Building New Zealand's First Al Unicorn | 3-Day Strategy Retreat BTS

we got some just some rocks some regular old ugly rocks and we put them in the can we closed the can up and he turned this motor on he said come back tomorrow and I came back the next day we opened the can and we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks that's always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they're passionate about is that it's through the team through that group of incredibly Talent people bumping up against each other having arguments having fights sometimes making some noise and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas and what comes out are these really beautiful Stones all right so we are just about to

head off to our official Clarity day for the year and so that we're going out to W hicki Island and I want to take you guys on a journey with us um of me and my team and the core team that I work with um getting out and ready setting our clear goals for this year um and also spending time doing a bit of team building Etc so I've got a little backback packed here and now I'm going to shoot into the office um catch up with the team um and then at 3:00 p. m. and 4 hours from now we'll be taking a theory over to whye so I'm going to be taking along the whole thing so a bit of behind the scenes action for you today destination I'm trying to catch train before has to leave the station packing no bags nothing but the cloth back with a conac let me Si trying to relax red wine up in my glass plus fet Min I got an army right up under me I'm gang as this is when is proba pull that CH videos on the street and someone recognized the morning side logo on a shirt and asked for a job he's a devop engineer you me I need a c yeah I mean I don't know what what's going on what all five of us are that oh c all be mine all we got is memories so what the [ __ ] is time this is what we call our Clarity day so

we have the entire day tomorrow blocked out for me and the uh the senior leadership team the whole point is for clarity to get everyone clear and aligned on the same goals end of year goal is the most significant thing that we're really working towards and where we want to be and we work back from there to get our quarterly goals and then that split into sort of our monthly checkins and also weekly scorecard checkins as well and it's a chance for us as a team to get away to uh this beautiful part of the country it's a nice excuse to uh get a nice Airbnb on the company and um spend a bit of time together all as a team outside of the sort of official work setting loosen up a bit as well I'm very excited to be taking you on this next few days with us and uh yeah let's get

to if we're going to do it we probably like pump it way the that's what I'm saying you wouldn't you just do a mini tester thank you boys you know BR J like a agre and the cuz you want a piece of the all that [ __ ] is bleeding me

be quiet today like David Eden BR content that you should serve to you st this when I found it for the search engine top a build five things every build should you get it now we try

move um I said these two sales schs so uh inside AI both of them pretty much interested in consultancy one of the guys was South African guy essentially works with Bahrain C Abu dhabi's tourism agencies and does all the dashboarding for them and they've essentially B Reigns come to them and said hey we've got a budget that's allocated for AI over the next year um we're essentially looking at our vendors for potential proposals here and so they're obviously scrambling for okay can we implement it into these dashboards that we've got um or you know is there also something else that we can do in terms of just partnering with someone to be able to provide consultancy and just C in the ticket on it so his main issue is same sort of thing right it's like it's us case identification and see it's s education um but main use case identification what can we actually do what's going to be feasible what's the ROI and what's the cost and so I said to him I was like well perfect this is consultency rundown gave him that whole spel um and said pretty much let's just get on a call so I've got a call with me n Tara him uh and his partner and essentially just jump on there and just do 45 minute brainstorming session first of all on what we can Implement in your s and then potentially also him dying to byrain and being like hey I've got this company that does these consultancies they could come in and do it for the whole department or the whole agency um so we've got that and then you've got the second one which was this guy essentially who was developer he seems like he an engineer um and was working with Fortune 50 companies so like big [ __ ] companies M and he started off an a agency unfortun your videos and um he essentially has working with this guy he wouldn't say who he is but he is got a fish that's too big and he can't cook and eat it all himself that's it and so it's a big sales coach that apparently likeing for Tony Robins he's essentially got the same thing right it's like use case identification and then development he wants us to be the development Partners on it um and then he also needs help obiously with use case stuff so he's going to try his gig at this use case identification tomorrow with this guy for 45 minutes I was like uh look I've got this consultant sold Nick out the wi was like why don't you just have n stand on the call just in case he needs you need any help like oh perfect so next going to sit out and the 4 of him tomorrow while he's talking to this client and then help him out the use case stuff and then that's enough easy stuff for us is obviously just provide consultency service to them to be able to identify Solutions and develop it off the back but it's like this whole thing is likez I like an hourong session with Nar K there is a [ __ ] ton of demand for the use case side at the moment bro like especially on SS it's like an instantly for example it's like you come into instantly you charge 30 grand and it's like okay this is every place that you can essentially Implement AI into your SS I don't I just how the hell are these dudes in the software game and they need help to figure this like they can't figure it out they can't figure out where to implement this stuff and if you look back at morning side AI leads a lot of it is like we just want to have a conversation about how we can use Ai and like that s there so I was thinking of taking every morning SED request that we've got which is probably 3,000 over the past 2 years and just reaching out to them and just saying hey this is what we're doing we just opened up this consultancy arm if you want essentially a 45 minute free Discovery call on how you could potentially Implement an business MH and then just booking the hell out of theara and then just using that as Discovery Well and that's also our kind of product Market fit exploration thing like figing out what they that's the survey okay so I'm just going to continue to book these calls as many as I can um we'll reach out to your guys I was going to put an IG story up on your side just of like hey this is who we're calling an Out book a call here yeah um yeah but it is interesting maybe it is a little bit more not Enterprise level but maybe it's like that midmarket level where it's not F offer mhm yeah I mean at least you get started but I mean if we try to go to some fully like productized service model immediately it is going to be a bit of a stretch I'd say um so yeah I mean if we can just start having more conversations what are you thinking for like pricing on that stuff just going to be like I mean was just saying that he's got another guy that he just had coffee with this weekend in La that's pretty much what we're trying to do consultancy AR consultancy right and he comes from a consultant background and has pretty much gone off they nonprofit came to them and said hey we have a bunch of money to spend on this [ __ ] nonprofits are the ones for we have a bun of money to spend on this [ __ ] um can you just you know provide essenti consulty services identify use cases yeah this is the offer we could do a 3 to 4 week uh engagement and they okay like how much are we talking like with 100K be nothing maybe the price point is there is 50k upwards I mean I think we've just got to feel it out could be on um so what uh what are the next steps from here b as many of these calls as possible you mean two in now I'll do the email Outreach uh we'll do your Instagram we'll reach out to any connections that we've got and then we might even try and craft a bit of a YouTube video where we could do a lead magnet off the back of it to then try and get people to sign up and book a call and just Discovery call just didn't think about what it will look like so [ __ ] ton of Discovery call what do we pitch them on at the end of the discovery call if they're fit and what do we Define as a fit I think what we'll do is we'll just like pretty much build a bit of a waiting on the stor right and so just try and get like as many opportunities as possible what learn about the company fill out a bit of a notion database or something on like what they need what they like basically what they need and how we just see where it go we'll just sort of let the opportunities come in and then down from there but um yeah right let's get into this uh right so we're going to start our Clarity date um Josh you you've kind of put together most of us so maybe you can give a better thing when we're out there but um uh Clarity day doing a full day workshop with the team actually we've had to take the first few hours in the morning it's 11:00 a. m. now for everyone to get caught up on the work um make sure the wheels are still moving and now we're getting into um yeah s those 3 year one year and then um our quarterly goals so let's get into it

what we're going to be analyzing here is a ini to running a 3year plan right so this is obviously fine following this Ryan dice method um he instead of I think a typical startup culture probably it's usually like 10 year plan and one year plan and obviously your 10year plan is okay this is what we're inition this is what we want to get to unicorn status Etc and then they go one year one year and as he details it's just there's too much uncertainty in that and there's not enough data to be able to back up you think that's actually meaningful and so instead what you're doing is you go 3 years okay this is one we want to be in 3 years it's short enough where obviously you can set a reasonable Target uh but it's not long enough where you're just going into delusion land and so what we'll do is we'll figure out what that three-year plan looks like which is sort of Step One where do we want to be and then essentially from there we'll start to break it down what we'll do going forward is break down into quarters right so every quarter we meet and you break down okay these are the initiatives for this quarter Etc so tomorrow we'll do all the quarter stuff today essentially what we're focusing on is these next three years so it's sort of split into a few different things um one is sort of what our overarching goal is right and it's going to be Revenue wise we've got sort of strategic pillars in there as well we've got what our core sort of competitive advantages are there's a bunch of other uh probably like four different aspects to it which will sort of go through in stages man you might take this away it's going to get distracting yeah I agree all right so four types of values core values they're the inherent traits of the company they're what makes our company out pretty much so they what draw people in and they essentially rep the people that we don't want so they're generally accepted standards of behavior we recruit we train and we Fire based off these like I'm waiting like I'm watching put sty to these guys so we know what to Star is it thr a star not seen one of those you get to the point to star that one down signature [ __ ] slowly no no no oh do it real slow like take your time got start aeven got like a 3 to 10 ratio start with a c okay freaking belly distracted yeah distracted one of all right so that has

been day one that's uh the first big chunk of work done we made a lot of progress which is great but we've got clear things down like our uh clear goals and financial goals for 3 years from now we've got our clear mission statement set and we have identified our strategic anchors in terms of what are our unique strategic advantages versus others in our Markus so for that it's really important for tomorrow when we go into laying out our options and then prioritizing those into what we should tackle on like a per quarter basis particularly for this quarter and then also for this year and really leaning into those strategic aners that we've identified as these are our significant Edge versus competitors let's try to lean more into those and really harness them rather than try to compete in areas that people are able to replicate us and so we've had a great day the some stuff for us making the most of the break and the paer now we're going to head to a winery called mudr one of the nicest ones here um for a bit of wine and D should be nice way to finish off the evening then maybe a little bit of uh what's it called pain P sting pong sting P sting pong before B and then uh and then back into it tomorrow so you'll see a bit of that

now see the love run right out of you moments like these are golden never felt so even if I'm Dreaming with you breath my and kiss me there cuz I'm a little cold but I won up with you hard up my chest when you couldn't laugh yeah I'm a little cold but I up with you

all right so we're getting into day two now 3 days we've been in total but day two of these actual workshops um and this is getting clear on our quarterly plan as looking back over the last quarter and seeing how we did um where we mastered the mark and where we were doing really well and uh it's really key for us now to be setting our priorities so this is uh setting our key objectives and that means we're going to be getting all of the ideas out cuz everyone everyone's always got a lot of ideas about what they're department or whatever Department should be doing I mean me particularly I'm always like we should do this this this uh but it is a case of prioritization of making sure that you're not uh taking on too much at once um because if you pulled in all directions what's the quote it's like most businesses die from indigestion rather than starvation so um we're definitely not going to starve we're more likely to take on too much or more than we can handle and end up uh dying of indigestion really important for us today to get all the ideas out on the board in light of the recent performance then to prioritize on a per Department basis the initiative that we're actually going to be taking action on breaking that down to probably two or three that we in each department that we expect to be done by the end of the quarter so that we can say okay let's it's like how do you eat elephant it's one bite at a time we've got so much you want to achieve in the next 3 years which have just laid out it's really just breaking that elephant down into bite-sized chunks and say okay this quarter we're working on these different areas um and then we can set new goals for the next quarter making sure that we're on track we also need to be setting our Northstar metrics which are metrics that are specific to this quarter that we really trying to focus on um so that's really key to identify where our attention is on this quarter so should be another good session um the boys are all um had a really good night last night at uh at mudbrook and we're really get going get today so we get in there now I think the

grow from October to November is strange should have been more growth in that period I think that's probably like the concerning thing is um and we didn't have that and I think that probably comes down to that YouTube strategy changing up that was just a bit of a shift period um and then October was probably a cracker for cuz I think if you look at September there was a massive [ __ ] jump from SE September October so October I think technically was a really good that's what it comes down to who's actually one who's planning if we need product or not that's your job shouldn't be his job is essentially to sit there and film it and also to write them is that done or do we expect it to be continued all righty so that wraps up

the 3-day little Clarity Retreat we've had out here which has been really very productive um uh I've enjoyed it a lot as of the rest of the guys uh I've got a lot of work done which is great uh now I've got Clarity for our three-year goals our oneyear goals and what specifically prioritizing this quarter and things like our strategic anch is what really differentiates our business and is makes us unique and our really our Mo against other competitors and people in the space so um it's been super productive um you guys would have seen some of the non extracurricular activities we get up to um which has also been great for team building and just being a to relax a bit outside of the formal setting we have in our office now um so we're just about to shoot off on the FY back to Oakland and then we'll be back into work for the rest of this week and next Monday having a check-in basically we take a lot of our meetings on Monday just to really sink up about the week and also to check in on our quarterly and monthly goals so on Monday F1 who's been given a responsibility or something that we're working on for this quarter has to present a plan on that Monday um of how we're supposed to execute on that so we've all got a bit of work for the rest of the week and over the weekend I'm uh I've really enjoyed it I think you guys would have seen some of the shots of how beautiful it is out here um super uh yeah just lot of nature so it's been really cool um just to hang out with the guys um work and also Garden have dinner and stuff like that so I think we'll find uh some justification for doing this again in the near future um maybe not why hiy maybe somewhere else but yeah I hope you guys enjoyed that bit of a behind the scenes of myself and my team and uh the stuff that we get up to um particularly on these Retreats and stuff like that be doing some more content like this um within the next month or so uh stay tuned for that and aside from that I'll leave you with a bit of a montage Feelgood Montage kind of like the last video um which you haven't watched that already about why we came back to New Zealand and sort of gave up the whole Dubai thing I will link that up in the corner here and also put it in the description below so yeah I'll see you in the next

one don't want to fall asleep i' rather fall in love when I can't feel you I feel out of touch 2 seconds without you like two months don't to close my eyes I'm SC don't want to fall asleep but rather fall in love cuz eternity with you long enough don't want to close I'm scar too I