Episode 4: Bill Nikolouzakis – Serial Entrepreneur and Business Guru – 3 businesses by age 26 to CEO of an ASX listed company

At 21, Bill founded his first company and by 26, he had established three. After his business was acquired, he ascended to CEO of an ASX-listed company, overseeing a 500% share price increase. As Chief Revenue Officer at PropTech Group Limited, he drove 136% year-on-year growth, propelling market value to over $100 million. Bill’s latest venture as Co-Founder of Bond Property Lawyers has rapidly expanded nationwide within 18 months.

Welcome to The Leap: A Business Journeys Podcast. Hosted by Nathan Soti, our goal is a simple one – to help more businesses succeed!

The Leap is proudly supported by Ethos 360 Recruitment and produced by The Content Engine.

Nathan:

You’re going to love today’s episode. We are joined by Bill Nikolazakis. He has built a career spanning over two decades as a business owner, C-level executive in various ASX-listed companies.

He has had businesses acquired, started his first company at 21 years of age and established three businesses before the age of 26. Bill is currently the managing director of Levels Growth Consultants and co-founder of one of the fastest growing digital law firms in Australia, Bond Property Lawyers. We had a laugh on today’s episode.

Bill is absolutely a straight shooter, so you’re going to hear how it is and hear his incredible journey. And also, he goes for Arsenal and Tottenham are playing today after this episode airs. So look forward to you listening in, enjoy the episode.

Welcome to The Leap, a business journeys podcast where we dive deep into the journey of business owners to learn from their successes and failures. Our goal, it’s a simple one, to help more businesses succeed. 

Well, we’re here, Bill. Thanks for joining us.

Bill:

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Nathan:

I appreciate it. What do you think of the jersey?

Bill:

It’s good that you’re supporting a club, even though they’re so horrible. It shows a lot of character when you support a team that’s so bad and you continue to support them, shows that you’ve got a good character.

Nathan:

The listeners might appreciate us taking this podcast into a different direction and just talking Arsenal and Tottenham.

Bill:

Well, for those, I’m a mad Arsenal supporter. I’ve been following for about 25 years. Went to watch them in October last year, live, so I followed them.

Nathan:

At the library? Is that what they call it?

Bill:

Yeah, mate, it’s way louder than your stadium and it’s the best football team in London by a mile, so let’s not give them a go there.

Nathan:

I love it. I will say, I’ll have to give a shout out to my brother because he’s an Arsenal fan and we’ve travelled away to both Arsenal games and Tottenham games and he was pretty impressed by the Tottenham away supporters.

Bill:

Maybe not this year. This year, our crowd’s been brilliant. So, when you’re winning, it’s always better, obviously, but you wouldn’t know about that.

Nathan:

Our fans always turn against us, mate, so they’re really a bit sour about the whole fifth finish, but obviously, I’m keen to jump into it and I guess where I wanted to start off with is, I mean, a lot of people’s journeys to success, it’s not linear, right? People usually have, I won’t say failures, right, but there’s learnings along the way and you learn a lot from being in business, from previous business ventures and you started your journey pretty early on. I think you were like early, it was like 21, 22?

Bill:

21, yeah.

Nathan:

That’s incredible.

Bill:

I started my first business when I was 21, which was a little marketing company. We used to sell leads to mortgage brokers and it was actually a really, really profitable little business, but like most 21-year-olds, we probably thought we were a bit smarter than we were and we thought, hey, we’re selling these leads to mortgage brokers, why don’t we just write the mortgages? And we went and did all the stuff that you need to do to become a mortgage broker, which is not much back then, you could be a taxi driver today and a mortgage broker tomorrow.

Bit more now, you got to go do set fours and stuff, but yeah, and we started writing mortgages and while we were pretty good at writing mortgages, because our leads were so good, we were really horrible at settling them and we were even worse at running businesses, like we had no idea about how to cash flow a business, the financial side, the tax side. And that’s one thing that I’ve learned very much in my career, it doesn’t matter how good you are at the thing, whether you’re a mortgage broker, a real estate agent, a technologist, whatever, running a business is a totally separate thing and you’ve got to be knowledgeable enough to be able to not only be good at your thing, mortgages or whatever, but then really good at the basics, the one-on-one business stuff, how tax works, hiring the right accountants, making sure you’ve got the right legal structures in place and all that kind of thing.

Nathan:

Yeah, it’s a good point. I mean, I’ve learned from my mistakes as well early on in the journey, not having the right advice behind me from an accounting perspective, wrong structures, and I guess in the long run, it really hurts you when you have to retrospectively go back and then change those things, learn a lot of lessons, right, doing it that way. So, I mean, from someone starting off in a business, like what would you sort of suggest?

I mean, looking back from what you learned from that period.

Bill:

First thing I’ll say is just, you know, you have to be, you have to have an idea that you think is better than what’s out there right now and it doesn’t mean you have to be the best, so let’s just say mortgages, it doesn’t mean you have to be the best mortgage broker in Australia and that’s why you want to start a business, but maybe you could be the best mortgage broker for first homeowners in Abbotsford, right, or in the inner north of Melbourne, or maybe there’s some niche that you know you could be the best at and I think that’s really important. You have to truly believe deep down that you’re the best at something and like I said, it doesn’t have to be the best mortgage broker in Australia, but it has to be something that you think you’ve got a market where you can actually provide a better level of service than anyone else and I always say to people, you know, you’ve got to believe it so much that if the person you’re sitting across from doesn’t use your product, doesn’t buy your product or doesn’t use your service, then you’ve done a disservice to them, you’ve actually not done something right where they’re not going to use you and they’re going to use someone else and get a worse outcome.

That’s how strongly you have to believe in that idea and I always say, you know, the idea you start with might not be the idea you end with, so don’t get too wedded to that. Just start. If you think you’re going to be great at something, just start and you’ll work it out as you go along if it’s worth it.

You know, we talked about that first business, I had another business when I was in my early 20s that failed as well, and when I say failed, we didn’t go bankrupt or anything, but you know, it didn’t work. It wasn’t until my third business when I was about 25, Nyko Property, we started that and even in that first year, I would say that business failed too and then we did a big model pivot in the second year and that’s when it started to work, but it was pretty much like starting a second business because the model changed so drastically.

Nathan:

Yeah, and I think it’s really interesting, right? I think two things there, like with what you were saying before, that question of, you know, go deep or go wide. I mean, I always look at the situation that we’re in and you feel like there’s, you miss out on opportunities if you don’t have this breadth to your service, but I think I’ve definitely learned that you need to be really like an industry expert and a thought leader in that particular field.

I think that’s a really important lesson to be really, you know, like in that mortgage breaking space, be really specific to a sector, whether it be, you know, nurses or whatever it is. It’s important to be, you know, really niche in that sector, I think.

Bill:

Yeah, if you can niche out, then you’re definitely going to get better results over the long term. What I will say is when you first start a business, don’t really start in a way where you have to think about, oh, if I’m going to be like this billion dollar company, what would that look like? What does a scaled business like this look like?

Just do what you have to do to earn revenue early on. It’s not wrong to be broad and take, you know, if you want to do nurses, you take mechanics like at the start, you know, but then you do want to, even if it’s a service like mortgages, we’re talking about mortgages a lot today, but about mortgages, you want to try and productise it as much as you can. So that means that you’ve got really succinct processes.

You’ve got a really clear buyer persona that you’re dealing with so that you can really productise what you’re doing. Because if you productise what you’re doing, it means you become more efficient. Your capital allocation becomes more efficient.

Your time becomes more efficient. Your productivity is better. But then also you’re building this automated machine that is more saleable in the future or that you can move away from if you wanted to, you know, install a CEO, whatever you want to do 20, 30 years down the track.

So, you know, niching out is important, but I would say early on, just do what you have to do. Don’t worry too much about what it’s going to look like scaled. Just do what you got to do.

Get some runs on the board. Get some money in the door. Yes, survive.

Because, you know, what they say, no one fails. They just stop, they quit, right? So it’s about just getting in the getting, doing what you need to do to earn that cash flow, learn and then iterate.

Nathan:

So with with Nyko, right, you were like, how did you know if you had done enough in terms of activity because you obviously you pivoted, was it a year into it?

Bill:

About a year in, yeah.

Nathan:

How did you know that it needed a pivot? Because, you know, you’re pretty early on, are you wrong?

Bill:

I’ll tell you how naive I was. I started that business in January 2008. I don’t know if you can remember what happened.

That was the financial crisis in late 2007. Pretty stupid idea. One thing that wasn’t stupid is I had some pretty good capital behind me.

I sold one of my properties and I knew that I was going to have enough money to run this business for a period of time. And what we did then is we had this really good product and I love that product and people loved it. It’s just the market was nowhere near big enough for us to make enough money selling just that product.

We sold these property reports to developers to help them sell their projects. So research on why to invest in that product. And we put together all the supporting information, you know, along that with valuations, rental appraisals, a lot of information.

And we packed it up in a really nice way. But you just couldn’t sell enough of these at five grand or four nine that we’re selling for at the time to make enough money to live. There just wasn’t enough people that needed that type of marketing or research.

And I was never a real estate agent. I couldn’t sell real estate. But I knew that that was the angle we had to go down.

We had to find a way to not only provide the reports, but then use them to find buyers and to become a sales agent effectively. I met someone that was working at a company. I wasn’t a friend or anything, but he was just a really good operator.

One of the most knowledgeable property specific people that I’ve ever met and trustworthy guy and I annoyed him enough over a long period of time to leave that job and come and be effectively a business partner in Nyko. He bought half the business from me for a very small amount. But we really pivoted the model.

He brought a license with him. We became a licensed estate agent. And then we niched out.

We went and found projects in areas that we knew were going to perform. So, you know, one of the first exclusive projects we did was in Footscray. We did townhouses there, like three hundred ninety grand, probably worth a million bucks.

But back then we knew that it was going to perform. So we went in there, we said what projects are in there. We found those products.

We put those research reports together, won the listing from the developer. And then we distributed it in a different way. We didn’t go to the general public.

We went to other real estate agents, property investment groups more specifically, and even financial people, mortgage brokers, accountants and that kind of thing who had clients that wanted to invest in property. And we distributed through that manner. And it proved like a really good move.

Obviously, the revenue you can earn from that kind of thing is a lot more than selling a report. And we had a really good product that we knew, especially the finance companies, loved. Because back then, if you bought shares, you had to go through a statement of advice.

It’s really detailed about all the risks and opportunities and all that kind of thing.

Nathan:

It wasn’t super regulated, right?

Bill:

No, but property, you could do whatever you want. It’s super cowboy. Still is, but way more than.

Like now it’s straightened out a lot more than it used to be. And we just brought some structure to it and some research. And good and the bad.

You know, we had everything into the risks and it just worked really well. And, you know, we didn’t get it to a massive business, but it was very profitable, very good business, you know, and we built it up over slowly over the years. And, you know, as we grew and as we pivoted the model again a little bit later on, just slightly, it became to a point where we were doing well, but we either had to stay like this forever or scale.

And if you’ve met me, you know that, you know, growing things is my passion. I love building things. So I didn’t want to stop.

My business partner at the time didn’t really want to build a business completely fine. So he sold his share to me. And then shortly thereafter, you know, within a year we had sold to a public illicit company, got I Buy New Group because they sold to the consumer and they wanted someone that had the channel business and the research behind it.

So it kind of progressed over a couple of model pivots over that time. But, you know, if I told you, you know, in 2008 when I started that business that would sell real estate through financial groups and end up having clients like, you know, Mortgage Choice, iSelect, Yellow Brick Road, FinShore, all as our clients and approved panel members, I would have never believed you, you know. So it’s you’ve got to start.

If you know you’re going to something good, you’ve got to start. And then more than likely, it’s going to move in an area you probably never thought it would go into. But as long as you’ve got that North Star, you know, the research was our North Star.

We knew we had the best research. How we made money from that was not what we expected. But the research is still the same.

That pack, it evolved, but it was essentially the same idea from January 2008 to when we started to when I sold that business to I Buy New Group in 2016.

Nathan:

There’s some crazy things that I want to unpack, right? So you started the idea, so you came up with the concept. You’d sold an investment property.

You had this money. You must have really believed that you were on to something, right? Because usually people like, was there a test and learn stage or was it just?

Bill:

So I was in banking and finance. And when I left the bank, I went to work for a mortgage broker and he had a great business. And being who I am, I moved very quickly up that business and I was managing part of it at this stage.

And we diversified and we said, oh, we’re going to start doing risk insurance. And we started referring that out. And then we thought, hey, our clients now have had their mortgages with us for a long time.

They got equity. Let’s do some property investment. And we had a financial planner that did financial planning.

And everything worked great except for the property investment. We were naive. We put our clients with companies that were dodgy, that overpriced the properties.

The valuations were coming in low. It was a disaster. And the owner at the time, Naz, said to me, we’re never doing property again.

Forget about it. Don’t ever talk to me about this again. It’s horrible.

And I just, it first upset me, I swear. First of all, because, you know, I felt like we let our clients down. But second of all, I thought, well, there’s a massive opportunity here to give a level of advice that’s similar to what you would get if you bought a managed fund to an individual property or project.

And that’s where the ideation was, you know.

Nathan:

So nothing existed.

Bill:

There was a couple of people doing it. There was a couple of competitors, no one at scale and no one doing exactly what we did. Yeah.

But there was a couple of businesses out there, literally two or three, that did something similar. But they were called competitors. But no one that did exactly what we did.

We’re very niche.

Nathan:

So the idea was like, I mean, I’m guessing the data was somewhat accessible somewhere and you’re packaging it together. And like, how do you then start to distribute and I guess monetize that? Like, where do you start, you know, marketing perspective?

Bill:

The data was accessible. Most of it public, some of it not public. So you had to go and get the reports done.

And some of it was not even about the data itself, but being able to negotiate with a developer to say that we’re going to get an independent valuation to price the project. No developer wants that. But we did that on every one of our projects, which none of our competitors did, because the problem with buying new property typically is that it’s overpriced.

So we thought if we could counteract that, and that was the big issue that I had. Right. So it was very sensitive to that.

And the way we counteracted that was we got an independent valuation on every single project. We picked a value up and that valuation set the prices. Now, the vendor, the developer would either say, you’re kidding yourself.

I’m not selling them for that. And we wouldn’t sell the product. Or most of the time we’d sell a pre-sale portion.

So a small amount, just enough to get their funding, and then they’ll sell the rest at high prices at settlement, you know, to the public. So that was a big part of it. Some of the information was available.

Some of it was not available, reports that we commissioned. But it was important that, you know, everyone would get a value if they could. But it’s being able to negotiate with a developer and get them to see the value in getting that valuation.

And it had to work. So the reason they gave us, they sold them a bit cheaper evaluation because they knew we could get the sales quickly because we have a proven track record. And the valuation was integral for us getting those sales.

And then the idea was you get those sales quickly from us. You can start construction, save months in the sales process, and then you can sell them for more later to the general public if that’s what you want to do. Right.

But we were interested in that pre-sale portion that the developer needed to get funding. So typically it’s like 50 percent of the project or 30 percent of the project or something.

Nathan:

Yeah. OK. And I mean, the big thing is here, like, I mean, the whole concept of ever having a business in a position where someone comes along and says, hey, I want to buy it.

It blows my mind. And I’m guessing like that that has to be a, you know, I don’t know, the best feeling in the world, right? Like, what does it feel like?

Bill:

When my business partner left, we explored selling it before he left. Right. Because, you know, and before I bought it out from him and we didn’t have any idea about who to sell, which we approached a couple of developers directly that we did a lot of business with.

We spoke to a few people. But what I quickly found was as we scaled the business and as we built these processes and systems, technology systems and processes, and the reason I built them was because, you know, I wanted it to be more efficient, more productive. And eventually I didn’t want to work in the business.

I never thought about selling it. I just thought about I want to build a business where I can install one of my team members into like a CEO type role. And I didn’t have to be there anymore.

It’s like a succession plan. And funnily enough, what I’ve learned is if you build a business in that way, it becomes a very attractive acquisition target because suddenly there’s no key person risk. If you’re not there anymore, it still works.

And it becomes a lot more acquirable business. So, so, yeah, so when I got approached and, you know, another lesson, I guess, for anyone starting a business is one thing that I’ve been really big on, and I hate the word networking, like I don’t network. But what I do is I like like minded people.

I like people that are at similar stages or better than me in business. And I make an effort because it interests me to meet with them and talk to them. And I call it trading war stories, you know, you know, and I sat down with with a guy named Mark for years before that, a couple of years because he was in Sydney and he had built his business way quicker than I did.

Great business and listed it on the ASX. And he had great backers with him and he’s great board. And and I just, you know, he’d pick my brain, I’d pick his brain.

And we’d have this conversation every time I went to Sydney or every second time I went to Sydney, we’d have lunch or I’d just go to his office and catch up with him. And then when he had seen what I’d done to process out the business and, you know, I was on my own, he said, well, would you consider selling? And that was the first time I’d ever considered selling is when I said those words pretty much other than when Theo left.

And and yeah, so then it happened really quickly. Like we’re kind of, I’d say, friends. So he kind of stepped away from it.

One of the board members came in and that’s that’s selling to a listed company is a experience in itself, a lot of stress, you know, a lot of tactics that you’re probably not used to as a small business owner, negotiating tactics that that are used at those spaces that you learn over the years that you can fall for. But yeah, it was it was an awesome experience. I loved the experience of selling that business, although it was super stressful.

And, you know, you just you never expect to sell your business for a decent amount of money, you know, when you’re building it in that way. Never, never really crossed my mind to build a business to sell it.

Nathan:

What did what was it in your business that made it a sellable business or what were some of the key things you had done to have it in a position where you could actually sell it?

Bill:

So they wanted a a channel sales business that had big relationships that we had. So they were these big relationships with Isolex and Yellow Brick Road and Val Financial and these guys, Mortgage Choice. And they wanted a company that had those relationships so they can help distribute the properties they had, but also some business that’s very process driven and technology first because they were technology business.

And everything that I’ve built was we were never a technology business, Nyko, but we were, I would say, digital, you know, everything was tech first. We tried to automate as much as we can. Well, before that was a really popular thing, right?

Yeah. Yeah. My older brother was a software guy, so I had that around me all the time.

So they liked that part of it. They liked that it was very process driven. We were very, very efficient capital wise.

We, you know, we were very careful with expenses, profitable business, all things that make it more saleable.

Nathan:

Interesting. Now, tell me, I mean, like how old, when you started Nyko, how old were you then?

Bill:

I was about 25 and I sold it when I was eight years later. What’s that? 33, 34.

Nathan:

So my age now, you’d already been acquired by an ASX listed company.

Bill:

Yeah, it was I mean, you know, it happened quickly, like six months before that, you know, the business was it was I mean, it was a decent business. It was and it was profitable. But I wouldn’t say we were like, you know, some amazing.

Nathan:

You weren’t expecting it.

Bill:

No, no, we weren’t. And we weren’t like it’s hard to explain. We weren’t we weren’t like an extraordinary business.

We were just a good business. But we had done things in a certain way where it was attractive to bigger businesses. You know, the process, the technology, the big relationships.

And they were all on purpose, you know. But yeah, well, you know, that that that sales experience was amazing. And then what happened sort of the years following that was even more amazing, you know, just being being involved in businesses like that, going I was I was at every single board meeting, you know, going to the investor days and then eventually becoming the CEO of that group and the managing director was just just wild, you know, from never really ever wanting to be in corporate to being the CEO of an ASX listed company.

Nathan:

So that was your first corporate experience?

Bill:

Yeah. And honestly, I didn’t like corporate. Like I would say it openly, I hate corporate, you know, whereas now I’ve got I’ve got an appreciation for it.

You know, I really do like some really smart people, different, very different industry. And there’s just a lot more people. So you get a lot more bad people.

But that’s only because a lot more people, if you if you had small businesses that were that big, you’d have just as many bad people. But yeah, but the the experience was was pretty cool. And, you know, it wasn’t exactly a you know, one of the lessons I learned was when someone sells their buys your business, they do due diligence on you, but you should do the same amount on them.

And I didn’t, you know, I did a little bit. I looked at the ASX announcements and things like that. But but, you know, I sold to a business that was going downhill pretty quickly.

So that was an experience in itself.

Nathan:

So what did you what did you miss there? Like, you know, you you’re going through financials. You can see cash in the bank.

Bill:

You can see I knew they were burning cash. Yeah, it was evident. But they had raised capital pretty comfortably a couple of times.

What I guess naively, I didn’t realize that, you know, you learn these things as you as you go through experiences. Right. What I didn’t realize was that the capital in public markets is not unlimited.

Eventually, investors lose faith, you know, and they’d raise capital, raise capital, make promises and just didn’t deliver. And then eventually investors don’t give you any more money. Right.

Surprise, surprise. Right. And that’s what the stage they were at.

Yeah.

Nathan:

So you that’s when you were like. Not immediately when I when I bought my business, but but I mean, you at that point, because you had a lot of the tradeoff was you having shares and equity in that business.

Bill:

Right. So I got half cash, half equity. Yeah.

And two years later when so I had a year in escrow and then, you know, you don’t sell when you when you’re on the executive team of a public as a company is very hard to sell shares. It looks horrible. Right.

So, you know, you hold on to the shares. In fact, I think I’ll put a little bit more money in, you know, not much, but a little bit.

Nathan:

Trust me, guys. Look, I’m investing.

Bill:

Right. And I believe I honestly believed in the business and the guy when they bought it from me, my friend that was the CEO, I believed in him as well. Problem was, I think within three months of me, of them buying my business and it’s settling, he left.

And the new guy that came in is fine, but he’s not a digital guy, ran it like a real estate agent, which I didn’t believe in, had some friction there. And, you know, maybe about a year and a half, two years, less than two years after I sold my business to them, I went to resign. And, you know, I made a phone call to the to the board members that bought my business and I said to them, look, I don’t believe in this anymore.

I’m leaving. And finally, it’s so funny because I get so invested even when I’m working for someone else. I feel like it’s my own business.

And I was away with my ex-wife in Fiji, I remember, and I was super stressed and I hated it. And she’s like, well, you don’t own that business. You don’t have to be there anymore.

And it was like a realisation. I thought, oh, she’s actually right. I don’t know.

I’m just an employee now. Right. So.

So, yeah, I went to resign. And, you know, when I went to resign, the questions were, why do you want to resign? And when I said, I don’t believe in the direction we’re going to and all that kind of thing.

Well, I said, well, and I basically said to them, look, I don’t think we’re going to make it because of the direction we’re in. And they basically said, well, instead of leaving, why don’t you try and save it? And weeks later, they appointed me CEO and managing director of the business shortly thereafter.

And we went on a massive change management process to save the business.

Nathan:

At that time, right, you’ve literally gone from, you know, doing your own ventures. Right. Somehow.

And you were sort of saying it was almost unexpected that your business has been acquired now. Yeah. You sitting there going, how the fuck am I the CEO of an ASEX listed business now?

Bill:

I mean, if you saw the text messages from my friends, it was a pretty funny process. Yeah, it is. Mind you, it was a what I would call a nano cap.

It’s not Telstra. You know what I mean? It’s a very small ASEX company.

But what is true is that being the CEO of an ASEX company is very different to being the CEO of even a big, small private company. There’s just a different element, not better or worse, just different. You’re dealing with shareholders and the ASEX and with audits.

And there’s very, very specific things you have to do in that process. And, you know, one of the things that’s been true in all my career is that I love learning. I remember when I got into technology after this, everyone thought that I’d been in SAS my whole life, SAFWA as a service.

But I remember the first three months, I read every book, I listened to every podcast. I just consumed my life with learning about this thing. And, you know, within three, six months, I was ahead of the curve on the knowledge.

And it was the same with this. Like, I remember sitting in my first board meeting when I just sold the business and they were talking about something called a 4C and I just scribbled on my pad, what the hell is a 4C? You know, because I didn’t even know what it was.

But it’s a cash flow report that goes out every quarter. That’s common knowledge to anyone that’s been in any public business. But I’d never been in one.

So I’m writing down these dodgy little notes in little so no one has to read them.

Nathan:

Did you feel out of your depth, though?

Bill:

You know, honestly, what I felt, this sounds a little bit arrogant, but I felt, I actually felt, oh, these guys are not that much different to me. Like, yeah, they knew a few words I didn’t know. And I say me and I talk about every small business owner that’s had a successful small business.

Like the big board members and directors and C-level executives of big companies, they’re not smarter than you. You have a very different skill set. But, you know, I used to think that these big corporate guys were just these amazing financial geniuses.

And what I learned was, yeah, they’re smart, but so are small business owners. You know, you’ve got to be super smart to have a successful small business. So I felt in my first couple of board meetings, I felt like I had to learn a lot of glossary words, you know, but other than that, I didn’t feel out of my depth at all.

It was actually I thought I would and I didn’t. And, you know, I think what I found was that a lot of people moved up through corporate ranks that had never actually never run a small business before or never run any business. They’re moving to CEO roles from being in other C-level executive roles.

And I think it’s not as good a grounding as running a successful small business, because, you know, the day to day of running a business, you know, and especially if it gets to a certain size in small business where you’re not on the tools, you’re actually running a business. And that is very relatable to running a bigger business. You’ve just got to learn, you know, and you’ve got to have a good CFO.

And I remember when I when I on our board initially, when I went into that business, there was a guy that bought my business from me that did the negotiations. It was a really intelligent, experienced CFO who I’m friends with now. And I learned heaps from him just and that’s where I learned mostly about the ASX listed stuff.

And there was a guy who was an analyst who became my right hand man, like our COO, when I become CEO, Eric Chow, who is this young kid, but he was a bloody genius, was, still is. And he was super smart and he knew all the ASX rules. And, you know, and I just leant on him.

I was, you know, that’s the thing about business. You don’t have to know anything, everything. You just got to be good enough to hire people that know it and be smart enough to bring them close and being able to do relationships and learn.

Nathan:

Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think I had, I remember I joined the networking group, Club of United Business, CUB. Have they hit you up yet?

Bill:

Heaps of times. Yeah, worth it.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Bill:

Love it. I’ve thought about joining once. We’ll talk about it.

I hate the word networking. That’s what gets me.

Nathan:

Because I think Tom just joined up as well. Yeah. So shout out to Cubsponsor us for that.

But I remember the first event that I went to, I was going up the elevator and I was like, I was shitting myself, you know, because it’s like, you know, it’s serious businesses, do you know what I mean? Like there’s a, you know, a revenue qualifier, like it’s an expensive thing to be a part of. And I had that, that sort of moment.

I was like, fuck, like I’m.

Nathan:

No, and then it’s now, I love the community. I love the group now. And I quickly realized, I think I said it in my first like session with my group, I was like, fuck, so no one knows what they’re doing.

Like, everyone’s like, just sort of working this out. As they go, everyone has the same sort of challenges. They might just be at a different scale.

You know what I mean? Because at the end of the day, like, I think you get to a point where it’s like, numbers and numbers, right? They’re just, they’re a little bit bigger.

Bill:

Yeah, I think there’s, you’ve got to be humble enough to know, you don’t know everything, and you’ve got to keep learning. But you’ve also got to have enough self confidence to say, hey, I can do this, you know, that that person may be more successful than me doesn’t mean that they’re better than me, maybe I can learn from them, or maybe I can do things differently. And I think that’s, that’s important.

You know, you’ve got to believe in yourself, you’ve got to, you’ve got to like to believe in your product, you’ve got to have belief in yourself, but it’s got to be, you know, in a humble way, where it’s like, I believe in myself, but I want to, I need to keep learning, I don’t know enough, like, you know, I still listen to hours worth of audiobooks and podcasts and read. And, you know, I still feel like I know absolutely nothing, you know, and, and funny, the more you go into senior roles, the more you meet even more smarter people. And then you think, I actually know nothing, you know, like, I know very little.

So every time you think, hey, I’m pretty good at this, then you move up a level, and you meet more people that are actually just, and you’re like, oh, and I’ve got more to learn, I’ve got more to learn. So, and I think that’ll never stop, you know, I bet you Elon Musk sits around thinking, I’ve got more to learn. You know, imagine.

Yeah, right.

Nathan:

That’s why he’s, he’s, yeah, he’s where he’s at. Yeah. Tell me, like, one thing that I’m interested to know, like a lot of the people that we’ve had on, on the show thus far have started their journeys early.

Do you know what I mean? I was 20, 26, I think, you know, you were early 20s. Like, I felt like that’s the time to do it, right?

Because you don’t have, you might still be living at home. You know, you don’t have, there’s not as much risk, right? It’s hard, because you know, fuck all at that early age, right?

But it’s like, you know, how do you, you know, I know a lot of people that listen to this. And I had the question come up the other day. It’s like, it’s easier when you’re young, right?

Because you don’t have mortgages and stuff like that. Like, how do you, how do you do it when you’re older? Like, what do you say to people?

Bill:

So there’s two things, right? Like, after I bought new, I got a chief revenue officer role at a listed company, bigger listed company. And if I’d got that job at 25, I wouldn’t have succeeded, right?

Because the knowledge I’d learned from them, I just started a business at the same time, about a year, about, sorry, about a year and a half ago now, that’s going extremely well. Bond Property Lawyers, which you know, is a digital law firm that’s growing nationally in 18 months, growing at 400% year in year. If I started that at 25, it would have failed, probably, right?

So, but at the same time, I’m glad I made the mistakes when I did, because you’re right, when you’re 25, 21, like I was, you know, I didn’t have kids, you know, I didn’t have major commitments. And the failures are easier to take, right? You don’t, you don’t have to put food on the table for your kids.

You don’t have to worry about that. You’re less, and you’re less prone to take risks when you’ve got all that. Even now, I’m way less prone to take risks than I was, you know, I still do probably more than most.

But I think, I think, you know, you’re less prone to take risks. And I think it also changes your psyche, you know, like, you got to be, got to be ballsy when you’re running, starting a business, you got to make big decisions that could either really work or fail horribly. You know, and I think that’s an important part of growing a business, those big model pivots that we talked about, or, you know, doing something really crazy, that’s, that’s going to change the industry, that almost never is profitable immediately, right?

Any kind of change. So yes, starting early is, is great, because you learn those lessons that you have to learn. But you know, I see a lot of people that worked in really smart corporate roles, worked their way up, and then started businesses and had all the right experience, and then started a business that was more likely to be successful.

So there’s, there’s both, both, you know, one’s not better than the other. I think if you’re older, and you feel like starting a business, and you know what you’re doing, start a business. If you’re younger, and you feel like starting a business, because you got an idea, start a business, you’re going to have different challenges at different times, just start, and you’re going to have different challenges.

You know, when you’re older, you know more, you probably had some experience, you’re more likely to succeed. When you’re younger, you can take more risks. And if you do fail, it doesn’t really matter as much.

So, you know, there’s swings and roundabouts. You know, my thing is, if you think you’ve got an idea that can change something, then back yourself, if that’s what you want to do, or don’t, and go work for someone at nine to five, you know, whatever you want to do, you know, whatever floats your boat.

Nathan:

Yeah, I love that you’ve sort of done both. And you’re not, you know, like, I have a bit of that mindset. It’s like, fuck, I don’t know if I could work for anyone again.

But I like the fact that you, you know, there’s this very entrepreneurial people in those big corporates and startups and stuff like that.

Bill:

Yeah, that’s, you know, I’ve never thought to myself, I can’t work for someone again. I don’t know, I think we spoke about this before you and I, but, you know, when my business partner left, I got a business coach, because I need actually accountability. Like I really like having a business partner, or having somebody that I’ve got to like talk to about my results.

And your business coach, I’m paying them, like I’m not accountable to them. But also, if I tell someone I’m going to do something, I’m going to bloody do it, right? So I’m going to work my ass off to do it.

Whereas if I just told myself, you know, might prefer to go for a few beers at the pub, you know, like, I’m not going to be as motivated. Yeah, yeah, like after this. But I’ve been working super hard lately.

But yeah, so but there’s, there’s, um, yeah, I think I think working for someone else has never been a problem for me. I like that accountability. And what I’ve learned is that in big companies, those C level execs, a lot of them are entrepreneurial, like they they run it like it’s their own business, you know, it’s not like they’re clocking in and clocking out or worrying about, you know, most of the most of their pay structures in bonuses, you know, they’ve got big bases sometimes, but you know, a lot of their pay structure at C level is in bonuses as well. So it’s it’s you effectively are somewhat self employed anyway, you know, that makes sense.

Nathan:

I remember, so obviously, like the prop tech journey was was an awesome one. And I was lucky enough to sort of, you know, be hiring for it and watch that evolve and grow. And it was it was crazy.

I remember the first, we actually met on on Call of Duty. Oh, we did drink over.

Bill:

That’s right. Yeah. I was horrible at that game.

Nathan:

Carried the team there. But what I found really interesting and I loved about it is I remember you, you know, when that when that time came to an end, we, we had a conversation and there was there was something else that was in the works that didn’t eventuate. And I’m like, so like, is there is there a plan now?

Like, what are you going to do? And you were like, yeah, I might do some consulting I might do. And there was like, there was just not a confidence, but it was like, I think you knew that you were just going to do more successful shit.

Like, how does that is that a mindset?

Bill:

Yeah, it’s kind of like, 10 years ago, wouldn’t be like that. But, you know, I just got so I got appointed CEO by a new group, literally months away from from from going broke. We turned that business around in two years, sold it, and then the share price increased by 500%, literally 500%.

Like, you know, the investors who were going to lose everything, lost money, but didn’t lose everything. And they were very, very happy. So I had a pretty good relationship with a lot of ASX investors.

And then one of them was the guy that hired me at PropTech group, you know, and then I went there and we list that business out or they listed it just before I started at 30 something million 32 million or something, we sold it two years later for 100 million. Right. So we had a couple of pretty big successes in a row.

And I knew that, you know, and what you were alluding to was that I was offered another ASX CEO role, which I turned down at the last minute because some negotiations went sour. But the the I knew I knew that I built up 20 years of industry experience and knowledge and, and a network. And also, you know, we’re lucky at this, not lucky, but at this age that, you know, I wasn’t worried if I did nothing for six months.

Honestly, it probably would have been nice, you know? Yeah. So but I didn’t and you know, and then next thing you know, I thought about doing some consulting.

And I remember I thought to myself, I’m going to just put up a LinkedIn post and see who replies that they need help. And I’ve got three clients immediately, which is basically a full book of consulting clients. You know, within the first three or four weeks after that one LinkedIn post, and then I started suddenly I was a consultant.

And, you know, then my good friend Rex Afrasiabi owned a law firm, he hit me up and he said, Hey, there’s a, you know, legal text broken, let’s build something. And next thing you know, we build a startup.

Nathan:

Right. So this, this is obviously this is a fresh-ish business, a year and a half. Yeah.

Yeah. In, like, I want to know, like, take me through from, from initial concept through to actually, like, you know, detail here, because this is, you know, like, you’ve basically just disrupted, you know, disrupted a market that’s been around for a long time.

Bill:

So Rex Afrasiabi was my lawyer since 2009. We grew up in the same area, but really didn’t know each other, but, you know, knew each other, became my lawyer, then we became friends. And we’ve probably looked at two or three different businesses together, potentially to start.

We just wanted to start a business together. We love how each other works. And we get along like a house of fire.

We thought it’d be really cool to do something together. And when I left, he’s like, Hey, let’s look at this side, legal text broken for the conveyancing side, not for all of legal, although legal text broken across the board, but more on the conveyancing side.

Nathan:

Was that something that you identified that you’re like, this is the biggest problem?

Bill:

So he basically said to me, because he did a conveyancing already. He had a conveyancing business, but like every other law firm in Australia, it’s like an afterthought because you don’t make any money compared to law, right? Like an hourly rate, you can’t charge 600 or whatever it is an hour doing conveyancing, right?

So, so it kind of every law firm, it’s important to them because their clients want it and all that kind of thing, but it’s not a big part of their revenue stream typically. And it’s not the best people in the business aren’t working on the conveyance.

Nathan:

You’ve got a guy sitting next to the printer.

Bill:

Right. Yeah. Right.

So it’s typically, it’s not a super, super well-run part of their business, the best part of their business. It’s not the best part of any law firm, basically any commercial law firm anyway. And we, the first thing we did was you said, yeah, great.

Let me, let me look at it. And I literally interviewed every software vendor that sells legal tech. So CRMs, all types of software.

And he was right. Like, it’s not great. I mean, it’s good, but it’s not, if you compare it to FinTech or PropTech, it’s very far behind from a quality perspective.

In fact, most of the legal tech software is given away for free by the companies that do your searches. Right. Yeah.

So, so it’s like, it’s, it’s not very advanced compared to, you know, the, the software in FinTech, PropTech, where you’re paying a hundred bucks a month per user sort of thing. Right. So obviously it’s going to be a different level.

Nathan:

So there was, was the initial thought, we just do this while using, you know, an existing CRM or solution that’s out there.

Bill:

Yeah. So the initial thought was, we’ll just build something. But then when I did all the interviews, I thought we could make a difference to the conveyancing world, provide more productivity and more efficiency, better communication to the client, all that kind of thing by just deeply integrating through APIs and, and, and webhooks and things, different pieces of software.

That was the initial idea. And the problem was that even if we could do that, it would create efficiencies, but we just didn’t think that it would remove the needle enough. We thought that’s great that you’ve created more efficiencies, but what does that turn into?

How does that commercialize into a really successful conveyancing business? And we just couldn’t really see that materializing. But we continued looking into it.

And that’s when something came up that really changed our mind. When, you know, we, when you’re building tech, or when you’re about to build tech, the first thing you do as a product sort of process is you interview everyone. When I mean everyone, so in, in conveyancing, we interviewed buyers and sellers, property developers, then we interviewed like other conveyances, lawyers, and then we thought, well, who else is important?

Who are the other stakeholders in a property transaction? Well, mortgage brokers and real estate agents. And what we found was that the mortgage brokers and real estate agents were an absolute afterthought.

No, not many law firms, conveyancing firms actually communicated with them in a way that improved the way they can communicate to the client. And what ended up happening is that created a worse overall client experience. So the buying and selling of real estate was created, but worse experience overall, not the conveyancing process itself, but a worse overall experience because the conveyancer wasn’t communicating and didn’t bring the mortgage broker and real estate into the transaction as an equal party.

And when we found that out, we thought, geez, that’s a, that’s a pretty big issue. And then the little penny dropped that who introduces all your clients to you as a conveyancer? Mortgage brokers and real estate agents.

So they don’t like how it’s being done, yet they provide us all the business. So we thought if we could fix that problem, it provides a better consumer experience, but it also makes the happier real estate agent and mortgage broker. And they’re the guys that give you all the business.

Nathan:

And I guess the other thing was that that was your network as well.

Bill:

So I know all the big mortgage aggregation groups and some of them being a property, given the big franchise groups and Rex is the corporate lawyer for a lot of the real estate agents and mortgage brokers as well. Our network was extremely strong. And when we built that software and we started going out to speak to people, I think we just built a sales and marketing function literally just started in May.

First hire ever in sales and marketing, yet we grew 400% last year. And so we added super organically, literally just calling in favors to friends at other ages to say, hey, we built this thing, it’s pretty cool, test it. And because they were friends or colleagues, they’ll test it and it did work and it was great.

And we grew really quickly. And one thing I’ll say is that, again, just being experienced in business like Rex and I, where we knew that we’re going to have this great tech, where there’s great relationships. But what we knew was that he or I weren’t the right person to run a highly efficient conveyancing team that’s going to hit the service out of the park, because it’s still a service.

Tech aside, it’s still a service. And we poached the best person that we could find to do that, who’s been an absolute revelation for us, Marilla Rice. And she’s run that team.

Our net promoter scores 200% above the industry benchmark in April. We’ve averaged that at about 170% over the last six months or so. We’ve got 199, I think, five-star Google reviews.

We’ve got a really high level of service. No matter how good your relationships are, how good the tech is, in a service-based business, if you give a bad level of service, all that’s for nothing. So that’s kind of all worked in well and that growth happened.

And now we’re taking that next step now. We’ve reinvested into that business and we’ve hired some really high quality BDMs, really knowledgeable guys and a marketing person. And we’re going to now take that business to the next level.

And we’ve brought in, we’ve been really lucky to bring in, I don’t think I can announce the name yet, but we’ve really been really lucky to bring in someone who’s an absolute gun software person, the best in the business, quite literally, and a lovely guy and super smart to help us rebuild the tech that we’ve integrated with other people’s products, which in theory is great, but they break sometimes, which is normal in software and you don’t have control.

They’ve got to fix it. So you’re waiting for them to fix it, but your clients are upset with you because the software is broken. So now we’re building it all ourselves where we’re going to be ready to go to market with that in June, July, probably July.

We’ll test it in June, July out to market, and it’s going to be a game changer. It’s going to be far better than what we’re using right now. And I think that’s, you know, just being able, like I said, being able to bring the right people into the business.

Morella was a game changer. This person here was going to be another game changer. And, you know, when you’re running a business, especially as you scale, you know, it sounds stupid and simple, especially for someone like you as an industry, but hiring the right people and getting really high quality people is the only thing that matters, you know, and then being able to manage them to perform.

Nathan:

Yeah. But it’s interesting, right? Because I think, I mean, two things I want to probably touch on there.

Right. I think the first thing is, you know, if you build, you know, you have a great personal brand, Rex has a great personal brand, obviously the business does, and that is the attraction. So, you know, like, you know, us as a recruitment agency, like we don’t have to beg people.

Do you know what I mean? Like it’s an attractive proposition. And to a certain extent, you’ll get people knocking on your door.

Yeah. Right. I think that’s a big part of it.

Bill:

And I think a personal brand and a business brand coalesce a little bit in that, you know, we as people and as a business, it’s really important to us that we will make mistakes. We’re not perfect, right? We’ll try and make the minimal amount of mistakes.

And we’ll try and put processes and systems in place every time we make a mistake for it to never happen again. But we know that there’s going to be mistakes that happen. And the kind of business that we are is that we take them so seriously and we will fix those problems as quickly as possible, take ownership and make those things happen.

And that’s something that’s really important to us. And I think, you know, as you build a brand, you know, people don’t want to, you know, don’t want you to be perfect, I think. I think people are smart enough to know that’s not possible.

It’s about being able to then, you know, trust in you as a person, your, you know, whatever you want to call it, your brand, your personality, that you’re going to fix their problems and you’re going to be there. And, you know, a lot of the times fixing a problem can be even more valuable than ever having a problem because people know that shit’s going to go wrong. They want to know that you’re going to fix in a timely manner and it’s not going to affect their client.

Nathan:

Well, I think what’s interesting as well, like I think goes back to what we’re talking about, you know, with, I mean, the opportunity of starting a business, you know, when you’re younger, there’s, you know, there’s less risk, I guess, you know, but a lot of the things that have come with this new opportunity with Bond, you know, the people that you’ve hired have been organically through your network and who you’ve met throughout your journey. You know, all of the people that you just went straight to and said, hey, we’ve got this, you know, they’re buying you.

Do you know what I mean? A big part of it was them buying you. So I think a lot of it’s not possible without that journey that you go on.

Bill:

That’s what I mean as you’re older, you know, it’s easier to start a business because you’ve built those relationships, you build those networks. I was able to bring in one of the BDMs I brought in who used to work for me. The other one was the tech guy that we brought in, someone that he introduced to us that he knew was good.

We already knew these people were going to perform, you know. You know, although we didn’t know Mirella, we knew of her from the industry very well, brought her in, you know, Rex and I obviously worked together. Mirella’s brought in really high level conveyances that she knew in the past.

So it’s like, it’s, you know, it is building a business as you’re older does have benefits. And that is that you know who you are, you know what you’re good at, what you’re not good at. And you know, you have a network of people that you can bring with you.

Nathan:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

I mean, what do we expect to see next from Bond? Like, you know, when we were going to do this again in a year’s time, right? Like what is that?

Bill:

Everyone, I say to everyone that my passion’s not property, finance, legal, anything. My passion is building things. So you can better bet that if we’re going to keep building, we’re going to keep scaling.

You know, we’re already national in Australia. We’ll look at new markets and we’ll look at, you know, consolidating in Australia and becoming bigger and bigger. I think that’s, you know, automating as much as we can, providing a better level of service, better transparency, better visibility for our referral partners and our clients.

All those things that are important to us, we’ll continue to do and we’ll continue to grow that business. You know, one thing that we haven’t spoken about is, you know, one of my biggest passions is keynote speaking. I’ve been doing a bit of that and I want to do a lot more of that.

So hopefully you see me doing heaps more of that in the future. You know, I just love, I love the idea of, you know, because I’m such an avid learner, I love the idea of getting a topic that I know well, researching the crap out of it, building a presentation that I know will resonate with people, then presenting it to a live crowd and seeing the change in the faces when a penny drops or an idea they have that’s somewhat related to that, that’s coming to their head, you know, that is the most rewarding thing ever. And, you know, I’ve always said that, you know, if I could do that forever, I would, you know, that’s the one thing, you know, building stuff is my passion, but, geez, doing that is really rewarding.

Nathan:

And I’ve seen, you know, all the positive feedback from some of the big groups that you’ve presented out. And I think it’s because it’s, you know, when you’re in a lot of them have been big corporate businesses that you’ve presented to and, you know, you’re a no bullshit type of person. You know what I mean?

Bill:

I think that, that’s, Yeah, I think that, that is almost on the spiel, you know, not like bullshit, but I think, I just think they use straight talk and the marketing people, they use straight talk.

Nathan:

The politically correct way. Yeah.

Bill:

Yeah. The politically correct way. Yeah.

But, yeah.

Nathan:

Awesome, man. Jump onto the rapid fire section.

Bill:

Let’s do it.

Nathan:

What are you, in terms of like podcast, audio book, like what is your morning commute drive look like? What are you listening to at the moment?

Bill:

I listen to a lot of audio books and also read a bit, but yeah, audio books are big. I listen to selected podcasts. I used to do a lot more podcasts, but I moved to audio books recently last six months or so, but I still listen to a few.

So All In, the All In podcast is one that I never miss. It’s weekly. It’s for tech billionaires, all mates that come in and have a chat and talk about the current, current sort of state of the markets.

And that’s just, you know, learning from, again, learning from people that have been way more successful than you is always good. And seeing their insight into things, some things you trust and some things you don’t, but you know, they’ve always got vested interests, talk their book, but, but it’s, it’s, it’s just one I really enjoy. And it’s fun to listen to.

They’re just four mates that rib each other as well. You know, it’s, it’s just, it’s just fun to listen to.

Nathan:

Yeah. Well, how, just out of curiosity, cause I’ve tried audio books and I’m like, it’s going to be boring versus, you know, a podcast, like any audio books that you’d recommend for people out there?

Bill:

There’s so many, like I love, I love, there’s two types of audio books. Let’s do biographies, which I love. So I know that, I know that I forget the name of them now, but I recently listened to the book.

I say read, but I listened to the book. It sounds weird to say that, listen to the book on Amazon and on Jeff Bezos. That was really changing from a, from a perspective of how he did that and who he was as a person.

Barack Obama’s book was, was boring in parts, but also quite interesting. I read that recently. And then I’ve, I’ve read the CEO within, I’ve said she’s, I’m bad with names.

There’s a, there’s a really good book about how to sell a business. The name escapes me now, but, but it basically talks about it from a first person perspective of someone that a fictional character that was selling his business and what he did to set that up. And he talks about key person dependency and all the things that, you know, but a lot of the times when I read books and it’s not only about learning something new, it’s, it’s remembering things I forgot.

You know what I mean? Spot on.

Nathan:

I think a good one. Have you, have you read the pumpkin plan before?

Bill:

No.

Nathan:

Read that. It’s really simple, but like, it’s about a guy who grows, his goal is to grow biggest pumpkins. And it’s an analogy, obviously to business, right.

To know what to, you know, when you’ve got these shitty clients, you know, that they’re going to be shitty clients. You know, there’s no point in fucking watering them. Do you know what I mean?

Focus on the big ones.

Bill:

And the only book I reread is one of the first books I’ve read as an adult, you know, that I didn’t want when I wasn’t forced to read in school. It was called screw it, let’s do it by Richard Branson. And it’s like a tiny book.

You can read it in a night or two. And, but it’s just so motivating. And I love his personality.

I love how passionate he is. He cares, he cares about his people and he builds these great brands and great businesses. And I just love his, he’s always been my prototype.

You know, like I hate the stuffy business people that, you know, like that’s not my style. You know, the suit and tie, the really, you know, proper people that that’s not my style. And Richard Branson has always been really someone I looked up to because I love that style.

I love that he cares. He’s not some rash, like, you know, trying to stuff people over kind of person. He cares, but he’s tough.

He’s good at business and he has fun. And that’s, I wish I had much fun as you. We’re not billionaires.

Nathan:

I think he’s enjoyed the journey for sure. Like I said, that’s a good read. Shoe Dog’s another good one.

Bill:

Shoe Dog’s a great one. Elon Musk got followed around by a biographer a few years back. That was a really interesting one as well.

Just hearing the stories, you know, you know, it’s always say to people, you know, every successful person I know has either been close to bankruptcy or bankrupt. You know, like you think about Elon Musk, you know, he made $400 million selling a business and blew it all in a couple of years because he started these three massive other companies. And if that last rocket blew up at SpaceX, all those businesses would have been bankrupt, you know.

It’s just wild to think that someone made 400 million and could be bankrupt in two or three years.

Nathan:

Yeah. Everyone you listen to, you know, most of the time they’ve lost it all, right?

Bill:

Yeah. I mean, because to make a lot, you’ve got to risk a lot. And the risks don’t always work no matter how smart you are.

You can mitigate risk, you know, like all those things are really important. And as you get older, you learn those things. But I mean, when you’re playing at his level, it’s very hard to mitigate risk when you’re talking about hundreds of millions of billions of dollars.

Nathan:

When we’re talking rocket ships.

Bill:

Yeah, right. Mitigating risk is maybe a little bit hard when you’re talking about rocket ships. But for us, you can mitigate risk as you get older and, you know, you’ve got a bit more capital and a bit more smarts about you.

You know, it’s less likely, not impossible, but less likely I’m going to go bankrupt now than when I was 25.

Nathan:

100%. Last question, right? One thing that I’ve been obsessed with, I’d say probably the last, yeah, last two or three years is like routines, rituals, habits.

How important is that to you in maintaining and staying in the right headspace running a business? So you, you know, talk me through that.

Bill:

Yeah, I feel attacked right now. No, I’m, I’m, you know, I hate to say this, because it’s always embarrassing, but I’m horrible. Like I don’t have a routine.

Nathan:

Yeah.

Bill:

I very much I know what I have to do. And I do what I have to do. You know, I’ve got a I’ve got like two or three periods throughout the day where I know that I have blank in my diary just to do like follow up because I never want to be too long to call someone back.

That’s the only thing that I structure really. Everything else is, you know, I have structured internal meetings, but everything else is what’s the most important thing that needs to happen right now. And then I’ll attack that and get that thing done.

I put I’m a big believer in time blocking and deep work. You know, so I’ll turn the phone off, don’t correct return emails for two or three hours and get some some deep work in. But in terms of routine, you know, I know I’m at my best when I’m going for less dinners and drinking alcohol.

I know when I’m tomorrow, we’re not going to be tomorrow. I’m probably not going to be firing for anyone’s got meetings with me. But but but, you know, I know I’m better when I’m going to the gym regularly.

Like I know there’s certain behaviors, but there’s not really routine. I know there’s certain behaviors that if I follow those behaviors, I’m going to be a lot more efficient, for sure. But I’ve never been one to I never want to be like ice baths at 5am journal meditate.

It’s just not my style. You know, like I don’t get to I don’t I don’t start work till 9 930. Like I wake up at seven, I hang out with the kids sometimes in the morning, you know, I’ll go for a walk, I’ll go to the gym.

You know, I’ll have a coffee, walk to the cafe, get a coffee, come back. And then by night, like I’ve got no meetings before 930. It’s impossible, unless it’s someone needs to see me early.

But I don’t do that, because I’ll work too late. That’s just my style. Like I’ll rather work from 930 till 930.

Then from 630 till 430. You know what I mean?

Nathan:

Yeah, same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, for me, there’s there’s there’s a few things that I’ve started to do. But I think, you know, one thing that you know, you hear some of these people on Instagram, you just want to pop yourself right, like they’re sitting there saying, you know, like, oh, you know, like one hour of gratitude, and then journaling and then the ice bath and this, you know, the first four hours I’m like, imagine like, there’s no way you built a successful business spending four hours doing that shit.

Bill:

I know people that genuinely do that stuff. And it works for them. I know people that genuinely not a lot of people say it and don’t do it.

But I know people that genuinely do it. And super smart people that have been successful. So I’m not knocking it.

But I think you got to do what’s right for you. What I learned was I used to get burnt out like, because I work, you know, I’m a sprinter. So I’ll sprint for two, three months.

And then I need time. I need three or four days off. You know, I’m not a marathon runner, you know, I sprint.

So I’m working 12 hour days, three, four months in a row 30 now. And then I’ll just need a week off or a few days off, you know, and that’s how I work. And I know that works for me.

Before what I used to do is I used to try and do these one month holidays a year. And then like all at once, because then I’m fully relaxed. But I’d burn out halfway through and I’ll be stressed and I’ll be put on weight and not you know, and it just wouldn’t work for me.

And I learned over the years that having this cadence of this core and doesn’t work for everyone. But for me, that’s how I work. I know I don’t get burnt out, stress levels are lower and anxiety levels are lower and all those types of things.

And I find I’m way more efficient doing that.

Nathan:

Yeah, absolutely. But mate, I appreciate, yeah, having you on the episode.

We’ll obviously drop a link in the tag if anyone’s looking for, you know, mentorship, guidance, you know, coaching. Yeah, we’ll drop the link in there to hit you up. And obviously, it’s across different industries, you know, it’s a lot of work on, you know, mindset and helping businesses that are sort of stuck in that, you know, pre-half a mil, mil stage get to the next level, right?

Bill:

Yeah, so the coaching, consulting, the coaching, I deal with businesses that want to take it to the next level and I deal with the owner. So one-on-one. My consulting business is a bit different.

You know, it’s again for businesses that want to scale. So most of my clients coaching or consulting are not startups. Typically, they’ve been around for a little while, they’ve got a bit of revenue, you know, from half a mil to 10 mil, and they want to take it to the next level scale.

So the consulting is a bit different to the coaching in that I’m dealing with the team. So, you know, I’m helping them build structures, projects to help them scale, whereas the coaching is more just a one-on-one with the owner, helping them put things in place. Keynote speaking is a big one.

Anyone that wants a keynote speaker that’s straight talking, happy to chat. And real estate agents, mortgage brokers, you know, if that resonated, the Bond Property Law stuff resonated with you, I’d love to chat to you about that as well. 

Nathan:

Awesome. Appreciate it, man.

Bill:

Brilliant. Thank you very much. 

Nathan:

Bye.

Bill:

Cheers.

Nathan:

Thanks for listening to The Leap. If you enjoyed this episode, give us a follow or even better, share it with someone who you think will get value out of it. Big thanks to our main sponsor, Ethos360 Recruitment.

It was actually just us sponsoring ourselves. 

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