The AI Revolution: Why Early Adopters Will Win Big (with Fergal O’Connor)

25:48Jeannette Linfoot:And it's something that a lot of people struggle with, I think. You know, they take it very personally and they really, you know, they stay down for quite a long time. Whereas what you've just described there is your ability to just kind of process it. okay let's let's move on let's regroup yeah exactly and and I think you have to

26:04Fergal O'Connor:be like that you know if you're if you're trying to build something that is genuinely global and disruptive then you're not going to get there probably in the first second third fourth attempt of what you're trying to do and we've had like hundreds of failures along along the route and we're only ten years in business so like we've we've made hundreds of mistakes and but you learn from those mistakes and the failures are actually the foundations of the success then because you understand where what has happened what's gone wrong you analyze it you make sure you don't make the same mistakes again and I think it's really important as well to have a network of people who have failed yeah like you know I I will always talk to people that like things went wrong in their business so tell me where it went wrong like what did you learn from that like failure that you had because that's more important than the success you know you can listen all day long to people have had success after success and you really learn anything from them probably not whereas it's the people that have said that say to me look we did this in our business please don't do that in your business yeah as we like it's it cost us like two years of like growth or it cost us a million quid in like investment that we blew or whatever so learning from those failures I think is much more important than they're just continually hearing about the success that people have because you know that gets a bit boring and a little bit say you know blowing their own trumpet kind of stuff yeah and but at the same time there's no learning from it you know and I go into meetings when I'm showing people our platform and I'll say to them, I know you're going to probably want to tell me all the good things about the platform, but please tell me where my baby is ugly.

27:35Fergal O'Connor:I want to know the ugly baby bits because it's by understanding where the things that are wrong with the platform, whether that's from a process perspective, you know, oh, we don't do our job that way, we do it this way. Oh, that's interesting because now we can change the process and the product to fit what you do or we wouldn't look at a report that way we'd look at it this way so like all the things that are wrong in the in the in the platform and the business are actually the things that get you to success eventually in the business so whereas if people keep telling you yeah it's great it's fantastic it's wonderful you eventually run up against a brick wall and you don't know why yeah and and it's it's much more important I think from a business growth perspective and building a business perspective that you hear those things as early as possible and you understand the challenges that you have within the business and the product as early as possible so you can solve them because otherwise you get to a point where you run out of money and you go what happened

28:25Jeannette Linfoot:yeah yeah absolutely I mean it's similar with mentoring isn't it you know I was I always say get yourself a great mentor or a coach but you know someone that's been there they've made their mistakes yeah so that then they can you know hopefully support you so you don't make the same mistakes and learn from other people and do you have you ever had do you have mentors coaches is Virgil in your kind of professional life?

28:48Fergal O'Connor:Like it would have been one of the things, and again, I don't know whether it was like just purely by chance, but it was just like I'm someone that always reaches out to people that when I see someone that's either done something good or bad that I reach out to them and say, look, could I have a chat with you?

29:00Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah. Could I have a coffee with you?

29:02Fergal O'Connor:Could I bring you out to lunch or whatever and just talk to you about that? I saw you on a podcast. I saw you speaking at an event. I thought it was really interesting what you said. We're at this kind of stage of our business. You had your business at this stage. I'd love to hear how you got yours from here to there and or you had this massive failure like how can you teach me anything about how to avoid doing that in the future so I will always reach out to people if I hear something read something so one of our advisors that's been in the business for maybe five or six years I saw on a panel and I heard her talking about her business and how she'd scaled it and grew the business and the things that were important for her when she was scaling the business and I immediately just linked in with her sent her message on LinkedIn said I saw you talking to this panel can I bring you out for coffee because I've got a few questions and she's been with the business for five years as my mentor and the business mentor so I and I would constantly do that and I'd encourage anyone that's kind of either growing a business whatever stage you're at in terms of life stage or business stage you never know it all there's there's always someone else that has a different perspective and that can teach you things and and I feel that life in general is it like a learning experience you're just going it's like a science experiment and you're just going through things you're testing things you're blowing stuff up and and they will work sometimes and they don't work other times and if you can learn through that process and grow through that process that's what the whole journey of life is about whether it's just personal or business well exactly and the messy bits

30:23Jeannette Linfoot:is is the life isn't it you know it's all I saw from where where the kind of the gems really are hidden and I think to have that pragmatism and that ability to reach out and just ask because generally I always think people do want to help you know and but so often people are almost afraid to ask well I always say if you don't ask you don't get do you hundred percent you know and you might get a no or this oh it's busy now right now okay that's fine but you know maybe later but if you don't ask in the first place then you're never gonna know

30:50Fergal O'Connor:100 % I think the other thing and I don't know if you've come across this Jeanette but people afraid to share their ideas because the thing people's got gonna steal them and so I've had lots of people reach out to me because they see where we're at in terms of the business or early stage businesses would would reach out to me and say, can I have a sit down with you and talk about where we're going with the business? And I'd say, well, share with me what you're doing. What's the business idea? What's the technology you're building? Who's your customer? What's your business plan? What's your marketing plan?

31:20Fergal O'Connor:Et cetera, et cetera. And they go, I couldn't tell you all that.

31:23Jeannette Linfoot:But they want you to tell them all your stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

31:26Fergal O'Connor:I don't want to share that with you because we're a bit worried that someone might steal our idea. And I was always, there's actually, again, another mentor that told me, don't be afraid to share your idea. People are too busy with their own stuff going on. They don't really care about yours. They're not trying to steal your ideas. Everyone is selfish and they've got their own little track that they're in at the time. And you sharing an idea with them, they're not suddenly going to go, oh, I'm going to completely change my life now and steal this idea and build this business because they're doing their own stuff.

31:53Fergal O'Connor:So I'd also encourage people to share their ideas with mentors or people that they think can give them advice because that's what I did and that's what I suppose helped me also to get to where we are today by sharing that idea and not being afraid that someone was going to steal us like we've been told since the start of the business you Google or just build your business and you'll be gone yeah and that was ten years ago we're still here I'm growing and the fourth fastest growing business

32:16Jeannette Linfoot:in Ireland may we say not just growing in any kind of incremental way here but so I think the other thing as well as you were talking what was bringing to my was not only about sharing ideas and don't worry about people stealing ideas, but I think also a lot of people are afraid to put themselves out in the world. Now, I know you sit on a lot of panels, you're out there doing your PR and you're interviewing and everything, so you do put yourself out to the world. And I think a lot of people are kind of afraid what people are going to say or think. They're afraid of judgment. And I've always, the approach I've taken, especially since I came out of corporate, was to say, well, people are going to judge you anyway.

32:55Fergal O'Connor:For sure. They are, because that's just human nature.

32:57Jeannette Linfoot:So you may as well put yourself out in the world for something that's important to you, that you stand for. But have you ever struggled to kind of make that jump into being out there in the public arena, putting yourself up for questioning and panels and stuff? Or has it always kind of just come naturally to you?

33:17Fergal O'Connor:No, it doesn't come naturally to me at all. Right, interesting. So I would be, my natural state is introverted and shy.

33:24Jeannette Linfoot:Is it? So people would be surprised to hear that.

33:27Fergal O'Connor:So I would prefer to be in a little dark room on my own with nobody else around.

33:32Jeannette Linfoot:In the corner, rocking. Do you want to cuddle? That means cuddle in Welsh, cuddle. Sorry, my husband's Welsh.

33:40Fergal O'Connor:So my natural state would be a very shy person, very introverted person, naturally. and I wouldn't necessarily be doing this if I had the choice to do it and I wouldn't necessarily be put myself on panels or talking etc etc but it's not me it's for the business and it's not me it's for the team that are behind me that have to that I'm trying to you know we've got lots of mouths to feed we've got a business to grow and and a lot of the way that we can do that successfully is for me to get out in front of people talk about what we do from a business perspective talk about the mission and the vision of the business and hopefully through me doing that then it helps the business to grow and so what I've had to do over the years is to like almost become like this other persona of like from my natural state of like not wanting to be putting myself forward so and I come across that a lot you know people who come to me go how do you do that how do you get up and stand I actually find it easier to stand up and talk to like a room of 400 people than I do to have a one-on-one conversation sometimes with people because it's just it's you become used to it and you become trained in it and it's it's almost like you're desensitizing yourself to like this situation so like um when i when i was doing my wedding speech right i could barely speak right and i was in a room full of like people that were my friends and relations but i was like almost like frozen with like fear and nervousness and i couldn't speak and then when i obviously got into business and i got more into my career i realize that you know you have to be putting yourself out there like for you to to for the business to be successful and for me to be successful and for people to be successful in their career they have to put themselves out there and be front and center or whether you're the voice or the the leader of the business you have to be putting yourself out there and you and so what I did is just created this persona of myself of this like someone who's really good at public speaking someone who's not worried about standing in front of three or four hundred people and I can get up and speak about it but that takes time yeah And the more you do it, it's like a muscle.

35:38Fergal O'Connor:It's like building up a muscle. The more you do it, the better the muscle becomes. And now for me, as I say, it's more natural for me to stand up in front of a room full of hundreds of people than it is to sometimes maybe just have a normal conversation with some people, you know? Which is a bit weird, but it is just the way I've built that kind of persona of I am the public speaking voice leader of this business and that's just what I have to do. and so like I will constantly be pushing myself to get on panels to get taught leadership pieces to get speaking opportunities even though I absolutely at one stage couldn't speak yeah you know so I would encourage people to do it and I know people I say people have come to me and said how do you do it because I could never do that and and there's never I can never do that because it's always just a training and just getting yourself in front of people and desensitizing yourself to these situations it's a bit like having some sort of phobia about something you just have to kind of do it push yourself out there and you'll eventually get there to the point where you uh you become more comfortable with it yeah i mean

36:38Jeannette Linfoot:that's really encouraging because someone that's watching this maybe listening to this might be you know a more quieter introverted type of personality and you know the fact that you can you've done it and can do it and still continue to do it you know it does give encouragement to other people to say you know you can do this because otherwise i suppose you know you're the best kept secret and this isn't about you as an individual it's about the business you know If your clients or future clients can't see how you can help, well, then you're doing them a disservice as well, right? So I think that that's a good perception to sort of say, let's just get out there and give it a go.

37:12Jeannette Linfoot:I always say, well, how bad can it be?

37:14Fergal O'Connor:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

37:15Jeannette Linfoot:Is anyone going to die in this process?

37:18Fergal O'Connor:Exactly. And if not, it's fine.

37:21Jeannette Linfoot:Anything else you can cope with. You know, you might fall off the stage. You might get your words wrong. Someone might heckle you from the back. But first world problems, really, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.

37:30Fergal O'Connor:And I found it, Justin, you mentioned training earlier on. I found training really helpful with that as well. So we would have been part of accelerator programs as we were starting to build a business. And part of that was, you know, you have to learn how to pitch. So you have to learn how to pitch your business. And I would have been a fairly good salesperson. And again, maybe, again, the sales persona was different from my normal persona. So when I'd get on the phone trying to sell advertising to people, I was not me. I was another person that was selling the advertising to people and actually my kids mentioned as well that you you when I come off the phone oh you had your uh you had your business

38:03Jeannette Linfoot:voice on there I saw you got your posh voice on yes so there is a but there is an element of that

38:12Fergal O'Connor:like you build up this persona of this person but with the training piece when we were on one of the

38:17Jeannette Linfoot:accelerator programs they had acting coaches yeah that came in and taught us how to act and stand

38:22Fergal O'Connor:and speak and breathe and learn scripts and all of that training piece as well was hugely important for that development of that persona as well because you step into almost like an acting role. So you're not necessarily yourself when you're standing up in front of someone but you're the actor that you want to portray in front of that audience. So the training piece is hugely important.

38:41Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah, but I will say you are still you.

38:46Fergal O'Connor:You know what I mean?

38:47Jeannette Linfoot:So it's not that all of a sudden you morph into this completely different character because that would just be a bit weird, right? But actually, you know, I think it's also being able to kind of still be furgle. The essence is there. And, you know, your values are still there. Your character is still there. Your humour is very much a part of kind of how you communicate as well, isn't it, and bring people with you. So it's that balance, isn't it? You know, equipping yourself with the right tools. I mean, I used to do so much public speaking when I was in corporate because you just had to. Yeah, yeah.

39:19Jeannette Linfoot:And I'd had media training. I'd done all of that stuff. You know, what happens if a plane goes down and, you know, you're on the BBC and you've got, you know, all this kind of stuff normally around disaster and kind of risk. So I'd done all of that stuff. I'd never really been formally trained in public speaking as such. So I did. I went and did a five-day residential course. I then joined an academy for a year. And it just really helped me practice, practice, practice. But also just some of those tools and tactics, the little things. So it's a really good piece of advice for someone who's maybe slightly nervous about this give you you know give yourself a better chance yeah yeah but I think to your point is it's the training with the doing yes you know so the training in isolation is not going to work

40:00Fergal O'Connor:unless you actually have to go out and do it yeah because you can be trained up to the the neck on like how to do it yeah but if you're actually not putting into practice then it'll never like come

40:09Jeannette Linfoot:true so I think you have to be doing both together definitely definitely which which again comes back to you know just kind of taking a you know a deep breath it's like when you decide to start the business there was a moment in time when you went okay we're gonna do this yeah

40:21Fergal O'Connor:yeah yeah exactly yeah well our acting coach would have told us to blow out actually not a deep breath oh so if you if you if you just about just as you're about to do your speech yeah most people's instinct is to go and that actually makes you more nervous so before you do your speech is what's go

40:38Jeannette Linfoot:and it just takes it all out and relaxes you but you're right getting state isn't it yeah exactly and just those few moments even even in in a meeting when you just need to buy yourself just a couple of seconds yeah yeah that breath yeah and stuff so you may be like this could be another business for you so in terms of the sort of the broader tech world obviously AI which is part of your business but you know your business has been around for a long time 10 years anyway what are you seeing as being the most kind of interesting exciting tech development because AI is the buzzword but I mean you're you're deeply in this in this world what are you seeing that's coming up that's like really like wow okay this is going to be the next frontier if you

41:32Fergal O'Connor:like pass what we've got today I talk I maybe go back to some of the AI stuff but some of the the quantum stuff is is going to be really interesting so if they can crack that that's going to be a real game changer in the technology space so explain that in layman's terms so it's well I'll do I'm not a quantum

41:50Jeannette Linfoot:scientist exactly I'll do my best and but it's basically a way to accelerate

41:54Fergal O'Connor:you know the compute power of traditional computers at the moment so there's a quantum computing which can basically do stuff much much faster like that's in essence the simple way to put it yeah so if you look at AI you know people are worried about the amount of like energy that AI is consuming with each kind of query that goes through, quantum will basically negate all of that because it's a much more efficient way of doing it. But quantum can be used in a number of different areas from like cybersecurity to financial fintech to social media. There's a lot of areas that it can be applicable to.

42:26Fergal O'Connor:The challenge is that it's a very difficult technology to get into a solid state. But if they can crack that, that's gonna be I think the next kind of wave of like really interesting technology and really interesting products that come out of that quantum space. But for us in the AI space, what we're seeing is a lot of stuff around interaction with AI. So, you know, speaking to an AI. So we have an initial feature that we've rolled out to some of our clients at the moment, which is like a talking avatar of their customer. So it's built with all of the data that their customer has. So like the behaviors, the attitudes, the consumption behavior, the media behavior of their cohort of customers.

43:12Fergal O'Connor:And because you have all that data then and because we now have generative AI that can turn that data into a conversation, we can almost like build the brain of an avatar with this data. And so that avatar can speak to you as if it's your customer. It's almost like speaking to a focus group. So that bit is really interesting for us, that interaction, that human interaction with AI and data, making a conversation, making it feel human even though it's a bit creepy. So there's that creepy cool element to it. And then the other piece that we're really excited about is the agentic AI. So it's how do you take a process that is currently very manual and involves people.

43:51Fergal O'Connor:So in our instance it's buying and selling media. So you have normally a media planner on one side, you have a media company on the other side and the media planner is negotiating with the media company on whether it's rates or inventory. So it's a very manual process. So the opportunity that agentic AI brings is that you create an agentic AI buyer. So the agent is now an AI agent talking to a media company. So no longer is there a human talking to a human. It's now an AI agent talking to a human. And then the next step of our journey is that you actually have an agentic AI buyer and an agentic AI seller.

44:27Fergal O'Connor:So we build out the media companies, sellers, with the marketing team, buyers, and now you've got two agents that are actually, two AI agents that are actually negotiating with each other. And so the outcome of that is obviously then there's a human oversight on it. But in terms of that, let's say that process for a human perspective could take three weeks of back and forth negotiation that happens instantaneously with the data between the two agents. so you're getting that kind of like here's the here's the final inventory plan with the pricing on it and then a human just looks at it and goes yes we can approve that or no we need to change that so that's a really interesting piece from us because if you can actually control the buying and the selling side for an industry then you kind of own that industry and so that's a really a huge opportunity if we can make that happen between the two sides i mean it sounds futuristic but

45:18Jeannette Linfoot:But it's not that far away, is it? This stuff is happening now to a certain degree.

45:23Fergal O'Connor:There are customer service AI agents that are answering kind of like 80 % of customer service calls at the moment. And the challenge is not the technology, the challenge is the psychology. So the technology is there to do it, just the psychology of people wanting to engage with these AIs, whatever we call them, its or he's or hers or whatever it is. Not binary. Yeah, exactly, is the challenge. And that's the challenge that we find with our platform as well. The technology is never an issue. We can build whatever we need to build. It's the fear of humans to actually embrace it. And sometimes our platform is called a black box.

46:03Fergal O'Connor:So we just have to trust your black box. And so it's that fear of the unknown of what's happening inside the black box from an AI perspective and whether that's relevant, effective, efficient, then that's the human element of it. But the technology is never going to be, I think, a stumbling block. It's the human element that's going to be the challenge.

46:23Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah, I was at this Festival of Entrepreneurs a couple of weeks ago and Piers Linney was on stage talking. He has an AI business. And in fact, I'm interviewing him. So Piers Linney, Dragon, Dragon's Den, right. Serial entrepreneur, but actually his background's in financial, so his banking, really. and lots of interesting things. But interestingly, he was talking just about, he said, AI today is the worst it's ever going to be. So you might have in your mind as a business owner or an entrepreneur that you would like it to do X and it might not be there right now or it might still be a bit clunky and maybe not perfect, but you've got to remember, it's the worst it's ever going to be now.

47:04Fergal O'Connor:Absolutely.

47:05Jeannette Linfoot:And it's only going to, so I thought that was quite an interesting concept. So I'm interviewing him in a couple of weeks. So it'll be cool to see his perspective on some of this stuff. But I was also... The other thing, sorry, just on that, Jeanette,

47:15Fergal O'Connor:it's also the level of growth is exponential with AI. And the level of learning is exponential with AI. And that's what kind of makes it slightly different from other technologies that have been transformational for businesses. So let's say we talk about the internet or mobile or whatever it might be. You could kind of let the internet play out for a couple of years and then you could develop a website and you could say, okay, now I'm online. The challenge for a lot of businesses now with AI is the learning is exponential. So the quicker that the data goes into your AI, so if you've got an AI within your business, the learning that you get from feeding that data as early as possible means that you're getting ahead of your competition.

47:56Fergal O'Connor:And it's sometimes described as like the cruise ship leaving the shore. So you're running up to try and catch the cruise ship, but it's kind of moving out, and you're never going to be able to catch it because it's moving quicker and quicker away from you. And it's a bit like that with AI. if businesses now don't kind of embrace it and get involved in it now they're going to find themselves really left behind yeah and it's going to be hugely difficult for them to catch up man particularly if you're in a really competitive environment so if you're dealing in let's say an industry that has a hundred different competitors and 50 of those have gone down the AI route and they've totally embraced it and their business is learning really really fast from all this AI data and learning that they're getting into the business the other 50 businesses are in our opinion probably never going to catch up and probably will be gone within the next five or ten years.

48:37Fergal O'Connor:So it's really important, I think, for businesses to understand that this isn't something that you can just kind of say, let's see how it goes. You know, we're a bit sceptical of it at the moment, but let's see how it goes. And maybe in three or four years' time, when we're ready for it, we'll then start to embrace some of these tools and these technologies. The challenge then is that your competitors have gone so far ahead of you that it's going to be impossible for you to catch up.

49:00Jeannette Linfoot:Well, not just your competitors, but the sector you're in. and also the customer expectations. I mean, look how impatient we are. If something doesn't load within a couple of seconds, you're like, oh, for God's sake. That was never the case. So I think the customer demands will change and the sector that you're in will change. It was interesting because I was talking to a partner of mine that supports us with psychometric profiling in our business and they're doing some really cool stuff. I mean, in the world of recruitment, they have built an AI platform that does C-suite recruitment end to end.

49:39Jeannette Linfoot:So if you think about executive search and headhunters and that sector, he said, and they've literally done their first test, they have 250 applicants and they've just placed a CFO. So to your point, everyone will say it's impossible until it's done. So I think once you've got the case studies and you go, oh, actually, this does work, and I've got a brilliant CFO at the end of that process, then you go, I'm in.

49:59Fergal O'Connor:Exactly. I get it.

50:00Jeannette Linfoot:And I can do it, not a third of the, you know, a typical head center will charge you 30 % of the package of someone's full package. Well, that won't be the case. So it's just going to totally shift, isn't it? So many industries.

50:16Fergal O'Connor:I think the challenge as well is that the race to the bottom from a pricing and an efficiency perspective could be like what businesses need to look out for.

50:24Jeannette Linfoot:Yes.

50:24Fergal O'Connor:Because as AI becomes cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, how does the business protect the margin? So like to your point, if I'm an executive recruitment firm and I'm currently charging £50 ,000 to hire a CFO and then suddenly an AI can do it in half the time or a third of the time or whatever it might be, I can't charge£50 ,000 anymore. So my pricing is going to have to adjust based on the AI that I'm using and based on the competition and what the competition are using. So it's going to be really interesting to see how businesses protect the value in the business and where they can give value to the customers that's outside that time piece and the efficiency piece because AI will wipe that out.

51:04Fergal O'Connor:AI will come in and say now it doesn't take me 800 hours to hire a CFO, it only takes me eight hours to hire a CFO. So now the efficiency has decreased, or the efficiency has increased, but the cost for that service has now decreased substantially. So how do businesses then keep the value in the business and how are they going to kind of create profitable sustainable revenue models within their business yeah without with AI coming into the industry as a whole that's one of the interesting things and the other piece is about kind of junior people coming into businesses now so like if AI is taking out a lot of that yeah kind of

51:38Jeannette Linfoot:entry-level entry-level work yeah yeah how are these kind of people who are

51:42Fergal O'Connor:coming in as interns or apprenticeships coming into the business how are they going to learn the business because AI is doing the job that they would have normally done so how are they getting up into like kind of management level roles because they haven't learned that kind of base level foundation of how the business works. So there's a lot of interesting disruptive things that are going to happen across the industries because of the introduction of a lot of these AI tools.

52:04Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah, I think I was listening to something, I think it was on Radio 5 Live, Wake Up To Money or something, and I think I said something ridiculous like 50 % of jobs today were not in existence six years ago. So I guess we're going to see that but probably turbocharged, but then it's going to create whole new opportunities as well so I guess the point is it's happening so get up get get with it exactly otherwise you're gonna

52:26Fergal O'Connor:be left behind yeah 100 % and I think I think businesses people would it people within businesses and businesses in general need to be more curious about it you know I don't think you can do a bury your head in the sand about this and they need to be curious they need to investigate they need to understand the tools we have this say treaties a model that we kind of work with business you know you have to build up trust with the businesses because if you can build up trust through training so you have to train them and how to use these tools and understand the tools that builds up the trust and then you get traction yeah people then start to embrace them and understand them but if you don't have those kind of treaties in place it's just gonna people are afraid you know and genuinely afraid they're just don't understand it and it's a bit like something new coming in a new piece of technology coming in businesses that are naturally skeptical of it and they want to take a wait and see approach and they don't want to risk take a risk and that's the danger for a lot of businesses that they get left behind.

53:17Jeannette Linfoot:So what would your advice be? So I'm in a business. I know it's here. I'm feeling a bit nervous. I'm worried it's going to disrupt. I don't know where to start. What would your advice be for a small SME, let's say, not a big corporate, to start getting themselves, you know, kind of with the program when it comes to this? What would you recommend?

53:37Fergal O'Connor:I'd say they should do a couple of things, right? So first of all, if they want to bring in someone that just looks at their business overall, So they're looking at like the finance function, the HR function, the sales function, the marketing function, the advertising function. They just look at the business as a whole and look at the processes that that business currently has in place and how they're doing things. And then look at is there an AI tool that can actually, you know, make that bit more efficient, that bit more effective. To do it as a maybe holistic digital transformation AI project within the business and kind of look at the whole business and see are there elements where they could maybe bring in or test some AI tools.

54:13Fergal O'Connor:The other thing then is to maybe do it at a kind of a department level. So they look at an individual department and they say, okay, what does our marketing function look like at the moment? And is it fit for the next five, ten years if all of these super duper AI tools are going to come along? Or is my business in shape to basically ingest these tools or use these tools? And what we find is it's actually not the tools themselves, it's the data that's not right. so all of the AI tools have to use data you know if you don't have data structured and quality data in your business then the AI tool is like going to be useless it's like having a sports car in your driveway and you kind of you can't put any fuel in it's just going you're going to be sitting looking at this beautiful sports car and you're going to have no benefit from it it's the same with AI tools if you bring an AI tool into your business but there's no data to actually fuel the tools then you're going to be wasting money and wasting time with all these projects that are not going to go anywhere so for For us, the first instance that a business should look at is how is our data structured?

55:13Fergal O'Connor:You know, do we have quality data in the business across our HR or finance or marketing or sales? Do we have that data in place in the first place? And if they don't, forget about the AI. You know, there's no point in bringing any AI. So they need to look at the data first and see how that's structured and see if they have good quality data. And if they have that, then it's kind of, okay, can we bring in something that we can actually feed this data into that might give us some insights into the business? So you can take it from two approaches. It's like look at the kind of big project holistic business and transformation Or is there a certain kind of like department within the business that we could look at and maybe use that as a test case Yeah, for some of these AI tools that are out there already

55:50Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah, I love that because it's just very practical advice isn't it? But don't be afraid because it's gonna happen anyway And if you don't you're gonna you're not gonna survive exactly especially if you're a small business I think the other thing I would overlay on to that Fergal is look at the customer journey because depending on the type of business you're in, especially if you're in a service industry, take hospitality as a good example, hotels, right? So there are certain parts of an experience of being in a hotel that absolutely can be automated. You know, the obvious questions, what time's breakfast or whatever, you know, all these things you would have rang down to the front desk or to the concierge or whatever that can absolutely be replaced with AI.

56:29Jeannette Linfoot:But at the same time, people who are wanting experience in a hotel they will value human to human interaction in certain parts of that customer journey so rather than see it as it's just about cost out of the business no it's about a redistribution of your resources as to where does a human element actually you know is really valued by by a by another you know by the client and I think that then allows you to possibly redistribute resources and yes you can take cost out but it allows you therefore to maybe double down on you know the spa experience pretty ai can't give you a massage i don't think so not yet anyway well probably robots will be in the future but you know um or in in the restaurant for example you know how beautiful is it when the chef comes out and you know stands at the table and talks about the menu choices or whatever you know it's a magic moment yeah yeah yeah um so so i think there's that there is this sort of symbiotic uh relationship between tech and people

57:28Fergal O'Connor:The other thing interesting there is because we deal with a lot of hospitality business as well.

57:32Jeannette Linfoot:I know you do.

57:33Fergal O'Connor:What we've been hearing from them is the segmentation bit.

57:37Jeannette Linfoot:Yeah.

57:38Fergal O'Connor:So for someone that's coming in, let's say you're in your mid-50s, 60s, you're visiting Ireland to a hotel, maybe you're coming from America, so you're a tourist thing, you're kind of visiting the homeland and all that kind of stuff. You want that experience, right? You want to feel that, like you want to talk to the Irish person behind the check-in desk and you want them to hear, you want them to say, oh, do you know any of the Kellys from around the town or whatever, you want that kind of human interaction. But if you're a business traveler and you're coming into that hotel and you've got a meeting the next morning, all you want to do is you want to check in, you want to get to bed, you want to get some sleep, you want to get up for your meeting the morning, you don't want any human interaction, you just want a very efficient process.

58:16Fergal O'Connor:So they're actually, they're segmenting in those two different ways. So for the particular customer that wants the human touch and the interaction, they're directing them to the check-in desk with the people behind it but then for the business traveler who just wants check-in in out I got business to do they've got the little portals where they can just do the automatic check-in so it is about not only the thinking about the industry and the customer journey but also the segmentation within the different customer journeys as well because different businesses obviously have different customer segmentations and they have different requirements and etc etc so it's thinking I suppose as well not just about how the technology can help but how it can help the different segments and how it's maybe more important for the business traveler to have that kind of tech efficient seamless interaction yeah than it is for the you know the couple who are visiting home after like 50 years of being away or whatever yeah it's a really good point really

59:07Jeannette Linfoot:good it's fascinating i mean it's such it's such an exciting um industry that you're in and you're obviously changing businesses changing lives for the better and disrupting and of course building a fabulous business for you the team all of your clients as well so you should feel incredibly be proud of what you've achieved. Thank you very much. So I'm going to come to a few final questions if I may. Okay so you'll have had loads of advice over the years maybe some of it not so good maybe some of it very good. I couldn't judge I couldn't say but can you think of some standout advice that's really helped you because you've given loads of advice while we've been talking to people that will be listening but what about advice that you've received that's helped you?

59:47Fergal O'Connor:I've gotten lots of good and lots of bad and one of the things that always sticks in my head and this is more from a founder of a tech business who has to go through a lot of fundraising right and this and it was an investor a roundtable and the investor said to me the most important thing for you to remember as you grow your business is never run out of cash so that's and that's one thing that I've always stuck to like we've been very careful on our cash flow making sure that like we always have a good runway in the business of money in the business to be able to cover all costs and expenses.

1:00:22Fergal O'Connor:Because I think if you run out of the cash, then the business is dead in the first place. The other piece I would say is around the team. So I had set up, I mentioned earlier on about setting up the business pretty much straight out of college. And it was like me and one of my friends and we were, two of us were just working together. And then eventually I sold that business to him and then went out on my own. And I did that for another probably four or five years by myself. and that business didn't really go anywhere it was kind of like just a lifestyle type business I was making enough money to kind of for myself and the family and all that stuff but it's never going to really scale or grow

1:00:57Jeannette Linfoot:globally the way my ambition would have liked yes and with it so when I started

1:01:02Fergal O'Connor:by media my advice that somebody had given me is like you know you can go fast by yourself but you can't go very far unless you have a team and so to build up a team as quickly as possible so to build up people that could help us on the journey to get to where we want you to get. So again, I would say the advice for me, if you're like a solo founder or like a co-founding team or whatever, is to try and get a team behind you as much as possible. And that doesn't have to be like at the start of your business, you don't have a lot of money. So you don't have a lot of cash to like hire people or whatever.

1:01:33Fergal O'Connor:And to your point earlier on, that could be a mentor. It could be just someone you sit down and have a coffee with. There's lots of funding and support from government agencies out there to kind of for mentoring programs as well so reach out and try and talk to as many people as you can get as many good people around you as possible as you as you build your business so the two kind of piece of advice i'd say is that you don't run out of money in the business because that's really really important customers and revenue will solve everything yes in most cases yes and have a good team and a good team that has a good culture around around the business as well because again you don't want to be going into work every day with a team that's like down and depressed and unhappy and because that sucks the energy out of everybody you need a high energy we think of our team as like almost like a family or a collegiate kind of like a group of people that everyone kind of gets on together we're kind of helping each other out we've got each other's backs and i think that's really important as well so those two things will be my piece of advice cash and

1:02:26Jeannette Linfoot:people cash and people two great pieces of advice we've got to get rid of the mood hoovers get them out get them out there's no place for that sort of approach no because it does it does affect the whole team if you have someone that's not aligned and they could be great people but they're just not right for where you are heading they don't they're not gonna be part of the future and I think you know we're making those decisions on hiring hire slow fire fast is what I normally say because normally you live to regret it if you keep someone in your business for too long when you know really deep down they don't fit for sure I think we've all we've all had those people over the years and so if you could describe this year in one word Fergal what would it be and why?

1:03:07Fergal O'Connor:Probably for us transformational so because we had we've had like a serious growth over the years so that the kind of the revenue growth has been sustainable and substantial over the last kind of four or five years but this year we had kind of made a strategic conscious decision to do a couple of things so we were looking very much at the product and was the product fit for the customers so we We invested a lot of resources into our product this year. And that's been really, I think, transformational for both the business and the customers because now we feel that we've kind of built this infrastructure for scale within the business.

1:03:41Fergal O'Connor:So although we have been growing fast, we're now looking at all the international elements of the business and how we grow this business globally. And I think for that, you need to have a really solid kind of product foundation. So we could have invested, again, in sales and growth of the business and revenue in the business this year, but we made a conscious and strategic decision to really focus on the technical and the product side of the business to make sure that that was solid and right before we started to scale into other countries. And the other transformation bit is we've taken in more investment this year into the business as well for our international expansion piece.

1:04:12Fergal O'Connor:And then that's the final piece is probably the international expansion, which has meant that we have to build up the team and bring more people into the business as well. So there's been, again, back to a kind of a sporting analogy, it's been almost like a team in transition this year. but a transformational transition so there's been a lot happening in the business across all different departments and it's been a really I feel a really transformational year for the business that's set us up for for scale

1:04:37Jeannette Linfoot:over the next three to five years yeah well it's exciting like you say what's got you to this point won't necessarily get you to where you need to be and when you recognize that actually you invest in the time effort to get those really solid platform for growth then you're gonna go much faster than if you didn't deal with that right now isn't it so a transformation busy transformational year for you okay so we have a playlist on Spotify brave but brilliant playlist and we like to ask all our lovely guests what their go-to track song artists would be hard to choose one but if you've got to choose one Fergal what you're going

1:05:11Fergal O'Connor:to add to our playlist and I would say it's a favorite because it's like picking a child it's like what's your favorite song what's your favorite child it says so I've got I'm a big music buff and I love loads of different music genres and music types and lots of different bands. And because being an Irish company, I have to give a nod to an Irish band. So I'm going to pick Fontaine's DC to add to the playlist. And the song is going to be Skinty Fia because one of the lines is you could read it in the papers and that's all about media. So that's our, our by media is part of that. So I think that's an appropriate song for both the business and where we've come from.

1:05:48Jeannette Linfoot:Love it. And we've not had that one. So there we are. That is great. And then you probably knew I wouldn't have had that one so that's a that's a great addition and you know Brave Bold Brilliant is not only the brand of my business it's the name of the podcast and it's sort of you know something that I feel is really important in terms of how we carry ourselves through life and what have you so it's sort of quite a personal personal brand as well as our business brand and the podcast name but when you hear that Brave Bold Brilliant what does it mean to you Fergal

1:06:17Fergal O'Connor:I can definitely identify with the brave and the bold. And I know you're all three. But I think the brilliant is probably a consequence of the brave and the bold. So I don't think you can necessarily start out thinking this is going to be brilliant, or I'm going to be brilliant, or this business is going to be brilliant. But you can certainly start out with the mindset as I'm going to do things that are brave. I'm gonna do things that are like not necessarily what everybody else is doing I'm gonna take it so when we started this business everybody told me why are you like why have you taken any interest in traditional media because traditional media is dying nobody's reading newspapers anymore no one's listening to the radio no one's what going to be watching TV in the next 10 years why why are you even like incorporating that into your platform but our attitude was that there's a you know there's a customer journey here and people are still involved in consuming those media to a certain extent and even though some of those media types may be in a certain amount of decline it's a very slow decline and it's also still there's still a 600 billion market in a lot of the traditional media so there's a huge opportunity there as well if everybody else is ignoring that market then there's a huge opportunity for us to be brave and jump into that market and i think with the brave you know the bold is just like you just have to like put yourself out there and be bold and not really you said you know people will says things about you regardless so you just have to be bold and not really care what someone is going to say just put yourself in in front of people hope that's going to work out for the best if it doesn't start again and do something different but i then like the brilliant piece you know i've got a bit of a reticence about the brilliant piece because i don't know if you ever get to brilliant um but it's a journey towards brilliant let's say so you can start out with the brave and the bold mindset and hopefully the journey brings you to brilliant but if it doesn't then you fail and you do brave and bold again and you try to get the brilliant so it's just a continual iteration process to hopefully one day get to brilliant so that's what it means to me

1:08:14Jeannette Linfoot:oh excellent what a way to end thank you so much Fergal you've been an absolute joy to speak to

1:08:18Fergal O'Connor:thank you Janette thanks for having me

1:08:23Jeannette Linfoot:what an insightful and inspiring conversation with Fergal O 'Connor wow his journey reminds us that leadership isn't just about vision it's about using innovation to solve real problems you know empowering teams and businesses to create measurable impact you know and Fergal's work with By Media shows how combining tech strategy and data-driven thinking can transform an entire industry so if today's episode inspired you please rate review share Brave Bold Brilliant podcast with your colleagues, friends and people that you know who are looking to step up. And of course, if you want to actually take that next bold move yourself and scale up your business, maybe sell your business, or you need some help with your strategy, we are here to help.

1:09:16Jeannette Linfoot:So whether it's our Executive Edge Program, our Leadership Masterminds, our Rise Academy, or one-to-one business mentoring we are here and we are there to help you be the best version of yourself for your own leadership your teams and your business so remember it is by being brave and bold that you will unlock your brilliant i really hope you've enjoyed this episode of brave bold brilliant remember check out our new website www.brave-bold-brilliant.com you're going to find loads of resources on there that's going to help you with your leadership journey and with the businesses that you're trying to scale up and grow so take care everyone and remember there are no limits to your growth but it is by being brave and bold that you're going to unlock your brilliance