Work Worth Doing

Dean: 00:00

Welcome to Quitable, a show designed for those of you who hate your job, to help provide you the belief and the skills needed to escape this lifelong dynamic of selling your time for money to instead live a life that offers you true autonomy and purpose. Our guest today is Nilo Sanz. Nilo is a sharp Irish entrepreneur who, before launching his businesses, worked for many years in Salesforce on the West Coast of the US. And what's interesting is he actually loved his career before starting his own businesses which now turn over 1,000,000 each year. You'll hear us initially talk about his brand Lost Irish Whiskey and how he created it for those of us who are adventurers with, to me, the most relatable of slogans of stay lost, which I love.

Dean: 00:47

Then you'll hear us talk about how he flew to Germany in March 2020 to launch his brand, mast, when Ireland needed a production supply of high grade mast to battle the COVID pandemic. Also, why he designed his company, Halo AI, to help protect the safety and longevity of horses in the racing industry which enables you to better predict injuries. What surprised me about each of his companies was the sheer level of thoughtfulness and consideration he puts into the problems he is trying to solve. Neil truly is a man of incredible wisdom and depth and by the end of the episode, he'll learn how to spot opportunities that nobody else does, how to create a product that speaks to someone, why you shouldn't focus on the grind, how to deal with financial loss, and why he left a career he actually loves. As you'll probably tell during this discussion, I myself was very very excited to do this episode and could've done it for 3 hours.

Dean: 01:41

So I hope you feel the same way. So kick back, relax, enjoy the episode, and don't tell your boss. So I would like to start by bringing us back to a little period that you may have a faint memory of, which is March 2020. Perhaps you, may remember that period for some reason. But I saw you started MASQ, if I'm getting the pronunciation right, and then Lost Irish Whiskey virtually at the same time.

Dean: 02:09

You're still running your consultancy business, Fox. And and zooming in just specifically on lost Irish whiskey, we'll we'll we'll get to the others as well. But I personally love the way that speaks to the sense of adventure. That really, really speaks to me. And I also love the the slogan, like, stay lost.

Neil: 02:29

Yeah. I get lost.

Dean: 02:30

I was dwelling on that for a little while, like, stay lost. I thought I think that's brilliant. But could you take me through, like, how that idea was born?

Neil: 02:37

Yeah. So the thing you have to kinda remember about whiskey is, and particularly Irish whiskey, this isn't true of of all liquids, but Irish whiskey has to stay in a cask on the island of Ireland for 3 years before it is an Irish whiskey. So when you see an Irish whiskey launch, say, in March of of 2020, which was an interesting choice for us to to launch at that that exact time. We had been in in Genesis, you know, for almost 4 years at that stage. So there's a lot that goes in the background of, you know, not just really getting the liquid perfected to the point where it's not, you know, similar to anything else that's in the market, which was very important to us, but also getting the brand and the positioning.

Neil: 03:16

And so it's a bit of a funny one. Irish whiskey generally falls into 2 categories of design. So principle 1 is that it's in a relevant place with all due respects to Tullamore and Middleton and and and Dingell too, who are great to be. But it's it's rooted in a place name. And the second category is, like, dead people.

Neil: 03:36

So this is where see, like, Michael Collins Whiskey, John Jameson, and then Jack Daniels, Jim Beam. You look at bourbon or whatever else. So there's relatively few, concept forwards whiskeys in Ireland because they they they tend to lean on tradition and hair. So even when you come across something like like proper 12 or red breast 12, you're you're seeing a departure from that design principle, and that's that's really working now. You know, red breast 12 has an age statement.

Neil: 04:06

And this is where proper 12 is an interesting one that they were able to use a number that wasn't necessarily indicative of the age, which is is an industry standard as well. So when we came up with Lost Irish, I had been abroad for most of my adult life. And so the concept of finding, you know, how we could tap into the energy of the diaspora and the adventurers and the the spirit of Irish adventure, using spirit as kind of an active term, was something that I was really, really interested in. And then it's about finding a liquid and and crafting a liquid that marries to that story as well. So when we came up with with, Lost Irish, it was about influence that Irish people have all over the world.

Neil: 04:46

We're the 2nd largest distributed diaspora in the world and were found in the hearts and poors of every every city around the world. There is there's an Irish pub in in Antarctica. There's one in the Tibetan mountains. And my my cofounder, Tim, who I went to primary school with, my next door neighbor, expert in Irish bars, and he wrote wrote wrote a book on this. But when we got together, it kind of inspired this idea that can we take influence from the places where the Irish have had influence and blend that into a liquid.

Neil: 05:17

And this is where we took pass from every continent. We brought them all back to Dundalk, which is we're we're from from County Louth. And, we blended it in Dundalk, and we come up with this really lovely balanced, liquid in our local distillery. And it's a tough thing to to continue to get right as well. So it's it's a relatively complex design in that it has these 6 casks, one from every continent, but they each age at different rates.

Neil: 05:42

So for us to try and keep the all of those things balanced, constant, constant worry for us, but one we've managed to achieve.

Dean: 05:51

When you were coming up with this idea and I love the way you've distinguished yourself from place names and, and, like, people. I think that's quite cool and it's not something I'd consider about Irish Whiskey. Did you have, like, a certain type of avatar in your mind when you were constructing the brand and the marketing and the message, or like was this something that you kind of made for yourself?

Neil: 06:18

Yeah. So I think you can, you know, you have to be really careful when you're designing a product and you are the target market of that product. I think so many people have this idea, you know, as entrepreneurs, just because I have this problem that this problem must be ubiquitous else elsewhere. You'll see it in, like, failed stand up comics as well. It's like, hey.

Neil: 06:37

Do you have this problem that I have? And it's not funny to anybody else because they don't have that problem. Design's funny. You know, like, we we would be very design centric when it comes to understanding who our customer is and how they consume our liquid and how they consume our liquid in different markets as well. And it's it's quite it's quite interesting to to see how we're received in, say, the Asia Pac market, which we're new into over the course of the last number of months.

Neil: 07:01

And then historically, how we've been received in Ireland, which is our, you know, our home sweet home, but the majority of our work is done in America. And the the idea of being Irish and, you know, when you talk about the avatar, you know, it is that character who is either Irish or Irish friendly or Irish ambitious and have that spirit of adventure. When we say, you know, get lost and stay lost, we mean that in the the kindest possible terms. In that, you know, the Irish don't have, for whatever reason, this bridle on them when it comes to travel or, you know, in the same sense that that many Europeans do. We don't tend to stay at home, and we find this adventure elsewhere.

Neil: 07:36

And so, you know, certainly, when when we were designing Lost Irish Whiskey, that was a big part of who we were as well. Both Tim and I have lived abroad for for most of our adult lives. And it was not I'm gonna say, you know, an easy thing to craft because in terms of the Irish relationship with diaspora, I think it's relatively difficult. There's there's this little bit of jaundice when we look at those that have left Ireland, and we're like, you know, we're maybe not as comfortable with with our diaspora as we should be. But our diaspora is wildly influential and and and a great selling mechanism if you can if you can activate it activate it well.

Neil: 08:08

So, yeah, we had we had a very clear sort of human centric design methodology when we came to the development of of both the brand and liquid. And, yeah, as I say, it's it's been really well received, ever we've gone so far, but it is a slower burn. Like, the the idea of concept led whiskey is is slower to build a presence around and and to get brand awareness for somebody to walk in to a bar and order Los Irish that isn't my mother or, my wife. It takes a long time for somebody to kind of build that muscle memory. But we've designed a liquid that we think is very adaptable.

Neil: 08:42

It shoots very easily. It goes great in cocktails, and that's not true of all our whiskey. So we're hopeful that, you know, that that kind of the consumer that we had in mind and the avatar that we've built around that we've designed appropriately for that as well.

Dean: 08:57

I think I can certainly personally relate to the wandering Irish person as myself. I've lived abroad. I've lived in Australia. I went traveling. I lived in May, and that certainly spoke to me.

Dean: 09:11

And then you've got the other avatar sort of ideal customer, let's say, which is somebody who is connected to Ireland in some way, like the American type of influence. Right. And I funny, when I was looking on one of your LinkedIn posts, I saw in the Chicago bar, they had like a whole dugout for a lost Irish whiskey ball just to get the size of it in

Neil: 09:35

To fit

Dean: 09:35

it in. They must love it over there.

Neil: 09:38

Yeah. They do. And and like I say, like, it's it's it it it kinda means different things to different people. Like, so when when when we say get lost I can remember Tim when we're we were sitting in in bar in Dublin, and Tim was really big on on the word get lost. And he thought it was kinda like you know, it was a bit avant garde to say that.

Neil: 09:58

And I was like, well, we we still need to spin a positive and tell your customer to get lost. And we had this great giggle about it. But to to be, you know, present in, like, the major geographies for us is New York. Tim lives in New York. We spend a lot of our time and energy there.

Neil: 10:11

There's a huge density of Irish people there and Irish friendlies there. The Irish bar is also a stalwart on kind of most of the of the the streets and avenues of Manhattan. And then we look at, you know, geographies like California where it's more dispersed, and that would be my my second home. It's very popular in Texas, but they shoot it in, a drink called a green tea. So, our main man in Texas, a lovely guy called Jack Cochran, and he's managed to create this, kinda like, you know, drinking habit around putting lost Irish plus, a a a green liquid together to make a green tea.

Neil: 10:46

And so we're wildly popular in, like, Austin, Texas for this drink that we never kinda saw coming, but but Jack has invented. And so when we see it in Chicago or we'll get a, we'll get a a picture from some bar that it's been lifted up in, like, I can remember getting a picture of a bar that was in Michigan. And we hadn't actually distributed yet in Michigan, but it was somebody that bought it when they were in New York and brought it back to the bar, and there it was. And, yeah, it's it's really lovely to see. It's also still you know, because so many people I I really cut my teeth in in professional services and and in in kinda non product based entrepreneurship, there's still something wild about senior product itself.

Neil: 11:26

Like, you'd never get over it. It's it's a pleasure to see when you get a picture of it. Kinda knocks you for 6.

Dean: 11:34

And when I think about the distribution around America then and how you're marketing to America, like, how are you going about that then? I mean, I imagine a lot of what you just said there is word-of-mouth and people saying, oh, you gotta check this out, check out this cocktail, and then the next buyer takes it. But in terms of your, like, direct strategy and how you've positioned yourself over there, like, what channels are you using mostly?

Neil: 11:57

Yeah. It's a great question. So, you know, uniquely in the in the American market, you have to use a distributor deal. So the idea of me being able to walk into a bar and sell, you know, a case of lost Irish whiskey to them is is is not allowed regulatory. So the idea that, you know, we've had a cofounder in in Tim that has deep relationships there.

Neil: 12:17

He was previously working with another very well recognizable whiskey. And so there was a lot of muscle memory, and he had built up a lot of trust and relationships with different with different bars, bar owners, and and bar chains, and they were very receptive to this new and innovative liquid because it wasn't the same stuff. Right? It wasn't the same as you were saying or or the others. And so it's been, you know, a very relationship based sales cycle for us in some ways.

Neil: 12:42

In others, just given the name of it and and I think the thoughts around travel and how lost can you get, there's a very, I wouldn't say obvious, but comfortable social media campaign, possible with Lost Irish because everybody knows somebody abroad and everybody Irish knows somebody somewhere else. And so sending Lost Irish to, to somebody abroad as a gift has been just a very, regular cycle of purchase that we're seeing people go through. So it's it's been it's been good for us. But, you know, there's there's no end to the amount of, capital that you could invest in brand awareness. Like I say, it's gonna take a very long time before somebody walks into a bar and just instinctively, without even looking at the shelf, ask for lost Irish.

Neil: 13:26

But people do that with Red Bull. People do that with Jagermeister. They do with other liquids. It just takes a time.

Dean: 13:33

I love and I'm gonna get to capital and startup costs because that is a particularly intriguing question for a lot of I mean, for me, right, when I think of businesses that I might probe into, I'm always like, right. One of the first questions is like, what's the startup? So I wanna get to that as well. But just staying on to stay lost, when I was reading some posts by you and then I see you sign off with stay lost, it really connected with me. And I think for me, as somebody who has created a business and obviously we all know what it's like in the 1st year of creating a business, you are all over the place.

Dean: 14:11

You don't know what's going on. You're getting screwed this way and that way. And then now I'm starting a relatively new venture of of podcasting and I feel very connected to this, but equally still feel somewhat lost in the process because it's all so new. And and I know for the person listening, whether they have started a business or they're about to or they feel like they're in the wrong place with their current career and it's, like, dissatisfying, I'm sure they can connect with that that, that phrase as well. Like, when you think of that, for you personally, like, what what how do you connect to that?

Neil: 14:46

And I'm sorry for some of the bang in the background here. Like, I thought when I listened to, I listened to Nathan on your on your last podcast, like, you you circle around several times to this idea of internal wealth and that you need to continue to to to grow your internal wealth. And there's there's definitely something about, you know, taking a risk as an entrepreneur. When you say that the 1st year is hard, every year is hard. I don't know a single entrepreneur that has got a balanced lifestyle.

Neil: 15:13

And while, you know, you can be very dissatisfied in a job working for somebody else or working for a large enterprise, which I did for very many years, there's nobody to blame except yourself when when you have a difficult day in the role of an entrepreneur. And there's an added pressure that comes along with that that you kinda need to be comfortable with. I think that a lot of, you know, first time entrepreneurs, they focus on the outcome and not the journey. And it's this platitude that said all the time that, you know, it's not the destination, it's the journey. It's it's about who you become on the journey.

Neil: 15:45

And it's I can remember doing my first, I was never a triathlete. I I never really got into it, but I I was kinda dogged that I was gonna do this half Ironman. And I did it in in Napa in California. It was wild, 42 degree heat. But I can remember after I after I did it, it was like a change in my mindset that because I had my legs had carried me that far through a half Ironman, that I had a 5 k in me always still, no matter how out of shape I got and how far I'd I'd expand or whatever else.

Neil: 16:17

And I feel like, you know, when you get through your 1st year as an entrepreneur, your 1st couple of years as an entrepreneur, there's just something in you. There's there's those miles are in your legs to be able to go that distance again. I think that's what, you know, the internal wealth factor is for me when I look at entrepreneurship is, like, you need to have a base of competency. Very difficult to be a good entrepreneur unless you've got some base of competency in whatever area you're going into. And then you need 2 other things.

Neil: 16:42

I think, you know, all entrepreneurs all great entrepreneurs have these. The first is, like, they have persistence. And I think entrepreneurship is an exercise in persistence, not 99% of the time. And then the second is resilience. And so those those two things are different for me because you get you're gonna take so many knockbacks as an entrepreneur, and it's not just about rolling with the punches.

Neil: 17:03

It's about being empowered by the punches. And that I've taken another one, and I've got back up again. And I've managed to go again, and and, you know, tomorrow is another day. And, you know, there's been very many times as an entrepreneur where I've really looked forward to getting fed up. This day just couldn't soon enough.

Neil: 17:19

But the sun gets up the next morning and so do you and you and you rock on. And that kind of bit of resilience, I think, is is not talked about often enough, because it's it's like they glamorize the grind. And the grind can ruin everything in your life. It can ruin your relationship with your parents, with your friends, with yourself. But that bit of kind of resilience and having the mindset that right, I'm going to I'm gonna take a hit anyway, but it's going to empower me to go again.

Neil: 17:47

That's that's really at the core, I think, of of great entrepreneurs. And, when we think on it even back to the branding around around around lost Irish, And we looked at this idea of staying lost. Like, the majority of people that I met as diaspora members, you know, in the states and elsewhere around the world, they did have this mindset of, like, they were out very far away from home doing it anyway, achieving anyway. And there's a bit of resilience to somebody who you see abroad. And I think this way of people in Ireland as well.

Neil: 18:18

When you go into a shop and there's somebody who obviously, you know, English isn't their first language and they own this store, I think to myself the resilience that person had to have had to to enter a country with, you know, English as a second language, and their store is still standing there, and they're still employing somebody, and they're still doing their thing. So it's, yeah, it's a it's an important one. I think those those ideas around resilience and and perseverance.

Dean: 18:43

One of the things you said that stuck out to me there was the fact that the grind is glamorized. And it I think our expectations are also probably misconstrued with the rise of gurus on social media saying, hey, look, if you do this for 2 weeks, you'll earn a bajillion dollars and you'll be on the beach in the Bahamas. And it preys on weaker or sorry, maybe less informed people who think then that it's this kind of rosy journey and it just straight up isn't and it probably detracts from their ability to have that resilience because when they get smacked in the face, they're like, what? This wasn't part of the journey that this guru told me.

Neil: 19:26

Yeah this was not in the brochure. And like I don't know, like the idea that the grind is glamorised and that you should give every waking hour to your job or the pursuit of this thing. I I feel like, you know, the the purpose that you have to find in your work is one thing, but it shouldn't kill you. And that idea of, you know, glamorizing this myopic focus on building a company at the expense of everything else in your life is for the birds. Like, there's so few people that are gonna die and they're going to put lost art well, they might if they if you got too much lost art, I was whisking them.

Neil: 20:03

But they're like, they're not gonna put halo.com.ai on my gravestone. They're gonna say, what sort of a son was I? What sort of a buddy was I? What sort of husband was whatever. It's like so, you know, that that idea of of grinding to death and that, you know, you need to be this this kind of lionhearted entrepreneur that that has to have this singular focus, I think, is very it's very misconstrued.

Neil: 20:25

And, you you know, I I would go into incubators all the time, small companies, first time entrepreneurs. And it it is a tired place. These people haven't you know, they might have children. They might have other stuff going on in their lives. And they're just about hanging on, you know, to to the last bit the last round of funding that they've had or to try and get the product over the line.

Neil: 20:43

You love to see it on some levels, but another level, you know, there's there's there was this great interaction. A guy actually said it to me, lovely guy called Seamus Ryan from Temple O. He's he's a very talented footballer and a dedicated guard, senior guard. And he said, have you watched this podcast between Roy Keane and and Gary Neville? It's the Ian Wright podcast with this trio, which I think is a really lovely trio book.

Neil: 21:06

Yeah. He said that there was the camera was rolling before the 3 of them got speaking. And Gary Neville mentioned that he needed makeup on his forehead because he had this little rash. And Roy Keane and he goes, I can't I can't, you know, I can't figure out where this rash is coming from. I just And Roy Keane is like sitting back folding his arms and goes Gary you know exactly where that rash is coming from.

Neil: 21:27

You're doing too much? You just have to watch yourself. You're doing too much. That's stress. That's that little rash that you're having, this little niggle, this little cold.

Neil: 21:34

He said I've known you for 20 years and there's always been a little bit of something. You have to watch yourself doing too much. And Seamus Ryan said it to me, I hadn't seen him in years. And he said it to me when I walked into, walked into a function with him a couple of weeks ago. He goes, just you need to watch that interaction between these two guys because they're 2 elite players, both in terms of meet the media personalities and and in their playing lives.

Neil: 21:55

And, I thought it was an interesting thing for one to be able to say to the other that, like, you know, you need to watch yourself and don't don't do too much.

Dean: 22:03

There's nobody quite like Roy Keane to give you a bollock an a?

Neil: 22:06

I don't. But it was gentle. It was it it there was empathy to it, which, you know, he's not famous for. But maybe that was why it was powerful.

Dean: 22:13

I think that's it just highlights as well that, you know, anyone you see on TV, they're still human, they can still burn out, they can still have the same they've only got the same amount of runway as we have despite their perceived god status that we might unconsciously give them.

Neil: 22:28

Absolutely.

Dean: 22:29

Bringing back to your ventures, and I wanna go into another one that you had around March 2020 as well, which was Maasque, which, forgive forgive my poor Irish, but that's the Irish spelling of the word Maasque, Right?

Neil: 22:43

No. It's the Irish. So masque means respect. So it was a play planned that and our logo is, like, green colored to m e a s and then the seat is, is blue.

Dean: 22:55

So tell me a bit about, like, your mindset then when COVID's going a bit crazy and you sort of recognize that there's this gap there, like, how did you actually find this gap or notice this gap?

Neil: 23:10

So to take a step back a little, I just I just go back to Ireland when COVID kicked off. 1st was we had no doctors or or nurses at a scale required to be able to address COVID. And the first initiative that I launched with a couple of buddies was called the Ireland's Call Initiative. So the HSE had launched, a program to try and attract, nurses and doctors from abroad. And we started, a program called the Ireland's Call initiative.

Neil: 23:40

And over the course of, like, 6 weeks, we got 67 medics back from all over the world to Ireland, I think, from from 13 or 14 countries. We raised a €100, and we had distributed over €1,000,000 worth of PPE. So to get we had flown, and funded and housed nurses and doctors who came from Australia or Singapore or elsewhere. And they were coming back because there were lesser affected areas of you know, when COVID struck in in Australia, for example, much, much later. So Irish doctors and nurses come up with real plus.

Neil: 24:09

But it became clear to me when we started the dialogue, particularly around e, that there wasn't enough of it, that Ireland didn't have its own native supply of it, at least in any sort of scale. And that these doctors and nurses were going into environments where not only was there not enough PPE, but the stuff that was there was substantial. And I went about exploring how we could give Ireland its own native, secure, domestic, affordable, high quality PPE supply. And, I offered to do it at cost. And I flew to Germany under the permission of of the government and the and the German government.

Neil: 24:47

I bought a mask machine. I brought it back to Ireland, and I brought it back to Ireland. And I didn't have a contract, and I didn't have know how, and I didn't have materials, but I knew that Ireland needed it. And we installed our first plant was in Bray, in Wicklow. So right in the jurisdiction of of Stephen Donnelly and and the minister for help Simon Harris at the time, we discovered that they had given the the major mass contract for production to another company that didn't have a machine, didn't have materials.

Neil: 25:19

And we had, at at this point, both when we were operating. I decided that my lockdown area was going to be up in Northern Ireland, and I took the machines and we built a factory in the north of Ireland. As long as the supply of masks that we were providing staying on the island of Ireland, I I didn't really care. So we then engaged with Invest Northern Ireland who were very accommodating as a new entrepreneur to to a new country. They just couldn't have done more for us, and they made introductions for us to to government and to national procurement companies and whatnot.

Neil: 25:51

And we got the ball rolling. It wasn't what you got on your shelf everywhere else. It was very, very high standard as well. And we were sourcing our materials locally from Ireland. So our our materials were made in in Ireland, and we were shipping right here at home.

Neil: 26:05

So it was, it was a really, tumultuous time. Pre vaccine, you know, looking back that that kind of 3, 4 years ago now was a big deal. And to be able to provide any support to the infrastructure of the company, be it in in the the shipping, you know, doctors and nurses who are really the ones that were taking the risk, or, you know, eventually been able to scale this this natural resource should should be an element of our natural, you know, national security policy to have this type of supply security in on the island for people. It was a big deal to us. And

Dean: 26:40

I can only imagine what it was like on that day when you got that message or mail from realizing that the government had then given the contract to someone else and talked about resilience and that was I can only imagine testing of of the resilience that you did have to find that out and to still pivot and go up to Tyrone, I mean, and especially with all your own skin in the game. That that's a different that's an added component to this as well, which I think, would have certainly provided for a hell of a lot more angst amidst amidst those crazy days.

Neil: 27:12

It was funny. I just maybe I was just naive, Dean, but, like, I went down to the factory that was given the because they hadn't testing done on MASK or anything at the time. And I went down and I was for for what I knew at the time, I was the only one that could configure mask machining. It's a small company in Limerick that was shipping its masks actually out of Ireland the 20th time. But I went down to the company that got the got the contract, and I helped them configure their machines.

Neil: 27:37

And I helped them with their testing, and I helped them with materials and sourcing because I felt very strongly that Ireland needed this natural domestic source of of PPE. And it was wild to me that so many other countries have thought about this. Like, the mainland GB and France and Germany spun up these programs and supported domestic manufacture, like, overnight. And the Irish were slow to do that. So we went down and helped with with the group and worked for quite a long time, that that eventually got that contract.

Neil: 28:05

But, yeah, I can remember getting it and just going, look. Okay. It's not us, but Ireland needs this stuff anyway. Let's just put our shoulder to the wheel and put on the green jersey.

Dean: 28:14

Wouldn't be like Ireland to be slow at something,

Neil: 28:17

No. No. But quick enough to to give contracts.

Dean: 28:22

Hey there. Hope you're enjoying the episode. I am recruiting more people to join my newsletter. Inside this, I send one email per week usually contained within is business learnings to help you along your entrepreneurial journey, the mindset hacks, learning from guests, or upcoming sneak previews of people that we've got coming on. If that sounds like something that would be good to have in your inbox each week, head over to quitable.me, pop your email inside, and like I said, I will send you one email per week.

Dean: 28:49

And if you don't like it, you can unsubscribe anytime. Cheers. So I I'm gonna finish on MASK because I wanna get to halo dotai and and touch on that because I love the idea there too. But I saw, like, mask actually finished up then, I think it was 2022, that you've actually ceased production. Like, what what was the end?

Dean: 29:11

Did you sell the company, or did you just literally sell your last mask?

Neil: 29:14

That's a good question. So we ceased operation. We came to the end of the the contracts. And, really, you know, there's there's a rollout of vaccines that was always going to see that day occur. So we we kind of had planned and scheduled for that, which was good because we had a very broad staff and folks that were depending on on the work and it was nice to be able to give give them clarity on that.

Neil: 29:33

So what we've pivoted the company into now is we've retained, you know, the design and patent and understanding of how we created this specialist mask that that we created, which stopped your goggles from fogging. Right? So if you're wearing glasses or goggles or a surgical lens of any type, it would stop it from fogging. So it was it was kind of a unique product in that regard. But it was a wellness innovation company.

Neil: 29:56

We'd always kind of positioned it that way. And so we're looking at a new project still under the MASK moniker, but we're we're looking at how we go about, delivering water and Ireland's finest and most natural source of water. So, again, I think there's a resource there that we should be focusing on delivering for for the island of Ireland. MASK has that same sort of wellness positioning that I think could work well again.

Dean: 30:20

Moving on to halo.ai. I, initially I was kind of curious. I was like, okay, what what is this? You know, I've seen a lot of posts and it was like, join the wait list here. And I was like, and then while I'm digging a little bit more, I saw like the it's like a place to safely buy and sell horses.

Dean: 30:37

Right? And I'm sure you can give a better explanation than I, but one thing I really liked was the line on the landing page. All workhorse, no show pony.

Neil: 30:46

Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

Dean: 30:47

Yeah. I thought that was great. So and I know you've been involved in horses your whole life. You said you've owned horses as well, so I'm sure you've been around this world and it's something that's close to home. But again, like, say my question I'm curious about is, like, how did you notice there was a gap here?

Dean: 31:03

What what revealed itself to you?

Neil: 31:05

It's, you know, when when I got as as deeply involved as I did in horses over the course of the last number of years, which, we're we're into both the racing and breeding side of horses now. I saw that there was a huge, gaping chasm in horse welfare and insurance. There's so many people that buy assets that are 1,000,000 of of euros. So what we're trying to do is figure out, is there a way of of the data that's coming off a horse when it's entering into a race or it's traveling to a different country or, it increases in value because it's won some some valuable race. Like, we we had a horse, won the all way hurdle.

Neil: 31:41

And when it does that, it just quadruples in value or more. But the reason we focused on the AI side of that was, like, there is enough data to say when a horse is declared in America, but it lives in Ireland. Or there is enough data to say that there have been injuries or there have been breakdowns on this track. And as a result of that, when you put your horse onto that track, it's at a greater level of risk. And you should insure your horse or increase the insurance of your horse because of the changing nature of risk.

Neil: 32:09

And we did that in a company that that I was part of in California called Trove, but we did it with cards. So we eventually became the insurance layer for the Google Waymo fully autonomous vehicle. And the car was going through different state of risk. So when it was in lovely term effect so we created this sort of dynamic insurance platform that worked really well for Google. And it was sold to to a larger insurance company a couple of years later.

Neil: 32:34

But I it kind of got me thinking, like, why doesn't why isn't a horse treated with the same degree of rigor when it comes to protection? And that's where halo.com dotai has come from and and what we've developed now. Because we have this body of data and really understanding the nature of the animal's pedigree and its race performance, and there's a lot of data that was just under leveraged, ML and and AI models can dig really far into that and make sense of data that a human being just simply can't compute. The permutations are too great. So even some of the best horse agents in the world that can buy you and say, hey.

Neil: 33:07

That horse, because it has these parents and because its parents, you know, ran this way and that way and because it looks a certain way and it has a lovely walk, that one's gonna win the Grand National for you. Well, you know, that's still an opinion of a human being. But there's a lot of data that that is under leveraged. And what Halo can do now is it can help with the prediction of who you should be breeding with and what races you should put your horse into. And eventually, you know, what what the the best path is for the horse that you need.

Neil: 33:36

So there's just no asset class in the world, of course. And so we've gone about building that. We kicked off with a company called Palantir, which are, you know, global company in in AI and data terms. They're the data science team behind them, and we saw, well, if it's good enough for Ferrari with their horse, we should maybe engage them and see what what they could do for for horse racing. So it's a very exciting project, but like that as well, Dean, it's it's one where there's just so much unknown.

Neil: 34:02

And and that's what's exciting about it because you're just you're you're inventing the wheel. You're as private.

Dean: 34:09

Stay lost. Right?

Neil: 34:10

Stay lost. Exactly. As long as you're in place, you know, stay lost in the top 3.

Dean: 34:15

Yeah. We so with these investments then, you've got MASK, got Lost Irish, got Halo. Are are you investing in all of these yourself, or are you raising capital?

Neil: 34:28

No. We haven't raised a cent. So it's it's all our own cash. We will I think when when we get to scaling the likes of of Lost Irish in the global sense we're in Asia Pac. We're in the Middle East.

Neil: 34:41

We sell well in Russia. It it depends on how deep you want to go with any of these products. And so when we look at kinda scale partners, there's a very high percentage chance that we'll take, you know, strategic money when it comes to the investment in the next round of growth for for Lost Irish. In terms of Halo, like, the the equine industry is full of of the characters that still believe in the witchcraftry of of, you know, the horse looks a certain way or like, for example, the Japanese won't buy a a gray horse. Right?

Neil: 35:13

Like, they just did it. They put something fundamentally gray horse. Or they loved them. I can't remember which. But there's a patch of folks that have now been millennials that are coming into the purchase and acquisition cycle of their career in horses.

Neil: 35:28

And they their digital natives are the best part of it, and they do believe in data. They believe in the power of data science. They understand ML models and AI well. And we're seeing a huge degree of interest from those folks that are, you know, at the sort of 40 35 year old to 40 level, which is really interesting. So I think we're gonna end up probably taking an investment there as well.

Neil: 35:48

The goal, of course, to kinda get back to to the earlier part of of our conversation. You know? Goal is not to try and stay in these things for the rest of my life. I I want to to build value in these companies, and I think there's, you know, there's there's a certain value that the likes of halo.com.ai will do for the equine industry that that should have been done a very long time ago so that more horses are protected. And I think that's kind of the future of that company.

Neil: 36:14

So, yeah, I would be very happy to exit out of all of these companies and give give myself the time that I need to do, you know, the other stuff in my life. And I'm very happily married and building a house and all of those other things that you kinda put on the back burner for for a time when you're when you're chasing down stuff. No. We've made the investments ourselves, and it's not always, you know, the easiest thing to do to look at your own savings and your own bank balance and put it into, you know, a company like I did with MASK and then see, you know, the the challenges that you'll have every day and the resilience that you need. And you go, this is not just, you know, hard, but it's hard financially.

Neil: 36:49

And it's hard. It's hard on my savings and everything.

Dean: 36:52

Financial stress is kind of a weird one. And I've talked about this on a couple of episodes now that

Neil: 36:58

Sorry. I didn't move to move too much harder. Sorry. Go ahead.

Dean: 37:01

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. But in regards to financial stress, I find it to be quite a unique type of stress.

Dean: 37:07

It's, it's, it's kind of, it feels like all encompassing somewhat. And I can only imagine on a scale that you've did to pump loads into this business, how daunting that must have been. And it actually kind of tees up something I wanted to ask you quite well, which is what is your biggest loss as an investor, as a businessman, as an entrepreneur that you've experienced in in in all of your points that you've taken?

Neil: 37:31

Yeah. Gosh. It's a great question. I'll address the first point. Like, I I think I don't know if my screen is there is no stress.

Neil: 37:38

It's like there's no pain like heartbreak, which I'm I'm a big believer in, but there is no stress like financial stress. Financial stress, like, shakes almost every part of your life because you look at what you want to do that day, that week, that month, and you're you know, you've ever been, you know, hand to med as a student or any other time in your life, it's it's a muscle memory that you have. I didn't grow up very well to press or anything. And, you know, you're always budgeting, always looking at how far you can make your money go. And only 3 rules in entrepreneurship is don't run out of money, don't run out of money, and don't run out of money.

Neil: 38:10

And so when you you've got a a worry about, you know, your capital, which you do every day is not regardless of how successful you are, I think it can be a stress that that can take away from the creativity and and and the productivity side of the business, which is really what your business is going to depend on. In terms of losses, like, I've been very lucky. I've just found folks that that have come in with me on projects that I've done that I could really trust with my life. And for that reason, we've entered quite slowly into even with lost Irish, even the development of Irish, entered quite slowly into markets and and proved it out, in a way that it can feed itself, you know, enough to grow the 20%, 40%, 60% at a time. But I can remember the the first kind of major painful loss that I had as a as an investor was a fracking company in in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Neil: 39:10

So I studied in Pennsylvania. I did master studies out there. And there was a guy, sort of family friend that we sort of knew out there, and he had a he had a fracking company. Fracking is absolutely unknown to me. But I really trust the guy, and I knew him.

Neil: 39:27

And and he seemed to have, you know, the world at his feet with this fracking investment, that he had made. And I remember investing with him then not hearing from him very often and then less often and less often. And it was at a time when, you know, I was just trying to get my act together. I was in my late twenties, early thirties. And I can remember eventually having a conversation with him and he explaining that, you know, it was always capital at risk and, you know, I knew what I was getting myself into or whatever else.

Neil: 39:59

But that last line was completely untrue. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And I feel like the the greatest losses that you're going to suffer as an investor are the areas that you well. And so when, you know, I even saw all these guys get off of crypto and web 3 back years ago and I was like, it feels a little bit like a price since 2008, 2009 to me. There are folks that are speculating in property that should never be buying they haven't bought their own house.

Neil: 40:26

So why did buying tree houses in bulging? So I feel like if you're going to invest, only small monicker of advice I would have is invest in stuff that you know. Remember my little brother, he he was making small investments at the time, and I was like, oh gosh. Should I invest in this blue chip stock? And he was learning learned about stock market at the time.

Neil: 40:45

And I was like, what do you know? He said, I know PlayStation very well, and I know, like, Call of Duty or whatever else. And I asked him if, you know, if you know them that well, do you think that they're gonna grow in the future? There's more of you guys out there that play Call of Duty. He was like, absolutely.

Neil: 41:01

So we ended up buying Sony stock. Sony stock performed. Him. So, I think, you know, if you're if you're investing stuff you don't know, a, it's difficult to trust the players because you don't have, you don't have a frame of relative understanding whether this person and this investment is good in the industry or not. But also it's just harder to read the tea leaves when you're when you're reading, you know, investor decks and you're you're looking at, like, you know, there was a number of folks that came to me recently that have these applications for managing your farm and managing your horses and your stables.

Neil: 41:37

And 3 or 4 years ago when I was less involved, these would all look like very good estimates. You know? A lot of horses in the world and people need to manage them, whatever else. And, I can just tell now, having been on the farming side and the breeding side, of course, is that these are not the thing. But, yeah, it can be painful if if you don't know what you're doing.

Dean: 41:58

I certainly know from, getting involved in crypto back in, when was it? Like, 2017 or something? I think it was kind of kicking off a little bit. Didn't show loads of money in, but I threw some in and then it, very quickly went to nothing. So I think, lesson there is definitely definitely know, at least to some degree, what you're getting involved in and and do your due diligence.

Dean: 42:21

I saw a post that you shared of sir Ken Robinson, and it was saying that children are naturally creative until they learn what it means to be wrong. And I really I really wanted to get like your thoughts on why what you think like contributes to that subsequent fear of loss that sets in for us then? Like after that period of being hit and why is that such a big deal for us after that?

Neil: 42:45

Yeah. It is. That's a that's a that's a big one. Like, so, you know, my whole professional career has been centered in design. So when when I got out to to Silicon Valley, I went out there.

Neil: 42:56

I'd studied an MBA. And I kinda had this good generalist view of what business was. But when I looked at I really wanted to work in in the tech sector, and it kinda made my career decisions around geography industry roles. So the geography was Silicon Valley because I thought there was more creative people there than anywhere else. The industry was gonna be technology for me because I'd grown a real graph for it, and, I felt like the fastest moving companies in the world were tech companies.

Neil: 43:20

They weren't, you know, financial institutions or anything else. And then the role, I would take any role I got my hands on once I could satisfy those first two things. And so I looked at product development roles and product marketing roles, and I looked at supply chain management roles. And I can remember doing this interview at Apple and I bombed out, Dean, I bombed out every interview that I had gone for, for a full year when I got out to Silicon Valley primarily because I was working with a a global management consulting company at the time, and it was primarily because I didn't code. So in Silicon Valley, still today, if you don't code, you're 2nd class citizen.

Neil: 43:56

Don't let anyone tell you any difference. It's just the truth to me. But the, the conversation I had at Apple, I was offered a job at Apple. And I arrived into, I arrived into Apple HQ down in Cupertino in the days before Steve Jobs was leaving. In fact, I took, like, a sneaky picture of him on on a Nokia phone ahead of the time because I couldn't afford an iPhone.

Neil: 44:18

And, I got offered this job, and this guy said to me, you know, as as I was offered it, he said, you need it was for supply chain for the iPhone. And no one could get an iPhone at the time. And they thought that this guy was the worst guy in the world because he wasn't letting you know, he was restricting the supply of iPhone and all he could get once. And he said, you need to go to bed at night, you know, really haven't been satisfied by balancing 66 lines of Excel spreadsheets. And I didn't take the job.

Neil: 44:45

And I can remember refusing that job going, I could have been neil.sans@apple.com, which is what you would dream of. I dreamed of of working in these companies. And I ended up, I did an offer at Facebook as well, which I turned down, which I couldn't it was pre IPO. It was a couple of 100 employees, and I couldn't believe I turned that down. But I ended up going to work in in Salesforce and found, their their Ignite team with a guy called Simon Mulcahy at the time.

Neil: 45:11

He he he later became the the chief marketing officer. Incredible guy. And, it was the first time in my career that human centered design and understanding the needs of the human being, and then trying to wrap technology around it became a way that I could earn money. So I had I'd really always enjoyed the idea of teaching others a certain perspective, or I had a fairly high degree of empathy when it came to building products. And that's where, you know, when we go back to Lost Irish or even, the Halo application or what we did with MASK, like, it was all around whether or not the human has this need and whether you can satisfy us with, with a human centric design.

Neil: 45:52

And I was it was one of the best jobs I ever had because you got to be creative every day. And you could be paid for it and be rewarded for it. And it was very clear that when we went out, now look, we're going out as Salesforce executives and as employees. So it wasn't like you were just going out from scratch. You had that platform to work from.

Neil: 46:11

And when we worked with Disney and we worked with, you know, the McDonald's and the Nikes and these kind of big fast moving consumer brands, it became clear that they weren't any better at innovation or product development than the next person. They just worked in environments where their creativity was rewarded and fostered and where failure was, to a degree, this idea that failure is okay is not necessarily true everywhere. It's true to to a point. But fail fast, you know, fail often, learn a lot was was really the moniker. And it was really nice to kinda look at these executives who, particularly when we worked with Disney, you're like, these are the top executives on the planet when it comes to imagineering and experience design.

Neil: 46:54

And they still were struggling to kind of get, you know, get out of their own space or their own industry and take inspiration from other places. And we do that as children, right? Like, when you throw a bucket of Lego onto the ground, a child doesn't start organizing it by its color or by its shape or whatever. It sees like the fin of a shark or like the top of a castle. It just sees that in that one little piece and starts to build the castle around this, what looks like the top, or it builds the shark around the fin.

Neil: 47:20

And that notion that we're supposed to forget that level of creativity is because it's not rewarded often enough. Like the outside the box thinker, which is, you know, terrifying in most organizations, was rewarded our in our company, in Ignite. So it made hiring for we we scaled our program, and it ended up, under the management of a wonderful lady called Nicole McNamara Wheeler, in in, in DC. But she had just this wonderful team of creative people who she gave the space to, and Sanlakay did this with me in the early days, gave the space to be creative and go out to executives who necessarily weren't naturally creative in their day or wasn't rewarded in their organizations and say, look, it's okay to try this thing. You know, it's kind of like karaoke.

Neil: 48:06

Like, it's not gonna kill you. Try it. And there's a chance that others might sing along with you if you do it. So, there's just there's a space for that that I think, you know, it gets it gets trained out of us and the Excel gets trained into us. And it's it's probably why I never ended up, you know, in that supply chain rollout app.

Dean: 48:23

What what's actually probably one of the most interesting things you said to me there is that you were in a job in Salesforce and you loved it. You said you've never felt more, like, kind of creatively, in a good place in that way. And if I'm listening to this, I might be thinking, why the hell did Neil then go and start all these businesses? What it sounded like he had his passion, his calling, whatever you wanna address it as or label it as. Like, what made you go from a job that you loved to taking all this risk and removing all that security?

Neil: 49:02

Because the the the value that I saw in doing that work for yourself eclipsed the security of doing it at a large organization. And there are so few places, Dean, you will hear this in every interview you do up and down the coast of America, at the West Coast of America, that we are a startup inside a big company. That is unless you manage the P and L and you control a product, control the delivery of product and after sales, you do not have a startup in a big company. You are, you know, you are some presales function or you're some product development function in a company And they can fire all 2,000 of you in a heartbeat if it's not working out. Right?

Neil: 49:43

Like, that's if that's true in your own organization, you call a lot more the shots. You do own the P and L. It is down to you defined, you know, the new idea and the new hire and whatever else. So, like, being able to do that for myself was quite a big, was quite a big deal. And I was able to use so much of the muscle memory and and the position and language and the methodology that we developed in Salesforce.

Neil: 50:07

That was applicable in so many other places. And, you know, you had to have the 10 ish years experience to be able to go into, you know, a new customer or, you know, I work a lot with with Deloitte global global company who have very many innovation executives within their own, remit, but they find it hard to negotiate against themselves and they find it hard to listen to their own advice. And so, you know, when we work with those type of companies, it's it's such a pleasure to be able to do it yourself. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing it in in the, you know, the startup in a large company. But we were a startup in a large company because I had a I had a great boss.

Neil: 50:42

And I would say the the difference between my career and and anybody who's taken the same path I did and and maybe they weren't as lucky was my boss. I had I had so many wonderful bosses from, Samantha Hutchinson in in Toronto and Canada to Simon McCaughey to mentors like Steven Vilkin and Matt Green. And the reason I'm using their names is they all came from very different walks of life. When when I worked my first kind of start up job in Silicon Valley, Steven Vilk was, I think, was the former CTO of NASA. He was a brilliant mind, a brilliant, quantitative mind, and he worked in one corner of the start up.

Neil: 51:18

And, like, 8 people over was Matt Green, and he was the sales guy. And I had a a brilliant mentor, a tech technical mentor in Steven Vilk, and I had a brilliant sales mentor in in Matt Green. I'm still friendly very friendly with both today. And, you know, if my wife kicked me out of the house tomorrow, and I would try and move in with either of those. I just deeply, deeply love their company.

Neil: 51:39

But they were brilliant bosses and they taught me so much. And and they they kind of encouraged me when I left larger organizations to pursue the and trust yourself and back yourself to pursue the thing, on your own steam. And I've really enjoyed that. And it hasn't always been easy, but it's it's really down to the experience that I got through the bosses today.

Dean: 52:00

And the thing is, like, everyone has a skill set. Now you had built up experience up until that point that then enabled you to be just equipped to do that under Halo Sans Limited or whatever you wanna call your company when you quit, right? We all have skillsets. We all have things that we've been doing for the past however many years and they can apply to your own business and then maybe everyone's why after that is different. Maybe they wanna do it for different reasons, but you have a skill set and therefore you can't do that.

Neil: 52:33

Mhmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's the hard part for people is I'm not gonna see that figure come in from x large organization on my balance sheet every month or every 2 weeks or whatever. And that's that is a that is a big leap.

Neil: 52:48

And to I feel like to try and accrue enough security or, you know, close enough finance so that you can get through that 1st year as an entrepreneur. Like, our overheads were so low. And when I started Fox Design that it was just me, I just had to to keep myself going for a period. And then I'd all this wonderful network of people who would like, hey. I'll do that 1st month of that work with you for, you know, drastically reduced rate and until you get the ball rolling.

Neil: 53:14

And then it was really backed down to relationships. But I think where where people struggle is packaging up the talent that they have and the skills that they have into into something that's, you know, product ready or even in the service organization that it's a it's like a bundle of services that you're going to offer to somebody. And you're really clear on your price and you're really clear on the deliverables. And I think that's where people can kind of struggle is bottling up the whiskey that they're making and being able to put it on the shelf in whatever industry they're in.

Dean: 53:44

If I was thinking, right, if I'm the person listening right now, and maybe I'm dissatisfied in the career that I'm in, and maybe I've kinda gotten into it unbeknownst to myself, A lot of people stumble into what they're doing and then 5 or 6 years pass by and you're like Wait, how did I get here again? And maybe they want to be entrepreneurial like you, but they see you as this guy who's like so far ahead they might not be able to relate almost because you're too far ahead. And what I want you to bring your mind back to is when you were leaving. And if you think about the person now who is dissatisfied and they want to take the first leap, they probably have somewhat of a they probably have enough voices in their head saying you can't do this, you are not good enough, you are not equipped enough. What could they do today to change that narrative in their head to start to start making it sound a bit more positive and empowering?

Neil: 54:42

It's a great question. And I will say, like, when when I moved from one venture to the other end, it wasn't like one stopped and the other started. That that only really happened when I left, you know, the bigger, more stable enterprises. You know, one project fell over the next, and, it it doesn't often happen that, you know, you wake up some more and you say, I am now dissatisfied, and I'm now gonna do something about it. It's like it's it's boiling a frog.

Neil: 55:06

It it it happens over time. The first thing is like, you know, you take a step back and you say the way I I always kind of calculated things was geography industry role. Right? So do I still wanna stay in this geography? Do I still wanna stay in Dublin?

Neil: 55:18

Do I still wanna stay in New York wherever I am? Do I still wanna stay in this industry? And if I if I look in some other industry, what is it about the job that I do today that if I was to pick it up and drop it down, like, I love seeing John. I was never Jeremy Clarkson fan until I saw him on the farm. Because this guy, you know, like some I don't know if he's Tory voting or whatever, but it it seems such an unnatural transfer of his skill set or mindset to be on a farm versus, you know, being sitting in a in a v twelve Ferrari or something.

Neil: 55:47

But he had all of the the sort of the backing of Amazon to translate what his personality was relative to cars to a farm. And there's just something so much warmer about watching him, you know, on the farm. And I feel like if people trust themselves enough to step out as an entrepreneur, they will find that the things that made them great in the organization that will make them also great outside of the organization, especially if you've got, you know, hard skills that are like quantitative skills or, you know, maths or physics or tech technology skills or whatever else. But for for the majority of entrepreneurs, it's not the tech or it's not the product that sets them apart. It's their relationship skills.

Neil: 56:26

It's their ability to connect with others. It's their ability to empathize with their customers. It's their ability to to sell themselves or the product. And if you give yourself kind of the the space to say, if I wasn't doing this thing 9 to 5 today and I'm an accountant working for Accenture, what if I was an accountant working for myself? And who would be my first three customers?

Neil: 56:45

Who would be the first three people that I would call to give me, you know, 5 grand's worth of work? And if I could get 5 grand's worth of work over the course of a year, I'll have 15 ks. And is that enough for me to feed myself? Maybe, maybe not. But it is probably enough for 6 months.

Neil: 57:00

Right? And if it blows up and fails in 6 months, right, maybe I head back to Accenture. There's lots and lots of people that I knew that did that. But you do have to trust that the stuff that's making you successful in your day job has another application. And that's the heart of great design is understanding what is making something work well.

Neil: 57:17

Like, it can be the handle of a door. Or I always use, you know, like, why is the handle great and this one poor? Or when I look at, you know, Domino's Pizza tracker, it's the same tracker that shows me where my Uber car is coming to me. And it's that piece of design that you take and you apply it for, you know, like, there's no human tracker. I don't know why this is like, when I lose my buddy Colin at at the after picnic, why can't I find him, you know, like the same way I find an Uber?

Neil: 57:41

And we had to put a balloon on him eventually. But, like the pieces that are making you great, if you can understand the design principles of what's making you work well in an organization, and then find some others that have the same type of thing in mind, like the networking effect of entrepreneurs is the real differentiator. It's like I never did a single thing I did on my own. It's certainly not anything well. And I've leaned on so many people to help.

Neil: 58:05

And you will have other folks, like, I can I can think right now of of a company that's shedding, you know, a big group of very well heeled designers and service people? And it will blow my mind if 2 of those don't get together and start the next thing. Because what they have in the company that's working well will apply well elsewhere. And and that's why I but, like, I try and buy if I'm getting my haircut, I try and get my haircut from one of my buddies. If I'm doing my taxes, I try and get my my buddy to do them, or if I'm if I'm looking for some service and my buddy's doing it.

Neil: 58:36

That's why I try and buy from my friends or buy from people you know. And I would encourage anybody who's listening, if they've got a buddy who's doing something, even if they cut your hair badly, it's supporting their ambition to do something themselves. And, it's it's not as hard as you think to find where your skills can apply elsewhere. Definitely not. If Jeremy Clarkson can be a farmer, he can do it.

Dean: 58:59

I I honestly love the way you think about design and how it has its applications just absolutely everywhere. And I love the way you approach business. I you've given me you've given me so much to think about today that I'm gonna mull over after we get off this call. And I hope the person listening receives feels the same way, you know? It's been a pleasure talking to you, Neil.

Dean: 59:23

Seriously.

Neil: 59:24

Thanks so much, Dean. I really appreciate it. And, yeah, it's it's I've listened back. I've I've been in the car, for the last couple of days back and forth. And I've listened to some of your speakers.

Neil: 59:33

I'm really humbled to be to have been a part of that, and that that's not a platitude. Some of the the purpose conversation I just find so insightful, that you've had with folks. So, you're you're a great example of, I think, what you're you're trying to imbue in your listener and, your ability to step out and and do your own thing and particularly bring the the wisdom. I'm a bad example of this, but the wisdom of others to to your audience is is very, very special and very important.

Dean: 59:58

I appreciate you saying that, man. Thanks so much.

Neil: 01:00:00

All the best, man. No worries.