Daniel Newman is an ass. Okay! He is an ass.
This was a good idea in the beginning.
It was a great idea via e-mail in December.
Richard comes from many businesses, Missing Link is when I knew you a long time ago
21Tanks, your write columns, articles, now you've even written a book.
I have.
and first of all, what inspired you to write the book?
It's just a thing I've been struggling with a lot in our business, is that we constantly get caught
being held back from tomorrow by being stuck in yesterday, and it was just a reality that happened
time and time again. When I started realising that the problems that we set out to solve had actually
disappeared, but we were still using the same solutions I knew there was a problem, so it became a very
introspective problem solving technique for me and then I reaslised it was broadly applicable.
Okay, what I like about your book, it's just two or three pages of different legacies, and you also mention that
it's not always necessary to find your passion, do something you love and go out and start a business
you termed it as "find what you hate", follow what you hate and find a solution and fix it.
Where frustration exists a market exists. If something is beautiful, if you love, cycling and it's your hobby
and it's your passion, and you decide aah I love cycling so much and decide let me go and start building bikes
the problem is, the market for bikes is extremely saturated because people love it so much,
but if you started something, and you thought that one part of your sport was completely broken,
and it's the thing that frustrated you the most about it, if you turn and say "I can't stand this"
I guarantee you other people can't stand it to, therein lies your market.
so I think you have to be passionate, you have to love, I don't love presentations, I hated them.
I thought they were so terrible that I started a company, but I loved the act of fixing them.
It's not like I'm grumpy all day at work, like I really enjoy working, but I found a thing that I disliked
and assumed other people will dislike it too.
Sure.
I don't enjoy running a company at all, at all, I never have.
Really?
but you've run successful companies.
Not really, like I think Missing Link is a...very...it's really...success is only important when measured
on potential, and the company has not grown according to potential at all, therefore it's a failure.
I mean, it's a nice ATM.
I guess you look at lifestyle, I just see you travelling all over the place, I mean something had to work.
So, I think I'm a success, I think my life is a success. If I look back at my life right now, I'd say sure, I'm really
having a great time, I have a beautiful wife, amazing children, I've a, I don't want for much,
I'm in a good space, but if I measure Missing Link on the potential it could have achieved,
if I stepped out the way and let it grow by itself properly it could have been a much better business
than it is right now.
Is that why you want to step away and get a general manager in?
Yeah, for some reason you become as an entrepreneur, you start believing that just because
if it's to be a success, and you're going to be a part of that success you have to be running it, but actually
the best thing I can do for Missing Link success is hire the right person in and step away.
The one thing I'm go at is sales, in fact I'm not good at sales, I'm good at selling, I'm lousy at sales, and
What's the difference between that?
It's critical huge difference, selling is my ability to stand in front of you in a room and get you to buy more of
what you thought you wanted from me, there is a desire I'm sitting in front of you, I get you excited and you
buy a product, sales is a process that is this many phone calls, this many meetings, this much,
these many follow ups, these many things, it's a discipline, you know a good sales guy knows
exactly how many calls to make in order to get this many meetings, he knows exactly how many meetings,
a good salesman doesn't mind being rejected on the phone 30, 40, 50 times
I would cry, I would go home and go into a foetal ball and cry if I got rejected 50 times in a day.
but the great sales guys can, so I can sell and I should be doing that, so we have a guy doing sales who gets
me in front of a meeting in which I can sell and somebody else should be running the business and
looking forward of where the business needs to be.
Yeah, I think that's why I haven't grown as much.
So I use an outsource service Colin Chapman, Colin Chapman, I'll give you his number and he phones
and makes all the meetings for me. So he finds an interest, he finds the meetings and we go there
so you need somebody who can sell, right. Somebody who can get your clients excited, but um,
we don't hire senior people at Missing Link, because we hire the right people at Missing Link and train them
but I think there's certain positions in which a degree of seniority is required and for the leadership of your
business to take it where you want it to go you need somebody that knows what they're doing.
Yeah
but even then, I don't want somebody who's, you know it's got to be someone 10 years younger than me.
Yeah, no sure.
Do you remember you offered me my first job, well you probably wouldn't know that, but
I remember, I remember you came in you had a tile business and I remember you told me that
Offspring wasn't punk rock, and I've, I'm still devastated by that.
Really?
Yeah, you said to me, argued with me Offspring is not punk rock, Dan, It's punk rock man.
I don't remember that part.
I've never, I've never let it go.
and that's why I never got the job.
No, because I remember that, I was doing a website, I was doing my first website from your offices
the tile business, Studio Del Mei, the tile business, and then I've often thought, what would my life be like if
I had taken the job and worked for Missing Link, and I think this is what it would be like.
Yeah, yeah, probably would have
You've got an ink studio, you've got a slide, I mean your office is amazing, is that what's set you apart in your
industry, to make it interesting, make the work place and interesting place to work?
In truth, it's it's our staff, the novelty wears off for the staff after the second day, right, so they arrive at work
and it's all cool and they like it and it's only nice for them when their friends come to visit and oh you work
in the coolest place, but for the most part it's a place to work, you're in front of the computer and you're doing a
job all day, but for the clients it's important, we sell presentations and years ago I realised that, people
didn't have a presentation problem, you know when I started the business, even 20 years ago now, even at
that point we couldn't sell a presentation cheaper than somebody that was paying their PA , and their PA could
make 5 a month, and I was trying to talk these guys into buying this and I realised that people weren't buying
presentations, they're buying a solution to boring presentations, so they were buying the fact that their
current way of doing things was boring and they wanted it not to be that. So we had to set up a reality
where it made us look like the smart, not the boring alternative, so everything is marketing for our clients.
How did you make that transition or that, or reach that goal of getting these top clients that you
wanted to get in the first place?
So there was no transition, Missing Link has had from day 1, for at least for presentations, not so much for
facilitation and training, but a no entrepreneur policy, so we never worked with small businesses,
only big companies
So did you go out and find that business yourself?
I actually did, but as, when we started at Gearhouse we were a rock 'n roll company and I realised there was
a lot of opportunity in the corporate space. So with a big company like Gearhouse behind me I went and I
knocked on a lot of corporate doors and got a lot of big work there. So I was already with a client with the
backing of a big company and then I just tacked my small little company on like a parasite, but the
advantage to the client, was that they had a more robust presentation project not just great screens but
good stuff to put on it.
I think the weather is changing a bit, so
so we need to go, okay.