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Each episode of GAIN Momentum focuses on timeless lessons to help grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, and technology. Whether you’re a veteran industry leader looking for some inspiration to guide the next phase of growth or an aspiring executive looking to fast-track the learning process, this podcast is here with key lessons centered around four questions we ask each guest.
GAIN Momentum episode #19 - Scaling is a Team Sport | with Frank Reeves
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[00:00:00]
Jason Emanis: Welcome to another episode of the GAIN Momentum podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from global industry leaders about how to grow and scale a business in hospitality, travel, food service, and technology. I'm Jason Emanis, here with my co host Adam Mogelonsky. Adam?
Adam Mogelonsky: I'm doing great. How are you?
Jason Emanis: I'm good.
Adam Mogelonsky: All right.
Jason Emanis: Our guest today is co founder and CEO of Avio and chief evangelist of SHR Group, Frank Reeves. Frank, how are you?
Frank Reeves: Hey, I'm very good. Thank you. How you doing?
Jason Emanis: Well, thank you. Adam want you to take it away.
Adam Mogelonsky: So Frank and listeners, our lesson for today that we're going to focus on is what we can learn from Frank about growing and scaling a business framed around four key questions. FrAnk, the first question is, [00:01:00] when it comes to scaling a business, what is the single piece of advice you would give entrepreneurs from your perspective as a professional in hospitality technology?
Frank Reeves: That's a big question, Adam. It's hard to, um, it's hard to find the right way into that. I think, I think I generally want to talk about team and culture in that sort of scale up, um, stage. I mean, startup businesses can run for a period of time on... You know the energy and the dynamism of the founder or the founders But I think when when you get to the point where you're really established and you're looking for that scale up those scale up dynamics I think that really is a team sport. I think that the general sort of area that I want to discuss here is definitely around team and culture and Probably trust.
And I think, I think trust is more, you gotta be more than just trusting of your people. I think those people should have examples of how you trust them, right? It's not just you hire people because you think, okay, I respect you. And I could, you know, I could see you in the market as a representative or an ambassador or evangelist to my [00:02:00] business. I think, people at this stage of a company's journey should feel and have daily or weekly examples and know that they're trusted and have autonomy. I think it's only with a team and the culture that sort of spins out of those sort of dynamics, that you get the sort of energy and momentum that a company would need to go about that scale up.
Jason Emanis: Yeah, I think trust builds momentum. Nothing better than trust to build momentum. But that can be a hard one. I mean, I don't know if you've got a practical example you can give us. It's like, you know, we do this one thing and we
continue to build on trust.
Frank Reeves: I mean, we've learned, we've learned a lot. I think over the years, I mean, Avio was going between 2002 and the end of last year when we came together through an M& A. Transaction with, SHR. So, you know, I've, I feel like I've learned a bunch and, you know, it's in that sort of, it's in the area of hiring and firing, you know, who you hire and how you decide whether people are, are working and really part of the culture and then what your culture is.
And I think to a certain extent that's [00:03:00] organic. I don't know that there's a real silver bullet, but I think the kind of stuff that gets you to good culture a lot easier is downstream of trust. You know, um, people that, you know, you respect, you shouldn't hire people that I think fall short of that bar, um, that you trust and that you do value and, um, would sort of, would gladly have representatives of your business.
And I think if you can create the dynamics of sort of team and collaboration around people like that, then I think you just sort of you foster at least the, you know, the, the, the key ingredients for a culture where people trust one another and go that extra mile in because you need so much more than, you know, the nine to five you need. You need hustle and you need all those, those great things that people would really sort of fall on their sword for one another, not necessarily always for the business, but for one another and wouldn't let their colleagues, wouldn't let their friends down. They'll always go that extra mile. So I think hiring and firing, that's just something we became better at.
I think once we realized who we were and you know, [00:04:00] what we were screening for, and we definitely had this notion of, we want to be super innovative, we want to be dynamic and always entrepreneurial and always sort of challenging and being challengers, but not for the sake of just doing those things, right?
We are ultimately very accountable to hotels. We want to, we want to be super associated with having delivered. Tangibly for our hotel customers and that whole customer obsession, because all the, all the tech and innovation and you know, all that stuff only gets you so far. You really need to be super connected to, what's at the end of that for your customer. And I think once you, you've got that sort of clarity in your business, you can then figure out well. Well, who do we need and what do we have and what's unique about our business and how do we encourage the stuff that's really working well? So I think the hiring and firing, you know, we all, hiring is one of the most difficult parts.
I've always found the most difficult parts of, of growing and scaling the business. But I think over time I got better at recognizing when it's maybe [00:05:00] not working and, and being sort of brave enough, I guess, to make that decision
Jason Emanis: Me too. You said a mouthful, right? I've talked about it before. I'm terrible at
hiring. My career is just, it's hard.
Frank Reeves: It is, it's so, it's so easy to be, to be kind of, I guess, lazy. I mean, you've got a million things going on and quite often you sort of, you know, you'll want to deal with, with stuff that's operational and stuff that's easy. And those big weighty challenges around, look, I just don't think this person's going to work. It doesn't serve that, that employee, that member of the team or you, and it can damage culture very, very quickly. So I think it's actually, you know, when you take that sort of perspective, you know, you're not doing that employee any favours. You're not doing your culture any, you know, any benefit whatsoever. And it becomes the what should I be working on rather than the ten emails that are easier to do on a Monday morning.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, to unpack that a little bit, or to lens it through your time at Avvio, [00:06:00] is, I'm wondering for the hiring process. What did it look like as you said you develop that skill and what would you say is the top criteria you look for to hire someone at Aveo?
Frank Reeves: I think that that energy and passion was really key. We found, I mean, roles are different, right? You're looking for certain things in an engineering, software developer. You're looking for other things, slightly different things in like sort of sales people and marketing people. But I think that You know, once you, once you get an understanding of what your sort of core values are, and if you might have three, four or five core values, and once you realize that, you know, those values are not just something that you've got, you know, on a, on a wall in an office, but those values are the kind of things that you'll make hiring and firing decisions around. So that if anybody in the business was to, you know, more than once fall short of those core values, that's just, that's not going to work. Once we got clarity around what worked really well in our Avvio. And we turn those into kind of very natural, organic core [00:07:00] values, like here's who we are, and here's what we do really well. Uh, how do we define, you know, that in a way that is sort of, you know, that looks like a mission and value statement? And then how do we make sure that we only hire on that basis? And, you've got to sort of tease that out. I think it comes at quite a later stage of the interview selection process, where you've got to look for, is this person, okay, they tick all the boxes, but is this person going to actually fit in? Are they going to sort of blend in with the culture and the DNA of the company? I think that's probably, I mean, we didn't, we didn't have, you know, it's not, black and white. But I think we definitely tried to adhere the final hire, no hire decision based on core values.
Adam Mogelonsky: How long did it take roughly to define those core values for Avvio?
Frank Reeves: I mean, we, we sort of evolved them over
time, but I think we never, we never radically overhauled those. We were always customer obsessed. I mean, that's a, that's a phrase that we use in Avvio going back to the very, very early days. And that's the first sort of value that [00:08:00] Avvio had that's also the first Avvio that, or the first value rather that SHR. And I think around that, just being, being team player, being super agile, flexible, dynamic, you know, not afraid of change, but leaning into that disruptive sort of, you know, challenger brand, uh, and taking ownership, being accountable. So always being the kind of person that, you know, we all get sort of, let's say queries from a hotel, and it might not be your sort of job to go and do that, but, you know, not to pass the buck, but to always be that sort of, to have that accountability personally, uh, within the company. So they evolved at them, um, but I think it probably, I mean, COVID, I think bizarrely, really shifted things towards that autonomy and trust. I think COVID went on long enough and disrupted enough that, you know, we solved for productivity totally remotely, you know, and whilst we trusted each other in an office context before COVID, you know, once we saw how [00:09:00] far the lengths that everybody went to above and beyond during COVID, I think that was probably the, the final evolution around culture and values.
Adam Mogelonsky: So, moving on to our next question. Frank, what are some of the common pitfalls or failures you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid when scaling their business?
Frank Reeves: It's a long game, I think, particularly in hospitality, hotels in particular. I think they're slow to adopt new technology, particularly disruptive technology for very logical reasons, I guess, but I guess knowing that, you know, there, maybe there's something also about hospitality where, you know, Avvio didn't often hear a no from a prospect hotel. You know, it was like they really liked what we were doing and that maybe turned into like a 12 18 month sales cycle in some cases because other stuff came in the way. Definitely what I, what I see around pitfalls of companies that are relatively new in this space is that they have this super innovative technology and along [00:10:00] with that is an expectation that This is going to be almost an overnight success and I think that, you know, may be possible in this industry, but I think it's, it's an industry that's somewhat slower to adopt new technology than perhaps other industries are. So I think that's definitely one, being realistic, you know, the game is maybe longer than you think it's going to be, um, for that reason. And then I think if there's a, another side to that coin, it would probably be, Just trying to learn the lessons of failing fast, you know, um,, not taking too much time with, uh, you know, new innovation, for example, failing fast.
I mean, it's a cliche, no, but learning how to say no, failing fast. I think those there's, there's huge lessons in those two, those two disciplines..
Jason Emanis: I'm always glad to hear when someone talks about how long it takes to sell into a hotel, because I always thought it was the CRS business only,
but I like, I've been a part of, um, smaller price tag, easier install, uh, software in hotels now, and it's, [00:11:00] it just takes a while. It's
Frank Reeves: It really does. I mean, we were, I think probably the most effective. Uh, sort of messaging around the Avvio value proposition was, was pre COVID where we were telling hotels that, you know, to take our booking engine, uh, that would come with a, a guarantee from us of at least a 25 percent increase in direct bookings. And we knew that the booking engine was great and had all the stuff, but we also knew that we were doing things differently around AI and personalized guest journey. And we, we just saw that and more in terms of impact. and even then, Jason, you know, where hotels would, in a meeting, get super excited about that.
And it was, it was legit, right? We were doing that, and we, we were accountable for doing that. Even then, hotels would be like, okay, we're super excited about this, um, you think you've done a deal. And then something else just comes into that operation of the hotel that's a huge distraction and then you hear from them in 18 months time and then they want to resume the conversation again.
So
Yeah.
it's definitely a slow, long game.[00:12:00]
Adam Mogelonsky: I want to pick up a thread there. You mentioned the term AI, which is opening a can of worms here, but AI, uh, failing fast to learn from it, it's really dependent on feedback data. And how do you differentiate between the feedback data of a hotel saying, Come back to us in a year or 18 months or two years and saying the feedback is no, we're not interested period full stop
Frank Reeves: it's a great question. I think you do get a feeling, like a human feeling, in meetings where you think, it all fits everything. There's no reason why this hotel brand Can't, um, you know, we've seen the data, the further you go through sort of a sales cycle, particularly our sales cycle, we'd be soliciting data around, you know, give us your current production from OTA to direct.
So, I think over time we would develop a really strong sense of, okay, this hotel has a pain point, understands they have a pain point. Um, there does seem to be a distraction. And that could come in the form of, you know, a whole tech [00:13:00] shake up. Like, oh, they're putting in a new PMS. So, you know what, they are super interested.
We do think this time, 12 months, they'll probably be back, but something else has come in that sort of distracted that. Um, Getting a no from hotels was, was often sort of just reason for us to move on. I mean, it's like as a founder, you take all that stuff very personally, you know, you're being rejected, I think on some level, right?
Your baby, everything that you've sort of built. So it's a personal rejection. And I think I certainly had a tendency early on to work harder when I was hearing a no from a customer to try and turn that around. But there isn't a good return on that effort.
Adam Mogelonsky: so you taking a failure or rejection personally for your company or product Would you have any quick advice for other founders and C level people to not take it personally?
Frank Reeves: So for me, the big step change there was, was stepping back from the direct sale. My role at SHR is Chief Evangelist. I love being [00:14:00] in the market. I love engaging with hotels. I love understanding their challenges. I'm super passionate about, you know, the niche that we, we, we operate in, uh, and the end results of that I think really do impact fundamentally asset value and hotel profitability.
So I'm, you know, I can, I can, I can talk about that passionately all day long at any conference. But that's not sales. That's maybe some stage of the sales cycle. I was never very good at the follow up, the, you know, the constant sort of chasing and closing out a deal. Never any good at that. And also I took this stuff very personally. So for me when I did get the opportunity to, to bring a professional sales team in, A, I got to step back from That sort of rejection, but B, you know, I let far more qualified professionals into that side of the business that also were armed with the tools that I didn't have, because, you know, they can say something when it comes to negotiating on price, they can say something about, Hey, look, this is not going to fly with the board that I could never say.
I was the board for all [00:15:00] intents and purposes. So I think those two, two dynamics of a professional sales team that had one or two more tools, um, in their toolkits than I did was the, you know, the real step change there.
Adam Mogelonsky: Yeah, so it makes sense. It's uh, you got to know your, your own characteristics and uh, what strengths or what weaknesses you have, and then finding people who complement your own, personal characteristics.
Frank Reeves: Yeah, I mean, back to my initial point about it being a team sport. You know, you do, and I think not a lot of entrepreneurs, startup entrepreneurs do make that journey from startup to scale up. You know, it requires different, different sort of skills, maybe, different energy profile. many do, of course, but I certainly think that You know, there comes a point where people realize that, you know, you've got to bring far better people around you in certain disciplines.
I mean, you just wear all the hats when you're an entrepreneur. My background was programming. So I was writing the code. I was the booking engine programmer. I was also sales and a bit of marketing and all the [00:16:00] rest of it. And of course, that doesn't scale.
Adam Mogelonsky: All right, moving on to question number three, Frank, what do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for hospitality technology companies for the remainder of 2023 and beyond?
Frank Reeves: We're almost October now, May 23. Um, I think I will pick up the AI point here because I think
it's possibly the most, is it possible for AI to be both overhyped and underhyped at the same time?
Cause there's, there's a tsunami, you know, under our feet. Uh, and it's changing, it's changing everything, right?
It'll change marketing, it'll change search. It's already changing everything in real time. But of course, it's also overhyped because everybody is jumping on this generative AI kind of bandwagon. If I talk sort of, I guess, a bit more specifically around key opportunities and challenges, I think, Here AI, I think it's definitely an opportunity and there are many ways that you could talk about that. But maybe one would be more around the speed to market around product development. Like there are, you know, the [00:17:00] AI tools that we can use to support our programming, our engineering team, our QA team, you know, we're possibly looking at a 30, 40 percent efficiency improvement by just giving our engineers. Better tools around code review and documentation and, you know, code commenting and unit testing and all the rest of it. And I think, you know, there are many tools out there like kind of co pilot, etc. But I think where companies do start to invest in some of those strategic opportunities, I think there's possibly in the region of 30 percent efficiency improvement in, in, in speed of product to market. Um, so that's not, that's not sort of an AI thing that a lot of people talk about in the market, but I think that is a strategic opportunity from a business perspective, particularly around hotel technology.
Jason Emanis: Yeah, I don't hear it enough.
I mean, I spoke with Oracle. Um, not too long ago and, and they're so laser focused on it because they see what, uh, it can do for efficiency and just, I mean, [00:18:00] it's like, I don't know, is it the lean years? I mean, you got to do more with less. We all do, you know, not just our customers.
Frank Reeves: Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think you're kind of, you know, it's like just, you're giving better tools to your, to your teammates, right? So you're just giving them the best of the technology that's in the market so that they can focus on the bit that, you know, is, is, is super valuable and super creative from their perspective. Um, so yeah, I think huge gains to be had there. the, what was the other side of that question, Adam? Was it, um, challenges or, yeah, key opportunities and challenges, right?
On challenges, as an industry, travel tech, hotel tech, I think we've, you know, everyone's integrated. We've, we've all connected more or less.
We've connected with one another from a technical connectivity perspective.
One of the things we're working really hard at SHR with our Allura platform is that there's strategic connectivity or strategic integration and strategic product development. And I think Companies that just connect to [00:19:00] one another are probably going to fall behind in terms of what products should be, should be delivering for hotels.
For example, if you take a CRM solution, a CRM solution will, will, will typically exist as a, as a standalone, or maybe it's a bolt onto a platform now, but you know, CRM typically signifies standalone email marketing segmentation, that sort of thing, customer profile management, but you know, it should be thinking about the role that it plays in the managing of the guest journey on a website. The role that it could be playing in the top of funnel digital marketing, right? But you know these these systems are not connecting up and not working strategically alongside one another and I do think that there's there's a new wave of technology Innovation happening that is either bringing multiple products together within a platform with far more strategic insight or bringing companies together that are getting closer together to figuring out what they should jointly deliver than just connecting two products. And I think companies that are looking at integration purely from a functional perspective, [00:20:00] I think is going to be an opportunity, you know, as we look at 24 and beyond.
Adam Mogelonsky: You know, you talk about CRM in this way of connecting the upper funnel and then the pre arrival, the entire stage of the customer journey, and I'm wondering if you could just explain a little bit further what you're seeing in terms of the territory that a CRM can cover now and what the possibilities are for connecting all this in the near future, because I just see so much potential, but, I'd like you, for you to explain it because, uh, you know, we're the hosts here, you're the, the guests.
So what, what do you see as the opportunities within CRM?
Frank Reeves: great. Well, I appreciate that. So when we think CRM, we typically think of the direct guest anyway. You know, OTAs don't share guest contact details and yeah, we'll try and capture that when they check in. We'll do our best, but you know, it's, um, it's not, it's not really what we think a CRM system is designed for.
CRM is designed for direct relationships and maybe loyalty and that sort of thing. So if I take a step back and just talk [00:21:00] about some of the traditional. I think the broken paradigm of the direct channel for a moment, and then I think I can sort of connect CRM in on the back of that.
For me, one of the biggest, errors that hotels make today is continuing to think of brand. com, their own website as a brochure, right? So every visitor to your website gets the same content and you've plugged a booking engine into that brochure website. And alongside that brochure strategy is this idea of look to book or conversion funnel, so many different things, but basically it boils down to, you know, on Monday we had 200 visitors and we got two bookings.
So that's a 1 percent conversion, right? Uh, you know, 98 percent of people didn't, didn't book.
Those two bookings things, the brochure, one size fits all website and the conversion funnel, I think are fundamentally broken because when you look at how guests go about booking hotels, it takes time.
For example, it took North American families [00:22:00] five days to book London properties last summer. Summer just gone. So from the first time they hit the hotel website to when they go about a very natural, very organic travel discovery research journey, that takes five days. And when they book in a hotel website, it's they're booking on their third, fourth, fifth visit to the hotel website. The conversion funnel is broken because, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't five guests. It was Jason five times and it wasn't abandonment on Monday when Jason didn't book. It was a beautiful first impression where Jason spent five minutes on our brand site and told us all about himself and what his interests were. And we were able to sort of nurture that relationship such that there's a very high chance now that Jason will come back when he's ready and continue that booking journey. So, Brand. com is first and foremost a marketing platform, that's so much more powerful than just a brochure, and therefore CRM should understand, you know, the 20 minutes of data that Brand. com is handing over to the [00:23:00] CRM about Jason. What are his interests? What content has Jason consumed? What's actually really relevant for Jason here? So yes, Jason's booked a room and that booking sits in the PMS and that's great. You know, Jason looks like every other guest who's booked for those dates in the PMS.
No difference. But actually here's 20 minutes of data on Jason. What his interests are? You know, what rooms he was interested in, what particular activities or, you know, other facilities at your hotel he was interested in. So CRMs need to, I think, take a step back and not just look at You know, single customer view and all that great stuff that CRMs always talk about, but a CRM is, well, who is, who is Jason and how much data, how much insight has come into the system about Jason, and leveraging all of that, such that we can, you know, hand a record to a PMS or a CRM, not just a booking transaction, but an actual customer record, uh, for the CRM then to to lean into.
Adam Mogelonsky: So what we're talking about here is basically a systemic change. It's where you have to rethink the entirety of the [00:24:00] guest journey. When you're speaking with hotels, how do you inspire that change?
Frank Reeves: As Avio, we've been designing websites for almost 20 years. And we've been a digital agency alongside the booking engine. You know, we've been a full partner on brand. com for hotels with the booking engine, and we now no longer build websites. We build personalized, hyper personalized, guest centric websites where every interaction that a guest has with the brand site allows that website to just further align the hotel brand with the guest. What I've seen really inspire hoteliers is showing that in real time, showing them what a brand. com hospitality experience really looks like. And we can evidence that now. We can show them, we can walk them through the guest journey of a hotel website in real time and show them how much better they could be doing and their brand could be doing than just a brochure.
I mean, [00:25:00] how, how frustrating that the hospitality industry A, just shout book direct at every guest. And then B, if you book on a Monday and come back on a Tuesday, it's still just book direct, right? I mean, it's, you just go to booking. com or Expedia and you'll get a far better online hospitality experience. And I think you only really need to show hoteliers an example of how that looks and you've captured what is a very latent passion of theirs, which is to deliver better guest experience, better brand experience, you know, for the commercial gain or just the hospitality, uh, brand experience of that. But it doesn't get much, um, much more impactful than showing a hotel what their website could look like if it's stepped beyond the brochure.
Adam Mogelonsky: Frank, our fourth and final question. What are the key things innovative leaders and entrepreneurs should prioritize and focus on to gain traction for their business?
Frank Reeves: one of the things I found very useful was to take strategy, and we did this exercise in [00:26:00] Avvio, so I raised private equity investment into Avvio in 2014 from London. And one of the things that I, that I work quite hard on, uh, following that, uh, with a professional board, I guess, and, you know, building a great team around me was this idea of, okay, everyone's got a strategy and everyone's got a three year plan, but in a very straightforward, you know, exercise, you can turn that three, one, three, five year strategy into a right to left. And this is very well documented and it's so easy to do, but it's like, well, if we're going to be here in three years, then where were we in two years? And you're just sort of stepping back. How did we get there? You know, you're, you're, you're making it real. You're calling it into a real high fidelity version of your strategy. Well, if that's true in three years, what was true in two and 18 months and 12 months, and therefore what do we need to do now? In order to get us where we need to be in 18 months, and you constantly sort of work and rework and check and test against that plan.[00:27:00] and I think you've, if your strategy was right, because you're gonna, you're gonna deliver whatever it was you said, but if you've nailed the strategy, then, you know, you've got a far better chance at that outcome, because stuff is just, you know, it's pretty Relentless in business, isn't it? There's a million things to do every day and nobody, nobody likes being lazy. We're all going to get stuff done, but are we working on. You know, the right things at the right time. Are we building the team at the right time in order to get us where we need to be? So I think that it's a very simple, I'm sorry, it's not more inspired, but I think strategy tied to a, what internally we used to call a right to left plan. So let's just walk it back and document what needs to be the case in three months, six months, 12, 18, two years, three years in order for us to execute that. And I think the very next lesson that follows there are the metrics around that. Well, what do we need to be tracking? In order for us to know that we're on schedule or on track, you know, what are the key metrics in our business that we're going [00:28:00] to consider to be the heartbeat?
There are metrics, everybody's got loads of metrics, but we're going to value these metrics, five to ten metrics, whatever it might be in your business. We're going to value these above all else and we're going to make those visible across the whole organization and I think the other, I mean you mentioned traction, I think that sort of implies that you're then going to use some sort of a structured operating system to to sort of conduct the routine of, of running the business and there are a few operating systems out there like that, the executive entrepreneurial operating system, I think is a, is a good one. But I think just the, I guess the habits around, you know, how do you do weekly meetings? How do you communicate? How do you share across teams and departments on our way to delivering on this plan?
Jason Emanis: What does that look like? Um, practically holding yourselves accountable
to these metrics, rarely, rarely
does
it pan out like you planned three years [00:29:00] before.
And that requires, right, it requires, it's like, okay, that didn't happen and that didn't happen. That did. What are we going to do? And I mean, is that like a quarterly check?
And then, There's like this accountability meeting in a, in a shift, or
Frank Reeves: Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, my background, I think I mentioned earlier, but my background was computer programming. And one of the things I really loved discovering about computer programming and sort of agile and, you know, methodologies like that was just the rigor of the retrospective. And it's like, Hey, okay, we smashed out another release or, you know, we iterated through another, uh, another build. But now let's take the time to look at what's gone well and what's not gone well. So this constant pursuit on how can we be better, we look for that. We want people to talk about that. So I think when you sort of ingrain that level of candor across the organization, you know, we want to hear from people.
We're, we're, we're not, nobody's perfect individually, collectively professionally. Nobody's there yet. [00:30:00] But we want to, more hungry to be better all the time.
I think that's a really important part of it, but I do think that There is a confidence that is downstream of having the plan, having a very structured, methodical, let's say it's the three year strategy, and you've walked it back and you've figured out your metrics.
You get a far earlier heads up on what's kind of Going awry than I think you otherwise would, you know, two degrees off course, when you're crossing the Atlantic is going to take you somewhere else.
Right. But learning that early on. So I think, I think systems like that really work. I think they're intuitive, they're logical, people buy in. And I think when you sort of ingrain those kinds of things in your business, then, then people are sort of keen on identifying what the data says and. You know, just adapting to it. I think boards love it. It's not subjective. It's not irrational It's just where this is what this is what the market's telling us And we think we should ignore that and wait a bit longer or we think we should make a change But [00:31:00] you know the structure and rigor of it all I think just brings people with you.
Adam Mogelonsky: Frank, I think that's a great place to end it because we want to give people some time to think about just the developing a three year plan, which is so critical and it's something that you really, you can, you could spend a whole month working on that document just to refine it and then break it down.
So I think that's a perfect way to end it. Did you have any final thoughts or any final comments?
Frank Reeves: No, not really I would just I guess go back to my initial comment on The team sport. I think this is, you know, you can start a business on your own, but you can't scale a business on your own. This really is a team sport. So it's about finding the right people. It's about building trust. It's about, you know, demonstrating that you trust these people.
And hopefully if, you know, you get, you get the tailwinds behind you, you know, you're giving yourself the best chance of, of, of success. If you can build the culture that that helps to foster.
Adam Mogelonsky: Great. Frank, can't thank you enough for [00:32:00] coming on.
Frank Reeves: Thank you so much, Adam. Thank you, Jason.
Jason Emanis: Yeah, thank you.