Why Australia’s defence needs tech founders: Vu Tran of Black Sky Industries on building missiles with a startup mindset.

26:20Think about the job creation, the technology creation, the industry creation, the benefit that is created for us in doing so. But the other great thing is if we create an awesome defense industry in Australia, it makes us incredibly spiky or prickly when it comes to anyone who wants to attack us, right? In fact, the way that we describe that strategy is what's called the echidna or the porcupine strategy, right? People call it Occupy Mind Strategy. We'll adapt it for Australia. We'll call it the Echidna Strategy. If you think about the Echidna and you think about what it looks like and it's covered in all those spines, it doesn't have all those spines to go out there and kill something, right?

26:56I've never heard these. This is sick, yeah. Those spines aren't there to go out and kill something, right? Yeah. Those spines are there to make sure that when something looks at it and says, I wonder if I want to have a bite out of that animal, it says, fuck no, I don't want to touch that thing. Look at all those spines, right? But the challenge we have, for lack of a term, we're pretty spineless right now. We're actually reliant on our allies to protect us and primarily the US, right? So think we're in a world where the geopolitics is changing, where the US is becoming much more nationalistic and they're saying, we've got to look after ourselves and we can't necessarily be the police force of the world.

27:32That's one thing. On the other side of it, we're sitting here going, well, we're reliant on the US for everything, not just to defend us, but all the stuff that we need, we buy from the US as well, right? So if COVID taught us nothing, we need to be more self-reliant on a whole bunch of fronts. As a GP, I didn't have enough bloody rubber gloves and masks during COVID. You know how scary that was? I still remember back to 2020. It was March 2020. I'm watching the news. Doctors are dying in Italy. Doctors are dying in New York City. I don't know if you remember, they were like cold room vans with people's bodies.

28:07Doctors were dying in hospital. And I stepped back from Go1 and I was in general practice all my time during that time because I needed just all the doctors out there. And I remember going, fuck, we don't even have enough masks, right? And that's crazy. Like, that's a pandemic. What happens when there's someone who wants to blockade us, right, and wants to stop us from receiving goods? And I sound very paranoid in doing so, but it's just how do we make sure we're prepared? But the other thing I'd kind of just wind it all back for you is we're talking about the porcupine or the echidna and having all those spikes, right?

28:39And how those spikes are for defense, not offense. They call our defense department the defense department for a reason. One of the really important things it comes back to is, this is just to illustrate it to you. About four weeks ago, five weeks ago, I like to describe it as we had some foreign ships go missing and decide to do a full circle of the country, right? a Chinese missile cruiser and a few other boats and probably some submarines underneath it that we're not publicly aware about decided to do a lap of Australia go down the east coast I think 150 nautical miles of Sydney so they're closer to you than I am to you right now they were doing live fire exercises off our east coast which is well within their light legal to do so and they decided to do a lap of the country go down past Tassie past South Australia and past our naval submarine yards in WA and head back north home, right?

29:29Now, that lap, they might have just been doing that for a bit of sightseeing or whale watching. If you want to read it the other way around, it was also sent a very strong signal that we can reach you anywhere. And we can also, if that's what we can do with two or three ships, what can we do with the whole fleet to actually blockade anything coming into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, any of our ports, Newcastle, whatever it might be. That's the very hawkish way to view it. The other way to view it, and this is a cold hard fact, is that one missile cruiser, that one missile cruiser, right? Sorry, am I getting you paranoid?

30:00Am I getting you paranoid? So I'll share this with you, which they didn't talk about on the news. And I know this because it was just out of defense problems. That one missile cruiser. So on board a ship, you have what's called a cell, which fires a missile out of it. I think a bit like a pod that shoots a missile. That missile cruiser, I think, I'm going to use round numbers here, had about 120 missile cells on it, right? Now, imagine this. take every single boat in the Australian Navy, add up every single missile cell of every single boat combined. And I think we might have maybe a dozen more missile cells than that one Chinese boat.

30:36Wow. If you take out the boats that are currently in dry dock, I believe the number is that that one Chinese ship had more missile cells than every single active Australian Navy ship combined. Wow. That is just mind boggling scale. So your question around why missiles? Yes. Well, that was going to be my segue in like all of this context. Tell me more about the wedge unique. First of all, think about going, okay, well, okay. Defense is a problem. What is the biggest, baddest problem? What is the problem that twofold? One is such a massive vulnerability for us as a country, but two, no one wants to touch.

31:16And the answer is lethality. You can't have a defense force without weapons yet the irony of it is no one wants to touch it right and i have this debate all the time i'll talk to some vc funds who invest in defense and as far as i'm aware steve baxter who's got beaten zone is the only vc fund that will actually invest in lethality there's a lot of funds who will invest in defense tech but he's the only fund to invest in lethality and full disclosure i'm steve is not an investor in black sky but i'm an lp in in in beaten zone because I believe in what he's doing. So just kind of want to put it out there just in case anyone pulls that up.

31:54But the answer is because no one's investing in this space, right? No one's investing their time, energy, or effort or money into lethality. Now, it is one of the most important things when it comes to a defense force and no one's investing in it. So I'm going to break this down to a few things. So one, why is no one investing in it? Because they don't want to touch the pointy stuff. It's scary. So for me, every single hour I have that I'm not spending with my family is an opportunity cost of spending time with them, right? So if I'm going to pursue something, you know, personally, the way that I view it, especially post my life and go on, which I'm happy to talk about in the tick, but it's got to be worth it.

32:30Like it's got to be something that moves the needle, right? It can't just be cute or cool. It's got to be something that I genuinely feel will make a difference. You know, so let's go chase the hardest problem, the problem no one else wants to touch, which is lethality, which is building weapons. And why missiles? Well, Blake has been building rockets for a very long time. And those rockets are used for aerospace to put things up into, not orbit, but what we call suborbital launch, up to 100Ks up in the air. Mate, the difference between a rocket and a missile is we aim that rocket at something, put a warhead in it, and suddenly it becomes a missile.

33:07Right? So the thing for us is there is a very fine line between rocketry and missiles. That's the first thing I'll say. So the most important thing we focus on in Black Sky is, yes, we can build the full kit and caboodle, the full missile, but the area that is our secret source and thing that is most important that we do is something called solid rocket motors, okay? Now, I'm just going to give you a 101 on solid rocket motors because I'm not a rocket scientist, but I'll give you the sort of background on it. A solid rocket motor is the oldest type of rocket motor that exists. So when you see rockets that were launched in around early World War, late World War II and pretty much almost any missile and rocket that was launched in the last sort of 70 years bar the last say 20.

33:49Most of them use what's called solid rocket propellant. So the old shuttles that would go up into space use solid rocket propellant. The missiles that you see being used across the world mostly a solid rocket propellant. Only in the last few decades have people started using liquid propellants. So that's what SpaceX will use. That's what Rocket Lab will use. Gilmore's, who's a Blackbird company up here in Queensland, they'll use what's called a hybrid rocket motor, but they'll use liquids as well. So liquids are awesome for things like reusables, when you want to be able to throw them, all those sorts of things.

34:20But they're terrible for storage, right? So, you know, and they're highly volatile. So the great thing about solid rocket motors and why they've used them in defense for a very long time is because they're highly stable once you cure them and mate them, and you can transport them super easily, right? So that's the reason why defense will always use most of the time. solid rocket motors with the exception of what we call cruise missiles or certain types of cruise missiles. So that's the sort of the role of solid rocket motors. But I'll say to you, remember I spoke to you before about the consolidation of defense industry?

34:54In the US and across the allied world, there are literally two major players of solid rocket motors, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Norfolk Grone. And both of them have a backlog of solid rocket motors in the tens of billions of dollars. Wow. Not hundreds of millions, not billions, tens of billions of dollars. And they are years away from being unclear. The second part of it is they're both American and it's virtual duopoly, right? So the ability to come into that space is incredibly important. The second thing I'd say to you is that to illustrate the importance of solid rocket motors, and again, interpret this however you wish, they actually had to stop the war in Ukraine and Russia in early 2023 because they ran out of rocket motors.

35:36That's not a good thing. I'm not talking about enabling war, but I'm just talking about how critical rocket motors are to the supply chain. And so for us, this is an expertise that Blake has spent over a decade building up. And unfortunately, and as much as I came in with my hat from tech going, sure, man, surely anyone would just get together and mix this stuff. But there are Venn diagrams of just circles on circles on circles on circles, which really helped me understand the fact that you've got to really thread the needle to know how to make these things. You've got to have the infrastructure to be able to do it, the experience to be able to do it, and probably at least four to five different levels of expertise to be able to thread them in your own, make these things.

36:11And the thing is, we're really fortunate in that not only did we figure out how to do it, and we'd be doing it for a long time in the civilian aerospace world, we figured out how to do it at scale. And that's super important as well. So you've got people who dabble with it, but being able to transition from being able to do it at a hobby sort of level, doing it at scale, is very, very different. and sort of the thing that I love coming from the SaaS space is I get to ask all the stupid questions. But the one thing that we know from dealing in SaaS is that unless your product can scale, it's a shitty services company.

36:43And so ultimately, you know, my job in Black Sky is to ask the question, how do we make 10, 20, 30, 50 ,000, 100 ,000 of these? And how do we scale it? And if it can't scale it, let's kill it. And so, you know, this is kind of where the, you know, traditional tech startup, SaaS startup sort of mindset is super useful in this space, which is why I mentioned at the start of our conversation, I'm super keen to see founders come into this space, but in particular, second and third time founders, because there's a whole mentality we can bring to this space that I think can be quite transformative. I don't think we need the change, but I really do think that we can be catalytic when it comes to bringing it about.

37:23The product is super clear. You said that you've proven that you can scale it. Now, my brain goes back to start small, show that you can build a prototype and progressively build up. What did you learn? How have you been able to prove that? I'd love for you to unpack that statement. We have proven scale. So let's go back to looking at the constraints first, right? So if I look at this typically, how about this? What if I said to you that there was a TAM that is growing by a trillion dollars every five years? It's going to grow by another trillion dollars. There's super low competition and the cost of capital is incredibly high because no one will lend them to the space.

38:02You'd sit there and go, fuck yeah, what a great market to go and chase. Right? Like, what do I mean by the cost of capital is high? Well, if you literally Google the words Bank Australia and missiles, put that into Bank Australia missiles into Google right now, open up the first link that opens up, and you'll see a term that says something along the lines of, at Bank Australia, we have never and will never lend to companies that create bombs, boards, and missiles, and so they're like 82 % of that customs. Yeah, I'm reading it now. And that sort of statement actually exists with almost every bank in Australia.

38:37Why us? That is so interesting to then have that at the top. Yeah. So the thing that you've got to think about is that for a traditional small business to go and get access to capital and growth capital, borrowing money is not an option. The banks won't give you a credit card, let alone give you a loan to build your business, even if you've got great unit economics. That's the first part. So the opportunities for private capital would come into this space and buy low, right, on low multiples, on really good businesses, in a growing TAM that's going to add a trillion dollars of TAM over the next few years is huge.

39:10That's just the pure capitalistic side of it, right? But I guess what I'm trying to say is, let's start at the top and work our way down. The market is there and it is growing. And you don't even need to have alpha. You just need to ride the beta. You just need to ride the wave and build a good enough product to get into defense and get some traction. So that's the first part. The second part that it comes back to is going, well, we'll put aside the scale and let's talk about getting the MVP and getting your product and getting it tested and proven. I think what a lot of companies don't think about is they think so much about the technology.

39:43They don't think about everything that goes around the technology. How do you prove it? How do you iterate on it? How do you actually keep improving the product and get to a point where you can show the customer it working? That it's not theoretical, that it's actually practical, right? That for me is where Black Sky has been very fortunate. We operate three test ranges at the moment, probably put a fourth online very soon. Where our guys are out there testing rocket motors on a weekly basis. Because of Blake's experience in rocketry and what Black Sky Aerospace was before we became Black Sky Industries, we actually operate our own launch ranges, our own test ranges, and we have, on one of our ranges, we have the ability to fly, sunrise to sunset, seven days a week.

40:25Out at Fagaminda, which is a little bit wet right now because they're getting a bit of flooding, we have a launch range that is 3 million acres. Wow. Now, we were talking to the UK Ministry of Defence when we said, oh, look, we operate the largest private launch range in the world. They said, 3 million acres, is that right? That's about half the size of Wales. We said, yep, that's about right. And so UK Ministry of Defense, they were saying, well, we said to them, how many people do you have in Wales? And I said, oh, they said about two and a half million people in Wales. I said, cool. They said, how many do you have in Thagaminda?

40:54We said, five. I said, wait, you've got five million people in Thagaminda? I said, no, no, no, five people. Right. And that blew their minds because they don't have that scale of land to test things on. Right. So again, if I talk about Australia's unique positioning to do a lot of this stuff, our ability to test some of this stuff, the space we have, to be able to play around with these things is huge. And it's a natural advantage we have that others don't have. And at Black Sky, when you talk about sort of scaling proof of concept, MVP, minimum viable product, and then moving to what we call low rate initial production or LRIP is the term they use in defense, low rate initial production.

41:34we were able to have the infrastructure to be able to do that without waiting on someone else to be able to help us test it so the waiting time right now for warmora which is the defense range down in south australia i believe is around about two years man your startup's going to die if you have to wait two years to test your product 100 now i need to be very very clear with anyone who's listening to this who does have a product that needs to be tested on a range because we get asked all the time because of the nature of what we do it's really difficult for us to allow third parties to use our ranges because I get asked about this every single week, which is why one of the things I'm encouraging the Queensland government to do is to build Queensland ranges that the government helps operate or gets a contract to operate that allows defense startups to be able to use, right?

42:18But just sort of fast forward to the point I'm trying to make is that the step to get to scale is first of all being to approve your product and not enough defense companies think about how they're going to approve their product. That's the first one. The second step is actually to find a customer as you would in any sort of circumstance with a startup, who is actually willing to tell you what they need and to be able to be that first customer for you, right? And the thing we're lobbying with defense every single time I'm talking to them is to say, we don't want you to be our biggest customer.

42:46You should be our biggest customer. What we need to do is be our best customer, right? Because the first question that when you go to an allied nation, you say, we want to sell you our sludge, which is what our solar rocket propellant initially is. And they turn around and go, who else is using you? You need to be able to say your home country is using you, right? It's a really important thing. So from my perspective, it is that ability, first of all, to be able to show you can test and prove your product beyond the theoretical. It's about to show it working in real time. Then it's to be able to find, as you would in any other business, an initial customer who wants your product and you find that useful.

43:23And the third step is every step along the way in what you're doing. Scale is not step three. Scale exists from step zero. So one, I think of scale as a platform. I don't think of it as a step. That's probably a better way to look at it, right? It's the foundation in which you execute everything. So when you're initially choosing what TAM to pursue, you're looking at the size of the market and going, is there a big enough TAM there to scale into a market? Right. Master TAM, sweet. Then as you're building out the product and choosing what product to sell into that market, you need to make sure that it's the product that can scale, right?

43:59If you're making custom-made Bentleys, where the world wants a whole bunch of Toyota Corollas, Like, man, you shouldn't be doing that. You should be thinking going, you don't want to be going after a custom-made Bentley where the world's saying, I want Corollas. You got to figure out from the start, you're making a Toyota Corolla. So therefore, every single decision you make in terms of the investment of time, in terms of your design process, in terms of the materials you use, in terms of the application it has, is based on how do I get a thousand, 10 ,000, 100 ,000, a million of these into service.

44:30And so I think scale is a mindset. It's not a step. I don't think it's build the MVP, then get it in service and then scale it. I think you've got to have scale in mind right from the start, from determining the business case as to whether the TAM is big enough, through to how you design and build things, through the materials you decide to use, right? Right. The example I would give you is that, and I don't think I'm breaching any confidentiality by saying this, but the way we've designed some of our systems is that I could probably teach you in two weeks how to fully integrate our build from scratch with three Allen keys and screwdriver, build one of our missiles in four hours.

45:09Wow. Now, what does that mean? Well, I'll tell you what that means. It means that we've designed it in a way that you don't need to be an aerospace engineer to be able to assemble this. That's step one. because if shit hits the fan, it's not about aerospace engineers building these. It's about how mom and dad's coming to the factory and helping us build these. That's the first. Number two is we've chosen materials that we can source from here in Australia because again, if shit hits the fan and we need to build 50 ,000 of these, we need to make sure that we have chosen materials that allow us to scale.

45:40And number three is that we need to make sure that the application and the usage of these is that we're not building something I mean, we've got five or 10 of them in the storage shed. We got 50 to 100 ,000 of them in a storage shed if we need to, right? Which means that not only should we be able to source those materials in Australia, but they need to be in sufficient volume that we could actually, you know, the Prime Minister comes to us tomorrow and says, Vu, Blake, Carl, here's the keys to the country. And we have a pathway to be able to make a shitload of stuff very, very quickly. Now, that is not a mindset that your typical defense technology founder in a startup will think about, right?

46:21But I guarantee you, if you've come from the SaaS world, that's what you think about, right? You're not building this product. If you realize that you're building a SaaS product and that the team is only going to be 15 people, right? And those people are going to pay$200 a month. So really, your team is going to be 15 times$2 ,500 a year. That's not much of a business to go and pursue. you could be really surprised how many defense founders build some amazing cute awesome pretty tech but it isn't applicable to the real world again it's a custom made handmade bentley it's the swiss watch right where what people are wanting a toyota corollas and casios right and that that is the thing for me is that and and to go back to that discussion i had with you before about major primes or the US military industrial complex.

47:11They are so good at building Swiss watches. But when the whole world needs a whole bunch of Casios, that's just not what they're geared up for. They're not geared up to produce them. They're not geared up to sell them. They're not geared up to market them and that sort of thing. And so that's why I'm trying to say, and I'm a broken record on it, but I really want to find great founders who have built businesses and understand scale in different industries. I say, come find a problem in defense and help us fix that, help us solve that. And at the same time, build an awesome industry, build an awesome business, build your next exit.

47:42But also at the same time, again, like me, make sure your kids aren't in a situation where they're having to defend their country. What are the lessons from Go One have you taken and brought into Black Sky intentionally? So to any founder who has, and if I think about my sort of journey in Go One, and I said to you, I spent my entire adult life up until that stage, you know, first 15, 20 years of my life building Go One, like adult life building Go One. with my mates. There's so much stuff you learn. The most important stuff you learn is what not to do. But I want to think about some of the things that I think about.

48:15I'll break it into two areas, the learnings, but also some of the mindset that I've learned, right? I urge anyone who has stepped down from business, sold their business, exit a day business, to restart a business as soon as you can, because you will find it so invigorating, at least most of the time, because there are a whole bunch of things that you'll be able to not realize you've learned that you'll actually be able to look like. So the first thing I'll share with you from a mindset point of view is that, man, how much you don't sweat the small stuff, right? So there's so many things that, you know, your fellow co-founders in a new business will freak out about if they haven't found a business before.

48:50And you kind of sit there and go, yeah, it's a problem, but it's not a big deal. You know, we've been through a lot worse and go on, right? So from a mindset point of view, I think you really learn not to sweat the small stuff. I think very much intertwined with that is you learn to value your time a lot more. So as a result of not sweating the small stuff, you also value your time and you go, this is a good use of my time, this is a bad use of my time. You also learn what you're good at and what you're bad at. And for me, early on as a founder, I used to think, man, there's so much stuff I'm bad at and I need to work on it, right?

49:21Like I think I'm a pretty good leader, but I'm a terrible manager. And Megan, I'm not a terrible manager. Megan said, I hate managing. It's probably a better way to put it, right? Usually that makes the best managers. Yeah. I hate managing. I just generally hate managing for a bunch of reasons. But one reason is just I hate being responsible for other people's outcomes. I like helping people achieve outcomes, but I hate being responsible for it. So perhaps that's just my maturity and not yet being more mature managing it. And I fully acknowledge it. But I used to think to myself, I've got all these weaknesses and I need to spend so much time working on them and trying to get better at all these weaknesses.

49:55And what I've come to realize is, fuck it. Like, I should be doubling down on my strengths. not trying to patch up my weaknesses, right? I should be taking the things that I think I'm really good at. So it might be things like communicating, motivating a team, communicating with customers, thinking strategically, looking at scale, thinking about how we break down processes into actually achievable outcomes. There's a whole bunch of things that I think I'm uniquely good at that I bring to the table. And instead of just focusing on all the stuff I'm shit at and trying to get better at that, I've realized, like, actually, this is what I bring to the table in Black Sky.

50:28I need to then surround myself with a team who's good at all the other shit. And so what Black Sky gets out of me is what I'm good at, not necessarily what I'm mediocre at, if that makes sense. And so that's a really big mindset learning that I wish I knew early on in my journey in Go One. That's the first part. In terms of practical things that I bring out, you know, I mentioned all those things just then, but I'll give you one really good example. In Go One, we sold to HR. So I dealt a lot with HR. and I think anyone who's scaling a business knows particularly if you're on a leadership level particularly for founder is there is a certain point in your business where you go from being a CEO an executive a founder what it is to an HR manager that's it every single founder who may be listening or who talks to you will know that most of their time at some stage in growth is chewed up by Hedger right and one of the concepts I always wanted to do and Blake what Blake was very much sort of helping pioneer this in my thinking as well, was I always wanted to divorce HR from people.

51:26I know that sounds crazy, but just let me run with this for a tick. Isn't it crazy that the same people, the same area that's responsible for your onboarding, compliance training, payroll, and disciplinary actions is also responsible for your personal growth, personal development, mental health, and your development as a human. Like judge, jury, and executioner and everything in between, right? So what we did in Vice Guy was we've got an amazing ex-Navy captain. He's worked across three militaries, including the Australian Navy. He's one of the best personal people that you'll meet. He headed up innovation for Navy in Australia.

52:03He's retired. And we said we put him in the role of what we call the MIG. So internally, we call him the MIG. And MIG stands for mentor in chief, right? That's what his role is. Now, his role in the MIG is to help you develop as a person, not as an engineer, because he can't help you become a better mechanical engineer. But his job is to be able to help you become a better human, to be able to progress through the stages and mature as a human through life, because a lot of our team is incredibly young. But he has nothing to do with improving your performance directly as an engineer, right? He's got nothing to do with your performance reviews in terms of as an engineer.

52:44He's got nothing to do with trying to help you upskill in dealing with certain new techniques or understanding new areas of engineering. His pure thing is to be able to help you develop as a person and as a professional, right? And by having you fully divorced from HR, HR we have completely, and again, our team's only made up with 30 people. So why don't I say HR is one person, right? But those roles are fully divorced. And in fact, the MIC answers directly into the CEO. And what that allows us to be able to do is to be able to very strongly, not just improve culture, but ensure that culture is something that is actually focused on throughout the organization without it just being another burden on HR.

53:21And the second part of it that it comes back to is it allows us to be able to get feedback directly to Blake as the CEO from the coalface without going through a HR filter. Now, the complexities that that brings in, a lot of people who may be listening, who have experienced it, will know that actually having that barrier between the coalface and CEO and having HR in between, no matter how well-meaning or however they are, can be a real challenge. And so that restructuring has been really important for us. What are the results that we see from that over the last 12 months? Well, one is that we've found people, or we call self-select to leave Black Sky.

53:56So instead of me saying to you, you're underperforming, you need to leave. Part of Steve's role as our Mick is Steve helps people understand whether or not they're the right fit for Black Sky. well before their performance wanes, well before they get to the point where, you know, that we're having to tell them to leave or they're, you know, or they're leaving in the half. So one example, it's that ability to help people understand on a regular basis and to reassess, am I doing the right job? Am I working in the right industry? Am I working for the right company? Am I working in the right role?

54:30Right. And helping them understand that on a regular basis and having a role that's focused on helping them do that. Also means that there's a bit of a safety net to catch them if they're falling and gives them opportunity to work out whether we're at the right business for them. The important company teams and whatever you want to call it. That for me is transformation. That's really something that I wish that I could have done back in the day at Go One, but it's something we're doing by exploring, something that I see as truly beneficial and I'm not even the CEO. So that's one example. That's a beautiful example.

55:00And I have to ask this question. I'm not sure if you have the time, but you were responsible for customers at GoOne as one part. And with defense, you sort of outlined like the antithesis of a good customer. Like what is a good customer? Someone who is easy to reach, immediately sees the magic, like quickly signs up and says thank you over and over again. And I'm curious, what have you learned from GoOne to accelerate the transition from being a bad customer to a good customer. I'll break it down for you. I love sales. Yeah. I don't mean sales in the form of just getting a deal done, right? One thing you'll learn from me is I'm going to go off in tangents, but I'll hopefully bring it back for you, right?

55:44The best doctors know how to sell. Now, sales has a really bad connotation with it, but if you kind of hear me out in the definition of what selling is, selling is communication and being able to tell a story and be able to engage with someone as you do on the podcast here. So good doctors sell. And what do I mean by that? One of the best sales I can make in the next few months is in general practice when I have a patient come in and see me and they're sick. They're sick as a dog. Runny nose, cough, sore throat, and they're terrible. What they're likely experiencing is a viral infection where antibiotics, no matter how much I give it to them, they're going to not do anything.

56:19They'll probably give them the trots or may even build antibiotic resistance over time. The patient just wants frigging antibiotics so they can get better because that's what's in their mindset, right? As an author, I've got a choice of either giving it to them, giving it to them and just being like, here you go, bugger off. Two, not giving it to them and making them feel crap about it. Or three, taking the time to explain to them, giving them an understanding of what's happening, what they actually need to do to get better, which is rest, take their foot off the gas and give their body a chance to recover.

56:48And have them walk out of that room after five to 10 minutes. Again, it's a short consultation. After five to 10 minutes and understand that they'll be perfectly capable of getting better than themselves, feel happy with the service I've given them, and not need a single medication outside of some Pamela or Neurofen to make them feel better. That, for me, is a say-it, right? I'm walking out, understanding where I'm coming from, and buying in to my professional opinion as to why I think they're me, right? We've all met good doctors and bad doctors, but I can guarantee your perception of a bad doctor isn't based on their medical knowledge or their skill, but it was actually based on how they communicated to you as a person.

57:27So true. How they make you feel and the trust they earn from you. That same skill set I think is highly applicable to selling, whether that be to selling a piece of software in learning management or through to selling yourself, right? And why do I say that? Narrative is incredibly important. Understanding the customer is incredibly important. Understanding your product and service and what you're selling is incredibly important. knowing how to sell is actually not that important in comparison. You know, the analogy that I would give you is if you wouldn't, if I want to go out and buy a car right now, right?

58:01What's more important to me? A slick salesperson who knows how to communicate and earn my trust or someone who understands my needs and understands the product they're selling incredibly well. And I'll say to you as the buyer, I want the latter. I want someone who understands me and understands the product they're selling really well, no matter how good a slick salesperson and they understand all the tools and tactics, right? So ultimately, for me, what it comes back to is that whether you're selling into defense, you're selling to SaaS and the enterprise, the SMB world, or the mid-market world, your ability to tell a story, understand the customer, and understand the product you're selling are two of the, or three of the most important things there.

58:40Tell a story, understand the customer, understand yourself, what you're selling. Those tools are applicable whether or not I'm trying to get someone to convince someone they don't need antibiotics, convince someone to buy software, or convince someone to buy a guided weapon, right? They just have different sales cycles, is the way I describe it to people, and a higher touch. But the parallels between doing an enterprise sale and trying to do a tender or trying to sell a guided weapon, they just have different restrictions, right? That's really good, right? But ultimately, the way to engage and tell a story is the same.

59:11It also means that trying to sell something to someone that they don't need, something that they don't need to someone, is also true. If you're trying to sell something to a patient that they don't need or they don't think they need, then you're going to fail. If you're trying to sell something to an SMB, to a mid-market customer, an enterprise customer in SaaS that they don't need, you're going to fail. And if you're going to sell something to defense that they don't think they need, you're going to fail. So the rules are pretty simple. It just comes down to communication, understanding yourself and understanding the customer that you're selling to.

59:42And I think it's very, very basic. Everything else just comes down to technicalities. and what are the rules around contracting and all that sort of crap, which again, they're logistics, right? They're logistics. They're not a skill set. They're logistics. It's like, okay, cool. You and I want a date. Now, what are the logistics of figuring that out? You want to buy a hard product? What are the logistics of figuring that out? But those logistics don't come into play until I've won my heart and mind as to I'm the right person for you. I've got right product for you. And most importantly, I'll be able to fulfill those requirements and make you look like a legend as opposed to having this fall over and you be left holding the bag in front of your superiors.

1:00:24Now that is applicable to SaaS and that is applicable to selling defense. You have my heart and mind. That was honestly an honor. Thank you so much for coming on and I'm pumped to see you at sunrise. No worries, man. I'm really looking forward to it as well.

1:00:41Thank you so much for joining us on this latest episode of Wild Hearts. If you want to learn from other ambitious people that are building, designing, and creating the world that we want to live in, then please hit the follow or subscribe button. It would mean the world to us here on the Wild Hearts team. We have an insane producer, Melia Reiner, an incredible editor, Annie Jones, from Welcome from the day one. And our marketing and content support is provided by Jonathan Blakely. And we couldn't do it without them. If you're searching for investment, please, my DMs are open. Find me on LinkedIn.

1:01:15I'd love to help. And so with that, we'll see you next week, Wild Hearts.