E46 Chris Mitchell - Honing your Commercial Core: Staircase to personal and organisational growth

“If it's a bigger organisation, you find out who's doing the financial you'll probably notice it will be coming around reports from someone, you can build a relationship with that person”

Chris Mitchell


This month…

We're pushing into the theme of innovation and trends and drivers of growth, both for organisations and intrapreneurs as leaders on a more personal level. 

In this episode you’ll hear about…

• How Canstar steered its transformation from a small B2B research business into a huge digital marketplace as one of Australia's biggest financial comparison sites, turning it into a brand that over 10 million Australians use every year.

• Revolutionising digital business: Driving scale and growth by empowering consumers to save time and money

• Matching Consumers desires into seamless Digital Solutions

• Maximising finance potential amidst commercial leadership constraints

• Aligning personal passion with your business goals 

• The need to adapt to trends: navigating the process within your team

• Fostering innovation by facilitating collaboration within your organisation 

Key links

Canstar 

Chris Mitchell on Linkedin 

Canstar on Linkedin

JD Power

About our guest

Chris Mitchell is the CFO of Canstar, Australia’s biggest financial comparison site. Chris has been with Canstar since 2007 and has co-piloted its transformation from a small B2B research business into a B2B2C digital marketplace.

Canstar is Australia’s biggest financial comparison site, comparing over 300 brands in banking, insurance and superannuation. We’ve grown the business from a specialist research company into a mainstream Australian brand used by over 10m Australians each year. Canstar Blue was launched in 2010 to compare telco, energy and other consumer products. Deloitte Fast 50. AFR Fast 100. Great place to work 5th in Australia 2021.

Prior to Canstar, Chris held senior financial and commercial roles in advertising in London and hospitality in Canada. With over 25 years’ experience, Chris started his career in audit in North

Queensland, having grown up in the bush and completed his Bachelor of Commerce degree at James Cook University in Townsville. Chris has been a CA since 2000 and has completed the AICD company directors course (2013).

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of Company Road, helping businesses and leaders find meaning, impact and positivity.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally. 

For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/

Transcript

Chris Hudson: 0:05

Hello everyone. And welcome back to the company road podcast and hope you're all well. As we push closer to. Australian winter and European summer and all those things. And yeah, last month, our theme was all about growth within organizations and how to set up foundations for growth and enabling teams and building a growth mindset. And this month we're pushing into the theme of innovation and trends and things that will drive growth for organizations and entrepreneurs, as leaders on a more personal level. So we're going to be asking, you know, what's next, for organizations that have and entrepreneurs as leaders on a more personal level. So we're going to be asking, what's next for organizations that have What are the latest trends? How can you As a leader play a role most effectively in all of that and how that businesses need to adapt in some ways. So my next guest is no stranger to growth adaptation in the market, and he's helped steer businesses to huge success, despite unpredictable things happening along the way and market changes and all the things that go with it. So we're going to get into that, but I'm really delighted to introduce my next high profile guest to the show. I'm super excited. He's able to join Chris Mitchell. Welcome to the show.

Chris Mitchell: 1:13

Hello, Chris. Good to see you.

Chris Hudson: 1:16

Chris, you're the CFO of Canstar, Australia's biggest financial comparison site. And you've been with Canstar since about 2007, so a little while. And it's going to be cool just talking about the story of that. And you've co piloted a transformation from pretty much a small B2B research business into a huge. Digital marketplace. And it's just such an awesome story as one of Australia's biggest financial comparison sites and institutions here. And you've obviously brought in, a number of different brands, like 300 brands in terms of banking insurance and super annuation, and, just bringing that comparison opportunities together. So you've been working with the team for a little while. You've turned it into a household brand over 10 million Australians use it every year. And it's just really cool. Last month, as I said, we were talking about growth. But maybe we start with that just to begin with let's hear about your growth story. Talk about Canstar, maybe a bit about yourself and what's happened for you over that time as well. But what's been your experience?

Chris Mitchell: 2:12

Yeah, great. Thanks, Chris. It's a pleasure to be here. We, full disclosure, we worked together 20 years ago. It feels like 20 years. But look, and I'll be up front with your audience. I'm a country boy from North Queensland originally. So unfortunately will come across a bit rough around the edges from time to time. But started my career in audit in North Queensland. Why, you know, I think the thing about audit, which is interesting from a growth perspective, is that you get to see lots of different businesses. And so I really enjoyed that aspect of and actually just seeing different businesses and how they worked. And from a growth perspective, it's pretty funny being a young fella at the time. You, every time you do an audit, you have to write a, they call it these days an audit findings report. And it's a letter to help management, to improve. And, as a young person, you take that, you're very passionate about trying to help people improve and change. Thank you What you realize as many years later is that they don't want that help. Everyone's busy and they're trying to get their processes, the processes going. But yeah, I found audit at the start a long time ago. Just very seeing different businesses. And I've always been a bit of a student of business. So anyway but anyway, so I started my career in Townsville in Far North Queensland. Once I got charted and had a few years under my belt, I moved to London, at the back end of 2002. Early 2003, I started working at Proximity London, which is where we met back in the day. And the thing I loved about making that change and working in a business and not coming to audit each year, is you actually get to be part of something bigger and you get to see it through. The thing about an auditor is you're just touching it. once a year and you come in and try and, see how it's going. But from a, being within a business, that was a lot of fun. And I, and the Proximity London time, I just look on so fondly it was a bit of a turnaround. So when I joined at the start of 2003, the business was, has coming off a bit. So it had been a merger of about five or six agencies. A lot of clients were jumping off reduced reduction staff numbers, and we bottomed out sort of 2004, but then went on a bit of a tear across 2005 and 6 pre GFC, I left there at the end of 06, but across that sort of four, five, six years. It's just a lot of fun. I think that's one of the things I just had a great time. I've never worked as hard, I've never worked harder in my entire life, I might add. We just worked all the time. But we just, there was something about the work I found quite inspiring and about that growth into the turn, and the teams, like, just, you just see creativity. And, and I found that really great. And then from there, I went to Canada for a bit with financial controller for two five star hotels and an Irish pub. We used to get a snowboard every day. It was fantastic. But I think what was interesting about that gig was bringing. That sort of innovation and growth and let, and then just apply, be prepared to try new things, so when we got there, when I got there we had to create a new incentive scheme for the executive team, for the hotels, we're able to actually go through. the balance sheet with a fine tooth comb and unlock a bunch of money for the P and L for the guys. And we helped those execs through focusing on the right KPIs to drive the right outcomes for customers, the hotel staff. And it was a cracker when, it was, that was a seven month stint or whatever, the guys in charge at the time, at the end of that season, pay for me to go, hell, this gig is a thank you. He goes, mate, this is amazing. It's just been great. So you go, go, you beauty, here we go. So after that, lobbed into Australia and it was pretty funny. The Canstar interview was like, I turned up, I answered a job interview on Seek, back in the time. And the CEO was in his first week. He'd taken over from the founder. The business was actually 15 years old at that point. Less than 30 people. Pretty, little research house. The Canstar brand didn't exist. It was called Can back then. And I said to the new CEO's first speaker, I said, oh mate, what's this place like? And he goes, I don't dunno, mate. I just got here. But he pointed at me, he goes, I promise you this son, this will be a three to five year gig, we'll build this up, sell it and go do something else. And then the joke became years later that, We're on our fourth or fifth term. We didn't know, the three to five would be pushed out, but we had plenty of work still to do, and I think the business kept evolving and growing and you It's just been a really amazing journey. It's a story of you need resilience. You need a whole bunch of stuff. You've had time, like COVID was a great year where you think you're on one track and then all of a sudden you're doing something very different for six months, but yeah, it's just been fantastic. And like when we started the brand was known by Less than one in five people knew about the brand. It's now four in five people know it from a prompted awareness perspective. Canstar Blue didn't even exist. Back, we launched that in 2010, that was being inspired by J. D. Power in the United States was the inspiration for that. And so Canstar has always been a business that has evolved and changed. And when you think about growth mindsets and things that you just, you've got to have an open mind. And I think in my case too, you've, they talk about, glass half full or whatever. Yeah. I reckon it's just got to have something in it. I'm good. It's just a couple of mouthfuls of that glass of would be fine, and I think it's been really good and the business, that evolution, like the very first part of the business was just collecting interest rate data on home loans and then in collecting other product data on banking products. We still have that business now. It's I think on a home loan, we collect something like 200 data points and that's in a system it's sold as a subscription back to the banks and as a product manager in a bank, you can log on to our system and see what you can see on the website, but on steroids. That business, we still have the inspiration for the ratings was Morningstar. There were Morningstar wearings around, the guys had all this product and banging it down to the floor. What can we do with that? And then, one of the, actually one of the things that need to say is no one is to be rated. But if you win a Canstar five star award and you want to use the logo on your marketing, As a marketing manager within one of the banks or institutions, and there's like a license fee that you've got to enter into, but there's no obligation to use it. And then what's really driven the scale and growth over the last sort of 5, 10 years has been the digital business though. And that's where as a consumer, you can come to the business and. compare products. So if you're using the home loans example, you can compare home loans. And if you click on a product and it takes you to that institution, there's like a referral fee there. It's a bit like Google CPC, how that works. And there'll be different models at play there. So it's really about, coming back to the digital marketplace on one side, trying to help consumers save time and money. And then on the other side, trying to match those consumers. to the clients that want to give them the business and just, but just do it digitally. And that's our mission that we're on to help people and help clients too. So that's, yeah, so that's been the journey and we're still doing that. There's probably a bit of an, the next evolution is to get away, not to get away, but like we have, we probably have over 10 million Aussies a year come to our websites, but for us, it's knowing more about those Aussies. And Canstar now, you can get your free credit score, you can have an account, we've got an app. there's tips, prizes, we want to help people, with that. So, and so that's where we go on to next. And then the more data that people are willing to give us, because there's a value exchange there with the consumer and they're prepared to part with that, we can then use that to help with that matching process on the other side to get them to the right client that actually wants that. That business and wants to actually help to it digitally. So yeah that's where, so that's where it's at. And so for us from a growth, everything's about, in this world now with AI and everything that's coming, it's about how do we automate? How do we, leverage that to make everyone's jobs easier? I think we had, we actually had from an innovation and growth perspective, we did an internal competition last week. Yeah. And we had a couple of prizes for the winners. Like out of the day, we've got a chief data officer at Canstar, Mitch Watson, been here like another, 15 years or so. And, Mitch and his team ran that day. And I think we had at least 30 odd ideas. We had, one, we have one particular person that he said, he came up with a cracker and they wouldn't win any awards of the awards, but they had the poor person, this is a problem for us to fix. In their day to day job, for one piece of work, they had probably 50 to 100 spreadsheets they had to go through. And he was, Mitch is hearing it the first time he's got. Oh my God. Just want to give that person a hug and a cup of tea. So we must fix that for you. So that's the mission where you're getting right around is like, how do we automate go faster? And it's not, it's not about saving money. It's actually going faster. It's like, how do we become more productive to then to further that advancement of the journey? So there you go, man. Sorry, that was a big intro.

Chris Hudson: 11:53

That's a great insight. What a wonderful story. There's so much in that we can think about. And, just from a, just from the point of view of, by the sounds of it, but you were there from, quite early on in the piece, in that transition period between founder and then new CEO coming in. I want to just talk about that part and also about, when you went off to Whistler when you went to proximity, just from your own personal point of view, how do you know whether the working environment is going to be right for you in one way or another? Yeah.

Chris Mitchell: 12:26

positivity is key, like in terms of, and you get a pretty good feel of that early doors, I think actually at the ad agency, the way I knew that was just walking into the, I remember it was a Thursday night walking in, back then there was a. bar behind reception, Thursday night full of people. Everyone's wearing jeans and whatever. I'm walking in the suit cause that's what accountants used to do. And I remember walking in and going, Oh my God, how good is this place? And then

Chris Hudson: 12:58

Yeah.

Chris Mitchell: 12:59

you could have signed me up. They had to go up the lift and Damien is a CFO, like he's in a suit and he was very serious, but. You just knew, I had he was very serious about the work, but you could just tell from the vibe behind, at reception area there that, Yeah, this would be a fun place to work. And, Andrew Spicer, who was the Canstar CEO at the time when when we did the interview, he was just straight up. He goes, mate, I don't know what this place is like. I literally started on Monday.

Chris Hudson: 13:30

Yeah.

Chris Mitchell: 13:32

But the way he said it, he goes, we're not here to, again, if it's about serious work, we're here to build this, we'll be able to build a great company and I'm going to do something with it. And then. if it works, we'll go and do something else. And you go, and in that particular interview too, there was one of the major shareholders in that meeting and those guys had me at hello. I would have signed up right then and there, I was still going through a process. And and actually for Spicer, who was the CEO, Later, after many years later, you go, Yeah, the guys weren't a bit sure, because I knew after the first interview I was gonna hire you, and then the other guys were like hang on mate, he's your first interview and you just said, oh, look. country boy finished high school at Mount Isa. He said, that's where my wife went to high school, was Mount Isa. It was like, he'll be fine. He's worked in London. He'll work it out. So again, yeah, so it's, I think positivity is critical. And I think when, when, like when, cause business, not everything goes right all the time, yeah. And so you need positive people around you because when things are tough, when, if some people have a negative sort of viewpoint, it can be hard for them, man. You need positive people because they're going to bring everyone else up. And so I think, I think one of the things for me particularly is positive, positivity is key because then if you have positivity and an open mindset, you can achieve a lot of things.

Chris Hudson: 14:56

Yeah. Yeah. I want to say I probably haven't worked with as many accountants or finance people as you have but I've worked with a few and I don't know whether positivity and no can do attitude or I don't feel like, I don't feel like those are words that usually spring to mind when you think about finance,

Chris Mitchell: 15:14

Yeah, it's hard because they're kind of like the gatekeepers. Yeah. It's a hop because they're, they've got to reinforce the processes the policy and accounting policy, expense policies and things like that.

Chris Hudson: 15:25

Yeah, I guess finance and financial controllers and accountants and, people in. In those positions, they can be seen as the enemy a little bit, a bit of a villain kind of character within the context of the organization. It's not everyone that can get the most out of finance teams and financial leaders, my experience. Anyway, it feels like you've got to work with it and you've got to basically, if you're an innovation, if you're marketing, if you're in this or that, you've got to work within the constraints that are there and then. You earn the respect of the commercial leadership, you still need to, obviously, you still need to tow the line a bit. So I guess, from your point of view, like how do people get the best out of finance, do you think, and what have you seen work?

Chris Mitchell: 16:06

I think, yeah, I think it's, I think you need, I think a good leadership will try and build a finance team that sees a finance team as a support vehicle of the business. So I've always had teams, been a part of teams where we are, we're there to serve the business, in my role as CFO, I've always thought of myself as the CEO is my number obviously very closely followed by the board and the shareholders or whatever but and my role is to actually help how we're going to drive this business for growth and to make money and and obviously be profitable on the way because you got to have enough money, you got to have cash in the gym. But I think, so then, so I think it's actually more, I think to starting point is more of the finance teams actually have a crack and then build those relationships. Relationships are critical across the business. And so I'm a big believer with my teams is that I just want the guys to walk the floor. Go and see someone, and nothing gets me crankier than having someone on my team give it, you know, I don't like when someone on my team is cranky about someone not doing anything and they actually haven't spoke them, spoken to them in person or, it's harder with working from home if they haven't picked up the phone, in, cause everyone gets too many emails and all that sort of stuff. We've got Slack these days is there's multiple channels, but you just need people get so busy. They can. It's easy to hide behind email, Slack, text, whatever. Actually not to meet people on both teams, it's hard for someone to say, Oh, look, I couldn't get back to you if you've actually spoken to them. And so that relationships are really critical and it's about trying to help each other. Yes, you've got reporting against KPIs, you need to see delivery on that. I think part of that is actually, you've got to build trust. amongst your teams, across your teams to say, look, if the numbers aren't telling us the answer that you'd like, that's more about actually, then what problem do we need to fix? How do we help you even more? Do you know what I mean? And I think sometimes if you don't have the groundwork for those relationships, it's harder to build the environment of trust that you're actually, everyone's running the same direction. And it should be that. The numbers are the numbers, we want to focus, we've got to make sure we're focused on the right numbers. If these numbers aren't the right numbers, work with the business to tell us, you tell us what numbers should we be focusing on to get to that. And then you can, yeah. And then that comes back to drivers and what are we trying to, what are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to push?

Chris Hudson: 18:46

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a great answer. I think there's there's a lot of kind of cloudiness around numbers and metrics. Like it feels like there's Indirectly or directly, it basically ties into people's own performance goals and, it can be bonuses. It can be this or it can be that, but essentially your career path and your promotions and other things, it might be tied to it. So it feels like it starts with the person that's going to take. Ownership in some way of the number and then it's always got to add up to the organization wide and the business wide. Set of numbers in one way or another, but that whole kind of step is quite a big one to get it all working and coordinated in a way that everyone's working on the stuff in the way that. Not only incentivizes them and they feel motivated by but it then connects to the broader number and broader ambition of the business. That, that feels like the sweet spot, but

Chris Mitchell: 19:34

Chris, that's spot

Chris Hudson: 19:35

rare is that? Yeah.

Chris Mitchell: 19:46

to the strategy and the business and what you're trying to achieve, how can you expect your teams to? row of the same direction, they're going to go off in all sorts of different tangents and that's where I think incentive schemes, the simpler they are, the better. And in terms of, but then in terms of trying to measure performance, that's how, that's, we spent a lot of time over the years, on goal sheets, fine tuning, and they've still, but everyone still hates the process and so it's still, you got to find a way as you get bigger that they don't get to, the process doesn't get too bureaucrat, you're bureautized in terms of bureaucracy and things like that. So I think, yeah, I think. There's so much to, if you agree a strategy, trying to keep it as simple as you can, trying to get the right KPIs that everyone can push towards. And then, but you, and then you got to find, okay, so how does that individual in that team that's over there play their role to impact that? And then you got to help join that. And then that's, that's every effort, in terms of everyone working together to, to do that.

Chris Hudson: 20:52

Yeah. There could be a new joiner, right? It's always like the whole thing is in transition the whole time, right?

Chris Mitchell: 20:57

Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 20:57

Somebody joins new team leader, they get set some goals. All of that has to be considered in light of what's happened before and what the other 16 leaders have had. But because he's joining or maybe three of them are joining, you've got to rethink the whole lot. And then, it's just it's always evolving like that. And if you get it wrong, obviously it's incentivized. Like you say, it's incentivizing the wrong behavior. From, from a personal point of view, would you give any advice, do you have any advice for anyone out there that is basically trying to align themselves to the business goal in one way or another? What do you think works well and gets through easier?

Chris Mitchell: 21:32

It depends, say if it's a project or you're in a, product and design or you're trying to build a new product for the business. I think what's critical is trying to get everyone to take a step back. What are we trying to achieve? And what's the one critical metric that we think that this new product, because obviously it's giving a lot of uncertainty, but what's the, if we've got eight months to get on a year or 10 months to get on a year, like what's the one thing we can get or two, if you're lucky. And then it's about having consistency so that everyone's targeted on it in some way, shape or form so that, it should cascade down so that the person, no one in my team. shouldn't have a goal that I'm not on the hook for. Do you know what I mean? Almost in terms of now, obviously lower levels, they all should cascade in. So, it's, I think, to use an example we put in a new accounting system, everyone had the same goal. We just got to launch that thing on one August. If we do that's a five out of five. And then if we get it out a month later, okay, that's still good. That's a four out of five. But we've got to have it done by the end of financial year, so you kinda, so I think yeah, it's just trying to have consistency across targets, incentives for people, because when you don't, because they don't talk, everyone talks anyway, and so you'll get people that won't be happy, if there's inconsistency, it just makes it quite difficult, and you just spend your time having more meetings, try to

Chris Hudson: 23:04

must have had a load of chats along the way that you know where people like leaders are like really putting their strategies forward and like they've spent weeks and weeks doing this stuff they come and they present it all and you think you know how can that be you know in line with what we're doing

Chris Mitchell: 23:21

No, but

Chris Hudson: 23:22

what we thought we were aiming for

Chris Mitchell: 23:23

that's a really good point, Chris. Yeah. I think there, I'd say that the strategy process is really important in terms of the leaders leading it, in terms of, like to be fair, we're probably a smaller organization, the 200 people, but there's, You've still got your executive leadership team, one, have to get together and say, Hey, here's how we're going to, here's a bit of a framework to work with awards. And then the leaders should be working with their senior managers and their teams wider within that framework. And then I think of things as like a, quite an iterative process. So if you allow, allow a decent chunk of time to roll through that process so that your team can be brought on the journey, I think that's critical in terms of then if there's a nugget of a new idea or whatever, then that can be explored and then, go after it. We like it because of that, because of our size, we can then pivot. quite easily. And particularly if, if there's great communication, people are aware of what's happening and and people are talking to each other, it's fine. You can then pivot on if there's something is, if there's an opportunity to get ahold of, like we always say, in our, when we had in our goal sheet process, it would be like, okay, part of it was your operational day to day. One section was the projects that you're doing. This year, another section was, what are the ideas that we're coming up with that we might do next year? And I'd always say to my teams, if there's a good idea there, we're going to find a way to try and get it done this year if we can. If it's got a way to impact the numbers and our value to the business, why wouldn't we have a crack at it? And then you just got to prioritize, obviously, at the back of that.

Chris Hudson: 25:12

Yeah, cool. It's about designing in those moments where, whereby ideas can come in, because obviously if your targets to, if your target set, and I guess your instruction to the teams is too narrow, then that, that kind of, Looking sideways for other opportunities probably won't happen as much because everyone's just going to be focused on the number or the one thing that's being put in front of them. And you see that happen too, right? And very sales driven organizations and, worked with Salesforce and various other ones, that's it, that's what everyone's focused on. So you've got to design a bit of wiggle room into the system. It feels like for people to be able to innovate and feel like they're comfortable in doing that too.

Chris Mitchell: 25:48

Yeah. And I think, if you're talking about budgeting processes and setting it up, you've got to find that way to, you've got to have a little bit of top down, but you've got to have a lot of bottom up because if you don't have bottom up detail where, you know, where my, like my team's working really closely with the commercial teams and the other teams around components of that budget. might as well go and sit in the smoke filled room, to do the top down stuff and just, just, so I think, yeah, and, but you've got to have, it is the challenge of budgeting where, when you do your detailed bottom up work, it'll always come in short. The guys will always be like, Hey, yeah, they'll, when they're thinking about risk, the risk comes through in spades and there's no upside. You can't hang on. When you, once you pull it apart you got to, you got to do that. But then, and then from, so you've got to have a little bit of top down magic, but that's purely should be for setting the framework and saying, Hey, look, we have this, but then, and then facts and data, everything's going to be facts and data. If you're, cause if you're, you guys are doing the bottom up, they've got really good facts and data and they're bringing insights back. Then you've got to listen to that, in terms of what you're seeing. And conversely, from the top down magic, top down stuff, you've got to have facts and data to back you up. What do you think you're going to get that? What's the, what's the system growth telling you? Say, what's inflation telling you? What's the economy telling you? What's going to happen over the next sort of 12, 16, 18 months? Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 27:21

Yeah. Yeah. I think, risk is a really interesting area from this point of view. And what's your appetite and how do you handle it and what, how do you get comfortable with it? Because, it's superannuation or like any kind of financial product where you can diversify and you can have high risk and low risk things. But, have you got a, have you got a kind of way of running that kind of keeps you as chilled as you are, keeps you comfy.

Chris Mitchell: 27:44

think for us, being a growth business, it's about cash. Everything comes back to cash. And so, the, yeah, it just comes back to cash and then whether or not I actually believe we can do it. Because if we can't, if we set a really high revenue target for the teams and they can't hit it. Because we generally have reinvested most of our spare cash over the years Canstar, like that, if we're not, if we're not hitting our targets or with a, career, that can create a real issue, knock on effect in terms of we haven't got any, we're running out of cash. And so for me the risk of every budget forecast that we do is what's the cash flow implication of what we're doing. And then making sure we've got some. Um, frameworks, rules of thumb that we operate to, to make sure that we're not outside of those. And then you've got to know your teams again, this where it comes back to being a sort of small or medium sized, small or business. You've just got to know your people. Like actually a crack, a cracker on this, where this, I got first taught this was at the ad agency. And my boss at the time, Damien, he would go. With the part, the client service directors back at the time, and he would know who was on and who was off in terms of who was going and who wasn't purely from body language, talking to him, asking the right questions or whatever. And he told me a lot about how do you know if that exactly, cause back in the ad agency days, like you you put up forecasts. You've got to go and win that work off the client, right? If you're doing tactical campaign sort of stuff and so then, it's about how, like, how in depth can you guys talk about the clients that they're talking to and what do you, how do you know, what can you see coming through in terms of some of the campaign work that's going on? What's been happening with pitches? What's the global look of that client? Yeah. For us here now, I don't think any of that changes. Like it's, for me, it's like whoever's in charge of the revenue line, you want to know how they go on with, client relationships are critical. Like we're just relationship focused at Canstar because we've been bootstrapped. We've been self funded the whole way through. And so relationships are critical, whether they're client relationships, partner relationships, even down to the, our part, our relationships with our lawyers and bankers and accountants, they're critical for us because that all comes back to me for cash risk in terms of what we can do. And then that's why that, you get really good with your incentives is because those incentives have to drive incremental cash. And so where I'm thinking about incentives, I want to, of course, I want to recognize the team. They're going to pay, make sure we look after the team. We're just going to make sure there's a few bucks to go out of the kitty for the business as well,

Chris Hudson: 30:44

Yeah

Chris Mitchell: 30:45

Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 30:46

So is there any kind of incentives? Is there any, is there anything that you think works better than other things? Or do any things that you don't think work at all?

Chris Mitchell: 30:53

Things that you can measure. Like whether it can be, because sometimes if it's a project it's really hard, but you want, it's going to be what's deadline, what's the deadline going to be in terms of exceeding those expectations or meeting those expectations, always allowing a little bit of slippage time in terms of the delivery dates, but then that's critical and then, but then what's that MVP look like? What's your minimum viable product look like and what are we saying up front? You're gonna you're going to deliver at that timeframe, I think. And then having regular check ins to, for that progress on those.

Chris Hudson: 31:25

Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a lot of chat obviously around because I'm doing quite a lot of organizational design, cultural design, and designing for the experience of work and you're thinking about how to differentiate yourself as a place of work compared to a lot of other places and obviously incentivization comes into that, there's some people that We'll be very happy with, non-financial incentives. Put it that way. There, there are companies out there bending backwards to try and come up with like new cultural initiatives That are just gonna stand out and feel a bit cool. Like you were saying at the time, the bar behind the reception or whatever it is. It doesn't have to be that, there are lots. So I guess there's a more lateral kind of approach to. In, making people feel good about the place that they work,

Chris Mitchell: 32:08

Now you're up.

Chris Hudson: 32:09

ties into a lot of what you're doing there at Canstar too.

Chris Mitchell: 32:12

Yeah, that's right. So we made a just on that. Yeah. And the bar thing is different now. Like it's, that's, I think for my team, what works is Korean chicken and ice creams. And you go, Hey, that's the world's change. That's fine. That's great. You know, um, But the um, the, so we made a real cultural shift probably around 2018, 2019 to really go after the sort of great place to work. Awards and to really go, what does it mean from a cultural perspective and that culminated, we went on a wall back at 21, but then you that post COVID world and working from home, it's, you've got to if you want to get your teams in the office at least a couple of days a week, two or three days a week, You've gotta do that. So like we are, get Canstar, you can get your breakfast, you can make, even now you can make a sandwich at lunchtime if you want to, like you can do breakfast and lunch, but in this, these times of sort of, cost of living pressures, it's basically, what we're basically saying is, look, if you can pay the public transport to come in, You can make your lunch at Canstar every day you want, every day you want. And then so we're doing that once a month, we're doing like a lunch. On Wednesday, because that's currently where Tuesdays and Thursdays expected in the office, you can come any day you want. But to help incentivize people to come in on a Wednesday, you can, we're, I think the next lunch is Italian. We just did Greek the other day. Still, by far, the most popular was that they kicked off with KFC. It was amazing. They've seen so many people in the office for the KFC day. That was great, but but I think if you really got to think, and in all the, mat leave, paternity leave policies things out of that, the whole it's definitely, It's changed over the last, since COVID, and that, and people have a choice. That's the other thing the unemployment rate is still under 4%, so staff have a choice and so you've really got to put effort into how you want to do it. And I'd say the, actually the staff lunch thing where it's just a fully stocked fridge with, so you can basically make a ham and salad sandwich, plus condiments that you want to eat. It's been really well received so far, like it's been great, and so I think that's whatever you can do to help your staff out. And I think to acknowledge that, Mondays. Do you really need the guys in the office? My days are hard to get, and I think about working parents with kids and whatnot. And so from a Canstar perspective, that's our exec meeting day. So at 1030, the execs were, in a locked room. They don't let us out for a few hours but for us, that means the teams are preparing all their weekly reporting for that meeting. And so what would you make and come in? You're far better off, let them get the kids into the, off to school or whatever. They can sit down with a cup of tea or a coffee and then crack on with the exec reporting and then, do a fantastic job without having the stress of coming to the office. So I think this whole hybrid working from home thing can really work. But then I'm a big believer in having them, your people in as much as you can, because you lose that water cooler chat and things like that.

Chris Hudson: 35:23

Yeah.

Chris Mitchell: 35:24

Yep.

Chris Hudson: 35:29

Have you had to enforce anything in that space?

Chris Mitchell: 35:31

Nah, like we, you might, actually, it depends on their role a little bit. And then in terms of, and that, but I would, I don't know, like the kind of person that I am, I need to be around a team of people and I would be, if I had someone like that in my team, I'd just be trying to get to the bottom of, okay how it is, but then, with some teams like tech, in particular, sometimes those boys and girls would far rather just be at home in a dark room and just tap it away with their code. So then that, and I think that's where the incentives are even more critical about what, acknowledging that and letting them work from home a few days a week, a couple of days a week, but then, What are we doing in terms of their professional development in terms of from a coding perspective or product, what can we do to put on in the office to help them? I think, I think the tech team they did for a team quarterly event the other day, and we do that at Canstar, team quarterly events, every exec's encouraged to do that. The guys are the Lego Masters. team body thing. Yeah, that's great. So then a guy who's a Lego master and he, they did a team thing like that. So you just trying to find new ways. It's just, yeah, it's very different to back when we were in London 20 years ago and there was a bar.

Chris Hudson: 36:44

Everyone's

Chris Mitchell: 36:44

think that was the old way of the agency's keeping costs down. I think they just said, Oh, we'll just give everyone a few beers. And that's true. That's right.

Chris Hudson: 36:54

or nothing, on certain nights, but yeah, that kept them there.

Chris Mitchell: 36:59

That's right.

Chris Hudson: 37:00

I, yeah, I mean, there's a lot that's changing. I'm saying, we've talked about a few things already, but in terms of what are you seeing else elsewhere in, in terms of the organization, what's coming up, the market, what are you feeling like some of the trends are that you're feeling like you need to adapt to and how are you managing that through the teams in a

Chris Mitchell: 37:17

Yep. I think the big one is just automation and the, and AI and it's, and that's a real hard to mine things. Because a lot of people, as soon as you say that will think that, Hey they're just going to chop, cut, save costs. And I, it couldn't be, if you were talking about a big four bank, yeah, I could go like that. But like when you're in a smaller growth business for us, it's about, we're always trying to punch above our weight. against other competitors, other, even, other institutions. And so for us, it's more about being able to be more competitive and more productive so that we can, meet those challenges head on. And so I think that's a big one. And so then you people like just talking to your people and trying to explain to them Why it's important, what we've got to do with them, why they're, and give them and say, Hey, your jobs, this is not about firing anyone. This is about how can we do this? And so that's, and that's like a, that's not a conversation you can just do once, like that is a conversation you have to continually reinforce and whatever, and put your arms around your people and say, Hey, we, we just got to, we have to do this. But guess what? We're going to try and strip out of your day job, a whole bunch of manual processes. That's the thing that I continually get amazed at around everywhere. Like whether it's within Canstar or other places. And I talk to other people where you go, when you lift up a rock somewhere and you go, wow, someone's been hooked up with. Such a manual process to do something. And it's about, I think there's a, there's an interesting thing around, and this is where I think AI and automation is going to go steamroll companies because the companies that will embrace it and get on board with it will just accelerate so quickly. And so I think internally it's about how do you create that sort of trust environment where people can put their hand up and go, Hey, I'm dealing with a really hard. process over here. Can someone help me out with it? And sometimes you've got to go across teams to find someone who's got this thick skill set to be able to do that. We're lucky at Canstar. We have a lot of data that we collect. We process a lot of data with our staff, with all the star ratings and things, the algorithms around that. Like we're really lucky. We've got fantastic. Data engineers, mathematicians, kids, and the kids are coming through to that data science. It's just amazing what they could do. And but you'll have someone in another team that it's not part of that. That doesn't see that on a day to day basis. They've got no idea that we've got this capability internally, even though we are. the size of we are and you go, wow, I'm, that's what I'm particularly amazed at. Like some of the stuff that came in at the innovation last week, I'm like, wow, there's some wow moments. You go, wow. And you go, okay we got to help these people. Then we got to, because you fix that person is so much more efficient and then they can actually add value on a whole bunch more stuff, but then they feel better about themselves. Can you imagine like coming up, change over process and you look at it. 50 or 100 spreadsheets to do it and you go, wow, so that's, so I think there's a mass, it's a massive opportunity. It's a massive hearts and minds because it's massive transformation as well.

Chris Hudson: 40:28

yeah, I agree. There's a lot I think, it's obviously there are a lot to do with trust. Within your culture and within the leadership and the team dynamics that you have, if you're basically asking somebody to volunteer information about the things that they could make more efficient in the way that they work, that can be a hard conversation because like the 2200 spreadsheets or whatever it is, it's like people take pride in that, that's the way they've been doing it, That's how they've justified their timesheet

Chris Mitchell: 40:53

Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 40:53

they've been running it with that level of care Even if it's, if it, to anyone else, it sounds like a very arduous task. So just but to those people yeah, exactly. And then like, how do you frame up the thing that they can do with the time they get back? Cause I feel like there's a lot of conversations around the premise of AI and the fact that, you're going to get three days of the week back or whatever. That's just an exaggeration but how are you turning that into something real for the people that you feel, AI is helping And how are you celebrating some of those stories within the

Chris Mitchell: 41:23

yeah, I think I'll use my own team to start off with. So we put in a new accounting platform last year. We've only been live on it eight or nine months. We've just recently completely re engineered board reporting, the weekly exec reporting, and there's no way we could have done that on the old system And so for us, I actually feel like we're at the start of a new journey in terms of how do we help the business provide more data? With a digital business, we've got so much data, our biggest challenge is again, being a growth business and not having massive teams. It's what are you focusing on today? So there's always, you're always cherry picking what you can and can't do. And so from an automation AI perspective, I get super excited. To set an example, I, you guys probably, get sick of me talking about it again imagine a dashboard of feeding all the data in from our websites and it's just telling me hey, Chris, I like, that your traffic or your, Is down 30 percent year on year for New South Wales refinances for the same day from the same last year compared to last year. And how about doing it? It's a, it's that whole reverse engineering. You don't have to boil the ocean anymore looking for insight. AI can give you that insight. And then as a finance professional or, I look after digital analytics at Canstar. So we have. that you can just help the business out so much more quickly. And then say from a content perspective, the guys, our guys take such a long time to upload the content. You just go, great. We can write more articles, we can write and the guys, we guys have said, we can write more in depth articles, which goes to eat on Google and it goes to this. And so for us, it's about, it's just about. being able to do more, but do more, but not feel like, oh my God, like it's not a switch or like it was back at the ad agency back in, back over there. But it's that actually,

Chris Hudson: 43:21

Yeah.

Chris Mitchell: 43:22

it's more like you can actually, it's sustainable, and the guys are doing quality work. And so then they're, they're happy to do that because you're not going, it's not about just trying to get the data or the insight in or get that article up. It's about actually. Or coming up with the insight. So I get excited about it because I think it could really help people. And I think one of, actually one of the big things I'm learning from it as we go on the journey as a business is actually the AI piece is just a little bit at the end, what it's actually forcing people to do is go and look at their infrastructure, how things are set up. There's usually quite a bit that's got to be unpacked. around your processes, what you're sitting on in terms of infrastructure, whether it's tech or even process that you've, you need to fix first. And some, and that's where you need to leverage other teams and people with different skillsets to actually help you to do that. Like some teams that just don't have that skillset to help them, you need to bring in other skillsets to do it.

Chris Hudson: 44:25

Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely an enabler. I think, what you're describing there in the way of, It's like unleashing the possibilities a little bit and making that the currency. Like you basically got to get people started with it and to get the stories coming out from what it's been able to achieve before people believe that it can do anything more and that life at work can be any different, which it can obviously. But if you're, and if you're in a business like yours where it's 200 people and you're saying you can pivot quite easily, you can move to, Move towards a new opportunity. Like in that situation, it would feel really exciting if you had all the tools available to, to be able to just jump ship and work on something else for a few weeks, one day and just see how far AI could get you within, Three weeks, four weeks, 24 hours. Doesn't matter.

Chris Mitchell: 45:08

Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 45:09

Like you, you'd soon find out how, it's taking a creator's mindset really

Chris Mitchell: 45:14

Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 45:15

into what would have typically been quite a process driven, arduous, set of decisions. And decisioning in particular, you don't see it probably where you are so much, with some of the, some of the government clients that we work with and, within other financial services institutions, it's just, it slows everything right down. And. There obviously is a reason for that too, but it gets in the way of rapid innovation. If you do want to move at speed competitive advantage is getting more and more important, isn't it? Because somebody else can just turn up and, if a startup could spend three days doing what you had to do in three months or even longer,

Chris Mitchell: 45:51

Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 45:52

It's worrying really that, a couple of guys in a room could probably turn out something that a team of 40 or 50 were doing potentially if they were focused on that one thing. Yeah the whole kind of, small, medium, large size enterprise and what each of those can do, it depends on the extent to which you're set up for some of this. If you're not, then you're up against different people. Yeah.

Chris Mitchell: 46:16

I think there's such a, it's just a it's actually a real leadership challenge in terms of, cause we've got a couple of, yeah, we've got a couple of interesting betas. where we we're leveraging AI in terms of what we might do on the website. And obviously from a Canstar perspective, we've got a financial services license, so there's a whole bunch of compliance stuff around that, so we taking our time with it, but for us to even got to where we were, you have to have like a growth innovation mindset and we had to create, you have to create the headspace for those people who are going to work on that. to do that, and then that's where, and that's also true where you leverage your partners. Leveraging, Google, Amazon, Azure, or wherever it is that you're partnering with, when those tools are becoming a play and being seen as creative can be quite helpful in terms of some of that acceleration in terms of that. But I think a lot of it comes down to your leadership in terms of What are people prepared to do to give you, try and manufacture some of that time to, to do that, and then prioritization, cause you go, I think people have got time, but when it's hard about how you're working on the right stuff, how do you empower your teams, how do you create that environment? So everyone knows the journey you're going on to. Tried. So you

Chris Hudson: 47:40

How'd you balance that there's a lot, and we've had a lot of chats on the podcast around this already, but it's around change and how to plan for change or just let change happen. If it's too much change, it's just too much chaos. Basically, nobody knows what's going on. If there's too much direction, it feels too fixed. The short term is, and there's longer term strategy. Have you found any kind of mixes of that, that you feel are working better?

Chris Mitchell: 48:02

Oh, I think you've just got to bite off chunks and I think you do have to be mindful of your teams a little bit. Think There's everyone's run at a certain pace to, hit an annual budget, hit their targets, deliver the projects that are aligned with that strategy and budget process. And then, and so you gotta keep, yeah, you gotta be a little bit careful about the change and then the communications. Yeah, it's pretty critical in terms of Taking people on a journey and you can't just front up as a leader and say something once and go, yeah, it's over, like I can tell you last year, like when I was, when we were putting in a, accounting platform, it's hard for everyone and they're doing on top of their day jobs. It's like we could, yes, we had a support from an implementation partner, but when it comes to UAT and everything's on our hook. And so then you're, you've actually really got to I tried to gamify it with the team and just create an aura of, hey, this can be fun. We get, we're giving out prizes to people that we could see that we're really engaging with it and really delivering on the UAT side of it. And then we try to, try to, you could make your team accountable in terms of guys, when we go live on this, if you can't do your day job, we're going to be a spot of bother. So it's like you're going this, you're trying to, and then you're running a pitch with the team. So this is going to be great, from a, it's CV building and it is in terms of be able to say you've been on a project like that. It's amazing. Like particular and the satisfaction you get at the end of it. Like we hit the deadline that we set out to do, was it, was it perfect? No, we're all our asses on fire. Yes. did, did we have a big team celebration at the end? You bet we did because the guys had delivered and you and we're seeing the fruits of that now, nine months later. And I think that's hard for you guys when they're in the trenches all day. I think as leaders, you gotta, it's about trying to paint a picture of, Hey, this is what it could look like in time. And you've just got to try and we could always talk about staircases. If you know where you're going to go, that's great. But we can't go from here to there straight away. What's the staircase and what's the, how can you get quick wins? Like, how can you just make a little win on that staircase? Everyone feels good about it. You can celebrate it. We love celebrating wins at Canstar. And then you, and then, you're on the journey, and so I think that's, yeah that's the thing, you're celebrating innovation is, like we do quarterly catch up with our our senior managers and whatnot, and what we are continually amazed at, and the guys, they come and present, you What's the, what's been their wins, what's been their challenges and what's their opportunities for the last quarter and the opportunities of what's coming up next quarter. And you're always amazed, we're always amazed at the micro innovation that goes on. You wouldn't hear about that. Except the guys are going to fill out the slides once a quarter and come and talk to the exec team. And then, and and, but it's really good. It's really engaging, for the business. And you can, then you see that and then you can, and you can join dots and different conversations. Oh, you need to so and that's great. And then you just be celebrating that with the team and then you're going, okay, great. What's next. Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 51:19

yeah, it's cool. I mean, just hearing you talk, there's so many sideways conversations and, it's almost like the connective glue, commercial side of things, obviously holding a lot of that together you'll be exposed to so many of those chats and the fact that you see it all and you can connect people. It feels like you're pretty, everyone knows that you're influential within the organization, but you're centrally placed for that visibility, which I think a lot of people may overlook, they might just go straight to, the, whoever it is, the innovation lead or the experience lead or the product lead or the CEO, no, but actually I think. From what you're describing, you're having to, having to bring a lot of those threads together for the innovation to be made possible. So knowing who, who within your organization doesn't have to be the finance lady that, but knowing within, who within the organization is basically facilitating that, and is across some of those conversations is really important for you as a leader or. An entrepreneur in one way or another to be able to think about, okay where do I say it? What's possible? How do we prove something? How do we make something different? How do we change it up? You've got to align to the right people basically From what I'm hearing.

Chris Mitchell: 52:25

No, but that's, and that's a really good point because I think what you can, even in a bigger organization, someone will be a budget holder somewhere and someone will be preparing the reporting around that budget. And so if it's a bigger organization, you find out who's doing the financial you'll probably notice it will be coming around reports from someone, you can build a relationship with that person. And so if you're doing an innovation program design, And you need to unlock, if you can make, build relationships with the people preparing the numbers, the people who have got responsibility for the numbers. And you can build sort of relationship pools around that, ponds around that. Then when you need, okay, we actually, we've got this cracking idea that's come up from here. Can we need five grand or we need 10 grand to go and test it? And if you've built relationships and people are buying into your story or what you're saying people will back it. I think they should, you know, I'm a big believer in the finance unit and, everyone that comes along with, you should just be, we're there to support the business and we're there to like, to help. And it's we're just, we want to drive and grow. And it's just about, how can you help with that? When you're talking about growth and innovation perspective.

Chris Hudson: 53:41

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a big thing. You were saying earlier with relations, Damien, it's how to bring that relation relational side to financial discussion. We were taught it when we were first invoicing as well, to clients, but. You can't just position it as a number, like you've got to, you've got to embed it within a broader conversation. You've got to, position its value and think about its value differently. And from the point of view of whoever, whoever it is you're communicating with, you can't just. You can't just treat it as a cold hard number because that only gets you so far, and it probably shuts the conversation down a lot sooner than it would do otherwise. And particularly if you're getting into negotiations and other things like more relational it can be, the more easy it can be as well. It feels like for people, you're effectively running. It's not Shark Tank or Dragon's Den or anything, but you're effectively, you're managing the money. So somebody's going to have to convince you that money is better spent somewhere else. And you could have thought, it's a bit like, a council deciding whether they're going to spend money on a digital transformation or a website or a mobile app, or by putting, more park benches in, it's these are the discussions that you're going to have within your business. In any business, people are going to have to trade off this investment in your pay rise, or, this bit of kit or this test and market against other things. So I think that broader picture and awareness, like you've got to be able to get to that. Otherwise you don't know what kind of. commercial discussion you're entering into fully. So it's not like everyone really knows that it feels.

Chris Mitchell: 55:10

yeah. I think, but that's, again, the Canstar example was because we're in so many categories, we've always been in a trade off. If you bootstrap self funded, but you operate in sort of 35 finance categories and Canstar I believe is over 300. We've just been kids in a candy shop the whole time. And so we've had to be really picky and choosy about what we do. About where we choose to play because we've got some fantastic 10 or total addressable markets in a whole bunch of different places. But we are capital, we're capital lot capital constrained, but the cash that we have, so it's a tricky one. And and then that sort of cascades down, but then coming back to your point I think the power of that relationships, right? Like when you're in a project teams, you've got your finance contacts and you can just build those. It can just be so helpful because you never know where that's gonna reverberate up, in terms of, it gets more visibility for the project that you're on and help and if, I think too from a, finance, trying to influence, it's like use of facts and data. Hey, look, if we had this five grand, I had this 10 grand, we think we could impact this, which could lead to that, which could change this number by Y. Yeah. We don't really know if it's going to pan out that way, but that's a strong hypothesis. And we've got this data to back it up. People love that stuff because it's, you're just putting science behind the spend and the data and what you want to do. And I think as. Automation, AI, all that stuff. Everything is just data. Data. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Hudson: 56:47

everyone wants to be associated with sales, but that's effectively what you're having to position, your your output against, somebody else is saying exactly the same thing and you're up against that. So if you're the buyer, you're the finance lead, which are you going to buy? It's yeah, interesting to think about it in terms of a competitive landscape with other people that you're working with as well. Yeah, cool. Cover a lot of ground. Thank you for your time. And yeah, there's a lot in there that I'll think about. The KFC obviously stands out. No, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. Just from the point of view of, relational work, managing commercial strategy. Preparing for change and enabling teams around change. I think there's a lot in that and yeah, we covered some good stuff. That's great stories along the way. And obviously we know a lot of the same people. And so can relate to some of these people as well. So yeah, really appreciate the chat, Chris, and thanks so much for coming on to the show.

Chris Mitchell: 57:43

Mate, thank you. Really appreciate it, Chris. Cheers, mate.