Amy: 0:18

Morning guys. Hi.

Brad: 0:21

Hi. Hello Amy. How are you?

Amy: 0:24

Absolutely loving my Friday, So tell me about who you've been seeing on this trip.

Erika: 0:31

We've had a bit more of a chill schedule this time. Cause usually we overload ourselves and we usually average between 20 to 23 meetings in four and a half days. It's usually a pretty big week, whereas this week I think we have 10. Yeah, it's been like a half pace, which is nice cause I feel less tired and we are spending much more time with the team. Ross and Rikki were in on Tuesday, Wednesday, so we got to spend some time with them, which is really good because we're of course based in Alice, and they're in Adelaide, so we don't get to see much of them in person.

Amy: 1:03

More time to, to sip coffee and to just

Brad: 1:07

about that. But the meetings too, have gone a bit longer. Like we had one yesterday that was only meant to be an hour and it went for really three

Erika: 1:15

hours. Didn't yeah. Yeah. So we've caught up with a couple of government ministers, which is really exciting. We also caught up with 42 who we sponsor, of course. So we did the, on the couch. So Brad and I sat on,

Brad: 1:27

we had to sit on a couch. It was so awkward. I

Erika: 1:30

like didn't know where to put my hands.

Brad: 1:32

Oh, I know it was, and there was 30 people around us, like this all like hanging on every word and we're like, you just, yeah.

Erika: 1:39

Yeah.

Brad: 1:40

You felt like you were in trouble. You felt when you're sitting on the chair, outside the principal's office and you sitting down, you like going. What am I doing here? Yeah, and we

Erika: 1:48

got to catch up with Louise afterwards and she's got lots and lots on her plate. It was good to see her again. And yeah, that school's really growing really rapidly, which is really great to see and really good for the industry.

Brad: 1:59

We got to go to Parliament House in Adelaide, which was very cool. Been there. What three times now? Met with the Attorney- General, Minister Maher, that was a very cool thing to be, to go in there again and have a bit of a quick chat with him about what we're up to.

Erika: 2:13

Yeah and it's probably one of the second times we've met with a government minister since the government's changed. It's definitely a different air at parliament. And they were sitting this week as well. Yeah it's quite busy

Brad: 2:22

and there was climate protestors outside and there was very hectic. And Parliament House is very old in Adelaide it's so it's very pokey and narrow and there's lots of bustling going on and bells going off. And so it's yeah, it was, and it was a really good conversation we had with him and his advisor about what we're up to and what we do in this space and the APY Lands and all sorts of stuff.

Erika: 2:43

Everything else. Yeah. Which is really cool. And we've also been seeing some other people in the industry who are curious about what we are doing, which is really cool. And yeah, we it's been almost a year now that we've been coming down next month will be a year, actually, but since we've been coming down and everyone we've met thinks what we're doing is super different and it's pretty cool to keep hearing that

Brad: 3:03

after a year.

Erika: 3:04

Yeah,

Brad: 3:04

yeah. Yeah.

Erika: 3:05

And even I went to Melbourne two weeks ago and pretty much half the people at that event were at South Start in March. So I was like, we're all hanging out at the same places all the time. But yeah, even in big smoke of Melbourne people like, what are you doing? This is just really different. This is just really exciting. It is nice to hear that we, what we're doing is like the right thing. It's really nice. And affirming, I think

Brad: 3:28

it is.

Amy: 3:30

Yeah and do you think that sort of people hearing about what H6 are doing is starting to connect the dots, say for H6, but also for other parts of this industry and how they approach some of the work?

Brad: 3:43

I think for H6, I think it's gonna be a process of at least, maybe two years of us telling these stories all the time of what we're doing, and those particular people that we're working with right now, taking that leap of faith and then us being able to talk to people and say, this is what we are doing. This is the results we've got. This is the process. The interesting thing yesterday was I had another conversation about owning your own data. And it's a really new concept for a lot of people, the idea of actually, building your house in your yard, not in someone else's yard is a bit of a bit of a different concept to still what Erika says all the time. And I think that's the thing that's triggering is making the light bulb moment for most people is when you explain that idea, they're like, oh, so really anybody can build a system. That's this idea of you actually owning that data as an NGO and. And then making people access you rather than other people having that data to do whatever they like with.

Erika: 4:39

Yeah. Yeah, and really utilising that data driving decisions, approach, and being able to collect the data that serves the program's interest in the people who are running that program and utilising it. They'll be able to collect it and be able to stand on their own ground instead of having this vague, grant acquittal or reporting guidelines from, agencies that you have to report on this, but no real why. So being able to see that and then interpret it and then go hang on a minute, like it's mandatory that I report this component of what we're doing, but I can see this gap here and, we need additional funding. We need additional staffing. We need to redistribute this program over here for this impact to happen. And for these people to make those decisions themselves

Brad: 5:18

So to answer your question, Amy yes. I think the dots are being connected, and I think that like with anything people are already meeting, we had with the government, basically the light bulb went on straight away and it's oh, we could make this work for this.. And that's, that's probably the first time that's actually happened where somebody's gone. Bing, we have this problem. This could solve it.

Erika: 5:42

Yeah.

Brad: 5:42

On a much bigger scale.

Amy: 5:44

I actually was at the women in equity forum here in Alice and that's something that the speakers were saying is when the government makes those kind of, or anyone makes those sweeping statements about, refugee women okay, but they're not all the same person, like when you say that it actually means so many different things that you really have to actually break it down. If you're gonna make that change and, improve things for those different groups instead of the wide banner that helps nobody.

Erika: 6:14

Yeah,

Brad: 6:15

totally.

Erika: 6:15

Yeah and I remember, digressing, but when I was living in Adelaide and I was working with Asylum Seekers and when Asylum Seekers would at the time, this is, six years ago that they would get their, that bridging visa they'd get 10 hours worth of English lessons. And then within that 10 hours, you're meant to be fluent in English. And I was like, that might be great if you've come from, you already got those two languages and it's just Just might be a bit of a top up, but if you only speak Arabic and you have to learn English in 10 hours, and if you haven't got that, you can't really survive in this country. Just doesn't make sense. A lot of these kind of blanket rulings, everyone's gotta be the same, but no one kind of gets any benefit out of it. Yeah. And there's just different levels of loss. It's really frustrating.

Brad: 6:58

Yeah. And one of the interesting things in the chat we gave yesterday to about 30 students was the fact that the realisation that. In Australia, you might have 200 languages that are spoken outside of English, outside of migrants and in Northern Territory you might have you've heard about 26 to 30. There was a bit of a revelation for most people and the disadvantage that means so to put yourself in those shoes and say, for I not a native English speaker and I don't speak English every day. How much of a disadvantage that is and then all of a sudden that sort of shifted exactly what you're saying about the migrants and stuff like that. It shifts that power base straight up,

Erika: 7:36

even like yesterday, when we were talking about kidney dialysis and Rav was like, you need 400 litres of water to go through a dialysis process. And I was like 400 litres of water? Like how does that go into someone? I'm like, I struggle getting one litre of water in me a day. And I'm like, how do you build a facility to be able to have that much water, especially in remote Australia, where it's already a problem. How do you have the power to drive these machines? How do those people, that, you can't work if you're on dialysis, how are they supported? How are their family supported?

Brad: 8:07

Where do they live?

Erika: 8:08

Where do they live? How do they keep their cultural connections?

Brad: 8:11

And on, on the back of that, imagine managing that data. So if you are just dealing with it every day and phone calls and emails and whatever else might be, and you're managing that people, but you don't actually have a guideline to what happens to that person on dialysis, where they go, where they live, how they survive, how long they're in town, that data would be super important to make better decisions. At the moment, nobody has that data. They know that those people are on dialysis. They know how long they're there for, but what happens around that? How do we

Amy: 8:39

totally, yeah,

Brad: 8:40

exactly what you're saying about the equity thing, it's yeah. The same you need.

Erika: 8:47

It's been a very interesting week. It's been really good. And we've done a lot of kind of internal looking at systems as well, which is really interesting. So yeah, and today we're just catching up with a few other people within the industry, in the Office of the Chief Entrepreneur at Lot 14, which is great. And we also caught up with an undergraduate team at Lot 14 too. And some other people who have similar kind of companies to ours, cause we always wanna have knowledge sharing. We wanna... being in Alice Springs, it's very hard for us to connect with people in the sector. There's not really much at all in the NT, in our space. So this is where we try and meet people and go, we have this problem with this client, or have you tried this technology before and being able to have people go. Yeah, you can do it that way, but I would do A B and C if I did it again, or have you thought about this or that or whatever and it's been really interesting to help us like improve our internal process

Brad: 9:37

and also to think, what you might be doing or trying to achieve is maybe not what you should be doing, but then to hear validation and people to say no, we've got the same problem. Yes. We've got 500 employees, but with exactly the same problems as you guys and I'm like, okay, that makes me doesn't solve the problem, but makes you feel a little bit better, the fact that you are isolated, but at least that touchpoint is there. So it's been, that's the good thing about coming down to Adelaide is to get perspective on that sort of umbrella, cause it's very easy to be in that fishbowl. And for people who can understand where you're coming from, cause we live in an environment where it's harsh and there's disadvantage and all those other things that happen around us every single day. You don't necessarily think about it or talk about it, but coming down here, that's the thing that brings it into sharp perspective is that you do talk about it and you do talk about those situations. You do talk about that disadvantage and the engineering part of it, isn't what people want to hear. They want to hear the other stuff and how these things get resolved.

Erika: 10:35

Yeah. And often when the engineering part comes up, people are often questioning why? We don't have a SAAS model is kind often the most common question that we get.

Brad: 10:44

It is..

Erika: 10:44

And often the reason is which we explained yesterday to some students at 42 who were just mind blown is that we have two very different users who use our systems like minimum, at least two. You have people on the front line who English may be a second language. They may be new to using a computer. This may be one of their first jobs. But then you've got the people who are managing the reporting and the funding requirements and compliance who may have university degrees, who are living in town, who spend their whole day on a computer. And they've got different push down from their management as, just as the front, like here have got different push downs as well. So they've both got very different priorities, very different experiences. So it's like being able to design systems that can help provide solutions to both two very different demographics is yeah it's a challenge and it requires a lot of lateral thinking.

Brad: 11:30

We might have to go to Canberra soon.

Erika: 11:35

with all the roundabouts.

Brad: 11:36

Yeah, exactly. Go and hang out with the roundabouts. Go around in circles. Yeah.

Amy: 11:39

That's what I was gonna ask actually, with the growth and the changes that have happened over the last six to 12 months at H6, although a lot of it was planned and you had this vision do you think that different goals or priorities have shifted? Some have fallen away? Or you've developed new ones as things have gone on?

Erika: 11:59

Last christmas Brad told me in July, he wanted me to get Tanya Plibersek and Ken Wyatt and Twiggy forest to Uluru to meet with us. So I wasn't able to do. But to be fair, I didn't really try.

Brad: 12:11

You still haven't met Twiggy though.

Erika: 12:12

I still haven't met Twiggy. I did go to an event that he was unfortunately in the Ukraine, so he sent his apologies. Fair enough. But yeah, so that's one thing that I didn't quite get to. But yeah, a lot of it's been ticked off and moved through and a lot of it is still a work in progress.

Brad: 12:26

Yeah. And a lot of it too is listening to conversations, like the conversations we had yesterday. There was a thing that was said to us that I hadn't even thought about. It was just a throwaway line like'you could do this' and we're like, actually, we could do that. And, but it went from thinking about individual NGOs to this idea of this thing covering the whole of the country. And I was like, I really hadn't thought of that and it is a core what we do, we provide good governance through the systems that we build and that's essentially what those systems do. They provide frameworks for people to use.

Erika: 12:59

Yeah.

Brad: 12:59

And I've gotta say that was a bit of a light bulb moment for me to take that idea and go, okay, there's a lot of merit in what he just said, and there's also to say, okay who do we need to see to make this happen? Because not just for getting to do the work, but actually the idea of actually providing that framework for this national rollout would actually make it successful. Because it's been tried before and one of the reasons why it's fallen over, it's not because of the will of the people, it's because of the governance, it's the framework behind it and having to manage that administration is just too onerous. And but to have something where you could plug the numbers, so to speak, and the thing runs itself through some magic in the back end I think would probably make all the difference. And combined with the will of the people behind it.

Amy: 13:46

Yeah,

Brad: 13:46

I really hadn't considered it. It was just a,

Erika: 13:48

yeah and I think coming back to your question, Amy, of the, the last year of transition with H6 a lot has had to change and to allow the scalability for even if we were considered for a project of a national scale, of us being able to do it. So a lot of the past year has been bringing us up to the standard of having, three years ago, we only had two engineers once Ryan left It was just a team at two, whereas now we have five engineers and we have a pipeline to keep having people come through on a sustainable model. So a lot of it has been doing this internal restructuring and supporting to allow the team to go beyond Alice Springs to go beyond Adelaide, even and to have these kind of systems in place so people can do really good work and contribute to our vision from wherever they wanna live.

Brad: 14:36

And I suppose the next stage is to over the next 12 months will be to create a framework where the company anybody can if we go into a$10 million project, can look at our business model and look at what we do and if we've gotta provide paperwork to say, this is all our internal systems that's all been done, often with a small business, people fill those gaps. So the next stage will be this idea of saying if we were to do this and a bigger organisation, wanted to partner with us they need to be sure that our internal systems from our HR down to all the other things, risk management, is all documented and we can supply it. So that'll be the next stage that we'll do. Cause there's so much risk. Unlike with, the other side of the business, which is a creative business With bellette it's with bellette there's not a lot of risk attached to, an annual report, so to speak, but doing something is a medically based system or psychologist database, whatever it happens to be. There's a lot of risk. There's a lot of risk to records. There's a lot of risk to the company. There's a lot of risk to the organisation that we're dealing with. Those pillars have to be there and so that'll be the next stages so that we could partner with bigger organisations or partner with the federal government or partner. And so that they'll come in feeling confident that an organisation of our size can handle that and that's quite a lot of work to get that all in place.

Erika: 15:50

Mm. So that'll probably be what the next 12 months looks like.

Amy: 15:56

Nice. And will there be ongoing trips to Adelaide? Is that still part of the plan? And have you got anything booked in yet for 2023?

Brad: 16:29

think Erika will be coming down here quite a lot. I will be not coming down here as much as what Erika will be. Just because as the business grows, I've got interest in other spaces as well, whereas Erika doesn't have a life so yeah, so I think there'll be plenty of trips coming down this way. And it's interesting that I'll probably maybe four times a year.

Erika: 16:47

Okay. Yeah. We haven't talked about it yet. but yeah, I think it's almost six times a year. I came down and then I went to Melbourne as well. Yeah. Yeah, so probably the same kind of thing six times,

Brad: 16:57

but the thing is now that there's been a change in federal government I do think that throwaway line of Canberra is something that we need to consider.

Erika: 17:04

I would like to do that. Yeah and then we can go via Melbourne so I can get my nails redone. Yeah.

Brad: 17:09

And then we

Amy: 17:11

better have those priorities in the right order. Or it all falls apart, so I guess the, of what you're talking about here, How would that affect any of our like existing clients? Or things that we've still had that commitment to support? That we've built for them, that has rolled out recently.

Erika: 17:28

I think it actually works in their favor because we are going to be more actively involved in the our existing systems and having we've been working on it a lot and then it's in progress with some of our clients, but of having this kind of this ongoing agreement with them where we are constantly, where we're actually formulating a product roadmap for that system. And we're actually seeing it kind roll out and helping guide the trajectory of their system. Cause often we would just go it's their system. They ask us to do it. If they have ideas, they need to bring them to us and then we'll tell them that we can't do it.

Brad: 18:01

Yep.

Erika: 18:02

And it's gonna cost lots of money. Whereas now it's hang on a minute. If we're the experts in the room, we should be the one coming up with the ideas and then being prepared to talk about them with the client. And to go this is what we're thinking. This is what we think is a must have, based on your processes and new system, this is what you maybe shouldn't look at doing and this is something that might be a little bit optional or maybe a could or sometime in the future. And we have a conversation where it's okay you've got this amount of money. We've got this amount of capacity and kind of understanding our client's priorities in a little bit more depth. I know it seems a bit strange to say that, but the big part of having Kevin and Kirsty in our analyst team is to have that happen. So we have this kind of, I said it yesterday at 42 people often are always amazed at us, how we actually spend time with our clients to figure out what they want before we start. And people are like, oh my God. And a lot of our clients, people on the front line had barriers being in remote Australia, which is one thing, but I'm like, For an industry that kind of, agile development, I think, I'm not gonna say statistics, cos I'm not great at remembering them accurately, but is very prevalent and being agile is all about being customer driven and iterating things to meet customer requirements. And I was like to do that, you need to know what they are and you need to actually listen to your client and you need to have mutual respect. And I was like, I don't understand why it's such a big thing for people to have mutual respect for their users or their clients. I don't understand why people are shocked because that's just, that's just doing the right thing you're doing. That's bare minimum to me, that's more than 0%.

Brad: 19:41

Some of this has changed recently too. Cause the way we quote in different stages and all those sorts of things is it's become pretty clear to us, both of us apparent that rather than going there and saying it's three stages, it's 300,000, it's this and that. And already you're throwing up barriers, to actually go in and say what's the bare minimum viable product that we can build for you and then what ongoing relationship are we going to have, in a truly agile sense, to get it? As Erika had said before, a roadmap of development, so that you've got you've got a long term relationship and then that product, one of the things I've noticed, some of the things we built many years ago, haven't changed at all. There's clients we've done one stage for, and that's it. And then they've come back years later to do it. And then you have all these inherent issues with old code and old frameworks and old systems that you have to update, which is super expensive rather than saying to the client. How about we have, stage one and we don't actually have two and three, but what we do have is a, an agreement that's just ongoing over 12 months. And then we constantly iterate these systems into being better and better and better. And along the way, your code base stays fresh. You don't reach, which we've got with some clients, end of life. And I have to have some difficult conversations shortly about end of life products simply because there's been no development on'em for 10 years. And we've realised that possibly as a way forward, that's a better way forward for us, for planning work and getting a better result for the client and also not looking at an expenditure of say, 80 to a hundred thousand dollars. Rather it be like a like more of a monthly amount and that work gets spread over a whole year. So we can discover along the way what the problems are, and we can look at with Kirsty, and Kevin, they can be involved and we can sort of, make the product better and better. And then the relationship is just there forever. We we've just noticed that lately, that, that seems to be what people want. And we've just had a quote approved for a big project and essentially we thought client said it was, we want a long term relationship with you guys, but what we want is a bare minimum product, which is not- terrible- it does the job. Does it designed well.

Erika: 21:44

Which you should do in agile anyway.

Brad: 21:46

Yes.

Erika: 21:46

To start with that.

Amy: 21:47

Yeah. Get them started. Yeah.

Brad: 21:49

It means that they can discover opportunities for improvement and process improvement along the way themselves as well, rather than saying 1, 2, 3, there you go. That's the next 12 months.

Erika: 22:00

Yeah.

Brad: 22:01

And it might end up being not what they really want.

Erika: 22:03

And it's a little bit on change management, I think is what we are doing in and I know it sounds, this is a bit of a buzzword change management, but it's very much like the systems that we build in because they are freeing up people from their jobs or replacing, components of people's jobs. There is an organisational shift that has to happen on their end too. So we're there to help guide and support that and to also provide reassurance that we're not this, kind of, scary AI, that's gonna take everyone's jobs. It just means people's jobs will be more interesting and you don't have to spend hours in Excel because,

Brad: 22:34

and if you if you have a fixed budget as a local council, the amount of people you employ will stay the same, but it's a matter of making sure that those people's capacity and enthusiasm and commitment stays high. So taking away those parts of the job, which nobody wants to do and making the process of delivery and service, better.. So essentially that's what we're talking about.

Amy: 22:53

Yeah.

Brad: 22:54

And then also one of the interesting things that's been with this latest quote is the fact that HR, know, people and culture, whatever they call it these days, is actually gonna be involved in what we're gonna be doing. So I think that's interesting cause generally they're not. And I think that this project that we will be doing it's also a good template for this sort of change management as Erika said.

Amy: 23:17

Yes, I think Erika you've actually mentioned this in one of the invisible skyscrapers podcast episodes, talking about if your role is process driven, then eventually it is likely to be taken over by a system. But that doesn't mean that then you lose your job. What it means is yes, one, you free up capacity to deliver what you're actually meant to be doing, but it also means when people do come through a system and then wind up with that, that human to human contact, it's so much more important that it's good contact. Because they've somehow got through the system that was designed to try to meet their needs, but they've come to a human. Yeah, it's so much more important.

Erika: 23:58

Yeah, and I think and I feel that way I've come from hospitality and that's very much the way it is there and I think even with all the dramas, with, Qantas and everyone else with COVID and everything else that's been happening. In that if you can you've gone through the website and it hasn't worked for you, you've gone through, on the phone, you've got like the AI, slacking your options and saying what you want and you go through that and it hasn't worked. So when you finally get through to the human level I had this with a bank two weeks ago. You're really disenfranchised because the systems that were set up to replace people who did that, haven't worked, they've failed you. And when I was on the phone with bank a couple weeks ago, the person on the other end of the line failed me. And so that's when it breaks you kind of confidence with that organisation or the institution. So it is very high stakes now when people get to a human and get that human interaction so the need, I think for empathy and soft skills, and I'm going off on a tangent now, but I just think of the latest skills, summit and the shortage of work and staff we have, and I think of all the women who can't work or people who are looking after children who it's just too difficult to work because of the cost of childcare and preschool finishing at two and school finishing at 3:30 and having two kids and going well, what's the point of working for three hours and then having to leave. And those people having to be stuck at home who are usually got a little bit more of those soft skills than the other half. And that just the connection not being there really frustrates me because this is really the time for those human centered skills to shine and that's how that brand loyalty and trust gets formed. Yeah, I'm pretty passionate about it. So that's a really big part of it as well. For me. Yeah.

Amy: 25:43

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think we'll just, we'll wind up here. So I guess two more questions. Tell me something unexpected that has happened on this trip, like a positive or something out the blue, maybe that's happened

Erika: 25:59

something out of the blue, something unexpected. Or something expected is I still can't manage to charge any of my devices. But one of the other things is when we spoke at 42 yesterday someone who was in the audience came up to me afterwards and he was like, do you still have this project. And I'd forgotten that we didn't mention it that day, but we'd actually mentioned it back in February when we presented to 42 the first time and I was like, oh, you remember that project? He's yeah, it was really cool. I'm like, oh, I'll just jump on your computer. I'll open it up for you and you can have a look at it. And he was like, yeah, cool. And I was like, it's the solar energy project we did. And I was, yeah, you can download CSVs. Panel data and if you're a renewal energy nerd, it's great fun. But yeah, for someone to just remember that and him being like, oh, I really wanted to work for you guys when you were recruiting. And I was like come back next year once you've finished, let's have a chat. So that was really cool to be like, almost six months ago that we said that and I forgot that we said it in the first place for someone to remember that was really nice thing for.

Brad: 26:59

For me, it was that meeting at parliament house, which was a surprise. We just went there to say hello and then to have possible other connections forming right in front of us and ideas on a national scale and those sorts of things I thought was, that was a big surprise I hadn't gone into that meeting expecting much at all. It was just like a touch base, a touchpoint and, I think that was good. It was just a really nice positive affirmation of what we're trying to do. Because of course it's a business, so you have to be financially sustainable, but also having such a, not narrow focus, but having such a laser like focus. And getting people to understand that has always been difficult, but to get people, to see, to get us almost instantaneously and understand the core pillar of the business. think that was a very, that was a really good moment for me. Yeah.

Amy: 27:46

Yeah. The values of the business shining through in that way.

Brad: 27:51

Yeah and what I would say too, is that all of this has had a positive effect on the creative agency. It's also some of what we do has and those sort of core pillars of it drifted across into bellette. And that positivity and seeing that sort of change I think has had a positive impact on everybody.

Amy: 28:10

Definitely. And that is a great lead to the last question, the positive impact on the two of you. So what would you tell the Brad and Erika from January, or how do you feel as the two kind of leaders of H6. How have, how has that changed you personally, professionally?

Erika: 28:31

I think I still cry my car the same amount. No, I think it's it's for me in my youth, this is the first time I've been able to do anything like this. Whereas Brad's kind of been doing this for ages, but in some ways, this is the first time you've

Brad: 28:44

no, it's the first time for me too. Yeah. It's

Erika: 28:47

It's always. It's really good feeling to feel like the ideas that we've had and when we've been executing. And that we wrote down last October are actually happening and actually working. And sometimes it, it feels like we go three steps forward and only one step back now instead of one step forward, three steps. So it is a really cool feeling to go this is what I want to happen by this date and then things happening like, that by that date with a few little detours on the way that's a good feeling for me.

Brad: 29:14

The positive thing for me personally has been, I've been a bit more, much of a planner and I'm very ad hoc, so I tend to, putting out bushfires is my favourite thing to do. But to see a plan put in place and see us following it through and being brave enough to follow that through alongside Erika, has been a good thing for me personally, to see how those things go and it's given me clarity on a lot of other things that in my own life personally, and also in bellette and with people and all those things, and we have gone through both companies, because of COVID and all the rest of it, gone through significant changes in the last two years, two, three years. And the style of management, everything, and it's been pretty bumpy at times. It's been pretty unsettling for everybody in the team, including the bellette team. But I feel as though that having that clear, that clarity for me personally has helped I know reassure people that we're not the only ones in this position with the not enough people and, there's lots of work and all those sorts of things. So it's given me a lot of clarity to watch what's unfolding in H6 and having that idea that we follow a certain road and that's what we do. And we are good at that. And also being confident and not feeling like we're imposters, one of the difficult things of operating in Northern Territory is you often feel like you're a bit of an imposter that, all the other businesses like us across the Territory are all owned by bigger companies or part of a bigger company and we're probably the only independent left in both spaces is it feels a bit daunting at times, but I don't feel that anymore. I just feel as though it's just a, we're just following step by step, the process And being good at what we do is enough to cement that sort of reputation.

Erika: 30:48

Yeah. And I think for me, this is the longest I've ever done anything in my life before. And it's nice seeing it actually working it feels like it's working. There's still things I wanna make.

Brad: 30:59

There was a time I didn't feel like that.

Erika: 31:01

But yeah, it feels like it's working and it's pretty cool. To see like an idea that you had happening and also like within like parameters that you feel comfortable with.

Brad: 31:12

And I think that COVID has been a blessing in a lot of ways. It's forced me personally, to reassess the values of what I see in people and staff and team and all those sorts of things and, working from home and. Being this support people and all those things has really become a part of what I think about all the time. Not that I didn't before, but a measure was often, someone sitting at the desk clacking away and answering the phone and all those things. That's not the measure anymore that I look at anymore. I, look at other things as well as, as well as the financial part of it, but it's the It's the health of everything, like health of the people in the business, mental health, the business health, the customer's health, all of those things has become much more clear to me because you don't have people sitting at their computers clacking away on the time you've gotta think about that stuff a bit more and being a bit more flexible, being a bit more sort. Saying at the end of the day, if work's being done, the client's being happy and the lights are still on, it's not really too much else to worry about. And making sure that, your customers are happy, plus everybody working on those projects is happy. And being aware of that.

Erika: 32:11

Yeah and I think for me as like an employee in this situation, like pre and from growing up in Alice Springs, pre COVID. When you tell people that you're from here. There's not been people who are from the Territory and live in the Territory, people would assume you weren't like good enough to make it anywhere else.

Brad: 32:27

exactly.

Erika: 32:27

So you had to

Brad: 32:28

yeah,

Erika: 32:28

come back and,

Brad: 32:29

yeah.

Erika: 32:29

And I couldn't, I didn't make it in Melbourne, so I moved back but and then after COVID hit and we had all these people back from interstate and people would go, oh, why'd you move back? I'm like why did you move here? I don't wanna have a commute. I don't wanna be one of a thousand employees. I wanna know the team I'm working with. I wanna be able to, work and do stuff for myself outside and, have friends and activities and hobbies, and like still sleep eight hours a night and not be like on a train for two hours and people who are teachers and doctors and nurses and everyone in between is yeah, that's why I moved here from Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane or overseas. Because I wanna have an actual quality of life. I'm like, yeah, that's what we're all looking for.

Brad: 33:07

Being authentic, the interesting thing of what you're saying, Amy, is yesterday, it was quite apparent that we were authentic to the people we were talking to. We were living what we were saying that we were doing, and I think that's become something that's become quite apparent that living in a city, just because you need to go there for your career aspirations. You don't have to do that. I look at our team spread all over the place now and same with the creatives as well. It's the best people for the best job, really that's what we are looking at.

Erika: 33:36

Yeah.

Brad: 33:36

And where you happen to choose to live is up to you. There is no COVID has made that very apparent that you can make those choices now.

Erika: 33:43

And we've interviewed the team members who we have, who work remotely full time, or pretty much thereabouts and they've been like, oh I don't wanna come to the office, we're like, okay. But are you sure? And I'm just like, if you get what you need to done and you're nice to your employees and you're nice to our clients and you hit your budget, I don't care where you work from or when you're doing it, as long as it gets done no, one's annoyed at you. That's it. Yeah. Why annoy? Like, why do you need to come to sit in a cubicle?

Brad: 34:09

They're, the things I've learned personally is about those things and and also, I've gotta tell you, that it was a time I've just finished it off here, there was a time that I would get to work at 7:30 in the morning and I wouldn't go home until six. So I'd always get there before everyone arrived and I'd always leave after, and the reason why I did that was psychologically, I felt that I had to as the person who was running the company and I had to be there to do those things. But what COVID and this new working environment has given me, is permission to walk out the door at four o'clock. If I've gotta go and do something or get there at 10, if I've got to do something else in the morning, or,

Erika: 34:43

You just went to France for three weeks.

Brad: 34:45

Yeah. So I just. I look at that and it was something I would never have done years ago and even with a family and it was always, I never felt as though that I had permission not to be, there because everybody else was there and that was the paradigm, that's what everybody did. And whereas now it's not about that. It is, and for me too, it's about having some sort of quality of headspace outside of what you do every day?

Amy: 35:10

A hundred percent. Same for me. I've got my Baja shirt on. We all know where I'm headed for an entire month, very soon.

Brad: 35:16

Exactly.

Erika: 35:17

Yeah.

Brad: 35:17

And look, I think for everybody that might watch this is having an interest outside what you do is the secret to mental health. And that's having that other life, that other tribe that you belong to like yourself, where it's not what you do professionally and you're not just extending that. And I think that's, maybe that's where the world's gone now with working from home. You don't have that office environment to create that anymore. But what you do has you have to have a community and maybe that's why for a whole nother day, maybe that's why depression is on the rise and all those things, because now people have to consider what they do outside of their jobs.

Amy: 35:54

Definitely and I think building businesses where people can work and have that confidence and freedom is a huge part of it because there are a lot of businesses who are still trying to return to their pre COVID normal. And it's a damaging time. So I think the businesses that do change and shift with it, will survive,

Brad: 36:15

But truly change, not just say they're changing.

Amy: 36:17

Definitely. Yes, it has to be real transitions

Brad: 36:20

in cities is going to be catastrophic for a lot of people because those core principles of a CBD no are no longer there. We have that concentration of people for eight hours a day. So it's gonna, it's interesting time over the next two or three years to see what actually rolls out.

Amy: 36:37

Definitely. Thank you for the chat.

Brad: 36:39

Yeah.

Erika: 36:40

Talk to you later.