Synergy IQ: 0:01

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Daniel Franco: 0:20

Hi there synergisers and welcome back to another episode of the creative synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco and today on the show I had the absolute pleasure to sit down with the chief entrepreneur of South Australia and a very successful entrepreneur in his own right, Mr. Andrew Nunn. But just a quick note, this podcast is brought to you by Synergy IQ, a leading management consulting firm in Australia who specialize in helping leaders in corporate and government organizations navigate their way through the overwhelming complexities of change, while enhancing their leadership capability. Check them out at Synergy iq.com.au Also, be sure to give this podcast a like and subscribe and leave us a review. It helps more than you know. So back to Andrew. Andrew is co founder and chairman and executive director of JBS and G Australia, one of Australia's largest privately owned environmental consulting companies. Andrew also acts as a director for several companies focused on property development, private equity investments and entertainment opportunities. In partnership with his wife, Alexandra Dimos, he founded the Nunn Dimos foundation a philanthropic fund focused on supporting key social and art causes in South Australia. So Andrew was appointed early in 2021, as the South Australian chief entrepreneur, with the role to provide high level independent advice to the South Australian cabinet and business communities. And to enable entrepreneurialism across all forms of business, industry and public sector. I must say that I geeked out a little bit on this podcast with Andrew and at times, it'll probably sound like a bit of a mentor session, we discussed so many of the intricacies of being a business owner and entrepreneur and Elena, then you couple this with his insights and experiences along the way of how he grew and scaled his business at JBS and GE. It was actually really humbling to note just like everyone else, he went through all the teething problems of growing a business but maintains his position to continually treat people with respect and dignity. And he believes that enabled good things to happen. Andrew also provided some insight around what exactly does a chief entrepreneur do, and how South Australia is positioned in relation to entrepreneurship across Australia, and how we have a real opportunity in growing South Australia into a startup hub with locations such as lat 14 That then allows us to attract more and more world class talent. We also then reflected on how important it is to give back and why he's so passionate about using his wealth and experience to give back to the community. I absolutely hung off every word in this podcast with Andrew and I know you're going to love it too. So if you'd like to check out his profile, you can find that at Andrew Nunn on LinkedIn. And feel free to connect with me to where you can find me at Daniel Franco on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. We've also had some amazing other CEOs and leaders and experts on the creating synergy podcasts and I'd welcome you to check them out at our website, synergy iq.com. There you are, check them out at the creative synergy podcast on Spotify, Apple and all the other podcast outlets. Remember to like and subscribe as well. This would really help us out tremendously. Thanks in advance. Cheers. Welcome back to the creative synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco. today. We have the great man Andrew Nunn on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Andrew Nunn: 3:48

Thank you for having me.

Daniel Franco: 3:49

Great opportunity. Chief entrepreneur of South Australia. It's a pretty big title. And not only not only that, but you built a very successful business in your own consulting business. Before that, and obviously, everything you do in philanthropy. I can never say this word.

Andrew Nunn: 4:04

Philanthropy yet.

Daniel Franco: 4:05

Some wonderful things in the world. Kudos to you.

Andrew Nunn: 4:08

Thank you very much. Now we try. It's all chief Antunez. Great. That's a great honor to do it. It's a great title. But but it's all of the ability. It's really interesting because philanthropy and the role of the chief entrepreneur and my vision of the same sort of thing in a way that philanthropy my wife and I have agreed to through the Nunn Dimos foundation to give money away to a whole range of ventures in South Australia, predominantly. And really, and so that's sort of giving money, the chief entrepreneurs about giving time giving experience giving access to people to you know, it takes 20 years to get 20 years experience. And so really, to be able to give that and to be able to link people and to use my network and my experience is really important.

Daniel Franco: 4:51

Brilliant, brilliant. And thank you for all that you are doing. I think you guys just tell us your story. So well. It started How did how did you become this business magnet? expert in entrepreneurship in business and all the above?

Andrew Nunn: 5:07

Well look, it's all it started in Victoria. So I'm a, I'm from Northern suburbs in Melbourne. I'm number four out of five boys, and no girls in our family other than mum and, and so realistically, we had a not a poor upbringing, but don't have privileged upbringing either. So we worked for everything. My brothers were really, really intelligent at school as a general rule me not so much. But I had my role my dad ran a pharmacy and, and every weekend from the Hyderabad, I was in the pharmacy, we always did on a Saturday morning, and my role there was very much around being on the front counter dealing with people. Yeah. And, and because that realized early, that was my, one of my skill sets, right, just be able to talk to people be able to, yeah, make them laugh and get involved and that sort of stuff. So so so I did that for about the best part of 10 years. And, and what I learned through there is how to how to read people feeling sad, people feeling happy, I learned how to the best I can read faces, I learned how to try and make an experience a good month for people. And so So I took that into my ultimately I became an engineer. I did geotechnical engineering and RMIT. But when we finished the recession we had to have was on so I couldn't find a job. There was no jobs, the only job I could find was, I think 50 people applied for it was for a new thing starting out called Environmental Engineering, and no one knew about it. Well, no one knew what it was. And so

Daniel Franco: 6:36

no one really had too much emphasis on you know, exactly back then. Exactly. So.

Andrew Nunn: 6:40

So what happened, though, is is I had, I was able to climb quite quickly through the ranks because one I was in new industry. And two I could speak really well, with the clients. Yeah. And so in an engineering field, often, that personal engagement with clients is difficult for a lot of engineers, typically. And so that allowed me to sort of step up and sort of grow through the company. So I, I grew quite click quickly through the company, which was called Camp Scott Furphy, and then became called CMPS, and F and then ultimately became Aegis. I did I did a number of years traveling around I, I basically took, I took a risky approach to everything right. So I looked at things I went, they asked me, Andrew, do you want to drive around Victoria for, you know, a year and a half cleaning up contaminated sites? Absolutely. You know, do you want to get live in the middle of the Gulf of Carpentaria for two years on an island called Grid Island? I said, Yep, I'll do that. And so each time, everyone else was not doing 100%. And then they asked me to come to Adelaide for one year deal. Yeah. And I was thinking, Oh, my God, I was hoping I guess the worst of the errors. Exactly. Right. Well, that's what I thought at the time. And I must say, I think the first few nights I cried myself to sleep. What have I done? Yeah, in the middle of the sticks is fine. But what was really funny was Adelaide in the light noise, I think 99 I came here. And and I very much I turned off work the first day at 730, which is when I always work in Melbourne. And it was that one? Where is it? Where is everyone? Oh my god, it must be a public holiday. Anyway, they all woke up around 845 Which, at the time, I thought my This is crazy. Yeah. But then I but then you start to realize this is the vibe of the place. This is the way people balance work and life. And this is what I started to fall in love with. With Adelaide is it did itself really well. Yeah, it didn't appreciate it at the time. And I didn't appreciate at the time, but that's what it did. Well. And so the other thing was coming from that Victorian 12 hour day work. And yeah, I really drove trying to engage with clients a lot. And so, you know, ultimately, I spent two or three years with that company. And now when you know, I'm gonna do this myself, and I got sick of making money for everybody else. And I thought, You know what, I can do this now it's time for me to make that that leap. And I was 32 when I did that. And and then so I started in my

Daniel Franco: 9:07

role was when I started. It's the

Andrew Nunn: 9:09

right age. It is the Goldilocks Well, you got enough experience. Hopefully got a little bit of capital behind you. But But anyway, so I we were living in Orange Lane in Norwood at that stage and I The other thing I knew in myself, I'm a great starter. I'm not a great finisher, right so so so I hired a couple of guys at the outset and guaranteed them two years. Yeah. If they come with me and we and we started on my kitchen bench in in Norwood with linked computers sitting around the kitchen table. So it was pretty surreal. But but to do guarantee then that I had to sell my house in in Melbourne so sold my house in Melbourne. So we rolled the dice quite a bit anyway, so as it was, we did really well we We had a really client focused approach. We took a different offering, because we all worked in big companies. And we thought, Well, what do we do differently? That makes it easier it makes clients puts puts the client base at the center. Yeah. So we did that. Ultimately, you made a couple of really important people in your in your career, I met one guy, Don field, who, who gave us our first remediation project. So consultants after then did a lot of work on assessing telling you about your problem. And here's a report that tells you about your problem. Yep. And, you know, saving, go find somebody else to fix it up. Yeah. I wanted to get involved in fixing it. Yeah. So I wanted to stretch the definition, you're consulting into potential little bit of contracting, but I want to do the smart end of the contracting, in terms of building treatment systems and whatnot. And so we were one of the first to be doing that. And so we containerize these treatment systems, then we started moving them on the sites and around sites. And that was a really transformation of the business. And so we did that. Until about, and the business grew really quickly. We had offices in Melbourne, Melbourne and Adelaide. I had about 45 people, I reckon. And I got to a point, it's actually really interesting, I got to a point where I went, I'm sort of done here. You know, we're making a lot of money. That was not the issue, plenty of money. But I'd sort of I sort of came to the end of what I wanted to do with that business. But I didn't want to sell the business for Chase, wasn't there any? Yeah. And it was painful, because I've had I had young kids at that stage. And I just wanted to speak and I was just drawn in different. And so my, and my same commitment. I as I said, I grew up in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and, and so all my drive up till probably my late 30s, early 40s was all about how do I make enough money? How do I make enough money? So I don't have to do that again. Yeah. And and then when I got that when it's actually not as enjoyable as I thought it would be. It's not everything isn't so great. I know. So I looked long and hard at it. And then we said, I just needed a bit of a break, I think I got a bit burnt out. And I got to the point now, so I approached a company. So we were in Melbourne, Adelaide, they were in Sydney and Perth. And, and we had a we were in a strong financial position in that transaction. But but we did a 5050 deal on the basis that that Andrew Lauer CEO is a fantastic CEO. He takes over the running of the day to day the business and he is, and what what I really learned through that is there's things you're good at, and you don't have to be good at everything. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs think I gotta be I have to be the CEO in the long term, because that's my role. And I'm not sure that necessarily being an entrepreneur is is this is the best person necessarily run a big business. Yeah, maybe. But it depends on the person. So for me, it wasn't. And so when Andrew took over the running of what became JBS and G, and that companies, you know, 350 400 people now. And and so he's he's built that from about where I think we're 150 to 120 where we merged. And so that's a good business. That's a great story. So

Daniel Franco: 13:03

yeah, two relations. Do you Do you still chair like you're the chair of the board? Are you on?

Andrew Nunn: 13:08

Yeah, so yeah, so we have? So there's six of us on the board? Yeah. Yeah. So I chair the board. And Andrew is the CEO. And he sits on the board as well. So So and that company, a grind is evolving and changing and as good companies do so. So now it's really interesting. And it's a great foundation business. And we've got some amazing people coming through with lots of different thoughts about how we take environmental to a different direction.

Daniel Franco: 13:34

We've got I'm a I'm a firm believer in in recipes. Yeah, like in formulas. And you know, I love a good pasta blue swimmer crab like so there's a formula. Yeah, well, the other there's a thing, there's a formula, there's a recipe to get, what is quality? Yeah, and I actually believe, and I know most people do that, you know, business is much of the same. So I'm really interested in your, how you scaled that business, how you got to a point of being able to merge being, you know, obviously earning some really fantastic financials, being able to think about stepping back. Yeah. Can you tell us the some thought processes that, you know, when did you learn about leadership? When did you learn about strategy? How was that something that you'd learn in your previous roles? You know, you talked about not being able as a CEO you don't have to do everything so key hires what they look like so I'm really interested in just some of that that journey through that growth phase and how you manage through the some of those ups and downs because I can almost guarantee there was a lot of downs in there.

Andrew Nunn: 14:36

Yeah, there was it's it's funny that when you feel like your business is growing, you feel like you've got the right business. Yeah, it's the right business for the right time. There's a great feel. Yeah, there's a great vibe in you and in a team we gotta get we got this now we just got to find our next big client. We took a view very early that these are one of one of our rules. We need a big clients. We needed to to deal with the bigger end of town at work, we do chips. Yeah, because we needed to get paid. And ultimately, that financial risk, because we were literally starting with not much more than enough to cover salaries for a couple years. Yeah. And that was it. We didn't have any float, we didn't have any capacity to keep to take any hits. And so only big companies. And so we focused on relationships, really did you know, so

Daniel Franco: 15:22

the pharmacy days,

Andrew Nunn: 15:24

come back to the solving people's problems, look him in the eye, giving them the answer they want, and giving them comfort that you're gonna deliver what you said you were gonna deliver. And for big companies, I think that's what they want. I think it's hard for them often to hire smaller companies. But if you look at what they're trying to achieve, that they want innovation they want, they want solutions, where they're in the center of what the client wants, and small companies deliver that sort of thing, being in a bigger company. And I know I work in big companies, you sort of become a number and you just get managed through this.

Daniel Franco: 15:54

I think this is a this is something that we put up with because we're a management consulting firm, we specialize in change, organizational change, that whole pace, change management, essentially, and, and we work on things like workforce planning, we work on things through large digital change programs, or, or, you know, that sort of stuff. And we often come up against the big four. Yeah, right. Like the, you know, the KPMG. Is the Deloitte Yeah, and whatnot. And there's a saying in amongst the small owners of consulting businesses is no one ever got fired for hiring the Big Four, right? Yeah, there is a safer thing. But the way we do win business is the simple fact that yes, our level of customer services is extreme. And we have a more robust product, meaning because we're passionate about it, if we don't do well, we don't survive our backs up against the wall. So we have to do well.

Andrew Nunn: 16:47

And every now and then you find a client who wants to help a group right. So what the other thing we did is we wanted our early clients to be part of our journey. So to really feel like they were part of our journey, because we said we we've gone out on a limb here, if you don't support us, you'll end up with just the big players anyway. So you know, give us a go. Yeah. And that was basically our pitch for the first two years. Yeah. And it worked, worked really well. It's, it was all about just getting, getting enough momentum in the business, that you could hire the next person and then the next person and that that's the thing.

Daniel Franco: 17:22

Who were the critical key hires in you in your space?

Andrew Nunn: 17:25

I looked at the first two guys, I started with a fantastic Adrian Webber and, and Nick Panel were great, you know that we were great. Engineers as well. And really focused and committed to the to the business and the growth and they love. Yeah, we all love that story together. We all worked pretty hard. But we all we all had different roles in the business. And we did them all. Well. Yeah. And that was a great actually, that was one of the real learnings out of it. Whether it was serendipitous, or fortuitous, or whatever, the fact that the three of us worked so well together in different stages of the business from from finding to getting the work out the door. Yeah, we did it so well. And we let me guess You played front end? Well, I played a lot of what I did, but it was funny as, as, as Adrian grew, particularly through the business, you know, there's clients that liked talking to him more than like talking to me, because their personalities relate, which is great. So and that that was the other change in the business, when you could have multiple people reaching out to clients. And clients wanted to talk to sometimes the technical guy, sometimes they wanted to talk to me, they the boss sometimes. And so you just got to be flexible enough to be able to read, it's like looking people in the eye, what what are they thinking? What do they need? Yeah. And so addressing that was the key thing. Continually feeding from the bottom, and not crunching from the top very, very rarely do we hire anyone at a high level, because we wanted everyone to grow through the business. And that was a view, we had a longer term view of this business, it wasn't going to be just a started and flick it job. And so so we took a long term view, we're all pretty, you know, relatively young in those days, and we all just had a go. And we're all at a stage in life where we could afford to probably just have a bit of a pump, which is great. Right? So and this is the other thing, take a risk, you know, have a go because I think somebody said to me earlier in life, that the things you regret most in life are the risk, you don't take it and I think that's right. So anyway, so we went in and did that. I think some of the things I got wrong. One of the things I really got wrong was I didn't invest enough in the growth of the business, right? I kept hiring people, but the systems that support that I didn't do well. So rationally saying operationally and so it all just started to build up and up and up more and I think that's probably part of my getting burnt out in sort of 2000 sort of 1415 was just, it was just exhausting.

Daniel Franco: 19:42

But were you hires around revenue producing.

Andrew Nunn: 19:45

That's all we cared about. Yes, revenue. We you know, basically as, as the CEO and effectively chair of the board, you know, I was fully fully billable. Everybody in the business was fully built. We hired a I think it's took us a couple It probably took three years for even harder receptionist. Yeah. So because it was all about revenue. And then we had a real strong focus on profitability, that revenue. So we could hire the next person hire the next person. Because as I said, once we thought we had a really good business offering, then it was about getting enough capital. And we were can't, we weren't great in the concept of borrowing money to grow. I would rather work harder banks and money and then spend that money. Yeah. And so we had a very sort of bootstrap model. So we never had any other shareholders and then then people within the business and we still to this day don't have any shareholders other than people in the business. In fact, we've probably got about a, it's probably about 180 of our staff or shareholders now, wow, well, will we by the end of the excellent employee share employee share scheme. So we think that's probably the one of the best things we've done in recent years. I just think people these days want to work for their own company. And so they should

Daniel Franco: 20:57

work on that exact thing, as well as the brand. It's how you bring in quality talent. And that was going to be one of my main questions is today, do you think that model picking up your model was, I'm assuming like, 90s? That sort of,

Andrew Nunn: 21:13

well, not so old? So I started my okay. And so really, when it started to go took us couple of years, probably by oh, five to to 2011 will be growth years.

Daniel Franco: 21:25

So if you were to pick up that model, between, you know, the first 10 years and put it into today's society, yeah. Where people possibly more connected to impact and purpose as opposed to revenue? Yeah. Would you do anything differently? Would you still be focused purely on the rev? Or would you on the revenue side of things? Or would you be more interested in building a culture of great performers? Or, you know, something outside of those realms?

Andrew Nunn: 21:54

Yeah, I think I think if you've got a longevity or a view of longevity in your business, and you and you want to avoid staff churn, you can't help but think of all those. Yeah, it has to be part of The Economist. And there's so many JVs Sanjay, now we've set up a philanthropic fund within the business. Yeah, we've set up. We, I think we've got the most generous parental leave, entitlements, we've got sort of free gym memberships, and all these sort of things, which is all about making the staff feel one of their business, and to the business cares about what they're doing and what they think. And their health, but also, and you know, where they're going and socially and where they want our business to be placed. So we try and avoid getting to a position whereby we take some clients and don't take other clients on the basis of political Well, yeah, well, we'll we'll, we'll do everything that feels right. But our game out there is to basically clean up contaminated sites, support the development of good infrastructure, and, and, you know, be good corporate citizens along the way. Yeah, the most important thing, particularly going forward, it will be minimizing your staff churn, keeping staff and letting them grow through business, hurting them trading world, but treating well, like it's their business here, and it shouldn't be their business. And they should have an opportunity to grow into it. And so, you know, my longer term view of JVs, Angie is that the staff share scheme will continue to grow. And as, as the older directors sell out, the staff will end up owning more and more. So that's the view. That's my view of it.

Daniel Franco: 23:27

As you went through that scale period, in that early phase, did you was there sort of a disproportionate emphasis placed on marketing and sales? Or was it more about quality of product? I mean, what how did you how did you play? That's

Andrew Nunn: 23:39

a really good question, because it was sort of both. So I was very much at the front with marketing, you know, relationships, marketing, selling what we were doing, but having really good products that the guys were delivering, and so, so, so we were quite thin on the ground. I have to say, we, we, we played a lot bigger than we were. But But yeah, I think that's fundamental. You have to you know what I say fake it till you make it. I think that was a little bit of us. But we work damn hard to be able to produce a quality product every now and then we stuffed up. And you know, what we got good at is owning that. Yeah, yep. We stuffed up what you know, but as a general rule, we wanted our product to be quicker, faster, smarter, cheaper than our competitor. Yeah. And genuinely, that wasn't that hard, because most of our competitors were big multinationals that you know, much more agile you were in. Yeah. But we were also talking about clients a lot more. Yeah. So I had a rule that I had to speak to most of my clients each week yeah, regardless whether working on the job just to keep the discussion going kidney engagements and case management pieces because next time they come back and they've got I think I heard from Andrew yesterday or something. And so you just want to be front of mind. So

Daniel Franco: 24:55

did you need to do that with all your people? Yeah,

Andrew Nunn: 24:57

I as much as I can, but a lot of people Yeah, and that's for some personalities, not others. Yeah. You know, some people hate the concept of talking to clients, they just hate it. Some people hate the concept talking about money, some concept to talk about variations. Yeah. And so you very much got to get horses for courses. We had a really great technical guy, Richard, who's fantastic. And he, he was wonderful technical, but struggled with some of the financials early on. Yeah. And so, but he grew through that. And now he's probably one of our best. And he's approaching retirement now. But he was one of the best guys who grew through so he proved to me that you can teach a technical guy had to become really good sort of commercially and have a great longevity, long view of the business and where it could go. So he was great. He's been fantastic.

Daniel Franco: 25:45

Brilliant. What was where would you say your biggest bang for the buck from was from an investment point of view back into the business? Or whether it's investment of time or, or cash or resources? Where do you think your biggest bang for buck was from from a growth and scale point of view? Sustainability?

Andrew Nunn: 26:01

The treatment plan was a game changer for us. actual asset actually building the asset? Well, what I call that is an innovation, right innovation to way of thinking. Right? So basically, typically, you give a report to, let's say, you know, one of the big one, the big guys saying, you've got contact groundwater contamination here. And typically, you'd say it's a problem, you need to do something about it. Here's your report. And I remember just thinking for some of them, not so much for the big multinationals for something just we could clean that up, you know, can't be that hard. You know, does that view it can't be that hard. Yeah. Let's have a go. have someone someone else's got to do it. Well, yeah. So so we Hi, Richard, guys. So before we hire, Richard, it was real step. For us. It was completely outside what we were doing, we were just sampling and writing reports on contaminated sites. Richard, we came in, we hired him on the basis, we're going to build something, we're gonna start training ourselves. So that was a game changer. And then the concept of put him in a shipping container. And even ultimately putting it in solar powered shipping containers. So we don't ever need power was transformational for the business. So it took us somewhere where no one else was. We're pretty much first to market. Yeah, we were cheap. We were agile we were we were, I wouldn't say sleek in their marketing. But we were always there explaining what we were doing. That that model. Now a lot of people have caught up to that approach. And that's great. And so we need to now reinvent, where do we go next? Yeah. And I and I look at that. I mean, in my mind, consulting, the output is almost the same as it was when I started 30 odd years ago. Right. And that's a problem. So we got to rethink what the output is, who's the audience? What are they getting? Because just writing reports and giving them is just not, I just don't think that's the, that's

Daniel Franco: 27:52

the right 100% way, I have the exact same approach. And we've positioned ourselves with like, you know, our mission is to build capability within organizations. So to enable them through the change, but then also build the capability within so that they can, so that just because you think about change, right in its own right. It's a journey. Yeah, isn't it? And it's a journey that's typically done not? Well, because everyone's outcome focused or output focused. Yeah, money goes into the end result. And not so much on through the path. Yeah. And, and so that's kind of where we really get involved is helping people through that journey. But then while we're doing it, it's making ourselves redundant in the sense that we can build the capability within the team and grow that skill set.

Andrew Nunn: 28:33

But that's really important. And I've talked about this all the time. Make yourself redundant, yeah. And be confident enough in yourself to go find the next thing. And then make yourself redundant again. And if you can do that four or five times in your career, you're done, yeah, you're done. You'll, you'll look up your 50, you've done really well, and you move on with your life. Great.

Daniel Franco: 28:49

And typically, those clients, the blue chip clients, and we're talking about their teams are so huge, that that there is another part of the organization that needs your help, as well. That's true.

Andrew Nunn: 29:00

And if you can find a window into those where somebody has it said, you usually find there's somewhere between one and 10 people in your career that just help you. Just because whether they want to whether they just in themselves, it's the right timing, I don't know. But you just get somebody goes, Yeah, I like that. I'm going to help these guys. And if you can get somebody to give you a chance, which some of those guys I'll talk about a minute as chief entrepreneurs is how do you get the guys who are just starting business, give them a chance? Because once you see it, and once people can see it, then off you go around, but it's very difficult. It's it's difficult to be what you can't see. And so it's important that we get those things out and so people can see

Daniel Franco: 29:41

through your growth phase at with with the them firm did you did you place a lot of emphasis on your own personal leadership and growth? Or was it really just about driving revenue and growth in

Andrew Nunn: 30:01

Yeah, I, if I was being completely honest, I don't think I did that as well as I could have or should have. And I think that's one of the reasons why the sort of 2000 and sort of 1314 15 I can't remember that time of it. But where that transition had to happen, because my focus had been on growing the revenue growing the margin growing the people. Yep. Right. It's a consulting business. So it's sort of bums on seats, times dollars per hour sort of thing. Yep. And the soft things and the important things about training and growing and teaching people, I don't think I did that. Well, if I was being completely honest. Which is why ultimately, it's done so much better by my currency. Because he gets it, he gets the fullness of it all. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 30:47

I think it's I don't think it is, I think you get it, though. Like, yeah,

Andrew Nunn: 30:50

I get now I get it. Now

Daniel Franco: 30:52

You do get it. But it's more of a point of where's the priorities lay, like, if we're going to create a business here, and we're going to build something that is sustainable, not reliant on one or two clients, then we actually need to create a product that can drive that growth. Not that we work, from change point of view, we do a lot in the culture space, is hugely important. But in that early phase, it's about how do we grow and scale enough so so that we, you know, we can survive, and we can get through the tough times? Yeah.

Andrew Nunn: 31:23

And it's important to be able to hand those roles down, or hand those roles across or down, or whatever it is. But it's, it's, it's important that we not, we don't have to be that role, because the role shouldn't define the person, right? Or the person shouldn't find the role. It should be, that role should evolve, person should evolve, and things change, and people move on, and people move into different roles and whatnot. So I just think there's a, you know, I'm not a big fan of people changing jobs endlessly. Because I think that's, that's a symptomatic of the fact that the business you're in doesn't recognize that you need to grow. And if and if you both agree that you'd be good for this business, then they really they should be finding a way to let you grow through that business. And taking a long term view of it. I often think that the people that do best in the long run are the ones that have stayed for a reasonable length of time, and less businesses, rather than jumping all over the place. How you create trust,

Daniel Franco: 32:17

isn't it? It is, yeah, well, it's

Andrew Nunn: 32:18

a two way street. In fact, we have that, yeah, we have an underlying motto in our business of caring trust, you know, will you care for our business and our clients, and we'll trust you to do the right things and will care about you and trust. So it's a two way street, both of those things, you know, we're we're not over overly monitoring everything we're not, we want you to care about our business, we want you to care about our clients and will care about you.

Daniel Franco: 32:40

The earlier you said, you said as a CEO, you can't do everything. And then, but then you did talk about the potential burnout at the end of your time before you stepped down as the as the as the boss as the MD or CEO. Did you? Did you find that hard in that letting go process? Did you find it difficult to have others? So So you know, the Steve Jobs quote is hire great people and don't get don't tell them what to do hire people and get them to tell you what to do? Yeah, did you find that hard? Because obviously, early in that period, it's hustle, hustle, hustle, grow, grow, then as the team grows, you're hiring these great, you know, these great heads and heads off and senior leaders and whatnot, that you, you then go okay, actually, you're smarter than this at me. Yes. I'm just going to set the scene for you. I'm just going to, you know, set that strategy that was added. Yeah, transition for you? No, not

Andrew Nunn: 33:38

really a couple of reasons. One, I've always been good at realizing that people are better. In fact, I always want people to be better than me at all of these things. Right? So I want to be, excuse me the perfect business. Absolutely. And I get made redundant as soon as possible. That's, that's my perfect such situation. The other thing that happened for me on a personal level, my wife got quite sick around the 2014 time, so it was sort of everything came together. I'd young kids, business was going great guns, but the difficult for me to manage. And then my wife got quite sick. And so I'd already I was already doing the deal with with Andrew Lau to merge the companies and I had to ring him one morning and just say, Look, I can't come in. I don't know when I'm gonna be able to come in or if I'm ever going to be able to come in again. Yeah. And he said, I've got this. And so there wasn't a transition problem, because I just couldn't be there. Yeah, junkies look after and my wife and we had other things to do everything so right. Yeah, everything's perfect. But but it was that. But looking back on it. As difficult as that time was it allowed Andrew just to step in and just run that business. So there wasn't any of those sorts of transitions, which, which is actually a really good thing in a way.

Daniel Franco: 34:48

Well, kudos to having the trust with Andrew in the sense that you you knew that he was going to take it on and make it work. Yeah.

Andrew Nunn: 34:54

And as I said, I think that truncated the the aggregation of those businesses really quickly, because everybody just got in and did what they had to do. Because you know, and I was there and then all sudden I wasn't. And so so we just had to move on with the belief of the, of the vision of where we were going. Yeah. And that was really good. And to be honest, we've sort of tried that in post mergers the company has done is to really move the CEO of that company out so that we're not having conflicting CEOs, because it's, it's just very difficult. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 35:28

How long does that process take? Well,

Andrew Nunn: 35:30

I was off. Offer probably two years, a year and a half. Yeah. Wow. So so it was a long, it was a long period. So

Daniel Franco: 35:38

Alex is all fine. Yeah, she's

Andrew Nunn: 35:39

great. But we looked at it, we just went. And when I came back, I came back into completely different roles, different mindset, how do we grow the business? Sort of a more of a, an overarching sort of chairmany role, looking at how we get connections in how do we grow the business into different key areas. So and as I said, Andrews, is such a great CEO that he just has, he has an empathy. But he has a really strong technical focus. And he also has a really good business acumen. So he's actually the perfect CEO.

Daniel Franco: 36:14

Yeah, that, which is kind of what you want, right? You've gone through the growth phase. Yeah. And the how handover to someone to continue some growth, but

Andrew Nunn: 36:24

and so the battle is always so who's the next Andrew Lau, who's the next one, we find that sort of comes through the business and that sort of thing.

Daniel Franco: 36:31

One of the most difficult things in businesses to keep the cost base down, are you thinking about cost basis continually goes up as you grow? How did you manage that part of the business? Was that something that you played a lot of emphasis on? Or? Or was it just, you know, generate more sales, and we can cover our costs? That's,

Andrew Nunn: 36:49

that's what my view is always revenue, revenue, revenue revenue. Yeah. Let's not waste money. Yeah. So we never spent big flashy offices, we, we did everything on the mother cheap, but but we didn't waste a lot of money on ourselves. Yeah. All right. So we didn't have a lot of support staff. We didn't have, we didn't have the best cars, we didn't have the best of anything. But the products, all our money went into building our containers, which were perfect. Yeah. And so when what the client saw was the perfect product, right. So so that's what we put our effort into, we sort of made do in the back room to keep the cost down. But the focus, for me was always just revenue, you know, the back end looks after itself, if I can get enough revenue through the doors. And again, that works for a while. But you ultimately need to then put the systems in place where you manage the back end, you manage that, and you can scale that. And again, as I said, the thing I didn't do well, it's just putting the electronic systems in place to manage a group I think, I think you can get to probably 20 or so on, you can you can make it work. But when you get to 3040, or 50, you really need systems that are that allow you to scale. Yeah. And allow it to scale quickly. Because it had the, in a business that's rapidly growing, it's very hard that retrofit systems you really want to be in front of the game with that would be my advice.

Daniel Franco: 38:06

So just having that foresight, though, is

Andrew Nunn: 38:09

backing yourself. Yeah. Yeah. So So I think I, I'm just a bit all open here. But I look at it and I got I if I hadn't turned my head quicker to where we were going and where the potential where we could go. I would have put the systems in earlier but it was it was just sort of happening. And is sometimes you got to learn does it lift your head and look for where you're going? Because sometimes you do get lost to the trees. Yeah, I in the chief entrepreneur will often talk to did on Saturday night, talk to some, some entrepreneurs about it's important to remain focused as to why you did what you wanted to do. You started your business and you started for a reason. And often clients and things around you drag you in different directions, every now and you got to look up and make sure you're still heading in the direction you want to go. Because otherwise you get lost because I wanted to get there now I'm over here. And how do I get back to back on chat? Track. So it's always good. And that's where boards are good. That's where external advisors are good. You know, somebody or mentors? Yeah, I've always been a big one for mentors. Just just have someone to have a quick chat to

Daniel Franco: 39:12

absolutely kind of flies in the face of what Richard Branson or you know, one of the world's best entrepreneurs would do is, you know, say yes to everything you figured out along the way. I absolutely understand what did you start the business for? What is the purpose and keep driving, making sure you're heading off in the same direction. But the true entrepreneurial spirit is to take those left's and rights as the market needs and requires

Andrew Nunn: 39:35

100% 100% And they're not necessarily a complete juxtaposition. I mean, the market is where the market is going, and that's where the business is. But just make sure it hasn't taken you completely away from what you believe in. Well, yeah, because Because yeah, you might have done something for you know, part partly social, partly lifestyle, partly, you know, technical reason, and you end up out here because the money's driven you Had he sort of lost those foundational things? So it just it just to keep the, to keep the balance in it.

Daniel Franco: 40:06

When you're passionate about something, this less of a grind, isn't it?

Andrew Nunn: 40:10

Oh, it is, well, let's say you never work a day in your life. But but it's but yeah, it's that's a really good point that you, you are driven by the market inherently. But it's also make sure that pack doesn't draw you back because you innovated to get there. Make sure that I put you back keep keep your innovation going. Keep thinking about new ways of delivering what you're trying to do. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 40:31

So say I'm a entrepreneur, starting up a business, you said you speak to a whole bunch of in your role, and we will get more into the chief entrepreneur role. But say, I am a an entrepreneur starting out. I'm in year one. What's, uh, what's that early advice that you that you give,

Andrew Nunn: 40:50

I think surround yourself some really good people, whether they're working for you or not, just make sure you've got some good people around you. It's that mentor time it is and hire good people and hire really good people. Yeah, I mean, I'm more, I'd be more inclined now to hire good people early in the business and make it work. Because good people bring work for stuff. Good people deliver products that you're proud of, and that clients will come back for so. So

Daniel Franco: 41:21

how do you overcome the problem of chicken and egg though? Right, like because you hire great people that cost money if I don't remember? Yeah. All right. And so there's always the element of, you know, do I take the risk to take the risk and wear the brunt of not being able to pay myself? Yeah. Because, like, My example is, I've never received $1. I've never received $1 from it from an outside investor. In growing this business. Yeah, we've built it to a multimillion dollar business. But there's still I'm still going through that dilemma. Right still to this day, Andy, you

Andrew Nunn: 41:56

take money, correct? Yeah, that Well, I think personal view, you've got to get the discipline of taking some money, you've got to get in that discipline, it's almost budgeting for it. Because otherwise, you're at risk of something changing everything sort of stopping, and you're going, Oh, my God, hold on. I've done all that work. I've got nothing for it. Yeah. So you've got to keep, you've got to get the discipline of taking money out, in my view, and putting it away, then completely away from the business. And if that means, you know, sort of a Friends and Family Foundation and funds coming in, that's okay. That's what it takes. The other thing is I'm not a lot of people want to hold all the equity in their business. Right. I think, I think a smaller part of a much bigger pie is a much better way to go. Yeah. I think early stage entrepreneurship, I think get people that believe in the vision and believe in the direction and we'll back it with some sweat equity. Yeah, that's what I'd be doing. Yeah. Because there's nothing better than having a whole heap a group of hungry people trying to build a business that they all own. Yeah. Right. So. So owning it all yourself, I think, in my mind means It means less. Yeah. You know, I think growing a business is a team sport. Yeah. And it's more fun as a team sport. In fact, every investment I do now, every investment. is with people.

Daniel Franco: 43:10

being where so given the circumstance that I'm in at the moment that I find myself is that we've built the business to a point where someone buying in, it's probably a little bit too expensive for them to buy in REITs, especially some of the key quality, maybe people unless they want to take out a loan or whatever it might be,

Andrew Nunn: 43:27

or unless you want to merge with somebody another business and then scale it a bit scale that, do it with somebody about your size. Yeah, in a different market that adds to the value. And then you end up with a business partner that you've got to align views with different areas. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's what we did. And that kicked JB, what my company was called them with soil and groundwater sng. And when we did a deal with JBS and became JB sng, very innovative name. We, we did very much that we took one plus one we have in fact, we talked about both at the time. One plus one equals three. That's the game. Yeah, right. Together, we're much better than apart. Yeah. And, and so that's why we structured that way. And that's, that's probably advice I give people now is look for a merge partner who's got vision similar to yours in a different market? That's that's directly adjacent, that you can scale from. Because it all you know, it all takes time. Yeah, it does. And so,

Daniel Franco: 44:28

at what point does that become the play? Because I have a business partner. So it's not just my business partner. 50%, you know, but the what at what point does that become? Is there a revenue number that you look for? Is there people number is there? If you are looking to merge,

Andrew Nunn: 44:46

like my gut feel is you probably don't know. Yeah, you're waking up at three in the morning? Yeah, that's what I do. I trust my gut. My if I wake up at three in the morning, either happy or concerned. Yeah. Then I make decisions on that basis because my subconscious has been working into the night. And, and I know, you know, I knew that the merger with JBS was the right thing to do for me at that time. Because I knew I could see no other clear way out.

Daniel Franco: 45:13

It's It's funny you say that because a couple of years back, Michelle and I met Michelle was my business partner. And we made a decision that, you know, didn't quite work out. And I remember having a conversation with her after and we made a pact to each other there. And then, because before we made that decision, we both had this gut feel. And the gut feeling wasn't the right decision. But we still went ahead with it anyway. And you know, you learn from your mistakes. Absolutely. But we actually made a pact from there on there enough that from now on our gut feel will be tabled. Like yeah, gut feel will be talked about. Yes. gassed. Yeah. And understood

Andrew Nunn: 45:50

and will make decisions in a rush. Yeah, not those sorts of important Yeah, right. I take the time, because they're really important growth decisions. Taking on external equity to support growth is fine. In some cases, you just got to make sure that people you're getting the equity from are aligned with your view and vision. And timing. Yeah, in terms of patient risk capital out there. In South Australia, there's not enough there's there needs to be people willing to take a longer term punt on something, and just to wait for return rather than expecting 7%. Tomorrow. Yeah. And so until we can build a maturity in the ecosystem, that that is a legitimate business investment. And there's a lot of exits that have that have supported that as an initiative, then I think we're just, you know, unique, we'll need to look at different ways of getting capital. But But yeah, look, as I said, I don't mind selling equity to somebody who's going to help me grow equity. Yeah, selling equity for the sake of just getting some cash through the door. Some people have to do it. That's fine. Yeah. But I'd rather be aligned with with another group. Yeah. And then grow together. It would be good thing. That's but that's my, and that's not for everybody. blemishes.

Daniel Franco: 47:04

Yeah, I'm saying, I love your viewpoint on the investment. Now. It's about making sure that we're investing for the long term we had on the previous podcast. Like one or two episodes ago, we had a guy by the name of Nicky scare back on the show. I'm not sure if you ever heard of him. He is the founder of Blackbird ventures. i Yeah. So they, they invested in Canva, many, many years ago. $250,000 investment that well on you? Yeah, it's made them handsomely, handsomely rich. Yes. They also invested in culture, amp and safety culture, some of these other online programs as well. So they've done this tremendous stuff, happy cos and other ones that they've invented, which Jindou Lee we had him on te show. is great, great guys. Loved in absolute service that Yes, but But my point is Nikki's, Nikki's philosophy is invest in the hungry, not proven, yeah. Right. Like, and he actually uses that his motto is, yes, you can be you can have delivered in built business and, you know, made millions of dollars in their business, I'm not so concerned about that, because you might not be hungry. And yes, you might not be passionate about you doing and that's where the investment comes in. And if you actually have a good quality product that I believe can scale and you're hungry, then 50%, if not more goes off, my investment goes into the fact that you are hungry, and it was 100 was pretty profound.

Andrew Nunn: 48:25

And I think the other thing is, you've got to keep innovating and your business, you know, our business model collectively, I think, you know, we're 20 Odd. 30 years old is our business. Right? Yeah. And, and I think you've got to continue to always push the boundaries of innovation, where do we go now? I'll allocate some monies allocate some people's times. Where does this industry go? Where else can we take it, and really make sure that it gets a seat at the board, because you really want to keep driving that because otherwise, somebody will come up hungry will come and get you. So it's really important that we get enough hungry people in our organization. And it's really important that the same people don't always make all the decisions all the time. So you need to keep promoting young people. I mean, we have we have shareholders in our business that have been in the business three months, because we just see the Young Hungry, they're going to drive it. Yeah. So we want them in.

Daniel Franco: 49:13

do you use the shareholding to attract people 100% Yeah. Great. So So we've gone on me one of my of my entrepreneurship now me for five what is there a different advice that you would give at that point?

Andrew Nunn: 49:28

Well, depends on the scale the business per year. Absolutely. It's so now you're now you're in maturing business. So what what's your differentiator? What's, what's the it's that SWOT analysis at that point, where how can I can I scale this thing? Further? Quicker? Because I'm four years in now. Yeah, well, four or five years? Yeah. So it's a bit of a brand recognition I've got where's my markets? Yep. Where's my clients? Where's, where are they? Where are the ones that I haven't thought of? How do I expand to ones that I'd love to get to, but I'm not sure how I get there. And how do I gain the stage? How do I integrate my business? Who's around me that are doing things differently in my space that will possibly take my market? Yeah. And understand that market? Yeah. Because that's, that's a risky position. Right. So you put five years in, so you're invested. Yeah. Yeah. You're all in, you're all in. And you probably haven't got a huge amount of rewards that at that point in time, right, you're just starting to build some genuine equity in a business. So now's where I'd be thinking, How do I scale this in quickly? Now I've got something to sell the business itself, he's got an equity value. And so why don't you use that equity? Do I use that by putting my equity and get back to it? Do I use my equity with another person's equity, put them together, and then we have much bigger business in different states and different marketplaces, and then we can scale? That's because the thing is, it takes time. Yeah. You know, even if you're in your 20s, and you Yeah, 10 years in, well, you're going to 20s to mid 20s, mid 30s. And then there's different things in your life too. So this, the other thing is people forget, I almost got to have kids, because you get so lost in the business. But then you got kids and those things and you want to spend time and all this stuff takes time. And so you got to work out what can I do to get my business where I want it to be generating good income generating growth, generating opportunity. But also I need to do all these other things that I need to do on a personal level as well. Because working 60 hours in a business when you got a four year old and an eight year old, doesn't work. No, it doesn't work long term. No. So So and that's fine, then you have different drivers in 20s 30s 40s 50s. And I'm learning the 50s drivers now. And that's great. But there's things I would have done differently in the 30s if I if I had known. But as I said, Yeah, we almost forgot to have kids, because you just get so locked up in the business and where you go, did you have kids during the growth? Yeah, so I started a business now, two kids. now, four now, six.

Daniel Franco: 51:56

Yeah, well, so pretty much thrown into. So

Andrew Nunn: 51:58

it's just like, Oh, my God. But but that's great. But it is it is how you you, you know, overplaying your life. But also, you've got to think about though there are just realities. But I've

Daniel Franco: 52:13

got a 10 and eight year old two girls, and I'm obsessed with with their sport. My whole life seems consumed with it that I feel like, I've never missed it. But I've actually I've missed one basketball game that was in Melbourne that we've done well, and well done. Yeah, one basketball game. And I still, but then that basketball game, my wife had me on face time. So I was still watching it.

Andrew Nunn: 52:37

But see, that's the beauty of your team doing it too. Right. So that's beautiful. Yeah. But as important, but that's the thing, though. So five years out, you if you go another five, so you're 10 years into the business? Where do I really need it to be in 10? Yeah. And that's the question I'd be back then I'd be back solving for that. Right? At 10. Is 10 years out this business? I needed to be here, here in here. Yeah. And it needs to be owning this. I need to be doing this and not that. How do I then back solve for that? So I've got five years to get to there. Yeah, do I need to put in place? Do I need to management? Who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to get his clients? Where do I need to be positioned? And I back solve? And then I'd start working on a plan. It's

Daniel Franco: 53:17

funny, because I've never because I've done there i We are going through the exact phase at the moment of understanding what the next three years looks like, not so much the five but the three. And the merger ideas never sort of crossed my head. Because on my mind, because I've always just assumed that I could do it myself. I've assumed that I could grow. I probably yeah, I've assumed that there's enough market there that I could do it with the right people in the team? Is that probably can. But the thing is, depends on the scale and size. Well also, but then what's the exit? Yeah,

Andrew Nunn: 53:53

if you've done it all yourself, what's the exit? Yeah. So

Daniel Franco: 53:56

you want to say that myself? I mean, we as a

Andrew Nunn: 53:59

as a team, so So how do you get out of the team, business? You know, so? And that's fine. But, you know, i look at it. you know

Daniel Franco: 54:07

as a as a working as in working working? Yeah. So

Andrew Nunn: 54:09

yeah. So how do I get some freedom from the business while not having to

Daniel Franco: 54:13

sort of like time and effort into it? Yeah. Because there's less time

Andrew Nunn: 54:18

because that's the thing you want, as you get older in the business, you want to be pro hopefully working a little bit less, and also getting a decent return out of it, because you put so much of the upfront to build and risk and risk, right. So you need to it's a risk return thing. So you just need unique partners along the journey, I think, yeah, unless your plan is build it, sell it, and then go do something else. Right. And that's fine. And that's then there's lots of different exits. So it's, it's, it's, I always, I'd say the view of a long term view of business become shorter, that's great. But But I start with the view of the long term. So

Daniel Franco: 54:51

you merged with the company in Sydney in Perth, right and Sydney. Does the the stigma of Adelaide come into play? Does it company in Sydney. I'm not We're all gonna merge with my little cousin in Adelaide like

Andrew Nunn: 55:03

no because I you know, I we're there's inherent differences in the way states work there's no doubt but but Adelaide through its nature in JBS he is probably the more innovative wing of our business. Yeah, right so we try things here. Yeah, but that's and this is my broader point about Adelaide is the perfect sandbox, right? You want to try something you want to throw an idea out, you want to test it in the market and do it here. Yeah, it's big enough to play, but small enough not to damage a national brand. Yeah, yeah. And so this is why a lot of people trial stuff here and be interested in all sorts of trials stuff here. I'd like to see South Australia be even promote that. Come, come and try your ideas. Yeah, come and try our health initiatives, and you know, digital health and, and, and, you know, interesting fintechs and whatnot, come and come and give them a go here. Because I think this is a place where you can actually, because of the degree of connectedness, and the geographic proximity of people, you can actually do pretty much anything here, check it, scale it, measure it, and then scale and then scale and then nationally, internationally. So I think that's one of our real strengths. I think we need to

Daniel Franco: 56:13

We'll go more into South Australia. I'm keen push that more. to talk that one last question on onshore enterpreneurship. But actually, before we get into your chief role, so there's a few school of thoughts and you and you talked about an exit plan earlier. But there's there's a few school thoughts when speaking about business and sort of the two of the most popular ones are build something to sell, or build something that can create a passive income. Moving away, yeah. You've obviously gone down the passive income, what is your what's your thought process around people or pay people to get into businesses just to sell versus? I mean, is there great, yeah,

Andrew Nunn: 56:54

great. I mean, if that's your view, that's fantastic. Right? You've gone in with a plan. Yeah. You got a strategy, you execute the plan? Love it. Yeah. Or if you ever plan to have a long term passive income, and somebody comes in offers you a big check. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 57:06

great, right. Yeah. Well, David always built it in a way that it could be sold is that

Andrew Nunn: 57:09

that's always had that in your mind, I think, I think you get a better business out of that. Yeah, you know, you've got to, you've got to look at those things. Like, if somebody wants to run their fun lens across your business, how would it stand up? Look good, look messy and difficult, and, you know, lots of deals all over the place. And so we've had, we've had a number of people approach us over the years over the journey to buy us out. And it just didn't feel right for us. And it wasn't the journey we wanted to go. And, you know, we get about a great margin business with great people. opportunity to innovate all the time. And just to rethink and from my perspective, you know, early 50s, now start looking at it go, Okay, well, you know, with this as a foundational piece with this as a business I'm really proud of, what else can we do? Where else can we add value? Where else can we give back? And that's the broader discussion for me as to where it goes. But from an exit point of view. You know, there's lots of different exits, as long as your exit is your planning. Doesn't matter what it isn't. Yeah. But just always remember your staff. That's the thing for me. Yeah. Is, is if they're part of the growth, they should have a say in the in the exit, is my view. But yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Daniel Franco: 58:26

So moving on to the chief entrepreneur, or how does one become chief entrepreneur? It's a pretty good title. Everyone steps back. Like, I mean, what does it mean?

Andrew Nunn: 58:37

What does it mean? I think ultimately, I've got a better idea of it now than I did when I stepped down. It's, it's a focal point. Yeah, I think I think it's somebody to talk to, I think it's a it's a it's an aggregate aggregation point where people can ask questions, ask for connections, asked to work and how to work out the government systems. Look for where opportunities or customers might it's, the role is so busy. It just goes to prove there's a need for it. So I think it's really good that we've got it. I think, how does one become a chief entrepreneurs an excellent question. Look, I got approached to do it. And I undenied a little bit to be fair, because I wasn't sure exactly what the job entailed. And it entailed a lot more than I thought. But, but I think like a lot of those things you get out of these things, what you put into them, once you've made your mind up in your head, you're gonna you're going to effectively work full time, volunteering for two years, then your heads around, how do I make the most out of that time. And so that's, that's where my focus has been. Last year was very much just trying to keep up with it, and will get in front of it, and now and put some structure to it. Now I've got some real structure in it. I'm really comfortable about where it is going forward. And so now, now it's working with the new government to work out what their agenda is how I get If that's work within the structure, or how I get my structure work within their agenda, how we how we do that. But we've all got the same goal, regardless of color of government, we want to grow South Australian, investable companies, which really make the economy a lot more complex, a lot more robust, a lot more able to take a hit from one direction or another. Because it's a really complex economy. That's, that's the vision. And so to do that, you really need lots of people having a go at startups, lots of people feeling you know, just to give it a go, like we said before, so I spend a reasonable amount of time talking to high school kids. Because I think that that's the next generation, right? So we have a problem, we do not have enough female founders, we do not have enough diversity in our in our businesses here in our startup businesses. So you know, that's where that diversity I think Sandy come from is that high schools. And so talking to kids about an entrepreneurial role is a legitimate business. If you can think of legitimate employment opportunity going forward, think of a problem solver. And don't overthink it. You know, because you'll always find a reason not to do it correct. You're not always easy to get on with somebody else, isn't it? That's exactly right. So it's getting kids to think about that, and then having a go. So that's a real focus. But yeah, it's all look, I think there's what I'd like to think is that I hopefully have got enough visibility on the role that people would want to do it. And then the next person that comes after me will have a different view of it in a different direction. But hopefully, in the same framework of what we're trying to do is grow it. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:01:41

I love the idea that you're out there chatting to kids. In fact, Gabriela, and I went and did a chat with a couple of schools with a school recently, because of doing podcasting, funnily enough, and we went and talked to him about this medium and what that meant, and yet some of the things that they can do, and it's really, it's, it's amazing seeing the light bulb sort of paying off in in there as you're going. And actually, this is something that I could do by just talking to a microphone. But the two daughters, I've got a 10 year old, specifically, I'm talking about here, I always talk to her about business, you know, trying to get her mind into into that world. But it there is an age that you need to speak to him isn't is the year elevens and twelves. Typically, because I mean, what age does it become the right conversation?

Andrew Nunn: 1:02:30

I'll look at to be honest, anything my view anything from me writing about your seven year, right, you know, think about I just ask questions, you know, this is a problem I got is the problem. Okay, how would we fix that? Yeah, hell yeah. Just keep thinking, if you're having a problem, and your friends are having a problem with something, how do you fix it? And then if you if you guys haven't probably more than likely, most people with it at your age, so how would you fix it? And then would they buy a solution to it? Or would they invest in a solution to it? And then

Daniel Franco: 1:02:58

putting it in a way that it's a bigger, it's bigger than the moment, isn't it? Well,

Andrew Nunn: 1:03:02

it's also going rather than here's a problem. Yeah. Here's the solution to a problem. Yeah. Can I scale it? Yeah. Is it? Is it a business it? Once you once that light bulb goes off? There's and I suspect it's for kids, it must be enormous. You just go, Oh, my God, there's so many years I could fit and do. And once they get that feeling? The other thing is I try and talk to is do it and teams do stuff into Yeah. Because one, it's so much more fun on the journey. Yeah, look, sometimes things fall over. And sometimes it's headaches and all that sort of stuff, no doubt. But the journey is just safer, easier, more supported in teams. And you also get a skill set that allows gives you resiliency your ideas? Yeah. So no, I did. Look, I don't think I think there's, I can't quite the statistic off the top of my head. But I think if you've got one parent that that really runs around business, you're as a child, your potential then that running your own business is substantially higher. So it's that that issue, you can't be what you can't see if you can see your parents running their business and you feel really good about it empowers you to be able to do it.

Daniel Franco: 1:04:10

I agree. I just the conversation. My daughter wants to be a vet, for example. And she's like, well, I don't I want to go and start my own business. Good on her. Yeah. And that so and so her attitude is well, yeah, I want to be different to all the other vets and so she's already having those conversations.

Andrew Nunn: 1:04:27

So that that's, that's a society that you can start to feel really, really good about and feel good about its future is when people are pitching ideas and thinking about stuff and discussing then that's great. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And because only they'll get the world that they growing up in. Yeah, I get it. No. And the I find it difficult and changing all the time. But for them that's that's, that's normal.

Daniel Franco: 1:04:52

Yeah. What is it day in the life as a chief?

Andrew Nunn: 1:04:57

Well, they vary. They vary a lot. It's, as I said, user Right roll. It's anywhere from talking to Premier and ministers, to talking to high school kids to talking to startups.

Daniel Franco: 1:05:09

Podcast.

Andrew Nunn: 1:05:11

I mean, it's all of it is about connection. Yeah. All of it is about engagement and getting a message. Yeah. You know, every now and then I see something, I go, Oh my god, this is important, you know, the premier or minister or somebody or chief executive department, Adam read his legend. They need to know about this. Because it's really important, it's really important to stay grabbed this opportunity and does something with it. And so that's, that's one of the real beauties of the roles, you get to see the front end of a lot of this. And so, now I'm, I'm impressed. I mean, if, if everyone knew how much is actually happening, and it's hard to get the message, yeah, but it's, but if he, if everyone could understand that, they'd say, Oh, my God, there's so much happening this time.

Daniel Franco: 1:05:55

Yeah, I think one thing that went through my mind last time when we caught up for coffee was you were rattling off names left, right, and center. And I look, I'm a people collector. So one thing that went through my head is the the may some of the amazing things that you would see and the some of the brains that you would meet, like, it would be such an inspiring role,

Andrew Nunn: 1:06:20

but it's, but it's even some of the most obvious things, you know, really simple things, you know, simple. I shouldn't call them simple, but But what on the on the face of that look like simple solutions to a problem? You know, the work that my venues doing here in terms of you know, we did some work with them. Yeah, right. Right. So, so it says things the care app with Nick Nicola and yeah, what we're doing with 42 here, we're training kids, reskilling, kids and computers is amazing. Yeah. If we could get that message out better. And that's why this podcast is great. But if we can get that message out more what's happening here, but we're really proud of what happens in this state is, it's really impressive. Yeah. But with all that we've, we've got to keep a broad remit on what we're what we do in this state. But also, we've got to sort of play to our strengths a bit, we can't, I don't think we can be everything to everybody, because it just gets difficult. We've got to provide a pathway for everybody. But I think the state itself needs to specialize in some things that it should be best at space and, and cyber and those things, I think, absolutely. You know, I'm a big fan of mineral resources, I just think, yeah, I think we've got 70% of Australia's copper in the Upper Spencer Gulf, I just think, you know, that is really important that we look at how we, we have that as a key part of our future going forward. So I think extractive industries are really important, I think getting water to places is really important, so and so in hydrogen is going to be a major player, plant based proteins, we're just the state is so well placed to do so many amazing things. We just got to make those few decisions, and then really commit to them, and drive them. And then I think we can be even more amazing.

Daniel Franco: 1:08:03

I was gonna ask you a political question, but I'm now on there. It was just given your space in the environmental world. And yes, the nuclear waste plants. Yes. Like, is that is that an area in which we think South Australia should go? Look?

Andrew Nunn: 1:08:18

Nuclear waste, taking nuclear waste is a contentious issue. And I'm not across the science of that. But I think ultimately, we need to be able to manage our own waste that we generate. I think that's, that's something we should be doing. Where we best do that. I'd seek advice, but I genuinely think we should be doing that. In terms of nuclear power. I'm a I'm a fan of nuclear power subject to a reality of where we sit. I think a lot of these, I think big nuclear reactors in south in Australia, and probably never going to happen. I think the cost of building the time that takes I just can't see that ever happening. Yeah. small reactors, potentially. Yeah. Subject to that. Yeah. I think that should be something we consider. Because things like hydrogen, even generation 100 takes an enormous amount of energy. Yeah. So you gotta get a really good clean source of energy to create hydrogen. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, there's there's a reality in this discussion, from just a greenhouse gas point of view and whatnot that Yeah, I think a transition away from fossil fuels is inevitable, the faster the better. Not at that, but we need to be very clear about how we get a baseload power supply.

Daniel Franco: 1:09:34

Yeah. Okay, so we'll leave that there. Yeah. As as soon as you've been in a role what's something that surprised you the most concerned you the most? Got you the most excited?

Andrew Nunn: 1:09:45

Wow surprised me the most surprised me the most that how many people are involved in the ecosystem? I mean, when I started to get a list of everyone wanted to have a chat. Oh my god, this list is endless. I'm, which was great. So that surprised me. But what also surprised me is how many people wanted to talk because they wanted to connect. They wanted to connect to entrepreneurs they wanted to connect to, to capital. So everyone wants to connect. It's just there's a lack of connection at the moment problem we could solve. Yeah, exactly. Right. So that's the game that's the game has had it. How do you get? How do you make it more? We need more capital in the system? There's no doubt. And so how do we get more capital in both both venture capital and angel investment and patient risk capital and all these sorts of different levels of capital need to get into this system to enable it to grow? Because the money will always find a home? Run? We just got to, we've got to design that system. So so surprised me as much how how well the roll was, was was liked? Or the second one, how concerned you sent me the most? I couldn't think of anything that actually concerned me other than I'd say. I'd love to see an enormous amount more go into talking to the kids. Yeah. Then enter. As I said, from year eight up, yeah, I'd liked the there was five entrepreneurial high schools that were operated under the under the previous government. And I think we'll also be running under this government, which is great, which is all about which funding with extra funding was given to run actually a course on entrepreneurship and innovation. From year seven to year 12. It was fantastic. And to see these kids was literally amazing. Yeah. And to see kids who would otherwise may have fallen through the cracks as they think differently. Yeah. And entrepreneurs often think differently. Innovators think differently. That's what they think is the creative thinkers of people who think about things differently. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:11:48

Why that crazy comment was Steve Jobs quote, right. Crazy. When is.

Andrew Nunn: 1:11:54

It is it is it and but to sit, whilst these kids were presenting to the minister and myself, and some others in the department just sitting there going, we should be doing more of this. Yeah, this is what we should be doing more of, and getting this whole level engaged in that this is their world. This is their future, and they can have a crack at it. Right. Yeah. So that's, it's concerning, but I like to see more effort into it. And what was also

Daniel Franco: 1:12:21

what, what has got you the most cited?

Andrew Nunn: 1:12:27

When I see the number of potential unicorns that are here at the moment, that people know about some but not others, just thinking this is there's so much opportunity for this place just to go bomb. Yeah, right.

Daniel Franco: 1:12:41

I was gonna ask what is? What are some of those?

Andrew Nunn: 1:12:44

You know, let's get people excited. Yes. Well, you live in biobank just buys me. Wow. You know,

Daniel Franco: 1:12:49

Tom Mitchell. Yeah, have a listen to that podcast, that guy's next level,

Andrew Nunn: 1:12:53

well, those guys are doing and what those guys are able to do. Like the guys that prepped, I think are amazing. They're, they're looking at a hydration, like a sports drink. But it was developed. Years and years ago through Flinders uni because of stopping kids dying of dehydration in Bangladesh, was a way of rehydrating the body. And so now they're using sports, five cars, you've got luminary you've got there's a whole range of them. They just there's so many young people driving these businesses. I mean, I think, and one of the things that we're looking at doing is how we might map this ecosystem and make it more visible for people to see from who are outside the ecosystem? Because part of it is about how do we make it easier for people to invest? Right? Because all these companies are looking for capital model, but most of them are looking for capital at some point. And so how do they get capital? How do they get access to cap? How do we get super fund cash into this system? You know, we're meeting with people on that at the moment. And so you've got companies like fleets and I don't know if you've seen Airspeeder, but elsewhere, the flying cars, unbelievable. Unbeliev right. So these are, these are game changers, both state national and globally significant things, right. And so we need to keep supporting them. We need to keep promoting them, and investing in them. And then let everyone know that they could be the next one. And have a go. So there's but yeah, so if we're if we're gonna hit biotech, and we can hit space, and we can do cyber, and, you know, we can do sports drinks and whatnot, there's no limit to what we can do. It's just the access to the market and the capital.

Daniel Franco: 1:14:36

From a South Australian point of view. You mentioned mining, defense cyber a few times now. Is that is that the play? Well, I

Andrew Nunn: 1:14:45

think I think there's some of our natural when I say natural there, there are the geological or geographic or political advantages we have over other people. Yep. Right. And so I think they're the ones we should play for Yeah. Is that?

Daniel Franco: 1:15:01

Is that more from just sort of your foundational stuff? Yeah, we can trial stuff on the outside. And

Andrew Nunn: 1:15:06

that's right. And in some businesses, some businesses will go to Melbourne and Sydney because that's where the hub of their people may, you know, the nature of their business might work. And that's fine. Yeah. But then some people may come from Sydney or Melbourne to Adelaide, because that's the natural hub of this area. And I think that is, that is how a nation works well, together. I think, the less we talk about state boundaries, the more we talk about international boundaries, so much more interesting for me agreed. I just, I just find that we waste so much time talking about just this stupid state stuff. Yeah. If we if we had a look at aggregating our skills, aggregating our capability aggregating our capital, I think we do a much better job of it. But there's just too much stupidity in the way but hopefully, we'll get our way through that. Yeah. But yeah, it's

Daniel Franco: 1:15:55

do you see Australia ever playing that way? It because it to me, it seems such a logical, you know, if you're, if you're if you're going. I actually use this analogy for the defense. Well, Ryan, I've asked questions of Andy Keogh, and I've asked questions of Jim McDowell in the Oval, we've had these guys, not necessarily on the podcast, but in the future is, how does the defense world sit with you, in a sense that you're effectively creating something that could harm others? Right? Yep. And then the idea of war in its own right, just blows my mind and how we could fight other human beings. So if I'm, if I'm Al Qaeda, yes, you're the US and we've got the Taliban or whatever it might be. Yes. And we're lining up and we're fighting each other. Yes. And this is an extreme case, but an alien race comes in from the sky. So what the hell you guys know, when I guarantee you were looking at each other? How do we get there? Exactly. It's the bigger picture. How do we save? How do we save the human race? Right? Not necessarily. And so if you place that on the state to state level, how we ain't trying to do best for Australia? Yes. And then for the human race globally, like, let's not think about state to state to city to city. Yeah, we need to think of a bigger picture, like a

Andrew Nunn: 1:17:20

lot of these things. It Well, there's a couple of things, but everyone wants to belong to a tribe or a group or something. Right. So that's great. So if we can make the tribe Australia rather than the tribe, South Australia, New South Wales, great. Yeah. The other thing is that it takes a real, a real leadership at the, at the top end of somebody, basically saying, Look, we're gonna start breaking down this stuff, because it's just, yeah, it really does get in the way of actually doing some stuff. I think, if you have a look at COVID should have gone and how COVID did go it sort of drove that, that that state wage a lot higher than then it should have broken it down. Because we're not island nation. So

Daniel Franco: 1:18:01

you're allowed to travel everywhere else except for Melbourne. You know, it's kind of

Andrew Nunn: 1:18:04

a lot of it's a lot. Yeah. Look, I think there's there's an important role in politics for all these things. But but at the end of the day, I think a broader view of the national benefit of some of this stuff would have been would have been nice to have ended this end of the COVID thing is as a tighter community, rather than as a more divided Yeah, it

Daniel Franco: 1:18:25

feels like now more than ever, the web is a completely different country, right?

Andrew Nunn: 1:18:30

And you look at that, so where's the logical conclusion of that go, ultimately, they need to come back into the fold, or they'll keep moving further away. So so so really, again, that's that's a leadership or a market driven situation. But we're like, I don't know, I just think we're like most things were better together than we are apart. And you're right, you know, take something significant, external to drive us all together. It'd be nice if we could do that through leadership rather than well, you would have thought

Daniel Franco: 1:18:57

COVID would have done

Andrew Nunn: 1:18:58

that. Right. Well, yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:19:00

Anyway, on the South Australian things still, Adrian temple, you know, yeah, so CEO of Thomson gear, lawyers. He's been on the show before, we had a great chat. But he recently and he's coming on again, and to talk about this exact topic. So he recently gave a talk at the ADA Conference, which is Adelaide economic advisor. So He's chair of SA productivity, yes. And so he has a little bit of knowledge about what's happening here in South Australia, as you'd expect. And so his keynote that he gave the at this conference was pretty bleak. From a South Australian point of view, in the sense that a were the least most educated state in South Australia as one of the one of the things that sort of jumped out at me the other one was the the government previously was promoting influx into South Australia, which is great numbers. show that. But if you actually break down the numbers, the out influx was people from 50s 60s. And there was still an negative outflow of people from 20s. To 30s. Yeah. of 10s of 1000s. Yes, 20s to 30s, if we're going to grow this state, become the entrepreneur state have become the next Silicon Valley, whatever we, you know, whatever we want to place on that, yes, how are we going to keep those, that young talent or younger talent in the state. So

Andrew Nunn: 1:20:28

it's a, it's a really important thing, because I look at that and look at my daughter, who's doing you 12 This year, and I think it's important for them to go into stay, they need to go internationally, and then to come back. But the thing is, it's about creating environment, they can come back sooner rather than 50 or 40. But you want them to come back earlier and add value that you need them to, you need the kids to go and get experience and get an understanding and then to see an opportunity here, right and so on. And so creating that opportunity here is creating space for them to have be able to, to start their business, enough people in the state to be able to, to buy their services or to want their services. And enough reason to want to live here because the lifestyle is good enough. Now we know the lifestyle is great, but it still needs to be more right. We still need to we no

Daniel Franco: 1:21:19

longer third most livable city No well dropped off the off the ball well, let's

Andrew Nunn: 1:21:23

shrine I don't know everything behind that. But but it is one of those things that you sort of look at and you go well, you get I think you'd probably get you run out those things, and then you drop away, and then you get to run at them. And so we just got to plan our next run. But but we need to create the environment, they come back early. And we need to have enough resources here that they can start a business and hire people and know that there's sort of excess capacity here. And so yeah, it's it's, I also go back to play to our strengths. Right? So you want them to come back inside the businesses that are relevant to what we're doing here. And what we're a hub for, right? This should be the best place in the world to do certain things. Yeah, right. Certainly the best place Australia to do certain things. And then this is why they should come here. And so look, I think we just got to own what they are, know what they are ourselves and then and then promote the hell out of them.

Daniel Franco: 1:22:17

Yeah. It's a long term fixes it

Andrew Nunn: 1:22:21

is I mean, none of this. See, I look at this, and we I was having this chat, but the entrepreneur advisory board the other days, is this is this the 30 year project? Yeah. Right. So we're a few years into a 30 year project. Yeah. So. So it's a commitment to that project, regardless of color of government, right, regardless of of economic situation as a commitment to, because if this doesn't, if we can't attract business to start here, and really innovative complex economies to grow here, then it's gonna be really hard for us to build the size of community and with the size, resources and the lifestyle we want, we're just not going to be able to afford it. So we need to the entrepreneurship, the innovation, the hubs that we're trying to create here are really, really important for the future. This statement, by

Daniel Franco: 1:23:07

my Do you think from an attraction point of view? I mean, Adrian, in his talk made the made the comment about potentially merging some of our universities right in the hope to become one of those top 100 universities that attract talent from all around the world to get here, right, why? We've got three amazing universities. But right now they're all stealing work off each other. And in sort of colliding and competing against each other, is there an opportunity to create one or two? Fantastic. Yeah, and then bring in that talent? Look,

Andrew Nunn: 1:23:40

I think I think the answer is probably yes. The, the business case for it? I don't know. On the face of it looks like it makes sense, given the size and given the size of South Australia and the size of these universities to at least aggregate two of them, and possibly three. You just got to make sure you got to get the efficiencies out of that. And you're not going to lose out of that. Yeah. There's, there's a healthy competition through some of these things. Right. And yes, we're stealing from each other in a way stealing or competing with each other. Yeah. But maybe, but maybe that drives them further. Yeah. You know, so I think that'd be careful about saying that that's the silver bullet that's going to fix

Daniel Franco: 1:24:22

your monopoly especially.

Andrew Nunn: 1:24:24

Well, that's the other trade off, right. So so I think three and a one is a stretch for me. Three and a two, possibly, there's some efficiencies.

Daniel Franco: 1:24:33

I mean, you're typical. If you're looking from a helicopter point of view, I mean, Flinders stays Flinders, and it's the Adelaide Ness uni assayers sort of join forces

Andrew Nunn: 1:24:44

and an aggregation of their capability. That doesn't seem like a terrible idea.

Daniel Franco: 1:24:49

It's almost very exciting. Well, well, it is

Andrew Nunn: 1:24:51

and again, if nothing else, it will create some some discussion around that and you know, and and may lead a trend around Other parts of the country and other parts of the globe to start looking at how we aggregate this to do better, but but Yeah, as long as there's a really clear business case as to what we're going to do if when we do it, and these are the advantages of doing it, and we all know what they are, yeah, and great, I'm supportive of

Daniel Franco: 1:25:14

your education, I think you've met, you've hit it a few times. To me, that's the most critical point, if we're going to bring people in, we've got to bring in educated people.

Andrew Nunn: 1:25:22

Well, and what Adrian says about our level of education is quite concerning. It is. So and so that's, that's probably the first thing to be addressed. And again, long term fix, right? There's, there's no, there's no three years. Yes. Right. This is this has multiple parliamentary terms, multiple commitments to the same thing, some, some of these things in my mind need to be above politics, education, health, and one, these all things should be about politics, they should just be the standard things that we do so because they should be that, you know, the importance of keeping a clear direction on where we're going with these things makes such a difference. We've done it with renewables, and we're a global leader with renewables. Right, we're, we're early there. And and then we've committed to it through successive governments. And I think we're a global leader because of that. And I think that's a great example of what we can do when we when we we work, and we commit to a longer term goal.

Daniel Franco: 1:26:12

Yeah. Yeah. Offer earlier you mentioned, if you can do business in South Australia, you can pretty much do business anywhere. Do you do believe that that is a real problem, why people leave that in South Australia is a tougher market to do business in.

Andrew Nunn: 1:26:30

It is, I mean, I had a chat to the Entrepreneurs Organization on Saturday night, and I started my talk with, with South Australia's a hard place to start a business. And it is, yeah, the markets, not massive. It's, you are just about every competitor you're gonna have here and a lot of those faces, particularly in my sort of space. So it forces you to find a differentiator. It really, it really puts a test of robustness of your idea to the to the fire really quickly, and see and see where it sits. And I think I think if you haven't got all your things lined up, you know, your ability to market them to a client, you really clear vision of what it is you're doing, what your what your business cases for it, and how you're going to and how you're going to execute the plan. If you haven't got all that done, Adelaide is a hard place because there's not enough people that are just going to throw money at you. Yeah. Right. So having said that, if you've got all those things in place, I think you'll find enormous support. And here's a perfect place to build. Yeah, right. But but it requires you to have a really clear vision of those things and, and a discipline to have the business ready to go. And so yes, it's it's difficult. But if you can do it here, you can I think you can scale it. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we are still one of the probably in our business, Adelaide is still probably one of the better margin parts of our business. Because we keep innovating. We keep pushing, we keep driving that price is really clear on what we're trying to do. We keep pushing ourselves into new markets. And so I think if you can stay ahead of that game we do really well.

Daniel Franco: 1:28:08

Yeah. Well, hopefully now with the world becoming more online, I guess, in the sense that you don't necessarily need to be in Sydney doing work in Sydney, you can be anywhere else in the world doing work in Sydney, for example. Hopefully, that keeps a lot of the talent here. Well, I

Andrew Nunn: 1:28:27

think it does. The only concern I have with that is that we end up with a lot of talent staying here, doing work doing work. Very interesting. So it's good in some ways, but But yeah, make sure that we're innovating and bringing them make sure they want to work here and that the we're doing all the things that make them want to work here that and I think any discussion with with Adrian is a fantastic one, because he's a super smart guy. He's done a lot of analysis of that stuff. And there seems to be a roadmap there on how we can start to fix some of these problems, their longer term problems to fix. Yeah, but we need to start down that road.

Daniel Franco: 1:29:00

Yeah, that that conversation is definitely happening. We've got that booked in gaps, I think with Adrian Yeah. So that's coming up in the next in the next few weeks. Fantastic. I am conscious of your time, just sort of rounding up before we go into some quickfire questions. What does the role of chief entrepreneur look like moving forward?

Andrew Nunn: 1:29:25

I mean, from my perspective, I'd love to see a female founder as the next Chief, I think I think that's really important. I think again, that can't be you can't see thing is, is really important for a lot of the female founders and female businesses starting up. But just more broadly, I just think it's a different perspective and different views. So I think my view would be flat. Five, I think five is busy at the moment. But Flavio has been on the entrepreneur advisory board for a number of years and she's fantastic contributor. I'd love to get her on if she's fantastic.

Daniel Franco: 1:29:59

I've been trying been a busy human being

Andrew Nunn: 1:30:02

busy, they'd only some amazing stuff. But But yeah, it's, there's there's a number of really capable female founders out there I will be trying to get involved. we'll refresh the board as of June 30. And then we'll start again. But we'll keep on our vision of where we're going with that. We've sort of set five pillars, their capital, education, ecosystem, social impact entrepreneurship, and events, and how and there, we think if we do those five pillars really well, then the ecosystem will continue to grow with sort of provided advice, because we're not very advisory board output advice. We've been giving advice to government in that. And we'll continue to do that and continue to sort of try and assist government where we can to try and drive drive entrepreneurship up and innovation up. So so I look, I'm really hopeful, to be honest, I'm really hopeful. My I think, my time nominally ends, sort of early next year. And, and I think the UK system is better for for last couple of years. And I think it'll just get better still.

Daniel Franco: 1:31:07

Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. It is a fantastic idea to mix it up a bit. Yeah, I think so great. Some diversity. And like you said, as you if you can't see it. So if we want to increase the female founders ship in South Australia, I should say

Andrew Nunn: 1:31:23

100%. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:31:25

So what is the what is the future for you like, then?

Andrew Nunn: 1:31:29

It's an excellent question. All involved in a whole range of things now. So I've been involved in anything from fashion to pubs to cafes, and restaurants, and all sorts of things. I'll continue to run entrepreneurship. For myself, like, I'm involved with property development with a range of friends. So I get involved in a whole range of things these days, I, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to continue to provide support to the government of the day, with my experience if there's roles available. But yeah, look, it's been a really enjoyable time. For me. It's been busy, but it's been enjoyable. And, and now I've exactly what the future holds. While still, obviously, I have my role with JBS Ng and will continue to grow their business. But yeah, I think I'm 52 now so. So the next five years are really going to be interesting period for me,

Daniel Franco: 1:32:23

or the philanthropy stuff will continue to add some impact into the world. So I mean, kudos for you. Yeah, we

Andrew Nunn: 1:32:30

love that. We love that. So, so whether I think a major philanthropic sponsor, sponsor for cabaret and illuminate and so we like to get involved in, in all the SA stuff that we can. Look, I sit on the eggs, I go yourself straight board. And I've really enjoyed that. And so I think just getting involved and giving back, I think we, Alex and I both really enjoy and I think we'll continue to do that. Alright, so

Daniel Franco: 1:32:58

some quickfire questions as we round up the podcast. These you can elaborate and you can deep dive if you want to. I know you do have a parking meter. So we'll run through that. What are you reading right now? We're big readers here are creating synergy.

Andrew Nunn: 1:33:16

Read notice is my Yeah, it's a really, really good. It's actually a true story about a young entrepreneur. Who gets blocked by the Russians. It's it's a fantastic story read notice it's Well, I have

Daniel Franco: 1:33:29

heard yeah, I've read a podcast the other day, actually. And I was put down,

Andrew Nunn: 1:33:34

it's really worth read. Yes, fantastic. onto

Daniel Franco: 1:33:38

a what's one book that you believe that sort of stands out from the crowd? Like, what's one that you've gifted? More so than then?

Andrew Nunn: 1:33:46

Okay, this is one from a South Australian author. That is probably one of the best books I've read in a long time. It's called the dictionary of last words. And that is Pip. Pip Williams. I think it is. And it was fantastic. Like, absolutely fantastic. Yeah. And so I'd implore anybody who, who hasn't read it to read the

Daniel Franco: 1:34:09

is the premise of it, as in to enhance our vocabulary. You

Andrew Nunn: 1:34:13

know, the purpose of is when the Oxford Dictionary was being written a lot of words that were particularly used by women were left out because the men choosing what was going into the book. And so it's basically it's that sort of discussion around you know, that there's another dictionary about women's words and of that, that period, but it was fantastic. The book is just, it's brilliant. It's brilliant.

Daniel Franco: 1:34:39

Brilliant. Do you listen to any other podcasts or anything? Well,

Andrew Nunn: 1:34:43

I'm not a big podcaster I gotta say, I don't have a huge amount of time with these kids. But, but look, I did. I listen to the podcasts that I actually get involved with, but I don't listen to many, but I will listen to more. No, no, I got. I'm looking at the photos on the wall of all these amazing people. And and so yeah, I'll have to, I'll have to log back in. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 1:35:03

there's there. You talk about amazing businesses in South Australia, I'd love for you to connect me with, get on there and share this or in their journey. But yeah, we've had some some superstars on this show. Yeah, I can

Andrew Nunn: 1:35:15

see it. It's a bit like a lottery tour. And here.

Daniel Franco: 1:35:19

What what's one lesson that's taking you the longest to learn?

Andrew Nunn: 1:35:24

That are not the best at everything. And that, you know, working as part of a team is actually much more not only more enjoyable, but a much more robust way of building a business. So I spent, you know, 10 years doing it myself, you know, largely myself, you know, putting all the weight of expectations on myself to drive this myself. And, and, and I think whilst we got there, in the end, it was at much pain that probably didn't need to be held. So yeah, I

Daniel Franco: 1:35:53

want to go back to the formula thing. Now, you figured out that there potentially there was another way that could have fast track that click

Andrew Nunn: 1:35:58

exactly right. And so is exactly right. So that whole discussion, I think it's a really useful one for anyone who's has that, you know, four to five years, we talked about business, or just, you know, what's your one, three and five year plan? Yeah. And how do you get there? And then as I said, back, so for that,

Daniel Franco: 1:36:14

yeah. Looking I'll I'll echo what you said about mentoring and coaching. I have noticed since I've started I've, I'm not sure if you'd be comfortable me mentioning his name. But Joel, Abraham is a guy that someone that I have, we've pulled in as part of our advisory board here. And I don't know if you know, Joel, but so yeah, he built the AIB with his family built the AIB did a fantastic job there. But since coming on, utilizing his thought process and skill sets, it's definitely different things. Well, because what he's done is similar to what you've done, right is the is the you've made the mistakes you've gone through you've so enjoy is is really fantastic way of, of maybe letting you make the mistakes by boat, while sort of coercing you in the right direction, assess the true coaching style, which I really, I learn a lot from making mistakes, yes, more so than if you tell me what to do. And I just kind of get bored with the telling what to do I need to get in the trenches a little bit. Absolutely. And I think that's the best way to learn. And then therefore, I'm able to then impart some of my knowledge on to others, and then you know, the ecosystem continues to grow. And that's

Andrew Nunn: 1:37:25

how it grows. 100. So,

Daniel Franco: 1:37:28

if you could invite three people for dinner, who would they be?

Andrew Nunn: 1:37:30

Oh, geez. Good one. Three people and we assume your family? Yeah. They're covering Elon Musk. I'd love to talk to him. I just find him eminently eminently fascinating. Cheese. Who else? Who else did I really CZ got me on that? Look, Bill Clinton. I gotta say, I just fascinating stories. Really, really interesting guy. Really interesting guy. And I suspect the other would be the queen. Not Not that I'm, I know, it's a really soft answer. But, but she has given so much over so long. And I just look at the struggle. She has had difficult personal habits every day. But how to stay above it and how to do it. I just think you know, there's a lot of grace there. You know, I can I say our governor here, Francis Adamson is just the most amazing lady. If people sort of read a bit more about her story, she's she's truly amazingly and so so people who are able to, you know, have an elegance in a service and over a long period of time.

Daniel Franco: 1:38:37

Kudos same song, right? Yeah,

Andrew Nunn: 1:38:40

that's, that's a tough,

Daniel Franco: 1:38:41

it's a tough game. What's some of the best advice you've ever received?

Andrew Nunn: 1:38:48

My dad always said to me, above all else, to my own self be true. And that's probably the best thing. So I take that with me with every decision I make. Can you repeat that? But above all else, to thine own self be true? So in your quiet, you think, if it doesn't feel right, gotta be true to yourself? If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. Yeah. And, yeah, again, let that one a couple of times the hard way. It's that two in the morning, wake up feel bad. Don't do it. Yeah, you know. And so, so that's so I use so that's all another way of saying sort of gut feel but but trust your gut and trust what you know, is right and wrong. Yeah. And don't do things in business that are wrong. Yeah, because it's just too, too bad. And you never really get your time back to fix them

Daniel Franco: 1:39:31

when you shouldn't start business. And then keep track of all the potential lies that you've might have told along the way and too, it's way too high. I actually learnt this lesson from from an ex girlfriend. She was relatively jealous person and I was just making up stuff to try to get out of having to explain I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was just like, Ah, I couldn't be bothered with the argument. And by the end And I actually forgot some of the stories that I was telling. And I think. And so I actually made a decision there. And then I'm never going to tell a lie ever again in my life because I'm too dumb to remember. And so honesty for me has been, integrity is obviously a big piece. But it honestly, is one thing. I think we'll just set you but it's not that difficult to be a good person.

Andrew Nunn: 1:40:25

No, it's not. But and as you say to yourself be true. So you know, in yourself if it's right or wrong, and so don't don't then query yourself on it, you know, when it's right. Agreed?

Daniel Franco: 1:40:34

Agree, love it. Yeah, the time machine. Where would you go?

Andrew Nunn: 1:40:40

That's great. Why would I go? Look, I probably go forward, actually, to be honest, you're

Daniel Franco: 1:40:48

bored? Because I'm one of those people. But everyone goes back. And I was like,

Andrew Nunn: 1:40:53

no, no, I'd like to give thought I'd like to see where it all where it all goes and another 100 years, 200 years, because I you know, I have enormous faith in our ability to do good things. I think we get lost corporately, on short term goals. I think we're getting better. I think corporate is getting much better at taking longer term visions on things. But but we all seem to throw a lot of effort at it late in the game, you know, I'd like a little more. Plan the work and work the plan. Plan, what we're where we're really heading. And when I say 135 years, yeah, maybe it's maybe it's 10 3050 or 100 300 500. Where do we want this to be? And what does it look like? What do we want it to be? And let's own it. And let's design it, and let's do it. And let's then start doing the things we need to do.

Daniel Franco: 1:41:43

So government is for you terms as well, that's that sort of similar thing is that you can never Yeah, look, I'm pretty impressed with with the current government and what they're doing and their thought process. But yeah, you really, really want to see what that long term vision and how do we actually see South Australia, Europe and Australia have to become that?

Andrew Nunn: 1:42:02

Well, that's true. And even federally, federally three year terms. I mean, it's ridiculous, isn't

Daniel Franco: 1:42:06

it? Just it's really do anything. You constantly just trying to hang on get back in three years or four years about getting back in? Yeah.

Andrew Nunn: 1:42:16

And so unless you really got control of both houses of parliament, you're it's very hard to get a lot of things through. And so I think we're, I think democracy is a fantastic thing. We just got to make sure it works with us that to promote things. Yeah, correct.

Daniel Franco: 1:42:32

Yeah. It might need to be rethought some point. If your house was on fire, and your family and pets, everything are all safe, but your house was on fire. And you could run back in for one item, what would that item be?

Andrew Nunn: 1:42:50

What would it be? It'd be my photos, I think, yeah, I think it'd be my photos. So because because it's funny, I don't know about you, but you collect so many photos of kids and things you do, particularly with phones out. I remember when I was shooting photos, and I sent them off, you know, in a couple years when my my younger son finishes year 12. I just, I almost want to sit down and go through it all. Yeah, you know, and just remember that, that first stage of that journey, because you just you're living it, and you're photographing it, almost photographing it for the future. I'd love to go back. And with that I'd feel plus my memories not as good as it used to be. I'd love to go back and relive a lot of that, because we did some amazing things. You know, we we traveled a lot overseas with young kids, which is a very difficult job. But but I'd love to go back and relive that because it sort of happened in the blink of an eye. Because there's so many other things going on. So I was talking before about the 30s and 40s. Yeah, they're busy times. And so yeah, I'd really want to get back involved and just understand and relive it again. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 1:43:52

they I don't know if there's an app, you can get the app on your phone, or your old photos, they get uploaded to a OneDrive or Google Drive or whatever. I need to do that. And it tells you this day, last year, this day, two years ago, say five years ago this day, 10 years ago,

Andrew Nunn: 1:44:07

I love that every now and then comes up my phone was put into a like a video of montage of photos. Yeah, I went on a wine trip back to Spain with some mates a couple years ago. It might be three years ago now. And this came up on my phone the other day and I flicked it back to all of them and says, oh my god Hager was at let's do let's do more of that.

Daniel Franco: 1:44:27

I you know, people say don't get up and check your phones. First thing I think it's one thing that I do do because that reminder comes to me first thing in the morning. That's great. I'll wake up in the morning and look at all but like just past memories, pictures of my kids.

Andrew Nunn: 1:44:39

Now I think it's I think if anything, it puts in a bit of context the fact that one it's not forever and two, it's always changing. Yeah, I'd say get on enjoy a great

Daniel Franco: 1:44:48

if you can't have one superhero power. Well, could it be

Andrew Nunn: 1:44:54

personally the ability to fly I just think that is just that cool is that That's always trying to read people's minds. Do you remember the shazam to the kid? Yeah, remember that where they put the two rings here? They can't remember what their superpower was. But there was a couple of those. But look, I look any superpower. Anything that thought anything I thought I can do all day, but now that's great.

Daniel Franco: 1:45:28

There's somebody a lot of people say it's flying read and read minds. Yes. And I don't know why you would want to read anyone else's. I cannot even read my own. Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Nunn: 1:45:41

No, no, it's no, it's, I think this their freedom. That concept. Yes. Being able to go Yeah. Which is why I love Airspeeder. So much that I just think that's that cool concept of just being able to

Daniel Franco: 1:45:50

yeah, there's something in that, though, that I couldn't hands down categorically say it's above 80% of people saying fly. Is that? Yeah,

Andrew Nunn: 1:45:58

there's something in that is that for I think there's a freedom in flying. That everyone would just love to be able to just go somewhere? Yeah, that's great. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 1:46:08

I always come back with teleportation, you can go somewhere.

Andrew Nunn: 1:46:12

I always think it goes wrong. There's a problem. Yeah, we end

Daniel Franco: 1:46:15

up in some random. Right, right.

Andrew Nunn: 1:46:17

We've missed a couple of

Daniel Franco: 1:46:18

cells. And finally, I love this one. And I hopefully, hopefully you came prepared. What's your best dad joke?

Andrew Nunn: 1:46:27

Oh, no. No, I can't let me think if I can think of one very quickly. Best joke. Why would Why do you? Why do you have a garden bed? What do you have in garden bed just cause? Anyway, sorry, I can only think of that one of the way. So no, I

Daniel Franco: 1:46:48

did not prepared to do that it can go to the whole of mine. Sorry. Any shit Joe, go straight to the whole. Look, thank you so much for your time today. Andrew, thank you for everything that you're doing for South Australia. And obviously the businesses that you've built up kudos for all the work that you've done there. And everything that you're doing in the philanthropic fund that you and Alex have put together. The idea of giving back is, is one thing everyone should get on to it's not done enough. And it's really amazing to hear that you are doing that. And obviously with your time and with with money. So, you know, thanks for everything that you're doing there.

Andrew Nunn: 1:47:27

I love thank you so much. And you know what you guys are doing with Synergy IQ here and what you're, what you're creating, and the platform you're providing for to people to talk to a whole range of it, we'll get some ideas and thoughts, I think is just fantastic. So anything I can do to help them 100% Ken,

Daniel Franco: 1:47:42

much. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks. That's it for us, guys. Thanks again. We're sorry, one last question. Where can we follow you or check in with you if you want to the

Andrew Nunn: 1:47:51

office of the South Australian chief entrepreneur? And I think we're on LinkedIn. And I'm sure there's a Twitter and whatnot account there. But but certainly talk to the office of the South strange chief on Twitter if anyone needs to talk to me. Yeah. And they'll arrange a time we can catch up.

Daniel Franco: 1:48:05

Excellent. Very good. Thanks, guys. We'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening to the podcast. Or you can check out the show notes if there was anything of interest to you and find out more about us at Synergy iq.com.au. I am going to ask though, if you did like the podcast, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, rate and review. And if you didn't like it, that's alright too. There's no need to do anything. Take care guys. All the best.

Synergy IQ: 1:48:33

Thank you once again for joining us here at creating synergy. It's been great spending this time with you. Please jump onto the synergy IQ Facebook and LinkedIn page where the discussion continues after the show. Join our mailing list so you'll know what's happening next at Synergy iq.com.au. And of course don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. And if you really enjoyed it, please share it with your friends.