10 Lessons from an F1 Boss.

Jason · 00:00Welcome to another episode of the Numbers Game. I'm Jace. I'm here with Nick. And uh Nick, I was down your neck of the woods on the weekend, uh Port Melbourne, little trot around Albert Park. It is uh Formula One time in Melbourne, everything was set up, it was uh looking the goods. Uh you're enjoying your time down there, few road closures, nothing frustrating here.

Nick · 00:19I'm um look fell I'm a Formula One fan, but I I also happen to frequent uh MSAC, Sports and Aquatic Centre, either for a swim or a gym session or whatnot and it's it's just a debacle this time of the year. You can't get into the car park. um just doesn't work. And it's going to be like that till mid-March. And you know, we're now talking towards the end of Feb, so it's not just a week or so. Uh it's out of action for quite some time. But I get that the show must go on and small sacrifice for us MSAC members, I guess.

Jason · 00:52Yeah, well, because quick shout out to Macca who's a listener. He's uh doing the scaffolding for the Formula One. So mate, if you can uh pack it up pretty quick for Nick so we can get back on the roads there, I'd be very happy. Thanks, Mecca. So and uh what are we talking about today?

Nick · 01:05Well on the topic of F1, um I read a recent article that was focused on the uh the new Audi team which is entering the competition this year and they interviewed the the new boss uh Jonathan Wheatley and he was unpacking you know, ten ten lessons in business and and and running a Formula One team. And whilst these lessons were all great lessons, I'm I'm sure, what I really thought was How do these relate to small everyday business? And I thought it'd be really good to to pressure test um high performance advice uh against small business reality. So You know, what are we seeing every day? Uh, what are our listeners seeing every day? Um versus, you know, these billion dollar businesses and and can we really take that advice on board or you know, is it just Just the pipe drain.

Jason · 01:56Yeah, it's a good one. A good one to unpack because I think, you know, you're so much so much noise on social media, depending on what your algor algorithm is doing at the time, you're gonna see different quotes pop up and different videos and there's a million life coaches and business coaches these days. So it almost seems like there's overstimulation of this advice that we're getting pumped uh so often. So it'd be great to kind of uh take what he said and then see if we can apply it to our business and then other businesses that we look after.

Nick · 02:20Yeah, and I and I think a lot of the times you hear these things and you think, well, that doesn't relate to me, or you don't really understand what happens in my business. um you're on a different playing field than I am. So I thought you're reading these these tips, although they are at a high level. A lot of them still are relevant. So I thought let's unpack them and and see how they would relate to us. Sounds good. Let's do it. Tip one. So there's ten of them and I'll I'll try and go through them reasonably quickly. Um, invest properly from the start. So, you know, to me, I took that as have the right level of capital for your business or what's required uh for your particular business. To make sure that you, you know, you're not going to be hamstrung in making decisions. Uh, you can afford the right team around you. Yeah, we're thinking about F1 at the moment.

Jason · 03:13Yep.

Nick · 03:13Um And I thought, well, small business, okay, well, you're probably starting in a lot of circumstances as a one-person band. So it might not be about having money in the bank to invest But I think you you still need to be comfortable from a money point of view when you go into business. And What I mean by that, and I can relate to this myself, and I've spoken about this on the podcast before, but I think if you go into business at any level, you need to have clear, clear runway. where you can focus 100% on making that business a success. So as an example, if you don't have savings in the bank and you want to start a small business, You need to understand how long that business is going to take to give you a return. And if I don't have savings in my business to get through that period, then I've got a problem and I probably shouldn't be starting the business. Because what will happen is When you start to stress about money, personally, your focus will go away from the business and doing everything that you need to do to make sure that business can perform and achieve what you're trying to achieve. So that was something that I thought, well, that's that is still good advice for small business people. You might, you know, might by be in a fortunate position where You think you can grow the business reasonably quickly into to one or two two people? You know, understanding what I need to have the right systems and processes in place. Yeah. Um, what do I need to spend on um tech? You know, the the the buzzword being AI. Yeah. Um yeah, we've talked about tax. You know, I'm I'm earning this money. what tax is going to come in. So I think having a lens on what capital is required to get you through that first 12 months so you can 100% focus on being a success. is something that small business can take out of that tip.

Jason · 05:06Yeah. I think uh bang on investing properly from the start, but also just with the resources you've got, it's how to deploy it smartly. Um, we've seen way too many times the old keeping up with the Joneses, like straight away you want to go and rent the fancy office, or you want to go and spend money on the sign writing or the big branding campaign, or all these things that that make the business look a certain way or feel a certain way, but realistically it's not paying the bills straight up front. So I think the how you deploy and use cash straight away and one of the things you said, systems. Like investing in the right technology, the right systems, you know, spending some time, which isn't always money, but the time to map out processes. How many businesses get, you know, six, twelve months in and don't have uh, you know, SOP or anything mapped out? I think you know that's that probably the different one for a small business is it's not just about investing properly from the start in cash that's deployed. It's investing your time, your education, your decision making.

Nick · 06:00Spot on. Tip two. Play the long game. Now what David Wheatley was uh sorry Jonathan Wheatley was referring to here was you know Audi coming into such a high pressure and high performance game that not expecting to get any kind of results and results being, you know, probably top ten finishes or top three finishes until 2030, you know, which is which is four years away. So, you know, I'd as a small business, is that relevant? No. Well, you can't afford to to wait four years for for some kind of result in small business. You're trying to put food on the table. But what I did take away from that, and I was reflecting on our business, is the fact that business for a lot of people gets easier the longer that you're in the game, small, medium, or big. So whether that's through through scale, whether that's through just having a more sticky client base over over the years. But if you look at our industry, once you kind of break through a certain um age, things just get um bigger and better. And I talked to our salespeople about this in in regards to their client base and getting lead flow. And this will be the same for businesses. When you first start your business, you're out there, you're hunting, you're trying to get as much business in as you can. If it's a sales environment, which most businesses are Then what happens is the next year, you know, you've helped a hundred clients. So those hundred clients might tell two people about you. So it's almost like a super fund and compounding is how I um the analogy I give to the salespeople. You got $100,000 in a super fund, um, you know, you have a 9% return one year on a growth strategy, it returns $9,000. Fast forward 10 years and your super fund's got $500,000 in it. A 9% return on that is $45,000. So what we see with our financial planning clients is When their super fund balances or their investment balances are quite low, they feel like they're not really getting anywhere. And you get a few years in and the returns just get bigger and bigger. So I think with business it's very similar. Things just get easier, your client bases get bigger, your centers of influence, you've got more of those, so you've got more people talking about you. So I think you need to be prepared to stay in there for quite some time and not get disheartened in the early years when it can feel like a grind, a grind, a grind. Knowing that, you know, talk to people around you that have been in business for longer and how it does get easier the longer you're in it. But probably similar for your business, I would have thought.

Jason · 08:36Yeah, 100%. I think you know future advisory has been around just over five years now. And I think about the momentum we currently have right now through being in the game for five years. Our brand has taken time to develop in the market. You know, Future Advisory as a brand now is starting to be perceived and well known. our culture in our team, there's a certain way we behave, a certain way we act. I actually love when I see a video pop up that was filmed of the team in the office and the way they're behaving. I'm like, cool. Like That is fun. That is us. That is who we are. But that doesn't happen overnight. The first couple of months you're there, you're refining or for years. It takes years do you refining? This was version two for us. We had another business for five years. So we've been doing it for over 10. And what's innovate? 15 to 20 almost?

Nick · 09:1718.

Jason · 09:1818. There you go. So, you know, I think that the other thing that's really important there when you say play the long game, for me it's And and a lot of people do it. They start a business just because they were a great technician or a great operator themselves personally, so they went out and did it like forming a business. I still think there is such a great place for actually having a three to five year business plan. And it doesn't have to be something fancy. It can be a one-pager, but actually articulating and jotting down what you want it to look like in five years. If you can't envision that and put a few words down or some pictures of what it should look and feel like, you're then not channeling that every day as you start to grow, as you start to make decisions. Because something's going to happen back in the office or back at work where you've got a decision to make. And unless you're thinking about what you really want things to look like, what is the long game? What does winning look like? the decision that you make that day might be impacted by not knowing what winning looks like down the track. So if you know what winning looks like, you're much better at making decisions on the day to day. Um so I think and you know that even the waiting till twenty thirty, I think about the Richmond story, you know, they came out and said they were gonna win three flags within the next I think it was ten years or whatever when Brendan Gale came out. And everyone was like, what the hell? That's crazy. But vision. They had the vision, they set the plan, and then it was reverse engineered from there. So um it happens in sport and it should happen in your business as well.

Nick · 10:35Yep, spot on. So linking your decision making back to that long-term plan. 100%. Number three, blend experience with new talent. So he was obviously building a team um from the start with a big budget. So bringing in people that are talented, that have been around for a while. um and bringing them together. Now, obviously for a lot of businesses when they start, they don't go and hire 10 people from um from from the beginning. But there is still something to take from that. And what I took from that was as a business founder or a business owner, When you're thinking about bringing people into your business at some stage, and you will if you want to grow a business, the key things that I looked at was who has skills that I don't have And you know, bringing talent in for me, bringing young people into my business was is definitely a big part of the strategy because you know, they're they're more across things like systems, processes, AI. Um and that will continue to to happen even as those current people in my business who I'd consider that younger, say 30, 31, 32. there's younger people again that will come in with a re with a renewed energy. So whilst you not might not have money out there um and going be going out there, sorry, to build a team from day one, I think when you start to think about your first, second, third hire, You do need to think about what talent you're trying to bring in. And it could be covering gaps that you've got, or it could be a renewed energy. in an area that you know you're not going to have energy or or or a skill set in. So still a very important tip.

Jason · 12:16Couldn't agree more. I think um that that blend and look in in accounting firms or in our space uh Senior talent and then juniors. The grads that are coming out of uni, they're fresh, they're hungry, they want to do their CAs or their CPAs Um, and that blend of talent and the blender, the mix is great. I mean, I look at the energy that we have, uh, the conversation flow, even for our clients, like we'll often have a senior client advisor. And then a some kind of ju a junior, like a junior accountant, junior client advisor in the meeting room, uh whether it's on Teams, live in person. And even then it's just like so it looks like legacy. It looks like the journey that we're on cus um our clients can get around it because they're like, oh that's that's really great that more more people have my back. I don't just get one person to talk to. Um so yeah I think I think absolutely bang on advice. I think uh more more more companies more businesses need to think about what that talent strategy is for them as well Especially as we head towards, you know, a lot of people have gone to outsourcing or offshoring. Um, a lot of people now looking at AI agents and everything else. But I still think that senior person in your business supported by bringing in junior talent that you can craft, you know, embed in your culture, get them following your systems and procedures, but give them enough, enough rope that if there is some innovation or some change that they can make through their different lens that we don't have. They grew up in a different era to the one we grew up in. And then the next one coming through, I think it's generation beta or whatever it is, they're going to be totally different again. They're going to grow up in the AI world that we didn't grow up in.

Nick · 13:45So for sure. Yeah. Yeah, and there's there's there's young people in our business today that are doing numbers and things that I I could never do. So you know, I think um that's been proven in our business and and we'll continue to think about that stuff moving forward. Um this one's a no-brainer, lead by example. I think it was Yeah, not so relatable what he was re referring to. Yeah, he was talking about going to every single race weekend and then still being in the office at 7 A. M. um on the Monday morning, you know, hypothetically in another country. But it look the reality is, uh we've all got lives to live, um and they all look different. So, you know, school drop offs, um, these kinds of things. So But I think what I took from it was not so much leading by example in in the way of you know you're working more hours or working as as hard as you can, but For me, you had to be on the journey and you had to be able to walk the talk. So, you know, that's rolling your sleeves up. If there's a problem, will you get into the trenches and help your staff fix it?

Jason · 14:54Yeah.

Nick · 14:54Um if you're promoting that they should be acting in a certain way, are you doing the same thing? Yeah. Not necessarily about grinding, you know, twelve, thirteen hour office day um office days, because for some people that's just not That's just not possible. Um But people need to if you if you have people and if you are hiring people They need to know that you're on the journey. Yeah. And you're there prepared to do what they're doing when required. And there's actually a young guy in our business who uses uses this analogy all the time because he's got his own team around him. So as a salesperson, he's a hot high performer and he's got his own team around him. And what he says to me is, look, I'm up here doing the client facing um interviews and I've got a team under me making making sure the implementation gets done. But there's there's times when there's a problem in the impl implementation. Now whether that's with a a a third party like a bank that we're dealing with And I know that if I step in, I can fix that problem in five minutes. And he says to me, I think about Michael Jordan when The the three point shot's got to be taken with two seconds to go. I'm putting my hand up to take that shot.

Jason · 16:06Yeah.

Nick · 16:06So that's a really good example of someone saying, hey, I know that I've got a team around me and they're helping me support, uh that they're helping support me to where I want to get to. But if I need to help them and I can um if I can progress them quicker by coming in and you know dropping down to that to that task or that level that I'm gonna do that um because I'm the one who can do that and do it uh uh efficiently. So that's what I took from it. And I think you always need to prepare to do to do that as a leader in any business or any team.

Jason · 16:38All all good leadership examples are, you know, showing up, being consistent. If you say you're gonna do something, actually do it. I think that makes a big difference to the team. So yeah, it makes perfectly I love that Michael Jordan example. Unreal.

Nick · 16:49Yeah, he says it all the time, but I actually love it. Uh number five, I didn't find this one too relevant. Um choose the right moment to enter. So if you're gonna enter a particular market When is the right moment? The reality is for most business owners, they fall into business because they're really good at doing something and they think they can build a business around that. You know, if you are lucky enough to be sitting back and deciding when you can enter a market, that's great But I didn't find that too relevant for most of our clients and listeners. Skip. Define roles clearly. Referring to high performance teams, who makes decisions. I think this is relevant and I might come back to the the tip around hiring for skills that you don't have. And I think as the founder, particularly in the early days when you start to build, you can drag yourself into every decision and you may or may not need to. I think that's where a lot of people go wrong and that could that could prevent growth in in in in a lot of circumstances.

Jason · 17:47I wish we'd done it earlier. I think we we flew by for years hiring people, giving them a title and a role and sitting him in a position, but nobody really mapped it out and looked at what that position looked like, who was supporting who, even your example before of you know, the sales lead and then the support team. It was almost just expected that if you were hired and you were slightly more junior than that person, of course you would support them. But it wasn't documented. Um the org chart wasn't clearly it wasn't shared with every new team higher. And I look back to w from where we are now to where we were five years ago and and before. like how much of a game changer it is when a new person starts to hand them the org chart with everyone's names, team colours, team names, who how the information flows around the organization, and even then position descriptions. scorecards, KPIs, so much more clarity in people's roles when they roll into work and have all of that mapped out in front of them.

Nick · 18:39For sure. Absolutely brilliant. And and and I think also then giving people autonomy or giving them room to make errors. I think that's a big thing too. If you if you bring someone in to do something, if you bring someone in to make decisions because you're too busy You have to let them run with that. You can't always be, you know, as as a founder or or a or a business owner trying to be involved in e everything. Otherwise Number one, um, you deter them from wanting to make decisions. You actually stunt their growth. Um, and they feel like you know they maybe don't have a long-term position in your business because everything's got to go back by you as well. So Similar in our business, we've got a lot of structure now on who does what, but those people have, in most cases, absolute autonomy to make decisions up to a certain level. And Otherwise, it's it's just inefficient if, you know, myself or Jordan or some of the other managers have to get involved.

Jason · 19:35So yeah.

Nick · 19:36Build a strong identity and brand. Doesn't matter what size. This is absolutely paramount, whether that's providing a really good service to clients. But you have to become, you know, someone that people really want to deal with in the early days if you're starting a business. And then where I found this uh relatable to our business was We're now becoming a destination brand. So the next layer for us is okay, how do we recruit high achievers or top performers. Well we need to be a destination business. So let's look great for our clients for sure and let's do a fantastic service. uh for our clients, but now we have to be an attractive business for employees. So how we present ourselves externally to the rest of the industry is extremely important to make sure we attract the right talent because that's what it's all about. When you get a bigger business, it's all about how do you get the right people in. And you're now competing, always competing for clients, but as you get bigger, you start to compete for talent as well. So I took a r I took um recruitment um was was the lesson I I took from that or the tip I took from that.

Jason · 20:49Yeah, I also add in like the pricing power of having a good brand and a good identity. Climbers talk about putting their prices up on a particular product or they haven't put their price up for years. And the simple question was like, are you the best in the market at what you're building? Yes. Are you well known? Yes. Would people not come like who would they go to if they can't come to you? And it was like, well, no one else is kind of as good as what we've built and and as well known as we are. I said, great. Put your price up 5%. Like they're going to keep coming back to you. Your product is amazing. Your brand, your entire organization, build on that. Like no one will flinch. And he was like Yeah, it was but him hearing that just gave him that confidence, you know, I have built a good brand. We are known and and well identified in the market. So I think that's that's incredible. And I look at, you know, everything you've built with Innovate, even your rebrand, the podcast that we do here, while it's not even branded Innovate, it's a flow on of like what you guys stand for and what it means to work with innovate around education, trying to get to a better place in the future. So I think, yeah, it's a it's a real great example.

Nick · 21:50Great example. And you know, have we spoken this, but how many times do you hear people say that run businesses? I've got too many clients. I need to increase my fees. I'm not sure I should do that. People will drop off. They increase their fees. No one drops off. So, you know, having a really strong identity and brand, absolute no-brainer. I love this la this next one. It was use constraints to innovate.

Jason · 22:13So because of the word innovate?

Nick · 22:16Yeah, you could think that. What he was referring to is there's there's new rules in F1 now around budgets. Yep. And you know they're they're they're trying to make it a level playing field, not just who's got the most money wins. So there's budgets around what they can spend in certain areas. So they have to they have to be really innovative on how they're spending their money and you know what productivity and and and efficiencies are they gaining. I thought that was awesome and where we've used that in more recent times is forecasting budgets. Next year, the year after, even 2028, 2029, one of the young guys came over with a budget this morning. Wow. It's building into those budgets the what ifs. Yep. So that's a really cool budget If we continue just to roll along like we are. But what if we have a curveball hit us, whether it's legislation, uh, whether it's you know losing a really top performer in our business. Let's start to think defensive now and let's pull back the performance and can we still get the required result on the bottom line? So that's what I took from that. Um they're talking about You know, having less money to spend, so needing to think outside the box. Um so I think there's a few ways you could think about that, but that's the first thing that came to mind for me, thinking about the disasters, because they happen. Yeah. Like they happen all the time, whether you like it or not. So you've got to make sure your business can be stable through those yeah through those times.

Jason · 23:51And constraints create focus because if you've got limited resources, you you need to laser focus on how you're gonna spend it and You know, many, many business examples around what they spend on, yeah, marketing or subscriptions. And all of a sudden when you focus in on it and look at it and go, well, what if we had to chop that down? Or what if we have to save some money there and we put some constraints on on a business? And they end up, yeah, finding a way to innovate. They come out the other side of it stronger with more cash on the bottom line. So I like it.

Nick · 24:16You'll love this next one because you're an AI man. Um and given we're in 2026, leverage data but trust people. So it's pretty powerful. So technology provides insight, but human judgment and experience make winning decisions. Yeah. Now I think that is relevant for a one, two, three person band and a four hundred person band because What's measured is managed. We've heard that said a thousand times. With all the tools we've got at our disposal today, and we look at the different CRMs, you can measure everything. Your conversion rates, where your leads are coming from. what type of clients are converting. So without having data driving your decisions, you are so far behind the eight ball uh in sati in society today. Because most people, you know, whether they're in sales or any kind of role, you want to focus your energy where it needs to be focused.

Jason · 25:09Yeah.

Nick · 25:09And how do you know where to focus that if you don't know what kind of um what kind of result you're getting from your current actions. So being able to change, change tactic, drive human behavior, you need to know how things are working. So the more data you can get in your business or the more visuals you can get over results, the better at any level.

Jason · 25:31Yeah. I like that it says leverage data, but the the word trusting people, like the human judgment to make that decision and then act fast on it. I think that's You know, in all of this talk of AI and everything going on in the world, what we need to focus on is doubling down on the human part, the empathy, the decision making, our actual extra layer of understanding what we can do with that data. So I think uh, you know, you can put all of the data on a dashboard, but the human instinct and then the decision to actually go for it. Yeah. You then you've got to back yourself and and you wanna win.

Nick · 26:01For sure. And as your business gets bigger, and it doesn't have to be an F1 an F1 team, it can be a team of ten. But as your business does get bigger, the impact that that data has is bigger. So when you've got Ten salespeople hypothetically that can move in a certain or can pivot in a certain way based on data from the last two months, the impact you can have is far bigger. um than what you would if you had a one or two person band. So the bigger your business gets, the more you will rely on data. So having that mentality from the start um I think is paramount. Yep.

Jason · 26:38Spot on

Nick · 26:39And the final one is combine proven performers with rising stars. Now, I think if you have a plan to grow a business, you definitely need to think about this. If I think about Innovate in its current state, we've got some real high achievers from a sales point of view. And we've got two or three younger people newer to the industry that are that are coming through. What we're seeing now is the high performers creating a blueprint in our industry. to get to the levels they're at. So um I'll talk in loan settlements per per annum 'cause this this will help um help help you understand what I'm saying. But generally in our business, uh an expectation from a minimum point of view is $50 to 60 million per year in settlements You've then got uh brokers who can do 100 million, and there's probably three or four of those. We've then got some outliers that are pushing to 150 million plus.

Jason · 27:40Wow.

Nick · 27:41Now, what those outliers are doing is they're making us create new systems and processes and layers of support to help them get there. So we're creating a blueprint for our 50 to 60 million brokers to get to 150 million plus. So we know exactly how to train them. If they want to get to that level that the high performance are The road's already there, they've just got to follow it. So I think for me, that was very relative in our business, and we're still considered a an SME. um, you know, with the level of staff we've got, but it's giving these proven performers the ability to grow. To create the blueprint for the young rising stars to follow. And then they can also see that it's it's it's possible, it's it's feasible. There's case studies in your business. um where high achievers have done volume that you may never think you could do. So it's been really relevant for us, particularly in the last two years.

Jason · 28:43Yeah, I like that one too in a sense of the what then flows for me is succession planning. Like, you know, essentially if one of the if one day one of those high performers wants to go off and do whatever they're gonna do, you've still got the succession planning of the the next gen coming through that are learning from them and