Lachlan McDonald CEO of Mova Project

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(Joel Beasley at 00:00:46) Speaking of great leaders, today we are talking to Lachlan, the CEO of Mova Project, and we discuss the disruptive nature of blockchain, gaining trust and credibility through leading by example, and how focusing on people can be the key to success. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO podcast. Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. What do you go by? What's your first name?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:01:22) It's Lachlan. People call me Lachie. It's hard for Americans to get it, though. I get "Lachie" a lot. "Lachie?"

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:01:31) Lachie. Yeah, like a key in a lock.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:33) Right?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:01:34) Yep.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:35) That's an awesome name, though. Is that a common name over there?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:01:37) It is now. So I'm always surprised in shopping centers or playgrounds for my kids that all the little Lachies in the world seem to be real brats. So the moms are always screaming at them, and I'm always spinning around wondering what I've done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:54) Yeah, that's awesome. So you work with mines and rigs, and that's pretty cool.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:02:01) Yeah, all that stuff. So my father and grandfather were miners, and my dad was an equipment operator. So he drove three and four hundred ton dump trucks, drilling rigs, stuff like that. And then I got into it. Now I've been mainly in the management and transformation side of coal businesses or energy businesses. So a couple of big players. BHP Billiton is the biggest one in the world. So I was a junior executive there for a while at the largest open cut energy coal mine in the Southern Hemisphere. And then I bounced around and went to some oil and gas providers doing a $6 billion project up in Roma, which is in Queensland, way out in the middle of nowhere.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:02:48) And then from there, started a head of procurement role, which was with a whole range of coal mines. So some were underground, as I'm sure you've seen in the movies before, which is pretty full on, and some were open cut. So they're the huge, big holes, essentially, with the extremely large equipment. And then I got into transformation. So I've worked for Boston Consulting in my own firm running around.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:03:15) And the simple way to put it is if a company is losing money and having problems getting this stuff out of the ground, I'm there to help them. And generally, their supply chain is a big part of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:27) So what is your day-to-day look like?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:03:30) So I'm actually doing a project for a metallurgical coal mine in Illawarra, which is south of Sydney. And the day-to-day is usually twelve to fourteen hours of trying to develop the facts for why something isn't working. So when you get somewhere, you always find the same story. So people are usually trying very hard but let down by either a whole bunch of strange assumptions or some bad leadership where people weren't held to account. So the best way to address both of them is to start actually developing facts and understanding, you know, if the drill isn't working, why isn't it working?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:04:13) And if you're then able to get the guys to buy into the solution, which takes a lot of work—you've got to get their credibility first and earn their trust, and then they'll follow you in the direction that you want to lead—so a general day will have me anywhere from the, quote, corporate head office with the executives looking at the five-year plan through to actually being on a site on the equipment, trying to understand what the top five failure modes are for something so we can ensure that it doesn't happen again.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:48) That's amazing. And how large is the company that you work with?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:04:53) So the one that I work with now, the specific subsidiary is worth about $2 billion, but the parent company is worth I think about $8 billion. So, and I guess it's probably around about the size of company where I've spent most of my career, hence why I've aimed most of the products that I'm building. And when you get to that scale, you're talking about thousands of employees, global supply chains, millions of transactions, hundred million dollar contracts, and, you know, little successes make big successes, but small problems end up making big problems. And something that's not working out on the coal face, which is a bit of a coal term, you know, if you've got a leadership issue out there where guys aren't getting out of work to the crib hut, which is essentially where they have their lunch underground, then that really reverberates all the way up to the boardroom generally.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:56) That's very similar to engineers in a company, programmers, developers. When things are going wrong in product low down in the teams, people aren't getting along. That translates right up to the boardroom as well.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:06:09) Yeah, spot on, mate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:11) So that company, you're a director there, and that's called Lachlan & Co., right?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:06:17) So I'm essentially helping the directors. So I've got two companies. So one is my consulting firm, and the other is the firm that I've got the blockchain development with. So the consulting firm—I am working with the metallurgical coal mine at the moment—and then for my blockchain firm, Mova, we actually have a trial at Hastings Deering at the moment, which is in Queensland. So I'm traveling up and down every week.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:06:46) So Hastings Deering, you guys won't know what that is, but it's one of the top five largest Caterpillar dealers in the world. Cat makes those really big yellow trucks. And so I think they're worth about $3 billion. They're one of the largest in the world, and we've got a letter of intent and essentially a functional trial up there to refine our design and help us make sure we get our build right.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:07:15) So it's been a lot of travel and a lot of work, but, you know, it's paying off. But I'm a director in both those firms, but not in the metallurgical coal mine. My job is to help the directors of that mine.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:24) Mova is really cool. How did you make the transition from working and managing? Like, how did you notice the opportunity and go from being very smart about this whole concept of drilling and mining and all this stuff, and then you translated that over into smart contracts?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:07:43) I guess there's two key parts to that. So the first was there's this really clear and present problem or issue with supply chains that lets companies down time after time. So it's not a sexy thing to look at. It's much sexier to be on the drill rigs doing the manly stuff. Not saying guys in supply chains aren't manly, but that's kind of the culture here in Australia.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:08:06) And when you really think about it, the entire business depends on the supply chain. So I've seen $5 million trucks over and over again, completely shut down, waiting for a $15 part. And since we don't have that $15 part, we are going to express fly it from another state, and that costs $3,000. And we could have planned better. We could have had it on a truck sooner.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:08:33) But because we're not looking at it and it's complex and difficult, we don't have a lot of sophistication in this space, which means that, you know, if our truck's going to be down for a $15 part, it's driven this huge amount of behavior being risk averse. So what does that mean? It means that we express freight everything all the time. We have latent capacity all the time, which is really inefficient and costly, obviously, just for those, you know, "just in case" moments where we've stuffed up, right?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:09:02) And that ends up creeping in. Everyone accepts that as normal, and that creates the culture. So the problem I've been wrestling with for quite a while professionally trying to improve that and banging up against the same issues with contractors and supply chain companies. Hence why building something that's simple and usable for the guy in the warehouse at 3 a.m. that really provides real-time incentives in a third-party verified GPS location.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:09:32) So you can tell what time the truck left the depot if it's actually late, right? That's going to be really scalable and helpful and have a measurable cash benefit. So one of my clients, they're a multibillion dollar firm. They spend over a hundred million dollars a year on delivery costs. They're essentially just a big supply chain. And over 25% of that cost, no joke, 25% was spent on express rates. So you've got to think that's tens of millions of dollars just because their planning window was only twelve hours, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:04) Right.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:10:04) And the second part is, you know, it's been a pretty ruthless mirror to go from talking about leadership and having expertise and being a trusted advisor to actually starting a company and trying to build it from the ground up. It's been a real lesson in what works and what doesn't, which has helped my consulting no end, but has been a real wake-up call on, you know, all the nice pamphlets and cheery things you can say about leadership or product development or getting stuff done. You know, if they don't stack up at the end of the day, I'm feeling the pain. So while it's been a period of growth, it's also been, you know, it's broken some of the preconceived notions of what an expert I was as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:53) I love the way you think, and I like how you are doing well with—you have your subject matter expertise, right, the mining, and then you've translated that into growing into the leadership and consultant role, and then you've taken it farther where you've identified needs and now you're branching out to do Mova and solve a problem. That's an awesome path of growth from, you know, mastering a skill to becoming a leader in the arena to doing consulting to then busting out and solving a real need and bringing value into the market. I can't believe that it's 25% on express shipping. That's unbelievable, man.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:11:37) It was mind-blowing. And, you know, there's this really complex set of behavioral issues, cultural issues that feed into why we have this risk-averse approach. Everyone then accepts that that's just the schedule, and then it's almost like institutional memory. My friend puts it well. He says it's like moss grows on rocks, because what happens is everyone's warehouse schedules get adjusted for the latent capacity of the trucking firm, and then everyone starts taking their lunch breaks when the trucks aren't coming.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:12:11) And then all the trucks, of course, show up at one time. So people actually build queuing space at their facilities. So instead of making it efficient, they're planning for it to be inefficient.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:21) Instead of solving the root problem, they build queuing space at the facilities. That's like with a system—instead of writing more efficient code, just throwing more memory at it. Eventually it catches up.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:12:30) Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:33) There's so many similarities, and I like your concept of institutional memory. I haven't heard—that's something I know about. It just hasn't come up in my life in a long time. And I'm like, you know what? It's good for that to come back up right now for me to hear that because that stuff happens.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:49) So what made you choose blockchain to solve this problem? Is it just because that's what everyone's going with right now, or was there some real tangible benefits to choosing that technology for this?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:13:03) So there's two answers to that question. And the first answer is I really like the deployable, customizable smart contracts. So it really cut the development time down for us. While we've got a lot of development to do on UI, UX, and the full stack, we were able to actually write all the code for the core smart contract in about a week. We got the logic right.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:13:30) We've tested it. It works. How to embed the real-time variable incentives for lateness—so if it's late, you don't pay as much. How to scrape all of the right GPS data from different platforms to verify everything in real time within the smart contract. These were things that were really attractive to actually start jumping, you know, and start building straight away, which was really attractive.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:13:58) And I also think that blockchain itself, as far as the connectivity of the immutable ledgers, it gives us real room to grow into an ecosystem that links providers and customers with reduced barriers to access so that everyone can auction off their capacity that they have, and we get a more efficient equilibrium with how things move around. Because at the moment, if you need another vendor, if yours isn't providing well, you take a big punt on going with someone else and generally cost a whole lot of time and money to do a tender. So I think that there's real merit in the blockchain tech, but I was particularly interested in how the smart contract works, and it's really efficient for us. The second part of that is we could have built it on something else, but I actually think it was faster to do it this way and go straight for solving the problem. A friend of mine put blockchain really well. He said it was an engineering solution in search of a problem. And I feel like we've finally found the right problem to solve with that smart contract platform. And I also saw it as an efficient funding mechanism. So we're actually going through the SEC qualification process. I think that's absolutely the future.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:15:22) And when I was thinking about this earlier this year and late last year, I went to a whole heap of events and was struck, having a background in board papers and giving advice to shareholders and messaging the market, et cetera, for large companies, struck by the impact or the culture of no regulation. And it was really leading to some what I thought were pretty bad and predatory behaviors of people in Telegram groups and all sorts of things I'm sure you're familiar with. So I think regulation is the future, and I also think that if we go that route, it's an efficient funding mechanism so that we can create an ecosystem where a hundred percent of the profits of the company is shared back to the people that invest in it. And I want to align the incentives of the system upfront, which means that the more transactions that come through the system, the better, because we charge a very small transactional fee. So we need to maximize how many actually come through and how many customers we have, which means the inverse of that is we actually—it has to work, and it has to work well, and people have to see the value in it.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:16:38) And since the only way that really the founders, the team, and the coin holders, et cetera, make money is through the dividends, then the incentives are actually aligned and it's transparent, auditable. You know, I've got a fiduciary duty, right? So I think that if we were to go a different route with different technology, I wouldn't be able to build an ecosystem where the incentives are aligned so much. I'm sure you are quite familiar with what happens in Series A fundraising and the compromises that have to be made to grow a company from, you know, nothing into something.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:17:17) And I think that this is truly disruptive, and I also think that if it was let off course from focusing on its core value proposition to customers and the market, it wouldn't realize its potential. So blockchain was attractive for those two elements to me. It could have been built on something else. I think it would have been slower and not as good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:40) I mean, I'm impressed. I don't know. I just like it because I'm in the product world all day making technology products, and you must have gathered a lot of really great people who built products before. Because your product looks really sharp, it's obviously solving a very real need, and it just looks really well done.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:56) Is this your first product?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:17:59) Yes. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:00) Well, great job, man.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:18:02) Thanks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:03) And then how did you raise money? And does it have full-time employees, or is everyone working as a side hustle on it?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:18:13) Yeah. So the original money that we raised was both myself and, essentially, family. So the other families are my cousins in the US. So we were confident enough that we bankrolled it for a while, which was a learning curve. And we also managed to attract the support of some other family members, which was really, really good. It really helped get it to where it is today. We do have a couple of full-time guys that are working on both ensuring that we've got a development pipeline and a scope that's going to get our product operational within this year for our customers. So the thing I keep running into with these tier one clients I have is when can they use it. So they see the value immediately, and they want to know when they can use it. Now I'm trying to balance, I guess, a complex set of time pressures with the SEC, building the right level of quality for the right kind of cost, and getting it into people's hands as quickly as possible beyond just a trial version.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:19:18) And I think we've got a few guys full-time. Well, I know—sorry, I know that we have a few guys full-time. And we also have an excellent board of advisors that are really experienced, ex-McKinsey or ex-Boston Consulting, senior-level executive consultants that have been instrumental in ensuring that we are ruthlessly focused on what the value is we bring to our customers and not getting lost in the noise, which has helped me immensely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:51) I know you're in Australia right now, but it says you have family in California. You have a little boy, a little girl. So do you just travel for weeks at a time, or how does it work?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:20:03) Yeah. So I am Australian, obviously, and based in Brisbane with my family at the moment. But we do travel to America quite regularly. We have family in Los Angeles, New York, and Colorado. So we try and get around and see them as often as possible. And I've been making a trip over quite a lot to continue the efforts on behalf of Mova. So it's been an interesting split. We've got a lot of our marketing, PR-type talent over in the US, and we've got a lot of our strategic advisors and technical talent here in Australia. So the time I woke up this morning is usually about the time I wake up to start balancing everything in the daytime, mate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:53) So how many hours are you usually awake a day?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:20:57) Probably something like sixteen, but I'm boring. I don't do anything once I finish work unless I'm home with my kids. I just go straight to bed. So I'm like a 31-year-old old man sometimes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:11) Me too. I got into that groove when I had my little girl. And since then, I'm just up early, and then there's no TV. There's no—all of those things are things I did in my early twenties.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:26) Yeah. There is work and progress, and then sleep, and then family time.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:21:33) Yep. Spot on. I'm—we're in the same phase, I think, mate.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:38) Yeah. So the Boston Consulting Group—I looked them up. They do everything. They're a large organization. How did you get involved with them?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:21:50) Yeah. So I was head of procurement at Mitsui Kousan, which is the largest Japanese resource company. And I was way out in the middle of nowhere on a mine called Boggabri Coal. I was on the leadership team there. And I got a random—it's a bit funny, actually. A random email saying I have a job offer I want to talk to you about. So I thought it was spam, but I did get a call from a guy, a bit of a crazy ex-McKinsey fellow from China. And they were essentially trying to—well, growing the operational coaching function that they have. So Boston Consulting are one of the three firms that are referred to as MBB, which is McKinsey, Boston Consulting, and Bain. So they're the tier-one management consultants in the world.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:22:38) And the Boston Consulting are truly world-class at a whole range of things, in particular finance and strategy, which are guys that are way smarter than me, and I don't really understand what they do. My job for them was essentially transformation coaching. So I would go into a global coal business, do a diagnostic so I understand what was actually occurring—so both behaviorally and culturally, what was occurring—and understand how they were spending their money and what they were getting for it. And then come up with a range of drivers on both price—so the price you pay for things and how many people you're actually paying—demand—so what do you actually need to buy and what does it actually work—and process. So is your end-to-end process actually working or are there gaps? And then lead the global operations and commercial functions for either coal, oil and gas, or metals businesses—that was another one—so global manufacturers to transform, which is, here is our current state, we're losing hundreds of millions of dollars and we need to let go thousands of people, to a future state where we're profitable, my friends have a job, and there's a future for us. So I just fell into it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:02) That's amazing. That sounds like a lot of fun. It reminds me of the sort of due diligence I would do with private capital.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:24:11) Yeah. So Boston Consulting and those other guys have a real crossover with venture capitalists and investors and all those kind of guys. So I think there's big problems in both worlds that attract smart people that want to fix them, and it's quite lucrative as well. So I loved being there. There's this really—I guess a bit hokey, but it's very true—if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And I was definitely in the right room there because I was the dumbest person in that building.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:45) I love that feeling, though, of when that moment when you realize you're the dumbest person in the room and it's just like, oh my God, there's so much to learn. I just learned how much I don't know. And then you just be quiet, but then it feels kind of good. You're like, I'm in the right spot right now. What I'm getting from this experience is going to take me ten steps forward.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:25:08) Yeah. Spot on. I just felt like a sponge. And I guess what the strength that I brought to that group—and I was just there actually just to go to and speak to a procurement leaders conference with the chief procurement officers of some of these biggest companies in Australia, which is pretty cool. What I learned there was that my background growing up in a coal mining village, basically, and growing up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, that kind of practical, heuristic leadership background where you focus on credibility and you focus on people—that actually really set me up for success in an environment like that. Not that the people that were there were wonderful, but just, I guess, have a different set of experiences. So I complimented the raw brainpower, I think, of those guys quite well, and that's a lesson that stayed with me until today.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:06) Yeah. I was talking this morning with my wife and our babysitter, and we were discussing—she runs an au pair group. So there's like 40 au pairs from all different countries in our town, and our babysitter, she runs it and she's awesome. And I was explaining to her, she was telling me about the au pairs having conflict with the host families and things of that nature. And I said—you'd be surprised, actually. She was telling me some of the stories. I said, Sandra, you'd be surprised. I go, what you're describing right now, that can translate to a boardroom. I mean, I know we're talking about au pairs living with host families, but the human conflict part of it, which is something you definitely have a lot of experience with working in those high-stress physical situations in the mining world—we're all boiled down to just humans, and that can translate all around from the bedrock to the boardroom.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:27:04) Exactly. Yeah. I love that. And I think that that's what excited me about this project or the idea I had in trying to really give it the best shot it has to be successful on its own merits, because making sure that it works for the guy in the warehouse who's working his butt off at 3 a.m. and just wants to go home to his family—if it makes his life better and if it makes his job easier, right, and we do so because we've got the real-time incentives and we actually give him the information he needs to do it properly, right? Then I know that the measurable cash benefit will hit the bottom line. I know that it will. So we're really trying to engineer this so that it's simple, intuitive, and it actually works. Instead of having a million features and trying to solve everything, we're targeted on a very specific cluster of performance and cultural and transparency-related issues that should hopefully give that result.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:28:05) And I think that we're getting the mix right at the moment, but time will tell in the real world whether we've got it right or not.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:13) I love it. You're doing the leadership thing, the correct thing. You're resourcing your great people, right?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:28:19) Trying to. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:21) So when will this be—when will Mova be available in full, running full steam with clients and revenue and all the great stuff that makes it a business?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:28:32) Yeah. So we've got—I guess there's two phases. The first is that we are aiming to get an operational version of this into the hands of the clients that have already expressed interest. So one of the—well, the largest global miner has asked to run a trial, but I haven't signed a contract with them yet. I do have a signed LOI and trial with Hastings, the Cat dealer. And we're looking at focusing on those two guys first and getting the product into their hands before the end of the year. So we've done a whole range of trial stuff where they've gotten to use it, run some dummy transactions. We've talked about all the design. They've crawled all over it, but actually get it up and running and have deliveries off the back of it this year. That'll also be the best testing ground to ensure that the product is operational, ready for commercial-scale use.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:29:33) We're building it so that we could hit the button globally, essentially. So we're not going to, hopefully, have too many scaling issues, but I really want to get it right first. So the timing for the commercial release—I'm not sure the right way to say that, but that's how I refer to it—the global commercial release should be sometime around April to May next year.

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:58) That's exciting. So you're just at the point now where you're refining it, you're rolling it out with the people who've expressed interest, your first customers. And then based on the feedback and how that goes, you will then take it fully to the market.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:30:13) Yeah. Exactly. And our strategy has been—we're going to target the tier-one, Fortune 500, multibillion-dollar firms because they've got the largest, most complex supply chains, and that's where my relationships are as well. And if it works for a $10 billion coal mining company that has millions of deliveries and transactions all over remote parts of Australia, the Asia-Pacific, and the rest of the world, and something like 200 vendors—delivery vendors—if it works for them, it's going to work for everyone off the street.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:51) Awesome. So if you could give yourself—you could travel through a time machine and give yourself a piece of advice ten years ago, what would that advice be?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:31:03) That's a great question. Can I only say one thing, or can I give myself a whole heap of advice?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:11) Yeah.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:31:13) So I guess ten years ago, I was really focused on becoming the best that I could at technical skills—being best at analysis or negotiating or finding problems and finding solutions and problem-solving. And I think one thing that I would go back and tell myself, probably the most important thing, is that it's all about people. So the soft skills, the influencing skills are critical, but everything is underpinned by credibility. So the very best leaders—and this is a lesson I learned in the army—they do what they say they will do. And you don't have to be liked as long as you're trusted. And you gain trust and credibility through being dependable and lifting your fair share and doing what you say you will do. And I guess the lesson that I learned years ago as a young officer training in the army—if I can tell you, it'll take a second. It's a bit interesting.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:32:13) So the very first time I took the platoon out for PT—so physical training—I said, alright, guys, let's go for a run. And everybody ignored me, and there were some really strong, commanding, sergeant-level guys in the platoon. And they just looked at me with utter contempt, right? And so I raised my voice a bit and said, guys, you know, form up, get in line, let's run. One or two laughed, and then another guy lit a cigarette. Everyone just stared at me. So I've gone, oh God. And I had this moment of absolute sheer terror that I've never had before. And I had no idea what to do. And I said, okay, suit yourselves then. And I thought, well, if they're not going to go for a run with me, I'm going to go for a run.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:32:57) So there was this huge hill behind the barracks, and I picked the biggest hill that I could find, which was that one. And I ran up once, and I came down, and a couple of guys came around and looked at me. I ran up again and ran down. And the third time, a couple of the weaker guys joined me. By the end of it, I think I'd run it 15 or 20 times. I puked all over the place. Everyone was running up and down as hard as I could, even those grizzled sergeants, and no one ever questioned my leadership again. So that kind of doing what you say you'll do, leading by example, has stayed with me. So regardless of the problem, the size of the company, the complexity, the people involved, if you have that approach and you lead by example and do what you say you will do, people will listen to you whether they're CEOs or the people on the front desk.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:51) Oh, man. Can I use that story?

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:33:56) I'm just going to go for it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:58) All right. Yeah. I will—I'm going to credit you, obviously, whenever I use that story as, you know, Lachie. But that is—I love that one, man. That's such a good story.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:34:09) I can still remember the sheer terror of being faced with 30 tough guys that were tougher than me and not knowing what to do. It was tough.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:18) Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I look forward to next time you are in the States. If you're traveling here, send me a quick email and let me know, and I'll make an excuse to bump up to where you are and say hello if it all fits in the schedule. You'd be surprised how often I say this and it happens from time to time. People say, "I just happen to be over here," and I was like, "Oh, I've got a huge excuse to go there."

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:42) So I bump on a flight over there and end up meeting five or six people that I know. And so let me know because I think we'd get along super well and have a fantastic, fluid conversation in person then.

(Lachlan (Lachie) at 00:34:55) Yeah, of course, mate. I'll definitely let you know. Thanks for the invitation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:04) Thank you so much for listening to the Modern CTO podcast. Share this, get the word out. Thank you guys so much. I couldn't do it without you. I appreciate it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:11) You guys are the absolute best.