Optimising Payments for SMEs

In this first episode of the new season, I’m thrilled to be joined by Lewis Turek, the General Manager of North America at GoCardless, a payment company that allows a simple, secure way to get paid, without the chasing stress or expensive fees. 

In this conversation, Lewis and I discuss his journey from IBM Intern, through to setting up Uber for Business in the UK and dive into his current experience as an English ex pat, leading GoCardless expansion into the U.S.

🌟 Some of my favourite parts were:

✅Lewis’ experience of starting in a new country “as an absolute zero and as a nobody” (referring to his credit history!), and the challenges of building that up with no track record in the U.S.;
✅How U.S businesses manage the data protections and controls around customer bank details – Lewis provides an anecdote on business attitudes that you won’t want to miss;
✅How, on the B2C side, we are seeing a downwards trend in credit card spend as Millennials and Gen Z have chosen an alternative route and are less comfortable with debt.;
✅How as a graduate trainee Lewis was up into the wee hours trying to work out how best to present to his bosses and the life lessons gained from that experience;
✅The differences in the way B2B payments are made in America – over 20% of B2B payments are still made by paper checks!

Transcript

Adam (00:02.205)

Okay, so today I'm here with Lewis Turek who is the General Manager of North America at Go Cardless, a payment company that allows a simple, secure way to get paid, allowing customers an easy way to collect instant one -off or recurring payments without the chasing stress or expensive fees. Lewis, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show, how are you doing?

Lewis Turek (00:23.598)

Thanks Adam, I'm doing very well. You've described Go Cardless there probably better than I could have done.

Adam (00:28.701)

Oh, well, happy to do so. Happy to do so. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And so today, you know, really want to dive into the world that you're going to be very familiar with about optimizing payments and particularly with my audience in mind of small and medium sized business owners. Perhaps to start with, would you mind giving us a bit of an overview of your career so far and how did you end up as an Englishman in the US?

Lewis Turek (00:52.334)

Sure, it's been a bit of a journey and I think the key word is very fortunate throughout all of the journey. I started my career at IBM. I landed there in a graduate job by fluke. I'd had an internship there and at the end of the internship they said, we'll give you a graduate job. So it meant I could spend my final year at university focused on what mattered, partying, drinking, rather than necessarily so much on the exams because I knew I had a graduate job sitting there.

And that was the world of IT technology. IBM selling Lotus notes, sort of showing my age there. And then made the switch from Lotus to Microsoft. Three years at Microsoft, a little stint at Salesforce, then a SaaS company called Bazaar Voice that did online rate or does online ratings and reviews. A little stint at Uber. That was fun, setting up Uber for business in the UK. Back to Bazaar Voice again. And...

Eventually I joined Go Cardless coming up to three years ago. My first foray into fintech, but still very much SaaS. And how I got it was the magic of people, knowing people, staying in touch with old colleagues, never burning bridges. One of my old colleagues messaged me and said, hey, I think you should look into this role we've got. And next thing you know, I was moving to America.

Adam (02:18.365)

Amazing, amazing. What have you found to be some of the challenges of moving over there? I mean, I know you are a big fan of the US and have been there a lot, but it's different traveling there to living there. So what have been some of those challenges?

Lewis Turek (02:32.814)

It's amazing when you start in a new country as an absolute zero and as a nobody. So one of the first things I had to do was go get a social security number. I had zero credit, zero history, zero anything. American Express gave me a credit card transfer. So at least I had a credit card when I got here to the US, but I was a nobody in the eyes of any credit union bank.

lending agency. I wanted to get a car. I couldn't get a loan on a car. I'd gone from being in the UK with a perfect credit rating can probably get any loan that I want to not being able to do that. I remember going to Bank of America and they offered me a $1 ,000 credit limit credit card subject to me giving them $1 ,000. So I had to cover my own credit.

And I remember asking the lady, do I get interest on the $1 ,000 at least? And her response was, no, honey, we do. It's like, right, understood. So it was an experience learning how to completely build credit and chatting and looking online and seeing the tips and tricks of you need to find a card that it will give you just $100 credit, put $20 purchase on it and pay it off over four months at $5 a month.

daft things that you have to do just to help all the analytics and all the systems come together. And I think the other slight challenge that any expat will feel is where to live. Again, it's quite tricky to find a landlord, let alone a mortgage company that is willing to take a risk on you. So I was very lucky having friends here in Austin, Texas. So my landlord is one of my old colleagues from Bazaar Voice. It made life a lot easier and it's worked out very well.

Adam (04:25.021)

Excellent, excellent. And I guess it's given you some insight into some of the challenges that your new customers face in terms of dealing with those sort of financial elements from scratch. You know, you look at them with a fresh voice, right?

Lewis Turek (04:38.318)

Yeah, it's, it is amazing talking with people and they go, Oh, why don't you just get this credit card? Or you can get so many points on it. And having to explain to someone, I really am untrusted in America right now. I've been here now coming up on 18 months and actually I've built my credit rating up and, and that's good, but it's a, it's a scary world for people that can't get credit. And that then leads on really well into the business world where businesses are relying on being paid on time correctly.

Cash flow is an issue in this day and age and you can't risk not getting paid.

Adam (05:16.989)

Yeah, no, exactly. You talked about cashflow there and getting paid and that's a nice segue on to some of those challenges. What are the sort of the main challenges that you face over there with small businesses in the US and any differences with the UK?

Lewis Turek (05:32.014)

I think there's many differences. The first one that still amazes me is over here in America, over 20 % of B2B payments are still made by paper checks. Incredibly, an IOU is how companies pay each other. And they put it in the mail with a stamp, and maybe it gets there. Those who are in America will know that the USPS over here isn't as good as the Royal Mail.

dare I say it, and checks get lost all the time. So this concept of paying in a smarter way hasn't yet got here. I think there's other interesting changes, the differences that we see. It's only COVID that really brought along in the US contactless payments. The concept of chip and pin doesn't exist here. At every restaurant I go to for dinner,

It still bamboozles me that the server will take my credit card away. Who knows what they're doing with my credit card, but that's what they do. Whereas in the UK, we'll all know that no one touches your card. You deal with your card and they bring the machine to you. But from a business perspective, we certainly see less of an adoption of smarter technologies. There's still a reliance on credit cards and businesses that are...

B2C facing will have to have a credit card solution typically because consumers in America typically want to pay by card, often want to get their points. Although we are for the first time seeing a downwards trend in credit card spend over debit card and alternative solutions. In the B2B world, in the UK, direct debit has been around for a very long time. It's well regarded, it's well...

people trust it. Over here in America the similar concept of pull ACH is much fresher and is growing rapidly.

Adam (07:40.701)

Okay, great. Lots there and a couple of points I'd love to touch on. You talk about the downward trend and credit versus debit. What do you think is sort of behind that? Is it COVID? Is it about just the general adoption and the sort of tipping point that's been reached? What's been the cause of that?

Lewis Turek (08:04.462)

It's an interesting question and no one knows the exact answer. My belief, my hunch on this is we're coming into a world where the millennials or the gen, whatever we're up to, gen Z, gen Z plus ones, yes, don't want to go into debt. They have seen the risks that debt brings. Some of them can't get into credit. They're in the same challenge that I had when I first came to America and...

Adam (08:17.629)

Z, I think.

Lewis Turek (08:33.678)

They are finding better ways of using debit cards or living check to check. They know their means and they don't want to go down into this massive debt pile risk. But I think we could spend an entire episode talking about the B2C world and the risks of consumer credit.

Adam (08:54.397)

Yeah, for sure. It's a different podcast, I think. But in terms of the small businesses that you deal with, what do you think are sort of the main problems that you at Go Cardless are solving and how is Go Cardless able to solve them better than others?

Lewis Turek (09:10.766)

So it's probably worth while spending a second talking about how Go Cardless came to be. British company founded 13 odd years ago, a group of young early twenties wanting to find a way that they could get money from their subscriptions for their football club. No easy way of creating a direct debit with their bank. So they created a piece of software. Next thing you know, other clubs, other organizations are using it.

And they go, hang on, we've got an idea here. This could work really well. Today that's grown and grown and grown to have 80 ,000 plus active customers at any one time processing billions every month. In direct debit in the UK in using backs rails, ACH rails in America, pad in Canada, SEPA, BEX, AutoGiro globally throughout the world. And the concept hasn't changed. It's really simple. It's.

You are owed this money. So I'm going to take the money from your account with your permission. I'm going to do it accurately on time with either the same amount or a variable amount, either as a one -off or as a recurring basis. So let's use the classic UK example on a B2C world, a gym, your insurance premium, your utility bill that will automatically come from your bank account.

you won't necessarily know that it's go, or the end user won't know that it's go cardless, but they'll know that it's super reliable. And there's hundreds, if well, there's thousands in the UK of accountants who use go cardless every day for getting their funds from their clients, integrating that into their billing platform, into a zero, for example, into a Sage, into a charge B recurly Salesforce net suite, et cetera. So the basic of it is really very simple.

I owe someone money, that company is going to take that money from me. On a smaller level on a B2B basis, I think it applies both UK and US. Businesses just want to do their job and their job isn't chasing people for money. They just want to automate getting the money that they are due and have it immediately. Ah, messed that one up. Getting the money that they're due and having it sink.

Lewis Turek (11:31.726)

automatically with their billing platform.

Adam (11:35.709)

And so that's clear. Just a question on that, because obviously I've been, I mean, you mentioned about showing your age. I think it's fairly obvious that I'm slightly older than you. And I'm very mindful of, as a finance director, working with companies, setting up automated payments is not something that most companies on a B2B basis, if they're dealing with a smaller business, would always be that comfortable doing.

Have you found resistance? How do you find the sort of response from larger companies and smaller companies alike?

Lewis Turek (12:11.918)

It really can vary. Some companies will say, this is how we do business, take it or leave it. This is how we get paid. Some companies will use or forced preference. So you must use this way or else, well, it's the same answer as the one before. Let's I'll answer that question again. Some companies can use forced preference. So this is the only way we're going to let you pay at a B2B level.

This is the way that we get paid, take it or leave it, take it preferably. We see that at a B2C level. Clubs, for example, membership clubs. It's really simple. If you want to be a member of our club, this is the way that you have to pay. If you don't pay this way, then you can't be a member of our club. We see some companies offering incentivization. So they'll say, we'll give you 1 % off your bill if you pay this way.

And let's not forget with credit card processing, typically two and a half, three, even 4%. Actually, we can sacrifice a percent in order to know that we're going to get paid accurately on time and we're still winning from, from not losing out on the fees. Finally, the way of encouraging people to pay this way is showing them that it's actually easier for them. There is a time and hassle involved in them having to set up a bank payment.

every month, every quarter, every year. There's a time and hassle in having to enter credit card details every month and every year. It's far simpler for businesses, customers to set this up once, sign the mandate and they're on the.

Adam (13:53.213)

Yeah, understood, understood. I guess it's that culture shift. And once, you know, there's a critical mass of companies that do this and also an education of the particular clients you're working with, that that's the way you're doing it. That's, yeah, you can see that sort of coming into play. Interesting. What are you, sorry, please.

Lewis Turek (14:08.942)

What we actually, I was just saying, one thing that we see is if you're a business and you say to your customers, this is the way that we get paid, we then often see those customers go, oh, this is actually a good way. We should do this too. And it's a lovely little cycle because we get customers of customers coming to us and going, hey, we'd like to sign up too.

Adam (14:22.653)

Yeah.

Adam (14:30.813)

Yeah, understood. And in terms of the sort of commercial arrangement with Go Cardless, how does it typically work? Is it on a, you know, what's the sort of contract style and how does it work for you guys?

Lewis Turek (14:43.374)

So we've got a range of methods that companies can pay, ranging from very small businesses that might do everything online, completely self -service. Larger organizations will typically have a contract with us with additional support if needed, and customer success teams with percentage -based pricing, fixed -based pricing, whatever is really going to be right, we've got flexibility.

Adam (15:07.933)

Yeah, understood. And going on to sort of an area that I know is a challenge, particularly for smaller businesses working with larger clients, are those concerns around security, compliance, data protection? And I know, again, being in the US, having worked with the US, I know that there are some quite strict rules there, same with GDPR and Europe. So have you noticed any sort of greater concerns?

in your time in the US versus the UK and how do you deal with those?

Lewis Turek (15:40.11)

It's a really interesting question. So let's split the UK and then the US and how dealing with them. So in the UK, I haven't seen any challenges at all because people are used to the concept of the direct debit guarantee. So ultimately everything Go Cardless does is backed by the direct debit guarantee. They can go to their bank, challenge it back and there will be protection.

Lewis Turek (16:05.422)

In the US, there's a very different approach to data. There are not as many protections at all. We're starting to see new legislation coming that way, which is good. I was always amazed talking to a company a couple of years ago where they accepted credit cards. And I was talking to them and saying, one of the advantages of go cardless is that bank accounts don't expire. And typically people don't change their bank accounts very frequently. So once they've set it up,

they're then more likely that you're not going to have failures. And I said, credit cards, of course, expire every three to four years. And this company said, oh no, we've bought a piece of tech that as the credit card starts to be close to expiry, it automatically tries the same credit card number with different new expiry days of either three years or four years later. And that is legal in America, completely unethical in my opinion, but...

That's a personal opinion rather than a go cardless opinion. But it just shows what is doable over here. So I think there is a willingness to push boundaries over here. Ultimately, we're very happy with our solution on the ACH rails. ACH has been around for 50 odd years. We've got new stuff coming, of course. FedNow is exciting. And we'll see what the uptake looks like that in the future. But...

We haven't had any concerns from customers who are saying, hang on, are we responsible for storing these bank details? For example, no, you're not go cardless secures that go cardless manages the data. And your customers can delete that data if they need to at any time. They can end their mandate at any time. If they wish to, you can end the mandate and critically, because it's all integrated with the majority of billing platforms. You don't need to go into go cardless and do that.

If the customer stops directly, they call your customer service line, you go into your zero, you go into your quick books and cancel their contract, stop their contract, that will then automatically flow into Go Cardless and we'll delete the details.

Adam (18:14.493)

Got it, got it, okay, very, very comprehensive. One thing you mentioned there, I'd just like to get your thoughts on, you talked, you touched on the future and you said, I think FedNow was the name of the sort of solution. Where do you see this all going in terms of the future? What are some of the changes and predictions of those changes that you're seeing and how will GoCardless be able to deal with them, do you think?

Lewis Turek (18:40.11)

So innovation is good in any market and innovation has allowed Go Cardless to excel and we now offer faster ACH services allowing people to be paid in two days, comparing that to a five, six day credit card cycle or previously four, five days through ACH. Where we would like to be is absolute same day instant payment services. We will get there for some businesses where there is perhaps

an assurance of credit cover or where we know, for example, that it is very unlikely there are going to be chargebacks. FedNow is exciting. At the moment, it is push funds only. That goes against our being, we believe, in pull funds. The whole benefit of automating these payments is that they're pulling. FedNow also isn't covered by 100 % of banks in America.

until we can get to 100 % coverage and there's no commitment from other banks that there ever will be 100 % coverage. I'm not sure we're going to see FedNow take off. To that though, Go Cardless is working with FedNow. We're involved in it. We want to innovate with it and we're pushing hard that it should have pull technology too. The whole benefit of being paid more easily at low cost is that you don't need to go to your customers each month, each week, each quarter.

and ask them to pay you.

Adam (20:09.405)

Yeah, of course. Okay, great. And I guess a follow on question is, and it would be remiss of me to not mention artificial intelligence in a podcast in 2024, but is there anything that you guys are doing around AI that is helping your customers? What are your thoughts on that and how it pertains to payments?

Lewis Turek (20:30.03)

AI is super exciting. I think it's the largest generational computational shift that we've seen in 30, 40 years since the internet even came along in 10 years. This podcast will have you and me both as AI robots and they'll do a great job, maybe even a better job than, than we're doing. Um, we are looking at AI in a number of ways. Firstly, I don't want to say the easy one, but a simpler one for us to implement.

is how can we use AI to support customers if they've got basic questions, if they've got technical challenges, if they're not sure how something works in our system. The answer is probably in our help center somewhere, but it's using AI that can say, oh, I see this question. I'll review the help desk. There's the answer. Send the customer the answer. That's beneficial for the customer because it's faster than we can probably respond.

And it's also beneficial for us because at scale AI is accurate and probably cheaper than having humans answering the same questions frequently. 

////

[20.15 – 21.04]  We're also starting to use data more and more around some of our smarter solutions of retried payments and around being able to work out what payments look like they might be fraudulent. What are these bank accounts? Are we seeing the same bank account being used?

and it's often having failures around the world. Can we use that data? Can we use open banking in the UK to look at bank account data and say, well, this account never has money on the 17th. So let's automatically retry on the 20th because they're more likely to get paid on the 20th based on what open data and open banking data shows us. So the answer is I don't know what the next 10 years of AI looks like in banking.

but I'm excited by it.

Adam (22:27.037)

Yeah, absolutely. I'm just thinking, as you were saying about that, using the open banking data to analyze accounts and create smart strategic solutions for your customers. I love that. I think that would be so valuable. So, you know, fingers crossed that comes. I just wanted to sort of shift gears slightly just in terms of the sort of how it works internationally, because obviously you're working in multiple currencies.

There are charges and fees, I know from my own experience when you're trying to transfer funds from one country to another, there's the time delay, there's also the cost implication of doing that. How does that affect a go -cardless user?

Lewis Turek (23:10.158)

So one of the key advantages of Go Cardless for our international customers is we have one login, one dashboard, and that dashboard can do dollars, US dollars, Canadian dollars, pounds, euros. This is where I get tested. Swedish Krona, Danish Krona, I think, Aussie dollars and New Zealand dollars. So effectively, the Americas block the Europe.

block for euros. Did I mention it? I mentioned euros. America's block, euro block, ANZ block as well. We allow customers to take payments in any of those currencies and then either they can be paid out in those currencies, in which case there are no currency conversion fees, or we have a full integration with WISE and we offer a service with a very low fee.

for then transferring that almost at the interbank rate using WISE's rates and using WISE's excellent technology.

Adam (24:16.445)

Okay, great. And you talked there about integration. And I'm interested to know that you mentioned earlier about integrating with Xero and NetSuite and other systems. What do you think in terms of the approach to integrating your system with those other systems? Do you have a team? How do you manage that to ensure that from a customer point of view, if I'm working with Go Cardless, it really is seamless?

Lewis Turek (24:42.286)

So we've got over 350 partners across accounting tools, e -commerce tools, membership tools, subscription billing tools, and a full open API. So I would say you've got three options to use Go Cardless. Option one, you can use our dashboard, do it all within the dashboard, track your customers in the dashboard, charge customers, set them up, end their relationships, do everything in the dashboard. That's a simple way of doing it.

Option two, you've got your own bespoke billing system. Well, then you're going to use the go cardless API and your billing system will trigger go cardless to go and request and take the money from the client's bank accounts. Or option three, which certainly in America is the largest one, is you'll integrate go cardless with one of those 350 partners, whether that's charge B zero, QuickBooks, Sage, the list goes on.

Salesforce, Microsoft, JDU. I can keep going with these, but Jim Manager, whatever the business is, there is going to be a link in. And what we do not want is you having to have your billing platform and have your go cardless platform and have to manage them both. Because wherever you've got two systems, that's where we get data issues. That's where you get data entry problems. That's where you get mistakes.

Adam (25:45.693)

No, no, that's all right.

Adam (26:02.429)

Yeah.

Lewis Turek (26:09.198)

And that's where you get unhappy customers.

Adam (26:12.829)

So you have, so these 350 systems have basically a plugin or an API that connects them together. It's literally just one piece of code that you copy and paste in and off you go, right?

Lewis Turek (26:24.43)

Exactly that. So if you're a Xero user today, you can log into your Xero account, you can set up direct debit, you can set up ACH, that'll take you to Go Cardless, you'll sign up for Go Cardless, we'll check that your company meets our requirements, you're not criminals, you're not money launderers, etc. And then you'll be good to go. Xero, for example, everything is done within Xero. It's a beautiful integration.

Adam (26:51.197)

Great, okay, good to know, good to know. I'll check that out later. I just, there you go, that's the plug, you get one. I wanted to just, yeah, just to finish off, just a couple of sort of final questions. One about the business model, and then specifically something for you personally, recommendation. So on the business model,

Lewis Turek (26:54.862)

Ah, very good, excellent. Go cardless .com.

Adam (27:17.149)

I noticed, go cardless, you've got a sort of free trial kind of basis and then you sort of, you get your first 90 days free, I believe it is. How do you guys make money off of that? Is that kind of seen as a loss leader? I'm just conscious that quite a lot of our audience are interested in sort of business models of companies. So how does that work?

Lewis Turek (27:37.166)

It's a cost of doing business that we think works well. We know that our clients are very, very sticky. Once you set up go cardless and you've then integrated it to your customers, the whole point here is that it's a simple way of getting paid. Um, our data shows, and we make every decision based on data that offering this is a very nice thing to do. Customers like it. It's very well received. And then ultimately it pays for itself down the line.

as we're making a very small amount on each transaction that's happening after 90 days. It's an optional 90 day fee free. People are welcome to not choose to take it if they want to start paying us on day one.

Adam (28:13.437)

Got it.

Adam (28:20.573)

And I guess once you've gone through the process of updating your clients, this is how we work, it's quite, it's sticky, right? I mean, your churn must be quite low following on from that sort of 90 days.

Lewis Turek (28:34.478)

Exactly that it is sticky and I think there are there are two different ways that companies will start to or three different ways that companies will bring their customers to using go cardless. One is they already do pull a CH they already do direct debit today. Perhaps they do it directly with the bank today. It's not integrated with their billing platform. That's called a bulk transfer. Super easy. Client doesn't have to do anything except receive an email.

from you, it's a templated email that says, hey, just so that you know, we're moving our direct debit supplier to go cardless. Super easy, all done online, very simple bulk transfer. The second way is we say for new customers only, this is the way we're going to take our money. This is our preferred way. This is our only way. We see some companies make it look like this is the only way to pay on their website or on their invoices.

And then if someone calls up, then they will accept it a different way. And then the third way is you say to, so the first one was the bulk transfer. The second one is we're only doing this for new customers. The third one is as customers start to get to renewals of contracts, that's where you can slowly bring them on, whether you want to incentivize them or whether you say that this is the way that we do get paid and positioning it to your customers as this is an easier way for you to pay us.

Adam (30:01.949)

Okay, great. And yeah, I guess final question and then we'll move on to our business book section. Just in terms of, you know, you've obviously had quite an interesting career, you know, having traveled from the UK to the US, is there any advice, you know, if you could go back to your younger self that you would give yourself knowing what you know today?

Lewis Turek (30:26.574)

Um, yes, the first bit of advice is never ever take life too seriously. Um, we're not on this planet for too long, so enjoy every day and it is not worth getting stressed about. I, I, and I, I remember vividly, I'd moved into a new role at IBM. I was asked to present a 30, 60, 90 day plan and the evening before I'm, I'm what 22, 23.

Um, I'm Googling what is the, is a 30, 60, 90 day plan. I didn't have a clue what I should be doing. And I remember the night before feeling really very stressed about the whole situation. And, uh, I spoke to a colleague that morning and he just said, just tell a story of what you want to do. It doesn't need to be some stressful, big presentation with, you know, moving parts and all of that. It's just tell a story of what you want to do. And, um,

It was one of those moments that made me realise actually, I can tell stories. Might not be able to say I'm gonna do this in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, but that message of don't take it too seriously and tell a story has been with me, where are we, 15, 20 years later.

Adam (31:43.165)

No, I love that. And there's something to be said for plain English, right? You know, avoiding business jargon and just, again, when you're young and up and coming, you think you need to impress people by using business bullshit and you don't need to, you know, keep it simple. Very good, very good.

Lewis Turek (31:57.966)

Yeah, exactly that.

Adam (32:00.829)

Okay, great. And now we've got our business book bonus section, which is where we ask our guests to provide us with a recommendation for a business book or to make it a bit easier, any type of business content that's helped you during your business career that you would recommend. So what would you like to recommend for the audience, Lewis?

Lewis Turek (32:18.99)

It's, you know, this is really hard because downstairs I've got a library, if you will, that sounds way more posh than it really is, a bookshelf of all sorts of business books. And it's very, very hard to say which is the best one, but you're putting me on the spot.

Um, the book I'm going to recommend is by a lady called Karen Eber, E -B -E -R. And it's the, it's called the perfect story, the sub line, the perfect story, how to tell stories that inform, influence and inspire. Um, I got it a few months ago and it was one of those books you look at it and you go, Oh, these are some of the things I do anyway. That's validating what I do. And then some of these are some of the stories that you think.

I've never tried that. That's really, really clever. So I really recommend it. It was recommended by Adam Grant in the New York Times, Daniel Pink in the New York Times and a few others. Highly recommended.

Adam (33:28.765)

Excellent, excellent. Well, thanks for that. We'll put a link to that in the in the show notes. Is there anything Lewis that we haven't covered that you'd like to say before we wrap up?

Lewis Turek (33:38.734)

I think, if I think over 20 odd years of working in SaaS and tech, the world has changed massively from when I started at IBM without even a laptop and you had to go into the office every day. Now here we are, you're in London, I'm in Austin, we're talking as if we were face to face. It would have been bizarre all that time ago. And now,

If I take those 20 years and apply them forward 20 years, what is it going to look like in 20 years time with AI as we talked about with technology, with bots doing lots of the work we do? My message and my excitement is let's just embrace it because I would never have imagined 20 years ago we'd be talking about and talking in the way that we're talking today. What's it going to be like in another 20 years? Bring it on.

Adam (34:30.799)

Great, I like the attitude. Thank you very much, Lewis. Thanks for joining me on the Fractional CFO show. I really appreciate your insight, your perspective and your time. Thank you.

Lewis Turek (34:41.134)

Thanks Adam, all the best.