We letterbox dropped that, right? We walked door-to-door.
We dropped like 3000 leaflets ourselves
in the hot sun in summer.
We didn't get one enquiry.
[Music]
What are you doing?
Ordering the coffee, so we can go and pick it up.
How do you do that?
We use this app called Boppl
which is really interesting, because one of my
failed start-up businesses many years ago
was a business called Cupstart.
I still own the domain actually. There's nothing there.
Cupstart.com
And it was a pre-ordering,
pre-ordering and prepay of coffee at your local cafes.
So you could 10 or 15 minutes in advance
particularly at busy times in the morning
and then swing by and collect it.
And it's interesting, cos now there's about five or six apps on the market
that do that now, but I was trying to do it
nine years ago. Eight or nine years ago.
And, had a successful trial, had five cafes using it everyday,
had happy customers, but
there's no money in it.
I was making like 20 cents a transaction
and you just have to have enormous scale to make something like that work.
So, I didn't pursue it after about twelve months.
So, now we use these apps all the time,
somebody else's apps to order coffee locally here
because it is really convenient.
But the value equation doesn't match.
Like, they're probably making 20 or 30 cents per order as well or per cup.
And for the convenience, I would pay more for that
but the cafe is not prepared to pay more for that.
So, I think a lot of them are still
backed by VC money. I don't think any of them are profitable.
And that's the challenge.
That's the challenge, I had all those years ago.
How do you make something like that, make money?
So, I'll happily use their service for as long as it exists, but it's hard work.
So, I wish them well.
Did we experiment with a few things at that time in our life?
Yeah.
We've, uh,
We have a checkered history of plenty of
plenty of start-ups in the graveyard.
Plenty of ideas that never even made it to that
level of execution.
And then there are a couple of successful ones.
A lot more failures than there are successes.
Do you remember the flower business
and how we tried to market that one?
Yeah, what was that? Like a subscription flower service.
Hand made arrangements delivered weekly or whatever.
To have fresh flowers in the house
and we letterbox dropped that, right?
We walked door-to-door, we dropped like 3000 leaflets ourselves
in the hot sun in summer.
We didn't get one enquiry.
- We never had a customer, right? - We never had a customer.
- So embarrassing. - I think we gave one away
- as part of a competition. - Yeah, we did.
Yeah, that was good fun.
Learning though. That's how you learn, you gotta do a bit of book smarts
and a bit of street smarts
and be prepared to fall flat on your face a few times.
None of that was the end of the world.
Didn't bankrupt us.
It wasn't life or death. It was just a bit of ego and pride on the line
and if you're prepared to sacrifice that, you learn a whole lot.
What have you been doing this morning?
Couple of meetings. Coffee meetings in here this morning.
Catching up with some people in Brisbane,
that have been looking to catch up since last year actually.
I just haven't had enough time in country to do it.
So, saw a mate that I haven't seen in
over a year actually. We share an office in the Philippines.
Their company has office space in the same place we have office space.
So we often share tips and tricks on how to make that work successfully.
But I hadn't seen him in over a year. Excellent to catch up.
They're digital business as well. They're a digital agency
doing really cool stuff.
Then I caught up with a local recruiter here in Brisbane
but she's actually focused on
producing a lot of content, putting on events for the community.
She is quite interested in employer branding.
You know, people that are doing what we are doing
and putting out a bunch of content and transparently showing
what the CEO's up to, what the Team's up to,
what are we all about.
And not just people that say they have
an agile culture or transparent culture, but
the values don't match what they --
They don't do what they preach.
So there's an opportunity. She's invited me to speak
at her events actually sometime this year
and share what we're up to at Vroom
and how we use social and how we use that to attract talent
and show people what we're all about.
It was quite interesting because we're really into that at the moment.
Just give me a second here, cos, I'm navigating traffic.
So it was quite an interesting conversation.
Because she's trying to add value on similar topics
that we're trying to add value on.
So, I agreed to create some time
and go and speak at her events
and see if I can add some value to their audience as well.
And obviously it's an opportunity to spread our message
and get our business on the radar of a few more people.
So, um, thanks.
And now we gotta pick up coffee for Claire because,
I've already had a couple.
Quite a crowd, so.
[Music]
[Music Continues]
Mine or yours?
Always mine.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Now, where are we going?
Into the office now to see the Team.
Fairly packed day, because
we've only got so much time in Brisbane, so lots of face time with the Team.
If yesterday was anything to go by
we're gonna bite of more than we can chew.
I had about 17 things on my "Monday to do list"
and I got two of them done
so, I think today is probably gonna be pretty similar.
Lots of meetings, lots of discussions,
lots of really valuable time with the Team.
Ah but not a lot of time to execute
So, I gotta do that in the evenings
and the weekends in order to keep up at the moment.
And then this afternoon we're running the
the #CEOAMA
which is a concept I created last year, and trialed it internally
to run an AMA session with me, live to camera
answering the Team's questions anonymously
so, they can ask me absolutely anything they want.
And I set aside an hour and I broadcast live
to a private YouTube channel.
And the Team tune in from 12 countries around the world
and watch me answer it.
We also recorded so, they can watch it back later
if they're in a different time zone.
The Team love it. It's super transparent.
Breaks down lots of barriers in terms of communication and silos and things.
You know, we're a remote team. We only have two offices
and 12 countries. So, as you can imagine
there are communication challenges
and so we try and do these types of innovative things
to break the mould and experiment and see if we can
increase the speed and the quality of the communication
because we know that
the higher the quality of information sharing,
the faster we can operate as a business.
And we're all about going as fast as we can
as a digital business on the Internet.
It's something I'm really passionate about.
I'm looking forward to it.
[Music]
[Music continues]
Have you missed your car?
So much.
I really enjoy driving.
And when we're in Asia,
I don't really drive at all.
We have a Driver in the Philippines
and when we're tripping around Hong Kong and stuff,
we're using the MTR or
car transfer from the airport.
So, when I spend a bit of time in Australia, I love to get out for a drive
and obviously, this car makes that all that more enjoyable.
Do you feel like some people might think that you're just
that you've got a car like this to show off or be fancy?
What's the justification for having a car like this?
Well,
I'm actually a little bit self-conscious of putting out this episode,
cos, I don't want people to see the car.
So, it's exactly the opposite.
I don't have car to be fancy. Most people don't know that I own it.
It's never been on social media
and friends and family and majority of people have never seen it.
It's just my toy, it's my reward
and it's not about --
You know, it's a beautiful car. I mean, let's not...
let's not take away from that. It's a beautiful car and I love it
and enjoy it and it's amazing.
But it's not about the material object.
To me, it was a goal that I set, a 10 year goal.
It was a 10 year goal that I set when I was 20
to buy a supercar by the time I was 30.
Or to be in a financial position where I can comfortably buy a supercar
and not have it affect anything else. You know, buy it in cash.
I reached that point at 28 and a half, not 30
and I even hesitated then, buying the car
because I couldn't --
I struggled to justify the money. Cos, it's a lot of money.
But I think that just goes to show that it wasn't about the object,
it was about the goal
and it meant more to me to realise the goal
and how hard we'd worked and everything we produced
over the last decade.
A lot of sacrifices went into that.
So, I bought it and I enjoy it and it's fabulous
and it doesn't get driven much, cos, I don't even live in the country.
Which made it, all the more difficult
to justify buying it in the first place
but you know, it was about the goal. I had to get the reward
for the goal, because
otherwise I'm not gonna set more goals in the future,
if you don't see it through.
It meant more to me emotionally
for the achievement than it did to get the toy.
And saying all that, though it's awesome fun.
[Music]
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