I don’t even have to do anything to actually try that. It was just connecting with the vision, made a huge difference in the business. Somehow on some level, I don’t know how it works and the mechanics of it.
[00:38:25] Germaine: [00:38:25] I mean, I guess there’s surely an element of you, especially when he’s starting off the individual is the business, right? So I’m sure as an extension of you thinking that way, the business, to an extent also thought that way, because at least initially when you’re starting off. For all intents and purposes, that is you are the business and therefore you, how you think is how the business thinks.
[00:38:47] I, I can’t believe like genuinely, um, I wasn’t expecting the purpose behind what you do to be so separate almost cause I’ve always wondered, like I know why we do what we do and now to come now, come to think of it. It’s almost really quite, quite separate, but. You use that information to move human thinking forward.
[00:39:11] And I just didn’t think that that that’s where this conversation was going to go. But that is, that is I can see how that could be so enlightening and so powerful because then that, that informs the decisions that you make. And, um, You know, you might not do it sort of very manually and you might not do it intentionally, but it would also affect who you work with and the types of projects that you do.
[00:39:35] We we’ve got that to an extent as well, where again, the more we’ve started focusing on why we do what we do. We’ve. Being even more comfortable saying no to projects. Like a few months ago, there was a project that came in, it would have been humongous. This person wanted to start essentially his own little car sales and car sales is a really big website, but it was all money-driven.
[00:39:55] And I could tell from the conversation, the fact that, you know, in the emails are short, it was just like, This suspect’s just give me a price. I said, that’s not how we work. And we mate, I don’t want to meet, just give me a price. Just give me a price. I just want to get this done as cheap as possible. And when we ask ourselves the question of, is this what we want to do is this, you know, okay, we talked about making goals come true.
[00:40:16] Might this be this person’s goal? But I guess as a, as a layer of that for us is also making, asking is this is this for the, for the better of, you know, bettering of society communities, is this helping someone. W we sort of came back to, this is just going to be helping some guys so more caused that it could be of questionable quality could be, it could be.
[00:40:39] Amazing quality, but, but ultimately it doesn’t sort of fit in and, you know, even, even for you, I’m sure you’ve found this as well. Where when you ha, when you’ve taken on projects, sometimes there are moments of maybe not for you, but for me, I’ve definitely had moments of sort of financial desperation of like, we just got to accept this because it’s, there’s not enough money in the bank to make payroll next week or whatever.
[00:41:01] And you take on a project and you realize this thing just. It doesn’t align with what I’m trying to do. And therefore it’s a chore it’s gone from, you know, you could animate one thing that is beautiful. I can, you just wouldn’t well, how much time that, that you don’t don’t even feel tired POS and you could spend office time on something else and go at that felt like it took four times longer because.
[00:41:24] It doesn’t align with ultimately, and the beauty of, I guess, being your own boss of Matt, being the business, um, is that you can decide to say no to projects and you don’t have to, you don’t have to push your morals and ethics sometimes where I know people who, you know, We’re in very, even like sales assistants who have to sort of blur their own morals and ethics because, Hey, you’ve got KPIs.
[00:41:48] I to, and if you don’t, the retail is going to really blast you and your manager’s going to be in trouble and you don’t have that control. Yeah.
[00:41:55] Adrian: [00:41:55] Yeah, yeah, totally. Uh, it’s, it’s such an interesting subject. Like, you know, I’ve certainly had times where it’s been hard to meet all of the obligations of running and owning a business.
[00:42:08] At, uh, that’s just part of having a business is you’re always aware of that and it’s sometimes it’s easier and sometimes it’s harder. Um, there’s always challenges, but then there’s also this thing of taking on projects for money versus taking on projects for purpose, you know, doing the right thing or the thing that’s right for you as a business, as a people, as humans and.
[00:42:39] In my experience, every time I’ve taken on a project, which has felt more about money. And that kind of what we need to make, make ends meet an oil. We need to put money in the bank, and this is a good opportunity to make some money. And it’s not necessarily aligned with the vision every single time. It’s been harder, more difficult, and usually not as profitable as the things that are.
[00:43:07] More purpose led. I put it down to when things are purpose led and you’re sort of aligned with them and it feels good to be doing them to doing the work. It’s easy to get out of bed in the morning and roll into work and do it because it feels good. There’s a, a sense of, um, I suppose, optimism and reason for doing it.
[00:43:27] That is beyond the money and that’s powerful. Whereas, if you’re doing some things, because you have to, it doesn’t feel great, you know, a trap it’s harder and that somehow creates resistances and complexities in the workplace and the job, the client relations and all of that kind of stuff that might make it harder.
[00:43:48] Financially profitability, just more difficult in, in the long run. So. Yeah, it’d be fascinating to see if anybody’s done any research, somebody off somewhere. I’ve probably done some research looking at that type of yeah. To see whether there is profitability differences between purpose led and nonprofit, non purpose led businesses.
[00:44:08] It’d be really interesting to see.
[00:44:10] Germaine: [00:44:10] It probably has a lot to do. I mean, talking about the fact that inevitably, you know, when, when you don’t necessarily do. Take on stuff. That’s purpose led that tends to be more issues that tends to just, it just tends to not, not work as well. I’m sure it’s something to do with mindset as well.
[00:44:25] Right? Because if it’s something that’s purpose led a problem might not look like a problem. A problem might just look like a little, little road bump on the wave versus a huge closed gate that keeps you out. So, um, I’m sure I’m sure
[00:44:39] Adrian: [00:44:39] exactly. It’s the attitude is different. But, you know, it doesn’t mean that we should all run around, you know, being a charity cases without businesses, suddenly Trump spending all of the profits on we’re still got personal goals and visions, uh, for profitability.
[00:44:54] So it’s, you still have to have all of that business logic and business models and, and, and be accountable, uh, as a business. It doesn’t mean you just suddenly go off and start trying to save the planet because you can’t do it. It’s gotta be sustainable.
[00:45:09] Germaine: [00:45:09] Well, exactly. Ultimately, Just because you’re doing, doing something purpose led the realities of the physics, the, the fact of how everything works does it, don’t just cease to exist.
[00:45:21] Right. Just because you’re doing, trying to do something purpose led the, you know, your electricity provider, isn’t going to say, don’t worry about it. That electricity is free or whatever it may be. So it’s ultimately. Got it got to sort of work. Like it’s one thing that I had thought about when I got into the business full time was if I had to work and at the time it was, you know, if I had to do like a, a sales assistant type role on the weekends, or if I had to, um, you know, finish work at five o’clock at six o’clock start cleaning someone’s someone’s office, um, until nine o’clock to then fund the business, I was willing to do that.
[00:46:00] I was like, If that’s what it takes, knowing that that’s not forever. It’s just when I’m starting off, when things are quiet, when they, when you’re trying to build things up, it’s, it’s sort of, you know, for me that wouldn’t have been much at all. It would’ve just been a way of accepting the realities, the physics, the, the things that life entails and the systems that we’ve built, just realizing that.
[00:46:23] I’ve got to play the game. I can’t, I can’t sort of go, I am going to remove myself from these things that dictate everyone else’s life like bills and, and the need to eat. For example. Um, I’m just going to look at ways where I can. I can still do it all. Um, and, and, you know, make some money separately. If that was the problem at the time, I did have another question.
[00:46:47] This goes back to way earlier when you talked about so many tangents, but that’s, that’s what this is all about. I, I, I love, I, I love this. Um, you talked about accelerator, so you went to Griffin accelerator. I want to just talk to you a little bit about. Y Y you went to an accelerator. What you, how you thought about that and how you chose to take, what is that?
[00:47:14] I would assume there was some investment monetary investment there as well. And why you, how you sort of factored all that into the decision that you made versus just trying to self-funded for example.
[00:47:25] Adrian: [00:47:25] Yeah. Yeah. Good. That’s a brilliant question. Germaine opens up a whole load of really interesting subjects.
[00:47:32] Um, so when I first. Okay, so I’ll backtrack a little bit more. Uh, one of the other things I learned when I was around about the time that I was getting in touch with my division that we’ve spoken about was this concept of. What is a startup, what is the business life cycle from startup proof of concept, MVP, startup to growth, to scale, and then to exit.
[00:48:04] And there’s this kind of like curve that it kind of starts off slow and then growth and scale, and then exit. And well, sometimes IPO for the big ones and this kind of curve that goes up was kind of new to me. And it goes back to what we were mentioning earlier when we were discussing this, the reasons for getting into business and the not, and must be when not having an idea of an exit and, and seeing this picture really clearly for me.
[00:48:32] Gave me a sense of, ah, uh, well, how do you go on this journey to have, like, let’s say a five or 10 year journey with a business where you can exit at the end of that and sell it and then have enough money to pay off your house or, you know, start up another venture or maybe retire. And when, when I say retire, I don’t mean going live on the farm.
[00:48:55] I mean, do whatever you need, want to do in life fruit out to,
[00:48:59] Germaine: [00:48:59] yeah. For money to not, not be a constraint.
[00:49:01] Adrian: [00:49:01] Yeah, exactly. And so this sort of picture of the business lifecycle made me understand the value of capital and the value of investment in businesses and why people raise capital at startup stage.
[00:49:15] And. Uh, and growth stages and the business and things like seed angel investors, uh, seed and seed funding series, a series B funding and IPO’s and what that does for a business. It gave me a picture of, Oh, I’m just understand one of those things of a valuable now, because the more money you have at the beginning, the more capital you have in the business at the beginning, the faster you can grow and otherwise you have to bootstrap it and it’s a slow journey.
[00:49:43] And. You don’t necessarily have the scale to be able to the funds to be able to put on a business development marketing manager or whatever it is to be able to do some advertising, to bring in more sales, uh, or to develop that product, that’s going to open up into a new market. And so that’s the value of home capital.
[00:50:00] And so though I realized when I had this idea for Breo, I’m going to be some money and I don’t really have enough money to do this by myself. How am I going to do this? And I now have this picture of it. Well, I can go and see if I can find some angel investors to put some money in, to own a little bit of equity, and I understand what they’re going to get out of it.
[00:50:19] Their, their vision is. So get a particular return on their investment. They might want to get 10, 20 times return on their investment, which is obviously a lot more than you can get in a bank or a fund. And they’ll spend a little bit of their cash to be able to take apart. And. Yeah. If they believe in the business and if they believe in founder.
[00:50:40] And so I stopped look at that as an option for Brivvio . And I thought, right, well, I’ll put together pitch deck. And I started to show it to a couple of people who I knew were working and had connections in this space and to float the idea of, you know, could I raise $150,000 to make this a fast growth business?
[00:51:02] And. What I realized was actually, no, it was a course. I did. It could the Canberra innovation network that was about negotiating term sheets. Um, that was fantastic. And I went and did this course at Canberra innovation network taught that was a simulation of negotiating with investors to raise finance.
[00:51:24] And, uh, it was fantastic. It was, it was such an eye opener that I realized. I’m going to be eaten alive. If I can try and do this now without some sort of mentor and coaching and the right type of people around me to grow my skillset, to get my confidence up, I will. Just get eaten alive, you know, that just gonna I’ll end up with nothing of the business or something like that.
[00:51:51] So I thought, well, you know what? I need to find that place where I can get that mentorship. How am I going to learn all this stuff? Because I’ve never done this stuff before one, I started looking at lots of books. I was reading books about venture capital, startup funding, all that kind of stuff. And I learned a lot through that, but really it was when I found out about the Griffin, et cetera, whatnot.
[00:52:13] Three or four months of dedicated immersion in that, and really kind of having mentors around me that I can talk to all the time on call would be fantastic. Um, and so yes, it meant giving up a little bit of the business, like giving a percentage of the business stuff, but it also got a little bit of injection of funds to kickstart it as well.
[00:52:34] And so I thought, well, that’s, I’ll, I’ll give it a go. And see, see what happens rather than me trying to go straight out there and raise funding without that level of mentorship on, uh, I’ll I’ll do this first. And that was my decision to apply for the Griffin accelerator program. And I think that it paid off in that respect.
[00:52:52] Germaine: [00:52:52] Yeah. And then I think one of those realizations that I had over over the years is that. Money is a tool rather than this thing that you necessarily had to accumulate. It’s just a, it can be an exchange of, um, you know, in a business it’s, it’s a tool, but also, um, it’s, it’s something that someone gives you an exchange for value that you present to them, right?
[00:53:16] So it’s this thing that can take different shapes and forms. And, um, I think there’s. For different people and you met, you can make a mistake of it, right? You can take, take on too much debt because money is just a tool. And, um, and then you can really, in-depth damaging yourself. And that’s the sort of look at in credit card debt and things like that.
[00:53:35] But then you look at it as a tool, as a tool for a business, and it’s a tool that can unlock, you know, more personnel. It can unlock. Rapid growth, hockey stick growth. It can, it can do, do more. And it’s, it’s a conversation that I have with people sort of close to me in my life who. Uh, so did they work traditional jobs in the and things like that?
[00:53:57] So they look at money as this thing that they, they work, they earn, they like, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a very finite cap around the parameters to which they can, like, they can’t just, you know, earn more money tomorrow than they did today. It’s sort of very limited. But then when you’re running a business, I think you’ve got to, you’ve got to obviously respect to that.
[00:54:19] That money is, is, is sort of something that you need to keep the lights on to pay people. This is someone’s abilities, but at the same time, it’s this tool that there’s no, there’s not a cap to how much, you know, there’s nothing stopping a business from earning more money tomorrow than they did today, or 10 times more money in two days than they did today.
[00:54:36] Um, so you’ve got to sort of look at it as a tool and it looks like. That is sort of that decision that you made and obviously tapping into the expertise and the personnel and the network around you that you would have got access to through Griffin accelerator as well. That would have been
[00:54:49] Adrian: [00:54:49] invaluable.
[00:54:50] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah. I vividly remember some of the conversations that were very challenging, turning with mentors who have successfully built up a business over 10 years and sold it for millions of dollars. Right. And they ask hard questions. Questions. I would never ask myself. And a lot of them I didn’t want to hear.
[00:55:09] And you know what, that’s, that’s valuable stuff, right? To have access to a pool of mentors who can ask those. Hard questions and challenge you a little bit, but also access to investors as well, to be introduced to potential angel investors. Is this valuable because how else do you meet them? If you’ve just got an idea and you don’t already work, walk in those circles of what they could talk about, what they call other people’s money, network investors and stuff.
[00:55:38] Yeah. It’s a great way to find that because otherwise you’re reading books, you’re watching stuff on YouTube. This new audio books and all that kind of stuff. Maybe doing some online courses, it’s armchair stuff. Right.
[00:55:49] Germaine: [00:55:49] You can only go so theoretical sexual on jail until, you know, you actually have to do it
[00:55:56] Adrian: [00:55:56] and
[00:55:58] Germaine: [00:55:58] have to sort of execute on that.
[00:56:00] I mean, uh, I, I’m sort of, we’re looking at a similar thing of how can we. Sort of further outgrowth because for, for, for the last few years, it’s very much been just reinvesting reinvesting, taking low pay so that we can reinvest more into the business. But you know, that that too reaches a limit because, um, below a certain threshold there’s costs of living that that have to be.
[00:56:27] Have to be sort of accounted for. So you can’t just go into, go to zero or, um, no matter how hard you try. So, um, that’s what I thought. I’d sort of pitch that question to you. See how you sort of approached it and how you sort of answered those questions for yourself now. Um, As we sort of wrap up, what do you hope to do moving forward within the two different businesses?
[00:56:49] Will they, are they, are they sort of, has red boat continued to sort of stay at the same size? Or are you looking at sort of trying to scale that up as well or how you’re handling the two businesses?
[00:57:01] Adrian: [00:57:01] Yeah. Yeah. Interesting question. So, you know, the vision red boat, I love the red boat. It’s not something that I’ll ever let go of or, well, I mean, look Brivvio is on a trajectory to growth.
[00:57:13] So that’s my real passion baby at the moment is growing that. And so I put a lot of energy into that. And so, you know, that’s, that’s got a huge potential red boat is harder to scale, but it’s such a valuable business. I love the work we do. And. It’s, uh, I love it. It’s, it’s wonderful thing that we create beautiful animations that really help people and for worthy causes and stuff like, you know, right now we’re doing one for the United nations environment program about the reef and staff.
[00:57:41] And it’s just beautiful. It’s about saving reefs and stuff and dealing with things. I did one recently for a new technology for which is addressing climate change, sort of emissions and stuff, dealing with what’s doesn’t address. Climate is it’s part of the solution anyway, so. Stuff like that is always valuable.
[00:58:00] And I want back to continue. So my vision for robot is to continue that and to grow that gently enough so that it can become something that sustains its self, maybe bring on some new partners, there’s some collaborate with the right people or the right groups or other businesses to be able to take that further.
[00:58:19] Then I can by myself and with Bravio, uh, yeah, that’s, that’s something that is good. A lot of growth ahead of it. And we’re right at the beginning of that, really? So we really, I mean, you know, we launched the app in February. We’re still kind of in prelaunch, really for where we were at Kango. So it’s early days, it’s early stage and a very exciting time for it because we’re still developing and evolving it and pivoting it.
[00:58:44] Germaine: [00:58:44] Yeah. That’s extremely exciting. Um, and, and I can tell from sort of how you talk about it, that you just can’t wait to see, see where you can take it. One last question before we sort of get into the top 12, when is there going to be an Android app?
[00:59:01] Adrian: [00:59:01] That’s the million dollar question. You know, if, uh, if I had a dollar for every time somebody asked me that question, we would have an Android app right now. So it’s partly cashflow. It’s partly sort of, you know, when we, when we. Yeah, we’ve been refining the product to get it right. And, uh, over the last six months, and we’ve got a really good solid base products.
[00:59:20] Now the app is really a great platform, but, uh, and, and there’s still lots to love. A lot of new things we can do with that, but it is on the roadmap to do the Android version as soon as possible. And so it’s partly a matter of, um, getting the capital to do it, getting the right partners, the right people to come on board to help with that.
[00:59:41] And so, yeah, we were actively. Sort of
[00:59:44] Germaine: [00:59:44] working towards this. Yeah. Well, and once you get the iOS app at a place where you guys are happy with it, then it’s much easier to then go to someone and say, this is the iOS app, make an Android app. That is, that is the same. Because then, then the question becomes, what technology do we need to use rather than.
[01:00:01] What are we building? What technology do we need to use? What does it look like? How does it function? All that stuff as well. So I’m just, yeah. I just use Android devices. So that’s why I asked.
[01:00:11] Adrian: [01:00:11] Yeah. Yeah. I would love to say here it’s really put it it’s high on the agenda and, um, Yeah. I can’t say anything more.
[01:00:20] Germaine: [01:00:20] I mean, it’s, it’s a measured thing, right? Like it, you can’t do everything in one go, you’ve got to be careful about it because if you overextend yourself, just develop an app that could say the business going under completely. If you sort of overcapitalize there. So it’s all part of these calculations that you’ve got to make.
[01:00:35] Looking at the ultimate destination. And if it takes you 12 months longer, but then you end up with a better end roadmap and a more sustainable business. That’s always going to be better than just, you know, answering the annoying Android fan boys like me, who just wants an app to check it out. But saying that we’re getting, once the new iPhone gets announced, we’re going to, we’re going to acquire another iPhone, but just for testing purposes so we can download and check the checkout your app, um, at that time as well.
[01:01:01] Yeah. Speaking of which, where can people find out more about your businesses?
[01:01:07] Adrian: [01:01:07] Yeah, well, so, yeah. Thanks. Uh, so I’m on LinkedIn. You can find me Adrian King and, um, you can find out about the animation business@redboats.com that I, you it’s red boats as in like, you know, lessen water. That’s painted red, uh, red boat a year, and that’s a whole nother story.
[01:01:26] I won’t go into why I called it that, but that strip at the company at the animation. And then for Brivvio is Brivvio.com. B R I V V I O .com. Love it and love it. That’s also on the app store.
[01:01:41] Germaine: [01:01:41] Yeah. Awesome. Um, let’s, let’s get into the top 12, if you already, yeah. Okay. Um, top three books or podcasts that you recommend.
[01:01:50] Adrian: [01:01:50] Yeah. Look, I’m listening to an audio book at the moment, which I’m loving and that’s a gamification by Ukiah. Ciao. Uh, which is his op Telesis framework is brilliant. Um, and yeah, I mean, it kind of touches on a lot of the amazing stuff that we’ve been talking about to do with purpose and, and what motivates people as well.
[01:02:09] So, uh, you know, it’s a, it’s a great book about, uh, Gamifying businesses, technology, but also applies to all sorts of other things like life, you know, uh, you can, um, use these sort of human psychology things in, um, in life. What else? Gosh, our pitch, anything was great when I read recently, um, by our in class.
[01:02:33] That’s fantastic. If you some great stuff in there, um, Contagious was also brilliant. So you can see the theme of the books. I’ve been reading a lot about communication, pitching business and, uh, human psychology of understanding how people engage with experiences and businesses and tech. Um, yeah, there was another one that was really good, uh, by, uh, what’s his name?
[01:03:00] Yeah, I think it was Ron Hoover. Just scanning through my audible list at the moment.
[01:03:07] Germaine: [01:03:07] I’m an audio book fan as well, I think. Um, yeah, it’s just amazing.
[01:03:12] Adrian: [01:03:12] Our venture deals by Bradfield was a good one, uh, that, you know what also, I love books like homogeneous and, um, you know, by you Noah around. So they go pronounce that correctly.
[01:03:25] Um, that stuff’s really cool level, that stuff about. I suppose it’s sort of an anthropological view of humans over the millennia. Um, yeah. Is that, that’s a three
[01:03:38] Germaine: [01:03:38] that’s about five or six, but love it. Um, top three software tools that you can’t live without.
[01:03:44] Adrian: [01:03:44] Ah, man. Okay. Now you got me.
[01:03:50] Germaine: [01:03:50] What’s the first thing you check when you’re out of bed on your phone?
[01:03:52] Like what, is there an app that you go
[01:03:54] Adrian: [01:03:54] to? First thing I go to. Uh, you know, I read the news stuff. That’s probably the first thing is catch up on some news, which I probably shouldn’t do because it’s very depressing these days. I hate to say it, but I do use Facebook to stay in touch with friends and stuff like that.
[01:04:12] Um, but you know, that’s all right. You know, a lot of stuff is actually. Slack is a big part of my life now, which I never thought it would be, but it is become that to discuss with my team email. I have a love, hate relationship with, and I use Gmail, but I’m struggling with email these days. Like. It’s just become this stream of emails that it’s hard to keep up with and it, because it’s too many marketing lists some on or something like that.
[01:04:46] And no matter how many times I’ve gone through this process of getting back to inbox zero. And yeah, never seems to last, which so things like Slack are alike because they’re actually built around this concept of a conversational stream. So that type of, uh, I think we’re shifting, you know, in terms of that transactional conversations to become more Slack, like
[01:05:09] Germaine: [01:05:09] yeah, definitely.
[01:05:10] Most even for us, um, external communications still happens through email, but where we can, we put clients into. Other, like we use Hangouts internally, which is a Google product, similar to Slack. We, we put, we know we’re happy to add a client on Slack. If that’s easier for them to communicate, or we text with the via clients.
[01:05:28] I texted with a few clients who, so it’s almost like the question that we put, put in there and say, what’s, what’s the best way to communicate with you? Um, like our bookkeeper, the bookkeeper, and I, we always text or call because. We’ve we’ve sort of established that that’s the bit best way to get an immediate action from either one of us.
[01:05:45] So I think part of, sort of what we’re sort of coming up with is that looking at sort of the tools and looking at how that fits into your life and how it works and not necessarily just doing things because that’s how things have been done. I think really, really sort of tweaking what you’re doing for why you’re doing it is, is a, is a good way to approach it.
[01:06:04] Top three mantra is you try to live by
[01:06:06] Adrian: [01:06:06] yeah. Uh, You know, I kind of got one, which is, uh, believe nothing, entertain everything. And what that means is, I mean, it’s kind of really nothing, right? Don’t believe you’ve stuff, always question everything because there’s always a different view of reality. And it goes down to a fundamental, I suppose, acknowledgement that each of us has a valid experience of reality and.
[01:06:35] Not to believe other people’s views necessarily. And to the entertain, everything part of it is that if you don’t entertain everything, you’re accepting limitations from. Uh, preconceived ideas, whether it’d be your own limitations or other people’s projections of what’s limp, what is achievable. And so entertain, everything means, always leave, leave your options open to something bigger and better and more exciting or more passion filled or more purposeful or better outcomes because.
[01:07:10] Uh, everything’s possible. Nothing’s true.
[01:07:13] Germaine: [01:07:13] It’s exactly like that. That’s something that I come across a lot of is, um, you know, I just keep, keep thinking. Cause people say that’s not possible. That’s impossible. That’s so rare. But the way I look at it as if, if a human’s already done it, then. I’m a human too, and I can probably do it.
[01:07:29] And if a human hasn’t done it, um, and it there’s no, you know, there’s, there’s no reason why you can’t try and do it and you can’t explore it. So, um, entertaining, everything I think is, is how I go sort of go into everything with an open mind because there have been meetings where, you know, we talked to a client and you know, this is sort of the.
[01:07:46] 30th 50th client from the same industry. And we go in sort of knowing this is the, this is the playbook that we’re going to follow for these guys. And, you know, they say something or they’ve tapped into something that just completely opens everything up. And if we didn’t go in with that, with that mindset of, you know, this is an idea that we have, but we’ve got to really build out our solution based on the client.
[01:08:07] We could have left something on the table that. That, you know, we, we would have otherwise been able to tap into. So, um, love that, love that, um, top three people you follow or study. And why do you, do you sort of keep track of what, what are no certain entrepreneurs, business, people are doing anything like that?
[01:08:23] Adrian: [01:08:23] Really? I probably should. Um, Yeah. No, not really. Uh, yeah, that’d be good. Well, I think,
[01:08:35] Germaine: [01:08:35] I mean, I don’t, I asked the question every episode, but I don’t. Yeah. I mean, I would lie if I said. I do that, but at the same time, I think that’s for me because I am trying as much as possible to run my own race. I’m very good at putting pressure on myself without necessarily having to look at what other people are doing to put more pressure on itself.
[01:08:54] But at the same time, I think
[01:08:56] Adrian: [01:08:56] there’s so many, I mean, I think I go through phases of spending a bit of time looking at each, uh, different people. Uh, I remember there was a phase where I, I followed a lot of. Brain’s gone blank. Um, you know, the video guy, the social video guy that everybody knows is very
[01:09:12] Germaine: [01:09:12] outspoken,
[01:09:13] Adrian: [01:09:13] always wears it.
[01:09:14] Eric Gary bank. Yeah. So I was pulling a lot of this stuff for a while, you know, and I follow a lot of these sort of outspoken. So they’re all over social media and, you know, it’s interesting to follow and listening and, you know, take a bit takes, take it all with a pinch of salt, but there’s some great stuff in there.
[01:09:28] If you read, especially if you read between the lines because, um, not every it, there is never, I find with those types of. Influencers. There’s never a one size fits all solution. You know, they have some great stuff and great content, but it’s not always applicable to everybody. And so you have to just selectively pick bits and pieces from different people and find out what works for you.
[01:09:55] And that’s true for everybody in sense of that, you know, nobody’s going to have the same circumstances and situation or business. So I’d move one. I’m doing it. Moment is, uh, with a great guy that does video ninjas, his name’s Ken, uh, West Saki, and he’s based in Tokyo and he does some great courses and trainings about, uh, being, becoming a better video, presenter, presenting, and marketing, doing marketing videos and stuff like that.
[01:10:25] He’s he’s great. Highly recommended stuff. What else?
[01:10:30] Germaine: [01:10:30] Yeah. Yeah, no, no, totally, totally agree. And I think quickly touching on your Gary, Gary V point or talking, you know, look at listening to influencers. I think what you’ve gotta remember, um, even when it comes to businesses, just because they’ve had success, um, even if, you know, That, that person or the company that they’re worked with looks exactly like yours, ultimately it’s execution.
[01:10:52] And it’s a lot more factors that go into it then than just, um, you know, than just, Oh, they worked for someone in my industry, so they will be able to do the same thing thing for me. And the same thing applies like for testimonials, same thing applies for influencers, putting out messages, just because, you know, work for them to work for their dad in, in Gary V’s case for a long time.
[01:11:12] And, you know, tech. Build the first online wine library and all that stuff. I mean, good luck trying to create the world’s first online, whatever nowadays everything’s everything’s been done. So, um, you just got to, but you’ve got to take out of that, you know, that maybe the point is that you’ve, you, you’ve got to be willing to just work your butt off or experiment and innovate and take take from that.
[01:11:34] What, what your message needs to be. So thanks for your time, Adrian.
[01:11:38] Adrian: [01:11:38] My
[01:11:39] Germaine: [01:11:39] wonderful conversation.
[01:11:41] Adrian: [01:11:41] Yeah, it’s been awesome.
[01:11:42] Germaine: [01:11:42] We’d love to, um, we’d love to catch up sometime. And, um, one last one last time. Um, give us the two different links for your two different businesses.
[01:11:51] Adrian: [01:11:51] Thanks, Brian. Yeah. So red boat, the animation businesses, red boat.com.edu and Brivviofor the app that lets you create branded and captioned videos instantly.
[01:12:01] Brivvio.com B R I double V I O. Dot com. Awesome.
[01:12:06] Germaine: [01:12:06] Thanks again.