#124 Grant Wilckens, CEO of the G'day Group on Navigating Rapid Expansion and Change

 This week, we have the incredible Grant Wilckens, CEO of the G'day Group, joining us to share his insights on navigating rapid expansion and change in the business world. You absolutely don't want to miss this one!have the incredible Grant Wilckens, CEO of the G'day Group, joining us to share his insights on navigating rapid expansion and change in the business world. You absolutely don't want to miss this one!

 Curious about how one of Australia's largest regional accommodation provider manages rapid growth and constant change? Grant spills the secrets!

Grant dives deep into:

🚀  The secrets behind G'day Group's phenomenal growth.
🚀 How to steer a company through times of rapid change.
🚀 Insights on leadership and staying resilient.

Whether you’re leading a team, running your own business, or just curious about the dynamics of growth and change, you’ll find something valuable here.

TUNE IN NOW, subscribe, and don't forget to share this episode with your network.


TIMESTAMPS:
[02:15] - Grant's Early Career and Background
[10:30] - Challenges in Leadership
[18:45] - Importance of Mentorship
[25:00] - Navigating Organizational Change
[33:20] - Maintaining Work-Life Balance
[41:05] - Embracing Innovation
[50:15] - Building a Strong Team
[58:30] - Future Trends in the Industry
[1:04:00] - Leadership Strategies
[1:05:30] - Professional Growth Tips


Where to find Grant Wilckens

• LinkedIn

Books mentioned in the episode

• Legacy, What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life By: James Kerr 

Join the conversation on Synergy IQ on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram (@synergyiq).

Access SynergyIQ Website to get to know more about us. 

Say hello to our host Daniel Franco on LinkedIn.

Transcript

00:00:10:01 - 00:00:17:29
Daniel Franco
Welcome back to the Creating Synergy Podcast today. We have a wonderful human being on the show. Mr. Grant Wilckens. Welcome.

00:00:18:06 - 00:00:18:27
Grant WIlckens
Thank you, Dan

00:00:18:29 - 00:00:40:19
Daniel Franco
So, Grant, you are the founder and CEO of the G’day group, Australia's largest regional accommodation provider, with more than 300 properties around Australia, including iconic destinations such as Cradle Mountain, Rottnest Island and the world famous El Questro in the Kimberley. Well done and kudos on everything that you guys have done today.

00:00:40:24 - 00:00:47:03
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, thank you very much. It's sort of a it's been a wild jetty, but a really good fun one. I can tell you.

00:00:47:05 - 00:01:04:22
Daniel Franco
Now I've gone on to get you on the show for quite some time, so I'm very excited that you're here. I'd like to start off this. Typically where I start off most podcasts is to just who is grunt and what do we need to understand about your earliest contacts? To understand that human being is sitting in front of us today?

00:01:04:24 - 00:01:29:05
Grant WIlckens
That's it's a good question. So look, at the end of the day of support and bread in the online hills. I'm probably pretty grassroots, but what you see is what you get. I also have had a professional career and says a chartered accounting and other things and sort of, yeah, I'm very much outdoors and want to be practical and we'll talk about what we talk about something like that about, you know, coming from that ideals has always been something that's very down to earth.

00:01:29:05 - 00:01:36:13
Grant WIlckens
And and I guess now I mean all that fox, which is what I'm more of a down to earth place can you want to be absolutely.

00:01:36:15 - 00:01:43:27
Daniel Franco
Do you have a core purpose in your life that you're living out today.

00:01:43:29 - 00:02:02:22
Grant WIlckens
That have got a core purpose but I think I do think a lot about, you know, my family and making sure that I'm always there for, you know, my family, whether it be sport or, you know, you have financial support, you know, there for my my parents I obviously raised me in what I think did a reasonable job.

00:02:02:22 - 00:02:19:15
Grant WIlckens
So, you know, the end of that is really my my purpose is probably just to make sure I leave leave a legacy of being true to who I am and supporting my family and my friends about. Obviously, I'm really proud of the the business that we've all I've grown over the last 20 years.

00:02:19:20 - 00:02:40:25
Daniel Franco
So keen to talk about your parents and understand because they obviously have influence who Grant is today. I understand that your father had run a construction business back in the day, which is interesting because they say if your parents are an entrepreneur or run their own business, you're 60% more likely to start your own, which is naturally what's happened with you.

00:02:41:00 - 00:02:46:19
Daniel Franco
So just want to learn a little bit more about your parents and your dad in the business and how that shaped who you are.

00:02:46:26 - 00:03:09:00
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Yeah. My father was a builder. He's now retired, but my grandfather was also a builder, so we've all had sort of construction thing. We all and I fox, we're still building boxing and developing bikes, but yeah, yeah. Dad, Dad came from a family that it was his father's business was a company called Wilckens. And then so I'm quite a well-known builder in the eighties time, in fact, the Aqaba Hotel my grandfather built.

00:03:09:00 - 00:03:30:19
Grant WIlckens
And so my father was always, you know, in the practical sense, but he didn't want to go into his father's business. He wanted to create his own construction business. And so he started building soon, cause I knew a lot about concrete. Ultimately, swimming pools became high rise buildings within Adelaide. But he knew a lot about, you know, precast concrete and actually building stand up.

00:03:30:21 - 00:03:41:15
Grant WIlckens
And, you know, he Saturday mornings for me was about getting an onsite. Yeah, when I was a kid, just me, me getting out and meeting the other workers, the tradies.

00:03:41:18 - 00:03:43:22
Daniel Franco
Doing all the hot labor for free, hot library.

00:03:43:22 - 00:04:00:10
Grant WIlckens
Hot paper. That was great for me to go and experience, you know, what it was like to run a business. I opened checks, you know, we got past the post office in the morning and we'd run out and get the mail from the post office. And, you know, dad would say, Well, that's life and the checks. And so that taught me a lot about, you know, the value of money.

00:04:00:10 - 00:04:02:09
Grant WIlckens
And obviously everything back then was it was a check.

00:04:02:09 - 00:04:19:12
Daniel Franco
Yeah, absolutely. I have a similar background. My my old man had a construction business, although a lot smaller, but every weekend and not weekends. I was playing sport more, but during school holidays I was there stacking bricks around the site and for a measly 10 to $20 or something like that. Back in.

00:04:19:15 - 00:04:19:24
Grant WIlckens
Cheap labor.

00:04:19:27 - 00:04:26:29
Daniel Franco
Cheap labor. Do you did you enjoy the business aspect? But you said you're looking at the checks and everything. You enjoy the business aspect.

00:04:27:01 - 00:05:00:11
Grant WIlckens
I did, I think. Yeah. I guess that it did instill strong values about hard work and you know, Dad was a hard working person and and I said it was definitely a six day a week. Yeah. And there was definitely early mornings and late nights. And Frank, from his perspective, but it was great for me to actually just learn about, you know, what it was like to employ people and the reliance that I had on him in terms of as a as somebody who was, you know, putting food on their table for me, having a job and Yeah, and you see the size of that, the size, the importance of what that is to to

00:05:00:11 - 00:05:17:27
Grant WIlckens
those individuals. And so that was probably for me, it was eventually I was always going to in my mind, I was always going to have my own business. I was always going to be a self-employed person. And yeah, now it's a much larger organization in discovering where I am. But at the end of the day, it was all about heading your own destiny, controlling your own destiny.

00:05:18:01 - 00:05:34:15
Daniel Franco
Do you think that everyone is made for that? You know, I think you know, and there's these common thoughts around, you know, find what you love and and pursue that career. But do you think everyone's got it in them to to take on business themselves?

00:05:34:17 - 00:05:41:03
Grant WIlckens
Probably not. And I think you know it's it's hard work. I mean let's yeah people say the.

00:05:41:03 - 00:05:42:00
Daniel Franco
It's painful Yeah.

00:05:42:00 - 00:06:01:19
Grant WIlckens
So you're lucky to get Hollywood lucky get well you know it doesn't it doesn't always come easy And you know I think for me I was predetermined as a as a younger person and I knew I wanted to be successful and I knew I wanted to sort of, you know, work hard and and win. And, you know, the thankfully, I got there.

00:06:01:19 - 00:06:17:06
Grant WIlckens
But I look at my kids and I can see I can certainly say that in in my kids as well, that they, you know, said, for example, my son, he he says I don't want to go into the business, that I'm going to create my own thing. You know, he wants to create his own his own world and his own business.

00:06:17:12 - 00:06:31:15
Grant WIlckens
But it's always he's very much focused on his making sure he's he's going to be sort of creating his own his own business. Not necessarily. He will go, obviously stopping in employed. Yeah, But ultimately, I can see him being a self employed person.

00:06:31:15 - 00:06:53:17
Daniel Franco
Absolutely. It's funny because your grandfather had his own business, your father started his own and you started your own. And now Seb saying that you started his own. It seems like a theme in the family and or relatively very successful by the sounds of things. So which is great. So good luck seven You're on your path. So you've got another you've got a daughter Sienna.

00:06:53:18 - 00:07:10:07
Grant WIlckens
So I mean, I don't know, she's thinking about medical so yeah my, my view I mean on your was medical. Yeah. You know from from my mind I was it was always going to be a business type role. But yes, it was she sort of bubbling around thinking that she might go into the medical world. But, you know, she's she's only 15.

00:07:10:07 - 00:07:15:24
Grant WIlckens
She's in your ten. Yeah. So who knows where she's going to end up as seven year 12. Yeah. He's in the he's in the crunch time.

00:07:15:27 - 00:07:25:03
Daniel Franco
He's on the brink of it. You said that you knew you always going to be successful. What? Why? Like, where does that come from? What drives that thought process?

00:07:25:06 - 00:07:42:17
Grant WIlckens
Well, as a as I think I mean, I think the fear of the fear of failure is is a really powerful ottoman. I'm not suggesting that I want to do that. But once you start something, yeah, for me it was about and you're going to be successful because you are going to work out. Whether it was going to be a success was unknown.

00:07:42:17 - 00:07:59:26
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, but once you start something, you know, you've got to make sure it doesn't work in my mind. You've got to make sure you continue to work at it. And we'll talk about it today, That discovery, you know, we're a big business now, but every every big business starts off a small business. And when you're a small business, you know, things can go wrong.

00:08:00:01 - 00:08:19:11
Grant WIlckens
And it does boil down to that grit and determination which actually can get you out of holes, you out of problems. And that is who I am. I'm a pretty resilient, determined person that really wants to you know, I wanted to make sure this business was I was a really successful one. Yeah. And I think it's just part of who who people are.

00:08:19:11 - 00:08:26:07
Grant WIlckens
You've either got it or you haven't. Yeah, sure you can be. You can be taught to you. I think it's something that you've either got or you haven't. Yeah.

00:08:26:10 - 00:08:45:28
Daniel Franco
It is. Why I asked that question around your early days and earliest contexts is generally how you are shaped. Is your level of of grit and resilience. The I guess the the thing for me is you mentioned the fear of failure there for a second. And and I think we spoke about this last time when we caught up.

00:08:45:28 - 00:09:04:07
Daniel Franco
Is this sort of the fear of failure on a macro level and then the fear of failure even more on a macro level? No doubt that it's this grit and resilience that you don't you're not fearing what's in front of you right now and how to sort of push your way through it. But you're it's the overall failure that sort of keeping you driven there and now.

00:09:04:07 - 00:09:22:25
Grant WIlckens
Absolutely. I mean, look, I've spoken about chairman about this as well. He's my chairman now runs a he's a he started his own fund and he's now at a very successful fund in Sydney, private equity fund in Sydney. And we've we've spoken about, you know, why we're here, why it was was his business being so successful and why is discovery and good.

00:09:22:25 - 00:09:37:06
Grant WIlckens
I've been so successful and I think, yeah, you obviously got a real desire to win, but you've also got a real desire not to, you know, not to stuff things up. Yeah, Yeah. For me, you know, I was, I worked hard. I was never an I, you know, Sorry, I did. I did get A's, but I wasn't a straight-A student.

00:09:37:07 - 00:09:56:03
Grant WIlckens
I was never going to get into medicine. I did a lot of myself with a lot of people in it school with a actually got in medicine. So they did drag me out and my results never, you know, career choice that I ever chose, you know. And so for me, it was about getting a business degree. And then I became a chartered accountant, KPMG, and then sort of went into investment banking.

00:09:56:03 - 00:10:14:10
Grant WIlckens
But, you know, for me it was like, you know, my career was important. My, my drive to wanting to be successful was important. And then it was sort of, okay, well, when I made the decision to go and buy a caravan, you know, which is very, very different from that corporate experience I just described, you know, I just didn't want to make that step up.

00:10:14:10 - 00:10:23:07
Grant WIlckens
And it was quite a bold step to go and buy something which, you know, holiday parks property, you know, that we're very tired. You know, we talk about the business.

00:10:23:07 - 00:10:23:29
Daniel Franco
Besser block.

00:10:24:04 - 00:10:28:00
Grant WIlckens
Blocks and not really something that is a corporate finance.

00:10:28:03 - 00:10:28:29
Daniel Franco
Sort of sexy.

00:10:29:00 - 00:10:52:21
Grant WIlckens
That's not that sexy, you know. And I was working in investment banks and earning good bonuses, you know, it was a very different world. And I think to make that step, it was right, you know, as my brand brand grant, you know, relearned to make sure Discovery was successful because, you know, and we were almost, you know, we'd talk about I was almost I was in the bad bank and we were almost collapsed a few times.

00:10:52:24 - 00:11:12:05
Grant WIlckens
But yeah, it was that fear of actually you know, it wasn't just letting down shareholders and laying down banks because I had a lot of debt at that stage. Yeah. But also about, you know, brand grant. What does that mean for my profile and my career? Because I'd given up an investment banking career in order to take up a caravan park area.

00:11:12:08 - 00:11:16:07
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Which is quite different and, and, and sort of What does that mean?

00:11:16:09 - 00:11:35:17
Daniel Franco
You mentioned them. Before we get into your career, I want to just talk back for one moment and spend a little bit more time with family because you mentioned earlier a couple of minutes ago that family and friends are what drive you. What does what does two flat mean to you? And and can you explain it? Can you explain that for us?

00:11:35:17 - 00:11:56:02
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, sure. Well, two flat is my happy place. So to flat is a place where I can be exactly who who I am. And so I probably do live a quite separate lives. My my professional life is my professional life and my private life in terms of getting away and being in tracksuit pants and.

00:11:56:04 - 00:11:58:06
Daniel Franco
Boots and beanies and.

00:11:58:12 - 00:12:27:23
Grant WIlckens
Daggy clothes is, you know, as I said, I'm a pretty practical, down to earth person. And so my history has been, as I said, Adelaide Hills, camping, caravanning and Too flat was a property that my parents bought and initially developed back in 1988. So I was born in 74, so I was 14 years old when we acquired well, when my parents bought property and it's really been a massive part of of my whole life went out way.

00:12:27:23 - 00:12:50:07
Grant WIlckens
Now my wife and I now own the property and, and my kids are now living the life that I lived You. Yeah. The freedom of, of, of, you know, having canoes and motorbike riding and all that fun stuff that you do when you're actually in a in a very an environment which is, you know, it's not built up cities and pretentious.

00:12:50:10 - 00:13:18:27
Grant WIlckens
It is, it is grassroots. Yeah. So that and that is actually who I am. And so even though I sit on boards and got a big organization, I've got governance and shareholders and you know, all that's, you know, that which is my Adelaide or Sydney or Australian business lot. Yeah. You know, who I really am is really that grassroots sitting by the river, skiing with the kids, you know, enjoying, enjoying beautiful sunsets and red cliffs and you know that.

00:13:18:29 - 00:13:27:24
Grant WIlckens
And that's what two flat estimates, that place where I can get away and that's where I switch off, you know, even just mowing lawns, you know, the simple things like mowing lawns. Yeah. You know.

00:13:27:27 - 00:13:31:07
Daniel Franco
Nothing allows you to there's nothing better than to switch off fresh, freshly cut.

00:13:31:07 - 00:13:43:19
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's the tool for that for me is I'll never Yeah, it'll never while I'm alive I'll never sell it. Yeah. And I hope my kids will never sell it. It's a very, very special place.

00:13:43:23 - 00:14:07:10
Daniel Franco
The the life of an entrepreneur and a business owner and a CEO is one that is difficult and. And one that there's a lot of sacrifice that needs to be made. How have you gone about sort of trying to realize your visions for what the group could be lost, managing and maintaining and cultivating those loving and thriving relationships with your family?

00:14:07:13 - 00:14:30:01
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, look, it's not easy. I mean, it's it's not easy at all. And it does boil down to, you know, working hard at your relationships as well as working out at the business. It probably means, you know, and it probably has been sacrifices even on this on the social front, on, you know, off to a great friends from school and great mates that I still hang out with, but and great colleagues that I've met through work.

00:14:30:03 - 00:14:53:24
Grant WIlckens
But I'm not the most you know, I'm going out and about every single day and, you know, lost busy. And so when you're running and starting an organization like Discovery and get high and you're running and you've got a family, I mean, my kids are now grown up at 17 and 15, but, you know, Discovery's 20. Yep. So, you know, when you sort of think about that, my kids were babies when I started this, I started the business.

00:14:53:27 - 00:15:13:15
Grant WIlckens
Then two years later, Seb was born and then four years later, Sienna was born. And then at that same time, I was put into the bad bank and tried myself out of a very challenging period. So you put all of that into the mix and with a new wife, I got married in 2004, so that was. Yeah, marriages and the challenge.

00:15:13:15 - 00:15:32:14
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, the work you've got to put in marriage. Yeah. Yeah. All of it is, is a lot of, a lot of work but incredibly rewarding. And now I look back and, you know, business has been successful. My marriage is successful. My kids, you know, amazing relationship with my kids. And I do sport with them and make sure I'm there for those special occasions.

00:15:32:14 - 00:15:47:10
Grant WIlckens
So I might be away a lot because I do travel a lot that's making sure I'm home for the the sporting events, the sports day. I mean, you know, they're no longer doing sports because they might. Yeah, yeah. You know whether it's be Friday night footy like I am tonight. Yeah. Boundary of offerings and I have.

00:15:47:12 - 00:15:51:00
Daniel Franco
Really I'm the team manager basketball every Friday night. Yeah. Yeah.

00:15:51:01 - 00:15:53:08
Grant WIlckens
But yeah you just got to making sure you're part of that.

00:15:53:08 - 00:16:01:18
Daniel Franco
Absolutely. If I was to ask your your family would they say yeah dad or. Yeah, my husband's got it right.

00:16:01:21 - 00:16:26:12
Grant WIlckens
Yeah I think so. I think that's I, I'm incredibly hard working and I'm, you know, I probably they wish I'd slowed down. Yeah. A little bit, but, but you know I think that I, they, you know, I don't think that I'd say that I, I don't contribute to the family life or that, or enough around home or don't come to you know I, I do travel a lot and I do work hard but I, I think I'm still present and yeah, to be present is really important, you know?

00:16:26:15 - 00:16:42:27
Grant WIlckens
So even if you have got something happening, a work place, if I can come home and have dinner and then gone to work after dinner, at least I'm present for dinner and I'm not sort of on the phone or on my iPad or. Yeah, they're trying to work out what's going on at work. I'm trying to be focused on what's happening to the family.

00:16:43:01 - 00:16:45:16
Daniel Franco
I love it. Did your dad have the same thought?

00:16:45:22 - 00:17:06:17
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that dad was always I mean, the construction industry, he was home ill. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, because, you know, they start earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad was. Yeah, he was always gone by 7 a.m. at least, and if not earlier and he was and he was, you know, coming home at 536 because building sites is close, close earlier.

00:17:06:17 - 00:17:32:09
Grant WIlckens
So you probably had more of a after school, you know time with my with my dad. But he worked I mean, both my mom and my dad worked very hard. The family the family unit was everything. Yeah. So and I think that's really important. The family unit to me is everything as well. So it is about the prioritization of, you know, I'd rather my kids entertain at two flat with their friends as opposed to, I mean, you know, obviously they go to, yeah, their other friends.

00:17:32:10 - 00:17:44:20
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, but I'd rather have more friends. Stay with us. Yeah. And create you know, that unit that this is where. Yeah, you can Yeah. This is your happy place as well. And they love it as well. So it has, I think it has worn off.

00:17:44:22 - 00:18:08:12
Daniel Franco
Brilliant. Brilliant. It's really actually nice to hear the families your core value and it is the same as mine, which is why I try to spend some time on it. Because you're right, it is a balancing act. There's and it's tough. But yeah, I guess I don't want to be the the entrepreneur or the CEO, the business owner or whatever that looks back and goes, I should have done more with my family.

00:18:08:12 - 00:18:21:20
Daniel Franco
I missed out on that time. So it's like, okay, having that consciously in my mind, how do I know what dress then? So where to from here? So you're born, you grew up in the Adelaide Hills and then you ventured down to the big smoke in Atlanta.

00:18:21:20 - 00:18:25:02
Grant WIlckens
So the idea of it came down to summer primary school.

00:18:25:05 - 00:18:31:01
Daniel Franco
So what is it? What does it look like? Where does your life take you from there? From from high school into university to overseas?

00:18:31:02 - 00:18:49:15
Grant WIlckens
Yes, I look, as I said, I you know, I wasn't in primary school, which I think we had 70 students or 80 students between, you know, reception in year seven. So, yeah, it was very small school. And so that was my primary school. And then so that that is and that's the grassroots. Then I came down to and broke in the house down the hill.

00:18:49:15 - 00:19:12:21
Grant WIlckens
And that was, you know, I didn't actually come down the hill a lot prior to that because I lived and, you know, went to school in the hills. And that was probably a bit of an eye opener for me because it was, you know, private school and it was a bit different. It was like, you know, almost like the public school, like I'm a private school really loved the fact that I did go to a private a public school, though, like my kids do the same thing now Pembroke as well.

00:19:12:21 - 00:19:33:03
Grant WIlckens
But I think making sure that you the kids know that you know, not every not everybody has that opportunity to go to a private school. Yeah is really important so that's important. I was it was a good phase for me and I did work hard and got reasonable results. I was never a never a straight-A student. I was at A's in my in my portfolio, but never Australia, a straight-A student.

00:19:33:05 - 00:19:54:02
Grant WIlckens
And, you know, I always I was probably, you know, average. And I think when when I when I look at the focus that these kids are now under to get results and you look at the averages averages actually on average in school. Right. You know, for me, I you know, I was always wanting to be successful, but I think the pressure that some some some of these kids go through is quite challenging.

00:19:54:04 - 00:19:56:08
Grant WIlckens
Anyway, having said all that, you're right.

00:19:56:08 - 00:20:13:11
Daniel Franco
And there's I heard this there was a psychologist coming out, some of the top psychologists in the world looking at children and their growth and development. And they would spend they would these top three psychologists would spend more time studying and analyzing the parents as opposed to the child.

00:20:13:12 - 00:20:13:22
Grant WIlckens
Yeah.

00:20:13:28 - 00:20:21:09
Daniel Franco
Which is kind of why I ask and start with the early context, because understanding that is understanding who who that person is going to be.

00:20:21:09 - 00:20:41:21
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, yeah. And I think I think so. I don't I think people still can work hard and have that because it was interesting because I don't think I push said that hard but he really focused on doing well. E Well yeah, but it's not. It's actually because he just wants to do something better in his life. Yeah. And he's never going to be a, you know, a brain surgeon either.

00:20:41:21 - 00:21:01:11
Grant WIlckens
I mean, you know, when it's not the who, not who we are, we're intelligent people, but we're not, you know, my wife's a physio. I'm a child. I tried. So we're smart people, but we're not we're not brain surgeons. And so I think being average is actually it is actually pretty is pretty good. Yeah. And so it's about what you do with that.

00:21:01:14 - 00:21:26:09
Grant WIlckens
Correct. And so I think that's really where I, what I took out of him. Right. Was a drop and then I really just wasn't I had no idea what I wanted to do. I still and it was about finding a sort of a business degree and I would say, you know, I did a commerce degree at Uni Adelaide and then went into a job at KPMG and then lo and behold I'm, you know, became a chartered accountant, got I never want to be an accountant, but you know, it was good training for me to learn a lot.

00:21:26:15 - 00:21:51:19
Grant WIlckens
And that gave me the, the sort of, you know, having that on my resume. And to be honest, it was, was what helped me get a job in London working for an investment bank, you know. Yeah. And that's where probably my time at Rothschild in London probably gave me, you know, there for four and a half years. It was probably did nine or ten years of work in four and a half years because you worked two days, you know.

00:21:51:21 - 00:21:53:02
Daniel Franco
16 hours a day. Yeah.

00:21:53:04 - 00:21:55:28
Grant WIlckens
Yet work really, really hard. But you learned a lot.

00:21:56:01 - 00:22:02:21
Daniel Franco
I quite like what is Rothschild. I mean you only need to This is $1,000,000,000,000 family, right? What did you learn?

00:22:02:26 - 00:22:21:18
Grant WIlckens
look, I think. Well, you know, I learned a lot about that. How the investment banking or corporate advisory. I were effectively a corporate finance advisory business. So we used to acquire and, you know, advise companies on acquisitions, divest divestments, you know, even just boards about how, you know, what's the strategy. Yeah. At the end of the day, it was a pretty broad.

00:22:21:21 - 00:22:40:27
Grant WIlckens
I was in a transport and infrastructure time, so I was a global group. So global time Yep. So I was lucky enough to go and I was involved in the privatization of the Hong Kong metro. The MTC Frankfurt Airport. Yeah, this is a lot of global deals in there, as well as the National Rail owner in England as well.

00:22:40:27 - 00:23:10:08
Grant WIlckens
Rail tracks, I that sort of gave me global perspective and, and you know really you know what's involved in terms of deep knowledge of financial modeling. I mean at the end of that I was, you know, left left KPMG knew a little bit about, well, you know, job accountants and accounting, but not necessarily around, you know, true corporate finance and Yeah, and how things impact through a name and a process or or even how to do a deal.

00:23:10:10 - 00:23:15:04
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, I probably learned how to do a deal. That's probably the other aspect of it is you know.

00:23:15:07 - 00:23:17:14
Daniel Franco
Gave you a more rounded me indication.

00:23:17:16 - 00:23:20:23
Grant WIlckens
And got me probably the M&A piece. Yeah. Which is really which is.

00:23:20:23 - 00:23:21:09
Daniel Franco
Essentially what you.

00:23:21:09 - 00:23:35:04
Grant WIlckens
Do effectively what the success of you know we've been very successful with discovery and guys yeah it was a core part of how we've done it is acquiring and developing Yeah. Properties as well as the customer experience piece which, which we'll talk through.

00:23:35:04 - 00:23:58:20
Daniel Franco
So is there anything that sticks out. I'm, I'm interested in the Rothschild story and then their whole I mean you hear you hear so many things on YouTube and whatever these days they talk about how they control the world. Essentially, I'm more interested in the business in itself. Was there anything that you remember and took away from that you've kind of introduced into the group?

00:23:58:22 - 00:24:19:16
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. I mean, Rothschild is still a family business, so that's what you've got to realize. It's the five arrows and the five arrows with five brothers that separated themselves across all different parts of Europe. And they became traders of, you know, of clothing. And and so they were literally trading between themselves in different parts of Europe and built out of the Rothschild family.

00:24:19:16 - 00:24:46:16
Grant WIlckens
So, again, the legacy of the family and the importance of the family was is was very paramount. And so that's if I think about Rothschild, they're not a cutthroat, hard core U.S. investment bank. They are a very, very good investment bank. But family values were pretty important and getting champagne in Turkey at Christmas time and things like that were part of it was a very big bank.

00:24:46:22 - 00:25:16:26
Grant WIlckens
Yes. Debbie, Bonuses, but they'd be the tree. A turkey. Yeah. And a beautiful, beautiful, you know, Rothschild champagne every single Christmas. And that sort of reteach you no matter how big you are and no matter how important you are as a bank, as a family of the Rothschilds, they always employ, you know, they always have. Even though I was a young banker that, you know, they always sort of bought it back to making sure they looked after, looked after us as a as an employee or as a the other people that were actually taking the COGS and paying the big dividends.

00:25:16:26 - 00:25:18:06
Daniel Franco
Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:18:09 - 00:25:36:02
Grant WIlckens
But, you know, I mean, it was hard work and it was great. I mean, I wouldn't trade my time. In fact, it's probably the most important job I had to discovery or get by that I've ever had. That experience was was was really, really powerful and really, really important to who I am, I think.

00:25:36:02 - 00:25:50:17
Daniel Franco
What made you move back? What was the the drawback to Australia? And I think you move from Adelaide to London in its own right and I understand you knocked on doors to get that results to then saying, right, I'm picking up, I'm going back.

00:25:50:21 - 00:25:54:14
Grant WIlckens
Yes, I look I met my wife, I met my girlfriend. Yeah, my wife.

00:25:54:18 - 00:25:55:29
Daniel Franco
So we haven't mentioned her name.

00:25:56:05 - 00:25:56:20
Grant WIlckens
So I.

00:25:56:21 - 00:25:57:12
Daniel Franco
Always meant that.

00:25:57:12 - 00:26:14:13
Grant WIlckens
And so she's a South African born. So we obviously met in many men in London and she's, as I said, physiotherapist and she and I became we're, we're actually where she started off as flatmates can you believe they platonic flatmates flatmates for over a year not as not as girlfriends and.

00:26:14:13 - 00:26:15:12
Daniel Franco
But yeah.

00:26:15:15 - 00:26:21:12
Grant WIlckens
And we just sort of gradually got to know each other as flatmates as you know in one of those big London shit houses.

00:26:21:14 - 00:26:23:15
Daniel Franco
And it lasted 20 years. Nasty.

00:26:23:19 - 00:26:25:16
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, well talking about that. So 25.

00:26:25:16 - 00:26:26:18
Daniel Franco
Probably 35. Yeah.

00:26:26:18 - 00:26:37:08
Grant WIlckens
And look she, she was two had enough of the cold winters and living in London and to be honest it was a pretty big divide at the time. I wanted to stay and.

00:26:37:11 - 00:26:38:09
Daniel Franco
Stay in your role.

00:26:38:09 - 00:26:56:03
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. I want to say Emma, Rosemary Ross. Charles was, was, was, was great. It was a great place I was making. Yeah, I was established. Yeah. It's hard to get established, as you said it was, you know, I walked the streets with my suit trying to get a job to get there and then I'd got there and then I was a key part of the Rothschild's team.

00:26:56:03 - 00:27:11:08
Grant WIlckens
And so it was, yeah, I was doing global deals. It was a it was a great part of Right. Part of my life then. So to my was sort of approachable. Sorry. My girlfriend at this stage a down approached me and she said, Look, I'm ready, I want to go. I can't do another winter, I'm going to go back to Australia.

00:27:11:09 - 00:27:12:12
Grant WIlckens
And I said, Well.

00:27:12:15 - 00:27:13:27
Daniel Franco
I she lived in Australia before.

00:27:13:27 - 00:27:34:18
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, she had lived in Australia. So she'd emigrated over to Perth. Her parents with him had moved to Perth and I said, well, you know, gosh, that's about it. We do one more. So we had a short six months and then actually we did a six month trip down through Africa. So she's South Africa and we didn't we say talk about camping.

00:27:34:18 - 00:27:57:19
Grant WIlckens
We, we went camping down through Africa. So I had a backpack with a tent NGO and we literally did independent travel the whole way down through Africa from Cairo, all the way down to Amazing. And so and not many people have done that. No public transport and, you know, no tour guide. You know, Malawi Zim in Mozambique. Yeah, yeah.

00:27:57:21 - 00:28:10:07
Grant WIlckens
Rwanda, Uganda, you know, amazing places through Africa that places, you know, wouldn't go to showing guns and probably in hindsight, quite high risk. Yeah, but incredible, incredible experience.

00:28:10:09 - 00:28:11:14
Daniel Franco
Would you let your kids do that now?

00:28:11:21 - 00:28:15:05
Grant WIlckens
I don't know. I probably I like I said, I'd be pretty scared if I.

00:28:15:06 - 00:28:18:08
Daniel Franco
Yeah I know I yeah, yeah. It is a scary thought. Yeah.

00:28:18:10 - 00:28:19:06
Grant WIlckens
I'm back in one place.

00:28:19:11 - 00:28:20:27
Daniel Franco
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:21:00 - 00:28:47:17
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. So and then you get back to Australia and didn't come straight back to Adelaide. I went to, I went into Sydney and I just wanted to find my feet again. I, again I knew, I knew my next step was, was I was working towards my, you know, my future of actually having my own business. No idea what that business was, but that was my, my, my future step was about how do I get my own business and create something myself.

00:28:47:21 - 00:29:07:04
Grant WIlckens
But I didn't need to reestablish networks, you know, being out of Australia for a while, not having lived in in anywhere other than Adelaide in Australia. So I came back, we went, we both went to Sydney and I got a job with a guy called Robert White who was a very wealthy guy in, in Sydney when the like.

00:29:07:04 - 00:29:33:02
Grant WIlckens
Kerry Packer was a lot of good mates with Kerry Packer, Roberts and multi-billionaire, and we used to buy a building serviced by say three buildings and then we'd put them together into a fund, He'd buy them on his balance sheet and then would sell them down through the financial planning network. So we'd do a PDSA product disclosure statement and we'd do the returns through the product disclosure statement, and we'd sell so effectively to self-managed superannuation funds through they saw it through the the financial plan.

00:29:33:04 - 00:29:37:04
Grant WIlckens
So that's what we did and I did quite a few of these sort of these funds.

00:29:37:06 - 00:29:38:20
Daniel Franco
Learn a little bit more about property than.

00:29:38:21 - 00:30:00:27
Grant WIlckens
Lots. And then that was property and that sort of got me the exposure because I was in transport. I knew a lot about track access charges. So, you know, I knew about landing charges, I knew about long term cash flows. So properties got long term cash flows of my time at Rothschild taught me about financing and debt financing and modeling and long term cash flows and securitization, effectively.

00:30:00:29 - 00:30:18:07
Grant WIlckens
And so coming back to Australia and getting into the property space, it was about also, you know, getting this business, this, this rabbit watch business. It was taught me a lot about different types. It was about property. I sort of changed right per square meter, but it was about rent and it was about, you know, cap rates and buying a property on a cap.

00:30:18:07 - 00:30:24:21
Grant WIlckens
Right. What's the value of that? Which obviously, you know, I knew about and it was sort of gave me familiarization with that. Yeah. That sector.

00:30:24:27 - 00:30:32:08
Daniel Franco
Absolutely. So and during that time you then you stumbled upon a couple of parts that sparked your interest.

00:30:32:08 - 00:30:53:13
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Yeah. So during that time I stumbled across a portfolio of five parks in Victoria and, and at the same time I met a colleague or an ex person that I knew back here in Adelaide who was much older than me. I got called Roger Sexton and, and I went to school with, with Stephen Gerlach son, Andrew Gerlach.

00:30:53:13 - 00:31:14:18
Grant WIlckens
And so Stephen Gerlach and Roger had finally found a portfolio of three parks in in WA, and I found a portfolio of five parks in Victoria. And when we sort of had a, had dinner with Roger in Circular Cay and we said, well why don't we try and put together a fund and buy holiday parks. I did talk to Robert about it.

00:31:14:18 - 00:31:20:02
Grant WIlckens
Robert what? But Robert wasn't interested in dirty caravan parks. He liked, he.

00:31:20:02 - 00:31:21:03
Daniel Franco
Liked you liked that?

00:31:21:05 - 00:31:26:03
Grant WIlckens
He liked big buildings and stuff. Yeah, he liked the glamorous stuff. And you know what?

00:31:26:06 - 00:31:35:24
Daniel Franco
What drew you to the parks? What was it about that industry? The. I don't know. What. Where. Where was the idea born and sparked from?

00:31:35:26 - 00:31:36:08
Grant WIlckens
Yeah.

00:31:36:08 - 00:31:37:19
Daniel Franco
Look, was it just.

00:31:37:22 - 00:32:08:24
Grant WIlckens
It was a property flight I and so we looked at surf lifesaving clubs, we looked at like lawn bowls and then we looked at caravan parks and obviously this caravan park business portfolio had also come to come to me. So there was that familiarization of the park base. But bowling greens was obviously challenging and, and you think that with bowling greens with located and if that load bearing bowling greens have now been you know they're now become retirement villages and other things that have been built on those bowling range but they're prime land in residential places.

00:32:08:24 - 00:32:12:12
Grant WIlckens
Obviously surf lifesaving clubs are on beaches but again challenging.

00:32:12:12 - 00:32:13:14
Daniel Franco
And learning the be.

00:32:13:16 - 00:32:37:06
Grant WIlckens
Challenging because you can't own them in their own councils. Yeah. And then you got caravan parks which are once again on the beach or in rivers and in beautiful places and lo and behold, owned by, you know, a lot of owned by Australian mums and dads, small business and so it, yeah, it became a, it became, it was really about a property play about how to how do you corporatized an industry because it had never been done before.

00:32:37:11 - 00:32:41:23
Grant WIlckens
So nobody had ever done a roll up of caravan parks back in 2004.

00:32:41:26 - 00:32:43:10
Daniel Franco
So the opportunity and so.

00:32:43:10 - 00:32:59:01
Grant WIlckens
The opportunity to sort of look at acquiring, you know, a portfolio box, the goal was always to probably yeah, the ambition at that stage was to acquire a portfolio of parks and probably list it. And we never we never got there and we're not there. We didn't go there to be Aussie.

00:32:59:03 - 00:32:59:26
Daniel Franco
Keep your family.

00:32:59:26 - 00:33:03:17
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, well that's private property business but.

00:33:03:19 - 00:33:07:15
Daniel Franco
Is it, is it like the McDonald's model where you buy.

00:33:07:17 - 00:33:17:00
Grant WIlckens
I wish it was gonna be much easier because every park, every McDonald's is the same. Right. So the challenge or the opportunity, the beautiful part about holiday parks is every park's different.

00:33:17:03 - 00:33:27:04
Daniel Franco
Yeah. I mean, sorry. I mean, more in context. It's more about the property value. Yeah. McDonald's would say that their property business more so than their burgers business in the sense of how they make money.

00:33:27:07 - 00:33:53:16
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Look, we've been very successful out of our property. Yeah. And I think we we had to pivot during the global financial crisis. So when I, when I just give you the background as to how do we before we get to the GST. So I mean we were we acquired, we grew very rapidly. So we put together these, these five parks and three parks Epoxies start off with and we grew rapidly and, and we, we actually did 40 parks in 36 months.

00:33:53:19 - 00:33:54:11
Grant WIlckens
Was there a.

00:33:54:11 - 00:33:54:27
Daniel Franco
Reason for.

00:33:54:27 - 00:34:16:29
Grant WIlckens
That Just well, probably had yeah, I'm, you know, if I, if I'm honest I probably lacked experience and had too much I with a lot of capital so we raised $50 million of debt, $40 million worth of equity. We had the management company ourselves and myself and those two partners I mentioned previously. And so we raised a lot of capital and we probably didn't have enough discipline.

00:34:16:29 - 00:34:33:27
Grant WIlckens
I don't think in those early days around we bought a lot of green grass, we bought a lot of really beautiful property with not strong cash flows. Yeah, at the end of that I got to say this debt you got to, you know you've got to the valuation was there and yeah the independent valuation of the parks was there but there just wasn't enough cash.

00:34:33:27 - 00:34:35:14
Daniel Franco
Well the infrastructure wasn't on it for you.

00:34:35:14 - 00:34:56:16
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. That, Well we, we, we had to change ourselves into a customer business and from a property business. But yeah. So the core of the core of our initial phase was very property focused and it was a roll up and really an arbitrage of how do you take a, you know, some of the parts of the overall value of the entire business being greater than the individual properties.

00:34:56:16 - 00:35:07:05
Grant WIlckens
And yeah, as a standalone and, and as I said, that all went pretty well, although my partners and I are separate, separate ways in 2007 so just.

00:35:07:05 - 00:35:07:25
Daniel Franco
Before the.

00:35:08:00 - 00:35:33:00
Grant WIlckens
Before the GFC. So unfortunately the so we had the management company, I was the mine, I was the junior guy, so it was the I was 30 when we started the business. Yeah. It was quite young probably. And then at the time that turned 50 ago and it wasn't really that, it was during that initial phase that my partners, the the Independent, the shareholders weren't happy with probably my, my CEO and chairman at that time.

00:35:33:00 - 00:35:54:03
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. And they stepped in and unfortunately removed the CEO. I was the CFO. Yep. Stage. And as a result of that it was and then GFC hit and that was sort of, that was all we had shareholder litigation because it was litigation that flowed after that. We were in the bad bank. So the Lehman Brothers collapsed, valuations collapsed.

00:35:54:05 - 00:36:06:24
Grant WIlckens
I that moved into the bad bank. I just shrank my head office massively because I did save costs. I then worked through selling non parkson for 40 Pakistan of 36 sorry 731 box but repaid a heap of debt.

00:36:06:27 - 00:36:08:04
Daniel Franco
Essentially working for the banks.

00:36:08:06 - 00:36:19:27
Grant WIlckens
Essentially working the banks. I did my my head changed and to be honest, the banks could have appointed an administrator on that face. They recognized that I was the guy that, you know, I was.

00:36:19:29 - 00:36:21:12
Daniel Franco
You're as good as any administrator, you know.

00:36:21:16 - 00:36:38:14
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, I was more passionate and more skin in the game. Yeah, I had a massive mortgage, you know, in terms of, you know, if everything went belly up, it was, you know, was financially going to be a very, very painful situation for me. So I managed to sort of capable and and and I delivered I mean I did work for the banks.

00:36:38:14 - 00:36:56:21
Grant WIlckens
My I was in the bad bank, but I was I was actually, you know, equity was still equity know, I was still an equity holder and an equity provider owner. But at the end of the day, in that phase and it's really interesting when when you go through that shift my brain actually went to the to the debt.

00:36:56:27 - 00:37:04:22
Grant WIlckens
And because you're trying to get every cent in the dollar, you have to keep the debt full. So we had a couple of hundred million dollars with a debt.

00:37:04:24 - 00:37:17:22
Daniel Franco
I mean, I knew that I knew you. You told me this previously that much that's incomprehensible about it that there's. Yeah, the debt was the sideshow here and there and everywhere but the yeah when you talk to a million.

00:37:17:24 - 00:37:39:00
Grant WIlckens
Jamaicans it was it was too it was too loose. Yes. We the mistake we had we had we had too much debt and it was too easy to get. And so equity was precious. So we had a very thin slither of equity and we were rowing through and and probably a response of irresponsible looking back. But that was pre GFC before anything goes wrong.

00:37:39:00 - 00:37:51:02
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, you sort of think nothing's going to go wrong. Yeah. We're we're and so you try and you want to hold onto the equity so that too much debt and all the equity and, and a lot of pain basically. So yeah.

00:37:51:04 - 00:37:54:22
Daniel Franco
I mean this is a pretty deep, dark time.

00:37:54:25 - 00:37:55:13
Grant WIlckens
Absolutely.

00:37:55:13 - 00:38:12:13
Daniel Franco
Right. Like this. Let's not just gloss over this. This is something that I can only think that it would have had major impact on you, your health, your relationships. If my understanding is correct. You're four years into a marriage, sibs, two years old or thereabouts at this time.

00:38:12:15 - 00:38:13:15
Grant WIlckens
Is getting born.

00:38:13:17 - 00:38:17:27
Daniel Franco
Is getting poor and like, yeah, how does one navigate through this concoction?

00:38:18:03 - 00:38:37:20
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, it was pretty, pretty soul searching. And, you know, I did have some really strong people outside of the business that I could talk to. I, in fact, one of my Rothschild's friends who's still great mate, I could Marcus blah, blah. So if Marcus if you listening Thank you. But yeah, and he's now gone. He's done an incredible job in his own business.

00:38:37:20 - 00:39:00:06
Grant WIlckens
But yeah, I really relied on people to help me through it because, you know, it was, it was, it was political. As I said, there was there was shareholder litigation, there was bank challenges, there was, you know, the young family, you know, it was I felt like I was on a treadmill and the treadmill was going faster and faster and faster.

00:39:00:08 - 00:39:20:26
Grant WIlckens
And it couldn't get off. If I got off, obviously, the business would have collapsed because everybody was relying on on me. And but the other part of it, you know, I was obviously I would have been a financial failure. And I the other thing with my career, I mean, I'd gone from the investment bank career to trying to, you know, make all that parks what they are today, which is the great part of the story.

00:39:20:29 - 00:39:32:25
Grant WIlckens
But this early part of the part of our life or the discovery that I life was was really, really hard. It's like grit, determination, all those sort of things gave me that. But it was pretty dark, you know, I was it was lots of sad.

00:39:32:28 - 00:39:35:25
Daniel Franco
Yeah. What do you remember? What do you remember about that time that.

00:39:35:26 - 00:39:57:20
Grant WIlckens
I remember walking around my backyard a lot on the phone, to be honest, because, I mean, that's where even I work happened. You know, it was a 24 seven. You know, when you when you're in that world, you know, it's your weekend. It just probably consumed my life for two years. And, you know, I honestly will. You know, we've moved houses, but we had little kids place it.

00:39:57:20 - 00:40:22:08
Grant WIlckens
And I just remember being out there a lot on the phone with various stakeholders, including accountants and banks and board members and just trying to, you know, work through different issues, whether it be selling parks, whether it be. So to me, it was a it was a very intense moment. I didn't really didn't really have a social life through that was probably wasn't a very fun person to be around.

00:40:22:15 - 00:40:36:13
Grant WIlckens
And it was hard the marriage that you know, I mean, it was you know, everything was hard. You know, we had a young kids my I was raising the kids on our own because I wasn't really around a lot. I mean, even though it's just how much I work and family, it was hard. It was really hard.

00:40:36:13 - 00:40:43:17
Daniel Franco
And like, mentally, you're not there either. I got I've been you know, we've all been there. We talk about talk to them, say, did you see.

00:40:43:21 - 00:41:00:27
Grant WIlckens
Anybody healthy, man the guy that and that is all motto that I've always lived by. Yeah and you know even though it was dark, you know I've always been somebody who got out and run and you know so then that's been probably been the the biggest issue got me through It's probably exercise. Yeah.

00:41:00:29 - 00:41:11:00
Daniel Franco
Because it's your escape. It's almost like a meditation in a way. I run a lot. And running for me is, is that. Yes, it's this get out at night. You get at the concrete building.

00:41:11:00 - 00:41:11:17
Grant WIlckens
Absolutely.

00:41:11:20 - 00:41:20:19
Daniel Franco
Was there a lot? So could you see a light? Was there a glimmer like, you know, you talk about great resilience, but could you see the path to getting out?

00:41:20:19 - 00:41:41:06
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, I look out my my current chairman became my chairman back then. He left the business for five or so years in the middle. At in 2000 I he became my chairman what's his name? Adrian Loader. And Adrian was a massive I mean we did it together. I mean at the end of the day, I don't sit here and say it's all he told me.

00:41:41:08 - 00:41:43:15
Daniel Franco
No, never is. It's always a bad same day.

00:41:43:19 - 00:42:04:16
Grant WIlckens
He helped me tremendously and he still helps me to this day because he's not chairman again. I think they are going back. But, you know, I guess Adrian and I believed we believed and I think that's belief is a really important part of business success. If you believe I believed in the business and we believed in what we were doing.

00:42:04:18 - 00:42:27:09
Grant WIlckens
And Adrian reinforced to me that what I was doing was the right thing, even though it was bloody hard. And I think when we when we managed to we I've met many, many international investors to try and come and invest. I couldn't find money. I was walking around Sydney, I'd saw non pax business would turn around, we were making money, couldn't find it, nobody would invest in me.

00:42:27:13 - 00:42:56:01
Grant WIlckens
And so that was really hard. And so I got as Chinese investors, I got Hong Kong investors. I had big funds out of Australia all looking at me. Nobody would invest and it was really hot. Now I now people would throw money at me, but it's a very, very different game. The industry wasn't institutionalized. Our industry was was still a cottage industry of mum and dad back then, whereas now it is in an institutional grade investment.

00:42:56:02 - 00:43:21:12
Grant WIlckens
You now I've got the largest superannuation, second largest superannuation fund in Australia is my largest shareholder. So that shows you the institutional ization of what we've done. But back then it was really about working and the relationship with potential investors and and eventually Sunseeker, which is Australian retirement Trust. He's my largest shareholder now, Sunseeker, which was a quite a small superannuation fund back there.

00:43:21:15 - 00:43:44:11
Grant WIlckens
Back then they had a they only had about, you know, 25, so like one of my $25 billion under management now they're 290 billion. Yeah. The merged group that you know back there they were a small C the fund and they believed and they invested, they bought 27% of the company in 2010 and that was like, wow. And that was like a rolling amount.

00:43:44:13 - 00:44:07:03
Grant WIlckens
And that was like, wow, we're stable, you know, because we weren't stable. It was about getting stability in the balance sheet. The operations had turned around. We would developed systems that we could start, looking at the front window around, looking at the back with a rear vision mirror. And we ended up being in a position where there was there was actually stability in the organization and got in some further private equity money that also came in along Sun Super.

00:44:07:07 - 00:44:12:18
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. And yeah, we lived again and, and we went through another growth phase, you know, so.

00:44:12:24 - 00:44:28:26
Daniel Franco
So legitimately two years that is that you went through that you know I it's taking me off to you know the Steve Jobs address that he did to the college and where he says you need to love what you do. We loving what you did at the time. Is that what got you through?

00:44:29:01 - 00:44:50:24
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Look, I'm incredibly passionate about the business and I think I have been passionate about what we're doing from day one. And I think, you know, the big thing that changed during those dark days was that we switched from a company focusing on the property to a company focusing on on the customer. Yeah. And that's really, you know, we all realize we had too much green grass and not enough.

00:44:50:26 - 00:45:12:18
Grant WIlckens
You know, I waterparks and jumping pillows and playgrounds and yeah, we call it pester power or, you know, get the kids hooked up and the kids bring the parents back. And what I parks would be a block, you know, old school ablution blocks and then that is exactly what we bought back in 2004 or five through that phase and we're still build better stuff now that we upgrade, rather.

00:45:12:20 - 00:45:41:09
Grant WIlckens
But the whole flavor of the investment change from, you know, being a pure okay, we're going to roll up the properties and, you know, try and do an IPO to okay, we need to be a sustainable business that actually has, you know, long term customers, repeat customers. And therefore we need to actually drive it and drive the customer experience, whether it be the physical customer experience or, you know, we started working on our digital assets as well as developing the brand.

00:45:41:09 - 00:45:51:12
Grant WIlckens
We had no brand. I mean, we were yeah, we were nothing back then. So it was all about starting to invest into the business as opposed to the property. It's on.

00:45:51:12 - 00:45:57:22
Daniel Franco
The brand. What you have Discovery Parks, great group. Why not just all under the same?

00:45:57:25 - 00:46:19:09
Grant WIlckens
Well, good question. So Discovery Parks is our balance sheet. So we own we own 97 parks and a half thousand staff across the country is about two one half billion dollars of property. Yep. In the business. So it's a big property business. Huge. And that's the discovery is our visitor parks. And so we can control the customer experience in a discovery park.

00:46:19:09 - 00:46:33:12
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Alongside of that we've got get a parks and every and the Gordon Parks Group is a licensee network so it's a franchise network. Yeah. And so we can't actually control the customer experience because they're owned by individual mums and dads around Australia.

00:46:33:14 - 00:46:34:25
Daniel Franco
But you can set expectations.

00:46:34:25 - 00:46:56:26
Grant WIlckens
Set expectations and they use all their systems so that what the benefit of the network that we've got a platform which we can leverage when we operate our parks, we can leverage that platform platform across a greater number of properties. So we go from 87 to sort of over 300. So 220 odd franchisees or licensees are in that get I network and that creates the get epoxy ran.

00:46:56:26 - 00:47:30:29
Grant WIlckens
And the reason why get a group is because we've also got something called wiki camps and wiki camps is Australia's number one app in the App Store, not the number one travel app, which it is. And the one travel app is the number one app. In the app Store. Ricky Camps Wiki camps as the it's the travel companion that you have in your pocket when you go camping around Australia are very good and it's and it's so it's a community of of of of customers Yeah incredibly powerful and we've got that also it's like a TripAdvisor of the holiday park industry but not only not only is the TripAdvisor I'm telling you about what that

00:47:31:00 - 00:47:49:22
Grant WIlckens
parks but it's also got all the points of interest all over the country. So Google doesn't necessarily tell you that, you know, just down the road from this park, there'll be a rock which you can go and, you know, climb up and jump into a beautiful lake that's got, you know, a big, deep like, yeah, wow. So we had a.

00:47:49:24 - 00:47:50:21
Daniel Franco
Community.

00:47:50:23 - 00:48:08:20
Grant WIlckens
And the community has published it. So the community say, when you're at that park, make sure you go down the road from this rock and that's what you want to do. Yeah. And that's what keeps people connected to the properties for longer. We want to make sure we're driving, you know, length of stay. So we're driving. You know, we want people when they go to a park, they stay there longer.

00:48:08:20 - 00:48:09:03
Grant WIlckens
Yeah.

00:48:09:10 - 00:48:12:21
Daniel Franco
So I'm downloading that straight away. I mean, they are none of it.

00:48:12:21 - 00:48:32:19
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, not wicked cabs. It's very, very good at great things. I really like it. I group is, you know, and we've also got things like our quest, right. So l Quest as you mentioned, you know, we haven't name we haven't rebranded that. No it's an iconic brand. You're absolutely right. And so that stands under the you know, under the under the umbrella of the Get I group.

00:48:32:21 - 00:48:39:22
Grant WIlckens
But it is a unique brand in its own right. And and it's iconic. It's world renowned. I don't know if you've ever been there, but make sure you.

00:48:39:22 - 00:48:43:23
Daniel Franco
Get that and make sure you get a really good discount from.

00:48:43:24 - 00:48:49:06
Grant WIlckens
Other parts of Australia. Yeah. So that's how we sort of keep them outside of the overall branding.

00:48:49:08 - 00:48:54:07
Daniel Franco
Do you ever pinch yourself and just go, Wow, this is like, this is amazing.

00:48:54:07 - 00:49:16:09
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, look, I, I do. I think I forget about how far we've come and how big we are and how amazing the company is. And it is amazing. It is a you know, it's a portfolio. So, you know, the great thing about the business is it's got brilliant people, our staff. I love the business when you get involved in the business, you fall in love with it.

00:49:16:11 - 00:49:22:00
Grant WIlckens
And whether it be directors that fall in love with it, whether it be staff that fall in love with it, because it's, it's.

00:49:22:02 - 00:49:22:28
Daniel Franco
It's and.

00:49:22:28 - 00:49:25:22
Grant WIlckens
It's grassroots. Australia, it's you nature.

00:49:25:22 - 00:49:29:08
Daniel Franco
It's within nature and you it's play right. It's fun. Yeah.

00:49:29:11 - 00:49:36:17
Grant WIlckens
So I look I do pinch myself and I, you know as I said I'm, I'm turning 50 as soon or and August and also sit there and I.

00:49:36:22 - 00:49:37:10
Daniel Franco
Raised the bet.

00:49:37:10 - 00:49:54:12
Grant WIlckens
You know what what do I do. And you know this I can't see myself doing anything else. I mean that's I sort of look at it and I was 20 years, you know, we're 20 years this year, too, So and my marriage is 20 years, too. So it's been a hell of a journey. But I look at it, I think, you know, it's it's such a great business.

00:49:54:12 - 00:50:23:05
Grant WIlckens
It's it's got all sorts of attributes. It's got we are we we we give great experiences to families. We, you know, the nomads love us when they travel around Australia, the iconic properties like Hillcrest Drive and Cradle Mountain and, you know, beautiful property down Kangaroo Island, which we haven't developed yet, which will be amazing. But, you know, we own McCracken Golf Club, which we've done nothing with yet, but we own that's all freehold land, the way we want to develop into a world class golf golf resort town is so exciting.

00:50:23:10 - 00:50:23:28
Daniel Franco
Yeah, it's.

00:50:24:01 - 00:50:40:26
Grant WIlckens
Good. Yeah, but. But yeah, there's opportunity everywhere. Yeah, I, I still, I'm still really excited about the business and I'm not sitting here after 20 years going on board. And what's next? I'll look at the business and go, Well, I reckon we've got just so much opportunity.

00:50:40:26 - 00:50:42:15
Daniel Franco
And do you get out too much?

00:50:42:16 - 00:50:52:06
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, not as much as I used to in the early days. I spent a lot of time, you know, in cars driving around this massive country, beautiful country that we've got.

00:50:52:09 - 00:50:53:20
Daniel Franco
And you were saying so much.

00:50:53:21 - 00:50:57:05
Grant WIlckens
I've seen a lot of Australia and I feel very fortunate to be able to have.

00:50:57:09 - 00:51:01:26
Daniel Franco
It's one thing that we don't do very often. You see our own country, you pick up and go elsewhere.

00:51:01:27 - 00:51:20:27
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, I agree, agree. I mean, you know, I've just come back from, from the Kimberley for example like ago and you know, here people are talking about the law school holidays and they're talking about Bali where there's, you know, skydives that have got the dinghy dinghies going, pretty roster Bali. And yeah, I sit there and go, wait, you got the Kimberley.

00:51:20:27 - 00:51:23:01
Grant WIlckens
It's absolutely beautiful.

00:51:23:03 - 00:51:33:17
Daniel Franco
I got to get on that wiki camps and figure out more about it. That's probably why you just you're here and goes to Bali is a cheap trip. Yeah. You, you can have a couple beers and all this other stuff and. Yeah.

00:51:33:24 - 00:52:01:19
Grant WIlckens
But well my kids like we've waited Kimberley for a month as a family in 2000 during COVID, during 20,021. And I've taken them to, we've been to the US, we've been to Canada, we're going to Europe as a family, and they still say the best holiday that they've ever had is is in the Kimberley and nice. And they say, Yeah, they love the Australian holidays and you know, we do have a phenomenal country.

00:52:01:22 - 00:52:03:09
Grant WIlckens
It's something that, yeah.

00:52:03:16 - 00:52:21:09
Daniel Franco
Yeah, I got to get out and see it, see it more. I want to just jump back to the customer experience stuff that you spoke about. This is a business podcast. Yeah. No, no, I just want I can with this we could talk all day about how beautiful the country is and it just makes me sit here and go, I need to do something about it.

00:52:21:16 - 00:52:22:05
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, yeah.

00:52:22:07 - 00:52:42:24
Daniel Franco
I am going to do something about it. But I want to, I want to just cast your mind back to the customer experience. I guess for me, I'm really interested in learning because you obviously provide an exceptional customer experience. Now what does this look like under your your leadership and what principles guide you in this decision making process?

00:52:42:24 - 00:52:50:21
Daniel Franco
Because it is fundamental to any business to be and understand the customer more than more than anything else.

00:52:50:23 - 00:53:20:16
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, look, it's a good question. I think as you as as we've got bigger. So when when you're a small business, a lot of the way that your state, your staff work and and a lot of it is sort of a command and control type mentality as you get larger, I think you've got to realize what decisions are at a level versus, you know, a regional operations level versus a an Adelaide office or CEO decision.

00:53:20:22 - 00:53:39:03
Grant WIlckens
And you know, obviously two and a half thousand staff and eight impacts are behind that. You can't make all decisions. So I think one of the things that I've been really keen to make sure is we empower our POC staff to really understand, you know, So there's obviously there's guidelines around customer experience that we draw from an Adelaide office perspective.

00:53:39:05 - 00:53:54:22
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, but at the end of day, these our staff who live in these regions, like if you live in the Clare Valley or you live in a region, you know more about that region than what, than what I should know. As I say, I'm so and so I want to embed. I want to make sure they're embedded into the community.

00:53:54:22 - 00:54:25:18
Grant WIlckens
They're part of the Chamber of Commerce, they're part of the local sports clubs. Yeah, because that is what the DNA of a community is all about. And for me, it's about making sure that there is freedom within a framework for our staff to have to do to surprise and delight moments. But there's a physical asset. And so the physical asset is stuff that we need to have influence on in the airline office because that is where they get a jump into our waterpark or or deluxe cabin or a new bitumen road.

00:54:25:18 - 00:54:48:25
Grant WIlckens
This is one that's got potholes. That's that's customer experience in a physical sense. And then you've got customer experience from a, you know, just the way that customers are metered met and, greeted and how their doors around the best coffee shop in town. This is is a great trial you need to go work work on and that law that comes down to local knowledge.

00:54:48:28 - 00:55:12:00
Grant WIlckens
So for us it's about making sure that there are certainly there are there are guidelines and they are a sort of how we think you should be looking at your region, but empowering a POC staff, whether it be a grounds person or a cleaner or the park manager, to make sure that if they, you know, if they see a customer and a customer has got a question or they're, you know, we and that's the great thing about our brand, Gary.

00:55:12:04 - 00:55:29:25
Grant WIlckens
I mean, you can go out to anybody. I mean, what a great brand. Gidday. Yeah. Because all of our discovery packs are also part of a good network. You can just straight away just, you know, start a conversation, get I and the grounding and I had gone you know, it's a friendly environment and then start that conversation around you know what are you doing today?

00:55:29:25 - 00:55:39:17
Grant WIlckens
Where are you off to And and you know, where are you going next? Hopefully they're going to somewhere else. yeah. We've got a popping up in there and mate John, you know, John's John's.

00:55:39:17 - 00:55:42:06
Daniel Franco
And like you said, because they know the community and the area.

00:55:42:06 - 00:56:09:08
Grant WIlckens
Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's a customer experience is and so that's a physical and obviously the got the digital the digital space as well. Yeah. So digital is massive. And so you know, we spend a lot of money on the digital space. Yeah. Yeah. With in the, in the tens of millions of dollars so a lot. Yeah. And it really is around, you know, making sure that we are, you know, my, my vision we haven't got there my vision for our digital experience would like to be the leader of the holiday park industry.

00:56:09:08 - 00:56:24:21
Grant WIlckens
You know, when Uber disrupted taxis, you know, people went and got into it, you know, they couldn't know that they could track the they were coming to them when they're sitting in the corner very straight and they got in the car, the guy knew exactly where they were going to go because the trip planner went into their Google Maps.

00:56:24:24 - 00:56:49:24
Grant WIlckens
They dropped them off in their place wherever they want. They didn't have to pay. Obviously, they got charged the to the digital wallet. But that whole customer experience of an either their sort of taxi that disruption was ginormous. So I think for us, our long term goal is to really have an incredible digital experience. From the moment you start thinking about going on holiday and you're doing research, I'm doing research where to all the guys, I'm getting the customer reviews for apps.

00:56:49:26 - 00:57:04:08
Grant WIlckens
You know, I'm looking at how well I can stay in a region. One of the things I can do and then once I travel, you know, I've decide to book so I can make the booking and right through to when you check in, my van's a 20 foot van. Your van is on you is a smaller than you're going to pop top of that a fifth wheel.

00:57:04:08 - 00:57:18:27
Grant WIlckens
You know we've all got different you know, we all have different types of vans. And so therefore I know that I can't go on that site or I want to be over by the river or the lake or wherever. So having very little like choosing your own seat in Qantas, right? When you what do you value when you fly?

00:57:18:27 - 00:57:40:04
Grant WIlckens
You probably value the lounge and the fact that you can choose your own seat. Yeah. And so these are the things that we want to have in our, in our industry is the way I just the no brainer. Yeah. When you want to go on holiday and you want to go to regional Australia, you know we are no longer festival holiday parks are no longer support which is the whole industry is improving not just us but you know, the industry.

00:57:40:04 - 00:57:57:27
Grant WIlckens
If you're going to regional Australia, we're better than those 1970 motels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we are, we are holiday parks just generally in the industry we have built on those 1970s hotels. But then once you've decided to go to a holiday park, you know what a Discovery Park or Goodbye Park is where I'm going to stay. So that's the vision for it.

00:57:57:27 - 00:58:14:08
Grant WIlckens
We're not there, but that's the vision that we want to go to from a sales perspective and I think the customers are, you know, they're everything. And if you can get, you know, if I if I've got a customer and I make that customer, how do I encourage that customer to stay an extra night or, you know, just repeat that, otherwise they're fun.

00:58:14:08 - 00:58:22:08
Grant WIlckens
A new customer. Yeah, it's a simple, simple business. But, you know, loyalty and loyalty programs are also really important, which we've got a very strong loyalty program.

00:58:22:12 - 00:58:52:22
Daniel Franco
Sounds amazing. Your your your turnaround actually helped you. We won an award, didn't it? Right. Like your so you you you're in this you're in a bit of a pickle need to get out of it more than a pickle $200 million pickle and then need to get out of it. Customer experience strategies, turnaround strategies investment strategies all come to play and now you're out and you get recognized with an award that I didn't even know existed.

00:58:52:22 - 00:58:54:03
Daniel Franco
Actually a turnaround award.

00:58:54:04 - 00:58:54:16
Grant WIlckens
They.

00:58:54:20 - 00:58:55:15
Daniel Franco
Talk to us about. Yeah.

00:58:55:15 - 00:59:11:09
Grant WIlckens
So it's it's selling, not an award You want to win twice. Yeah, exactly. We were yeah, we were very fortunate. So we, we, we were in the bad bank for a few years and as I said, there was shareholder litigation and there was a, there was a balance sheet restructure. There was also an operational turnaround that we had to do.

00:59:11:10 - 00:59:30:27
Grant WIlckens
So there was a lot of complexity in those few years. And when we got out the other side, as I said, my current shareholder bought for a chunk in 210 and by the way, they bought another. Now they own 95% of the business and they bought most of it in 2014. So 2010 they bought 27 and they bought the rest of it in in 20 2014.

00:59:31:04 - 00:59:58:07
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. So yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. So much N.A. So I'm the largest individual shareholder. So yeah, I think being good son. So yeah, so we won an award we hope we got nominated for the turnaround of the year. So there's the that it's called the Turnaround Management Association TMA And so the Australasian all of Australia and Asia turnaround of the year and very, very privileged to sort of take home the award.

00:59:58:08 - 00:59:58:22
Grant WIlckens
Yeah.

00:59:58:24 - 01:00:02:02
Daniel Franco
So yeah, but like you said, that's the last time.

01:00:02:05 - 01:00:03:11
Grant WIlckens
I should have agreed with me.

01:00:03:11 - 01:00:04:25
Daniel Franco
Actually. So we want to win that. It's a.

01:00:04:25 - 01:00:08:00
Grant WIlckens
Trophy. It's a trophy which I'm proud of, but not a trophy I want to win again.

01:00:08:00 - 01:00:09:20
Daniel Franco
Yeah. And said, well done.

01:00:09:20 - 01:00:23:03
Grant WIlckens
But yeah, it is. It is. It's satisfying to think that Yeah. That banks and I mean because it's people that judge it are the financial people that have so looked at the complexity of what you've done. Yeah. And it was complex.

01:00:23:06 - 01:00:46:25
Daniel Franco
And I guess leads me to my next question, which is around it is complex to change and to innovate and continually. And I guess the the being the biggest regional provider and it often comes with the expectation that you are leading in innovation and hence was what you sort of said from an introvert type experience. How do you guys go about continually pushing the boundaries?

01:00:47:03 - 01:00:55:03
Daniel Franco
What does that whole innovation and change process look like for the good angry? And would you say you mature in your practice?

01:00:55:07 - 01:01:11:06
Grant WIlckens
It's a great question. So with, you know, with all change and some of its success, some of it works well, some it doesn't work so well. So and we embarked probably in the phase of the business is such that and I'll just quickly run through it and then I'll talk about to have hit the, you know, the current world.

01:01:11:06 - 01:01:39:27
Grant WIlckens
So we bought our biggest competitor in 2016. It was another it was a public company and it was a hostile takeover listed company. And so that was sort of about integration change. And so that was a name. The name of your Aspen. Aspen, Yep. West Australian. We both had enthusiasm for. Yeah. And we acquired their they found as a very hostile public markets so thin review was writing about us and saying all sorts of things, but it was really exciting.

01:01:39:27 - 01:01:56:12
Grant WIlckens
You know, obviously I love doing this and that was about that was about integration and how do you integrate a big business, you know, but we're a big business, but it you integrate a big chunk of the properties in a way out and become a much bigger business. So that was about more about systems and and and digesting an elephant.

01:01:56:12 - 01:02:21:01
Grant WIlckens
You know, that's sort of how do you at a digesting of it Yeah. Then probably the next big change for us was we, we really we worked out that the the online travel agencies were sort of our own in the customer. So Booking.com and, and these other groups were really owning the customers. So in 2018 or 17 we bought time, we bought another company called Top Hawks, which is where I comes from.

01:02:21:02 - 01:02:49:08
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Which is really about owning the customer right the way through the customer experience. And that probably was where we needed to integrate API us through, through our tech platform for our digital B2B B2C. So digital platforms. And it was probably since that time that our complexity has increased tenfold from a digital perspective. So now we have a PPMO, a portfolio office that effectively manages our change projects and they are big.

01:02:49:09 - 01:02:53:16
Grant WIlckens
I mean, we spend probably 15 to $20 million a year.

01:02:53:17 - 01:02:54:14
Daniel Franco
Yeah.

01:02:54:17 - 01:03:16:27
Grant WIlckens
On change projects and they are everything from digital pathways, which is about, you know, the website through to even ESG and what we're doing with ESG through to something what get something called systematic, which is about it's about a it's an on it's a it's a, it's a app which people can use on iPads within Park to sort of operate their.

01:03:17:03 - 01:03:33:07
Grant WIlckens
Yes. Risks and see trip hazards and also see maintenance issues. And so the change process that we've got to go through is is pretty phenomenal. And as you get bigger, it gets harder. Yeah, because you've got a lot of personalities and you've got to you've got to move the ship, you know?

01:03:33:12 - 01:03:39:09
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Not to mention customer expectations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You continually, yeah. You know, how do you keep up with the market.

01:03:39:10 - 01:04:05:28
Grant WIlckens
We do, we do. Try and keep it separate. You know, we do have, we have BYU business as usual and then we have projects. Yeah. And we've always been, you know, you can't do what you can't grow and absorb and develop the organization, all that thing unless you sort of have a very project minded philosophy. And we've been fortunate in that we've had support from our shareholders to do that along the way as well, to make sure that we're thinking about long term growth.

01:04:05:29 - 01:04:28:04
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, you know, we're not alone, thankfully, and I've been in this business have been owned by private equity in the, you know, having a large superannuation fund who's my major shareholder and we are trying to work at it. We're not trying to work out. We are developing long term sustainable growth. So as a result of that, we can invest in projects and that does mean that how we continue to improve, you know, and it does all.

01:04:28:04 - 01:04:50:18
Grant WIlckens
Boy, but for Dan to say how do we continually improve CSA, whether it's systematic, which is our impact, how they're managing their business within a pocket right through right sorry right through the digital experience on a on our app or on our on, on our website. So change is hard. We have big stuff, things up. I mean, you know, that's not I'm not going to.

01:04:50:19 - 01:04:52:04
Daniel Franco
Say that you and everyone else.

01:04:52:05 - 01:04:52:27
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:53:00 - 01:04:54:21
Daniel Franco
We're often called to come in and fix it.

01:04:54:21 - 01:05:20:04
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we make mistakes, you know, I've, we've, we started a, a a transition to we have something called Sprout, which is our website. We move to platform same. It's called Indigo. Yep. And it, you know, we've invested quite a few years into that and now we're going, we're changing the complete strategy, something called Flutter, which is a different type of tech platform from a website perspective.

01:05:20:04 - 01:05:39:12
Grant WIlckens
So and that means we have effectively ripped up a lot of the taco work. Yeah. So that and that's hard because you've got people that have invested two years of their loss. Yeah, because that, that is their life and they've invested it and then we say I'm sorry when you know where we're not proceeding with that, we're going to pivot, we're going to do something different.

01:05:39:12 - 01:05:47:20
Grant WIlckens
You know, we say we sign our organization. I'm far just I firmly believe in it. And because you don't you don't always get things right.

01:05:47:25 - 01:06:14:18
Daniel Franco
No, you don't. And it's it's funny. There's a real there is a real gap in the market right now in regards to change and how businesses view it and how they embark on it. It is. And COVID kind of brought out some of the issues that we can see. Now. You think about when we rolled out Microsoft teams, we everyone, you know, go and go work from home and and work remote and we'll roll that Microsoft teams in and everyone just adopted it and it worked.

01:06:14:21 - 01:06:39:28
Daniel Franco
And it worked well because people were actually able to make sense of it. Right now, this makes sense. I can't do anything else. I need to I need to keep connecting with with my peers. We need to keep the business going. So therefore, moving online made sense. But what's happened is in that time is that as organizations have changed, they keep especially the i.t in the in the digital world, they've got all that worked.

01:06:40:00 - 01:07:04:15
Daniel Franco
So let's continue pushing out to see if we can continue managing change the same way. And as you can appreciate, it doesn't work that way when people are able to make sense of it. And these, these projects would fall over or like you said, you'd spend two years investing, spending money the amount of time. So we've got a call saying, yeah, with 2 million over budget then and can you come in and help us and salvage this because we just didn't set it up right from the get go.

01:07:04:15 - 01:07:24:09
Daniel Franco
And that's the gap is, is that early on in any project lifecycle we have to understand what are the boundaries, what are we doing and what are we not doing, What is the context? How does this connect back into Aboriginal strategy? How does this then integrate with the ecosystem in which we're applying? And then what are all the different perspectives?

01:07:24:09 - 01:07:46:24
Daniel Franco
And if we can understand that, then we're more likely to not overspend. We're more likely to not have the increased turnover and the lack of engagement levels dropping of of our people. Right? Because when, when your engagement levels of your people drop, then your customer experience is hit harder. Absolutely. And so it's all part and parcel of the same model.

01:07:46:24 - 01:08:16:17
Daniel Franco
I'm I'm pretty passionate about this because this is where we work in. But when I asked you that question from a change maturity point of view, I'm interested in understanding is how have you learned from your experiences over the years in order to say, Right, we need to invest in our change management and spend some time at the front end really getting this right, dotting our eyes, crossing t's so that we can actually execute this without ever going over budget, going over over time and, you know, and all the and quality as well.

01:08:16:22 - 01:08:36:23
Grant WIlckens
So, look, I think we've done okay in the past in terms of what we were integrating. I think, for example the Aspen transaction, there was there was growing pains, but we did okay. What I was saying some lessons out of it. I think what's happened more so since the tech I mean they investment now in technology across every business is is just ginormous.

01:08:36:23 - 01:08:50:15
Grant WIlckens
Yeah and I think the change the amount of change that and the problem is we shouldn't be it take it off just call it take their business changes on their business. These are business led initiatives and the tech is the enabler and I think.

01:08:50:19 - 01:08:51:12
Daniel Franco
It affects everyone.

01:08:51:17 - 01:09:05:00
Grant WIlckens
Absolutely. And I think where where we went when we actually so my tech team five years ago was three people, right. And so I now have 100. Yeah. And so I don't know and I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing. But anyway, which.

01:09:05:00 - 01:09:06:09
Daniel Franco
Shows you where your investment is, right?

01:09:06:10 - 01:09:24:22
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, it perfect. But I think it's interesting in that we, we probably didn't set it up the right way when we, when we started growing from three. And I think what you can do you got to you've got to truly invest in a pay in from our perspective we didn't we didn't start with a pay mark and projects were done ad hoc.

01:09:24:25 - 01:09:46:14
Grant WIlckens
We have with with sort of leaders my executive were supporting and sponsoring the projects, but they were done and led, probably not driven from a leadership perspective that probably driven by middle management. Yeah, right. But the that sponsorship at the at the we call it the C-suite. But at that time, at that change level driving that is is fundamental.

01:09:46:14 - 01:10:10:22
Grant WIlckens
So and look I was in a meeting yesterday just like you just said, I was in a meeting yesterday and a project that we're working on has blown out by probably another 850 Grant Yeah, and it's a lot of money. Yeah. And it's hard. And so, you know, we unpacked it and said, well, because it's a cross-functional team, there's a, there's my commercial marketing team that's, that's sort of the customer.

01:10:10:22 - 01:10:28:20
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. And then there's the day, which is the digital team as well. And then there's the technology team and yeah, you just try and unpack that. So where did we go wrong? Was it in, you know, what was it in the instructions. I, you know, I did did we not give a good enough brief, you know, or what was what is the work that's been done.

01:10:28:20 - 01:10:48:09
Grant WIlckens
Just not good enough. The brief was really, really solid and it was really interesting in that it was fundamental change that was fundamental errors everywhere in this project. Now, where the brief probably wasn't as good as it should have been then I think the feedback that we all got yesterday was probably what they documented, the insight, but they probably didn't.

01:10:48:11 - 01:11:04:26
Grant WIlckens
The current state And how do you get to the insight? Yeah, so they said this is what it needs to look like. There it is. That's what we've got to go build. And so then they went and built this thing where they got caught up is they didn't know sort of they did not enough about where they were going from to they knew the end state, but they didn't know how to get there.

01:11:04:27 - 01:11:26:06
Grant WIlckens
Correct. And I think that's a really challenging issue in tech in that in the technology space is that there's India as organized, that we're only 20 years old. It got a 50 year old company. There's a legacy of issues in there and and and people have left. Yeah the the person who put that system in is long retired or she's long retired.

01:11:26:09 - 01:11:33:16
Grant WIlckens
So the challenges how do you actually really think about going from here to here? Not just getting not just saying that's the insight.

01:11:33:21 - 01:11:46:14
Daniel Franco
Correct. So if you think about so I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent. So I love this subject. So if you think about the there's essentially four stages to change, right? This is the creation of change, which is is what we need to do. This is the return on investment we want to get. This is what it means for our customers.

01:11:46:14 - 01:12:07:25
Daniel Franco
So is part of our strategy, yadda, yadda, yadda. Right? Then the next part is enable the enablement stage, which is often the part that's skipped. And this is the part that you've just said that this is what we want to do and we're going to go straight to manage stage. We know like using Tech as an example, we've used Salesforce before, we've used Microsoft before Dynamics of just using a CRM as an example.

01:12:08:00 - 01:12:29:28
Daniel Franco
So we jumped the enable space because we've done this before. People get it, CRM make sense, let's go on and we try to get to the sustainability stage, which is by you, but we've skipped the stage. You know, it's the old if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, so to speak, in that. That's where I guess where most businesses go wrong because it is in that space where a, you can dot the I's and cross the T's.

01:12:30:02 - 01:12:49:02
Daniel Franco
Like we said earlier, we can help the organization make sense of what we're trying to do. First. And that's where you talk about your brief and then actually build a roadmap for execution in that. And this is how we're going to execute it on. So that's the area where we find most go wrong and fail, and that's where we believe the investment.

01:12:49:02 - 01:13:02:27
Daniel Franco
If you can get that part right, execution starts to run. We've been almost touted as change insurance, right? You know, it's our job. Our job is to save you the $850,000 just by doing that planning phase upfront.

01:13:03:00 - 01:13:21:08
Grant WIlckens
And it is really and again, we're talking about yesterday. So, you know, we build a lot of things as in cabins and waterparks and things like that. So and we do that pretty well. Yeah. And so the the issue that you sort of you got to reflect on is, okay, well we can these are CapEx projects and a and a tech project is a CapEx project.

01:13:21:08 - 01:13:43:14
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. And so the the issue is if somebody would estimate that that happens with, you know, $250,000, am I going to put pipes and power and whatever and therefore the budget is blah and you know, and, and then somebody knows what they're doing and then something goes and executes that. The challenge with that, a tech project or a Adelaide Adelaide office project, which of course it was a head office.

01:13:43:15 - 01:13:48:22
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Whereas a board or is it for office or anything to make sure we don't regard it as a, as a head.

01:13:48:22 - 01:13:49:24
Daniel Franco
Office as HQ.

01:13:49:24 - 01:14:12:26
Grant WIlckens
Yep, yep. And it is about it for it's like why can't we break it down? And I think it's the planning, I think it's the planning phase is where we've certainly gone wrong. You know, that estimate of the guy sort of thought about the bricks and the pipes and the power and to get that carbon in. I'm not sure whether we're doing enough work in our in our projects and our sort of initiatives.

01:14:12:26 - 01:14:20:15
Grant WIlckens
Our Adelaide office projects, because they're generally. Yeah. Using this business initiatives. Yeah. Which have been sort of dragging us down.

01:14:20:21 - 01:14:21:12
Daniel Franco
It's not just, you.

01:14:21:18 - 01:14:43:06
Grant WIlckens
Know, it's mostly it is, most of it really is frustrating because it's yeah, as I, as a CEO, you know, I sort of sit there and I, you know, I, I'm passionate obviously about about making change. Yeah. And the team works really hard and you've got to win. I mean, one of the problems I find is sometimes these teams having loss after the loss as the loss and motivation gets out.

01:14:43:09 - 01:15:03:18
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. You know, with a project that's going south, how do you turn it around? How do you get motivation to people? Currently that's 8 hours a day. That's what they're doing. They're coming in and they're thinking full time about this initiative and then it doesn't go. And then how do you then start celebrating some small wins, like, I know we've done that little bit that celebrate.

01:15:03:18 - 01:15:11:22
Grant WIlckens
Let's make sure we. Yeah, all right, do something. But yeah, I have a go and have a I don't I haven't really dialed.

01:15:11:24 - 01:15:12:21
Daniel Franco
The it's the.

01:15:12:24 - 01:15:24:00
Grant WIlckens
Cupcakes in the office or something, you know, I think, I mean I know just minor issues but it's about how do you motivate when things going wrong or going bad as in a project and that is how do you turn it around.

01:15:24:02 - 01:15:27:03
Daniel Franco
Yeah, it's a recognition that you want to give us a call.

01:15:27:05 - 01:15:31:13
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, we really Well, we better get you down, right? We're going to get down for Jess later.

01:15:31:13 - 01:15:57:00
Daniel Franco
I have to have a chat. I am interested, though, in your what? You talked about the role, the CEO and you're are. You are interested in changing all that leading through change is is something that in which not really anyone has really ever prepared for or been taught how to do I like is you can be a great leader and you can empower people and you can set vision and strategy and you can build a team that can actually do it.

01:15:57:00 - 01:16:15:04
Daniel Franco
But to lead through change is one that is absolutely always with, you know, the goalposts. Shifting all the time is one that's difficult and one that you learn over time. What have you learned about leading through change? What have you learned and how has your philosophy evolved over the years?

01:16:15:07 - 01:16:53:11
Grant WIlckens
Well, what I have learned is that it's never easy and it's, you know, certainly having the business objective very clear upfront with you, How you get there is is the the challenge. Yeah. But having a business objective non upfront be very clearly articulated and everybody sort of signed up to is is really, really important. I think the one of the challenges that you've got we have is that there are people within teams in, in our world but where I'm not sure if it's fully clear in their mind what they're doing to contribute to that business objective.

01:16:53:13 - 01:17:07:16
Grant WIlckens
So they may be doing something very small within a process or within a in a tech team, for example. And but they're not they're not aware that what they're doing is actually trying to draw, you know, increase digital sales by, you know, it's $30 million. And so it's like.

01:17:07:17 - 01:17:08:09
Daniel Franco
What's the benefit?

01:17:08:16 - 01:17:39:04
Grant WIlckens
Do we benefit? And then actually having a business purpose as opposed to a widget purpose. Yeah, right. And so my purpose is yes. Often to develop this widget or this, this this tablet, you know whatever it is on the so that's my that's what I'm going to do but okay as a result of that that's going to deliver this and I think being very clear on the business objectives and there'll be an area where we we probably haven't we haven't embraced the education, our staff as well as we could have in the past.

01:17:39:07 - 01:17:58:18
Grant WIlckens
And I think that's a really important aspect. And I think the other thing is, is knowledge and acknowledging early when you when you need to change or we need to stop, you know, we we've you know, we've just we've just ripped up on an issue that's, again, gone on for a couple of years, another a different one. So, you know, we have made mistakes of them.

01:17:58:20 - 01:18:29:28
Grant WIlckens
And, you know, the challenges is when you when you acknowledge it, just don't keep don't continue. They have the courage to stand up, as in because they and all these people that are the subordinates, the people that are in the times. No, I before I know, you know, and my view is I don't want to be managed, but rather an honest response and honest feedback about how a project's tracking or whether a project actually is is going to deliver value rather than continuing the process and finishing it and then going doesn't read what we wanted to do anyway.

01:18:29:28 - 01:18:44:17
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, right. And so that's that's probably that's probably an issue. But leading through change, you know, you've got to be supportive, but you've got to be you've got to be thin as well. I mean, you know, I'm happy if we make mistakes and make them twice. Yeah, right. So that.

01:18:44:18 - 01:18:45:18
Daniel Franco
I keep banging head against.

01:18:45:18 - 01:19:13:24
Grant WIlckens
That. Right. And so we do talk about our adjust quite a lot. Yeah. We, we, yeah, we, we're always willing to have a go. We are. No we're an entrepreneurial business so you know being a founder led organization, we're an entrepreneurial organization. So we are willing to, to take calculated risks and sensible risks. But we've got to know when you've got to pivot and either stop it or or change direction and nothing we do, we're going to fly the company out with so we don't do it.

01:19:13:24 - 01:19:19:17
Grant WIlckens
We don't do silly risks. But we are we we yeah, it's part of it's actually part of our success.

01:19:19:19 - 01:19:34:07
Daniel Franco
Yeah. If you're every project is going over budget by 100 grand a year. 100 grand or 200 grand, you know, you do ten of those projects and you, you've just lost a couple of million bucks. Right. And that can be invested into a piece of tech that actually works. So, yeah.

01:19:34:11 - 01:19:53:12
Grant WIlckens
I think the other part of it, though, is also look at what and you you want to work out what can be outsourced. Yeah. I think the other part is people want to build their own teams and I think you actually can get a lot better value and quicker value with really good talent if you outsource it.

01:19:53:12 - 01:19:57:02
Daniel Franco
Yeah, correct. Well, I mean, companies like us, this is all we do.

01:19:57:04 - 01:19:57:21
Grant WIlckens
Yeah.

01:19:57:23 - 01:20:05:12
Daniel Franco
Yeah. We just do change. We put all of our time, effort, research, development, everything into how do we help organizations make sense of change.

01:20:05:12 - 01:20:05:19
Grant WIlckens
Yep.

01:20:05:24 - 01:20:13:12
Daniel Franco
And set them up for success on their journey. Yeah. And to your point, would you, would you want to do your own logistics? Would you outsource it?

01:20:13:14 - 01:20:27:24
Grant WIlckens
I think there's a component of what you do. So there are there are areas of the business which you want to control and, and they probably are things really, I just to see you really want to own that face. Absolutely. But it's how you get there. And I think that's.

01:20:27:24 - 01:20:48:00
Daniel Franco
I guess my question was more around you don't run and manage your own logistics within you, outsource your logistics. And so you have the same mentality when trying to put buying expertise. Right. That's it's it's because it's like this isn't a lifelong thing. We need someone to come in, just deliver it for us. And then it's no different to you.

01:20:48:00 - 01:20:50:19
Daniel Franco
Logistics come in deliver. So a.

01:20:50:21 - 01:20:52:02
Grant WIlckens
Great yeah.

01:20:52:05 - 01:21:25:18
Daniel Franco
Well, I am conscious of time. I had a few more questions for you. Maybe I can sneak one in because I want to really ask this one. You have shown a tremendous amount of grit and resilience over your career. You've there's probably an element of post-traumatic stress. When we were going through the 2008 saga and 2008 saga and up until 2010, I am really interested in your advice that you could possibly give to business leaders there who are sort of traveling through that crisis themselves.

01:21:25:20 - 01:21:29:06
Daniel Franco
How do you suggest that they lean into that discomfort?

01:21:29:08 - 01:21:51:05
Grant WIlckens
first bit of advice is. Make sure you've got somebody to talk to through it. And as I said, I had an ex colleague and who sort of was almost like my personal financial adviser, as in corporate finance adviser yet through. And that was I was lucky to have that relationship, but he wasn't involved in the business. But he could give me very objective advice.

01:21:51:11 - 01:21:56:14
Grant WIlckens
People, I think, get somebody that you can talk to and have objective feedback around what you're trying to do.

01:21:56:21 - 01:21:57:18
Daniel Franco
Take the emotion out of it.

01:21:57:18 - 01:22:14:01
Grant WIlckens
Take the emotion out of it because it's draining. And so that's probably the first. The first the strongest thing I would say is get and I'm not suggesting go and talk to a psychologist and all that. You know, you want a business person that you can talk to that has experience in working through those challenges. Yeah.

01:22:14:03 - 01:22:16:13
Daniel Franco
So but if you need a psychologist, go.

01:22:16:15 - 01:22:28:29
Grant WIlckens
Hey, I'm not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I mean, it was more, it was more about making sure somebody can just put up maybe there's a psychologist. Yeah. Because that's part of what Marcus did for me. Yeah. He put the mirror up and just ask me questions and help me. Helped me.

01:22:28:29 - 01:22:50:22
Daniel Franco
Also. You're right. It's just having funny. Someone doesn't know who it is. Have to actually just us objective questions that you can start solving the problems with. Because when you're in the state of flux. Yeah, it's tough. I've been there. I know you probably you absolutely mean. Yeah so it's tough to get out of. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm lucky I have to talk my way out of things in sense of I need to.

01:22:50:22 - 01:23:00:17
Daniel Franco
I can't just sit there and write and. And think my way out of it. I need to understand and talk and share. And hear stories. Yeah.

01:23:00:17 - 01:23:10:07
Grant WIlckens
I think everything that happens is self-doubt. You start doubting your own capability and your own, you know, Am I good enough? You know? Yeah.

01:23:10:14 - 01:23:12:04
Daniel Franco
And I'm not the right leader.

01:23:12:05 - 01:23:35:16
Grant WIlckens
I'm not the right leader. And I think and that's obviously that happens even as the company gets bigger for me. I know we're we're you know, we're a large organization. Every now and then. I got to go. I should enjoy. The next guy's going to do a better job. Yeah. Yeah. And the challenges is the next person won't be a founder and therefore won't be a it's sort of found a solid culture within the organization, I think, which is fundamental to who we are.

01:23:35:17 - 01:23:36:18
Grant WIlckens
Yeah.

01:23:36:20 - 01:23:37:28
Daniel Franco
So does that mean finally.

01:23:38:02 - 01:23:47:24
Grant WIlckens
I think it, I think it's very different to and we talk about it a lot, as with my chair about family organizations and there's actually a heap of research about found a little.

01:23:47:26 - 01:23:49:00
Daniel Franco
Yeah I'm I am one.

01:23:49:02 - 01:24:09:00
Grant WIlckens
Yeah and it's it's a very very different way that your know you love this business your business as much as you love it so I know you love this business as much as I love it. So the the, the benefit that shareholders get, stakeholders get with you being a family business fan led person in this organization is your staff.

01:24:09:02 - 01:24:33:23
Grant WIlckens
You know the passion that you talk about about your organization and the passion and that you talk about with with your with your customers, not just staff. It's always embedded in everything you do. And so for for me being, you know, that passion is really very important to how I do it. I do inductions. I still conduct, you know, physically in the office, people that come through and they walk out of the induction and they go, Wow, that was inspiring.

01:24:33:23 - 01:24:54:11
Grant WIlckens
That was that was amazing in terms of just listening to where the companies come from and values, you know, that can I can hear the grit. I mean, you know, life is tough. Love is hard. Life is tough. You know, And we're not for everybody. You know, if you want to go work for Discovery. Yeah. If you want to work in a given type of organization, we are not for you.

01:24:54:16 - 01:25:08:07
Grant WIlckens
If you're in the great work and you're in a cutting edge work where we are, you know, Australia's leader and do stuff that nobody's ever done before and it's really exciting. Great work, then come work, come work with us. Yeah, because it's going to be great journey.

01:25:08:07 - 01:25:12:17
Daniel Franco
I mean, it sounds exciting, but you want to it sounds like a high performance culture. I like.

01:25:12:17 - 01:25:14:18
Grant WIlckens
Massively hopping. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:25:14:21 - 01:25:18:03
Daniel Franco
And that's not for everyone. Some people just know something in cruise.

01:25:18:03 - 01:25:34:05
Grant WIlckens
And I say that to people. Yeah, I'll say, look, you know, make you make up your mind in the induction maybe that I've been employed, I said, well you make up your mind as well as you work through this and if you want to go, that's fine. You know, people business is growing. I mean, the same thing that happens.

01:25:34:07 - 01:25:46:10
Grant WIlckens
You know, some really good different novel, not films, but books that I've read about businesses growing and outgrowing individuals. Yeah. And in that I you've done great work. You are? Yeah. Yeah.

01:25:46:14 - 01:25:48:19
Daniel Franco
The next page is what got us here. Won't go to the.

01:25:48:19 - 01:26:01:09
Grant WIlckens
Next phase of business. Yeah. So we'll still celebrate everything you've done and everything you've achieved. But, you know, maybe with businesses going, you know, you can go and do great work elsewhere. Yeah, they had conversations. Yeah.

01:26:01:12 - 01:26:18:16
Daniel Franco
Very difficult. The founder led thing. The. I often misinterpret how long things can take, right. Because someone might say, why am I saying, hey, can we do this? And I go, Yeah, you know, we'll have it ready in a couple of weeks or a week or two. I'm like, What do you mean it's 24 hours in a day, right?

01:26:18:22 - 01:26:19:14
Grant WIlckens
Absolutely.

01:26:19:16 - 01:26:24:02
Daniel Franco
But we can't have that expectation on our staff, right?

01:26:24:04 - 01:26:24:15
Grant WIlckens
Yeah.

01:26:24:16 - 01:26:27:01
Daniel Franco
And do you ever get tripped up in that space? All the time. Yeah.

01:26:27:02 - 01:26:29:26
Grant WIlckens
I mean, it's. Yeah, Yeah, it's because.

01:26:29:29 - 01:26:31:17
Daniel Franco
Because we don't actually switch off.

01:26:31:18 - 01:26:39:12
Grant WIlckens
No, I mean that's when my family becomes. Yeah. I mean out of that I, I've got to wasn't married to.

01:26:39:13 - 01:26:39:18
Daniel Franco
The.

01:26:39:18 - 01:26:57:16
Grant WIlckens
Job, I'm married to Discovery and the good I agreement. I was married to my wife. Yeah. She talks about it. Yeah but, but because I do I, yeah I, I think about that business a lot. I think that my people a lot of, you know, a lot of a big chunk of my life is the business. Yeah. And I love it.

01:26:57:16 - 01:27:16:01
Grant WIlckens
And I wouldn't want to be where I am today. I'm very happy to do that. You know, maybe when, you know, 20 years time, I'll be happy to do something else. But, you know, it's it's this is my passion. Yeah. And so and I'm lucky. I mean, a lot of people I hate the job. Yeah. I going to work and, you know, yeah, I've worked with difficult people.

01:27:16:01 - 01:27:32:25
Grant WIlckens
I, you know, I work for complete difficult people. I said the wrong way, you know, and hopefully the people feel as they can come to, to our business and, and one, you know, we're we're a good place to work. But you do you do work hard but. You do great work. Yeah. And so.

01:27:32:26 - 01:27:33:08
Daniel Franco
On.

01:27:33:10 - 01:27:34:01
Grant WIlckens
Top of all this.

01:27:34:06 - 01:27:43:28
Daniel Franco
Closing thoughts before I jump into some quickfire questions, if you had to encapsulate encapsulate your entire journey into one single lesson, what what would it be?

01:27:44:03 - 01:28:09:09
Grant WIlckens
wow. I think unpredictable unpredictability is I mean, we're a very predictable business and cash flows, but in terms of business in general, it's, you know, life is unpredictable. And and if I look at our 20 years, I would have never have envisaged the 20 years that I've gone on. And that goes from the the joys of the success to the challenges in the dark days of the bad bank.

01:28:09:09 - 01:28:36:29
Grant WIlckens
And then of the periods during the history of the organization. But yeah, it's incredibly rewarding and, you know, personally rewarding, saying our my staff, you know have wins and and you know, saying the joys of when they can actually use our boxes as family holidays and yes I know if I'm answering your question but I think it's I am I think being and it's being a leader in a business for a long period of time.

01:28:37:01 - 01:28:59:10
Grant WIlckens
I think if you're a leader, if you're say for an organization for, say, five years or something, three, 3 to 5, it's not just that's a short time, but it's probably going to be a relatively consistent five years. Yeah, probably right over a 20 year period. Yeah. I think there's so many ups and downs and and moments in in in your time as a as a leader that it's just there's constant change.

01:28:59:10 - 01:29:06:29
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. And, and changes you know, you're a manager of change and I think changes is something that you just have to go through all the time. Yeah.

01:29:07:05 - 01:29:08:24
Daniel Franco
And and adapt to it.

01:29:08:28 - 01:29:28:22
Grant WIlckens
And adapt to it. And I think it's, it's not easy, you know, I think you've got to, you know, I said it already, but how do, how do you work the lucky get you. It's bloody hard work. It's a lot of fun. It's very rewarding. I wouldn't trade it for anything, you know, it could have been an investment banker, it could be a caravan park guy and I'm very glad of a caravan.

01:29:28:27 - 01:29:50:02
Daniel Franco
Got I of it. You know, I read a lots and there's a book. It's called A Road Less Traveled by Scott Park. And the first line, the first sentence in the book is Life is Hard. And the moment that we realized that life is hard, life becomes easier, right? I think it just is in its own right sense, says this is going to be a ride, like this is going to be tough.

01:29:50:02 - 01:30:05:25
Daniel Franco
And like if you set that as your actual foundation and standard, then your expectations are that it's going to be harder, therefore makes it easier to. Right. Because if you expect everything is smooth sailing, then you're going to be constantly disappointed, is lost as life throws you curveballs. Balls is.

01:30:05:25 - 01:30:07:24
Grant WIlckens
Going to be interesting for the millennials coming through.

01:30:07:24 - 01:30:18:18
Daniel Franco
100%. Yeah, yeah. We talked about that in a previous conversation, that great resilience, which is why I wanted to bring that one up. Yeah, Jumping into quickfire questions, what are you reading right now?

01:30:18:20 - 01:30:40:23
Grant WIlckens
I'm reading the old Black Book Legacy Group is great books about leadership, but it's a it's a really good book. Without the likes of the most successful sporting team ever in the world. But I get you something like 75% of their games, somebody like one. So that is it's said and talks about behaviors. Yeah really. And so that's what's and this.

01:30:40:23 - 01:30:47:02
Daniel Franco
Core belief I can just say it this core belief. Yeah. And patriotism in to what it's like it's Yeah.

01:30:47:04 - 01:30:49:05
Grant WIlckens
So that is a it's a good one.

01:30:49:07 - 01:30:58:06
Daniel Franco
Is there a self-development book that you believe that stands out from the crowd, One that you might've gifted to someone before or recommended before?

01:30:58:13 - 01:31:14:28
Grant WIlckens
Well, actually the legacy book was gifted to me. Yeah, which was interesting. So that's why I'm reading it now. But another one that I it's it's an unusual one, but it's something that's I think it's quite simple for people because not everybody likes to read. No, it's called Atomic Habits and it's all about small changes.

01:31:14:28 - 01:31:15:15
Daniel Franco
James Clear.

01:31:15:20 - 01:31:33:26
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, gradual changes, right? And I think it's just chipping away and not trying to do like, Right, I'm going to, Yeah. Lose 20 kilograms today and that's wrong. And then like in that least we can put it all back. You know what, what, what a small, small change you can make in your life to have big impacts. Yeah.

01:31:33:28 - 01:31:36:12
Daniel Franco
The one thing I took away from that book was, the habit stacking.

01:31:36:12 - 01:31:37:00
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Yes.

01:31:37:00 - 01:31:51:18
Daniel Franco
As you try to focus on, you know, in the morning, if you want to get up you do ten push ups, then you make your bed, then you have a shower and you that's that, you stack your habits together and you're more likely to keep your families interesting. Yeah. So. Yeah. All right. I don't do the push ups, but.

01:31:51:23 - 01:31:54:17
Grant WIlckens
I think it's good lot. But it was a yes, and it's interesting.

01:31:54:17 - 01:31:58:14
Daniel Franco
Yeah, he's great. Great. What's one lesson this taking you the longest to learn?

01:31:58:16 - 01:32:03:21
Grant WIlckens
The one lesson is me along is to learn rhythm. My wife was always right. There you go. He's always right.

01:32:03:23 - 01:32:06:17
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Martin Is always right, too. That's right. Yeah, yeah.

01:32:06:17 - 01:32:07:25
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, yeah. I've learned that.

01:32:07:25 - 01:32:15:00
Daniel Franco
That's about if you could have coffee with one historical or current figure who would have a.

01:32:15:02 - 01:32:25:07
Grant WIlckens
Probably there's a couple of in our cabana or which is pretty adequate would be we should be Adolf Hitler only because I think he'd be interesting got it. Yeah. I mean he's.

01:32:25:11 - 01:32:27:09
Daniel Franco
You're not the first person to say that. Yeah.

01:32:27:12 - 01:32:30:25
Grant WIlckens
Complete nutter. Yeah. I'd like to just meet him and say what he's got to say.

01:32:30:25 - 01:32:33:25
Daniel Franco
What's going on in that? Right? I know that you can act.

01:32:34:00 - 01:32:46:07
Grant WIlckens
Yeah. Yeah. Not something that I recommend we all want to talk to, but I think it's. Yeah, he obviously nobody really knows what he was like. Yeah. Other than he was a crazy man but an interesting.

01:32:46:09 - 01:32:48:21
Daniel Franco
What are some of the best advice you ever ever saved.

01:32:48:24 - 01:33:05:29
Grant WIlckens
Probably came out of my Stanford course, which was about leadership. Yeah. And leadership is not. I was always thinking about leadership being about me and what I walked away from after I came back from Stanford was leadership is actually about the people around you and how do you make them great leaders.

01:33:06:01 - 01:33:08:21
Daniel Franco
And so it's a service leadership role. Yeah.

01:33:08:22 - 01:33:18:22
Grant WIlckens
So and it really changed the way I think about myself being a leader because I thought it was about me and there wasn't enough investment in in the people around me. So.

01:33:18:27 - 01:33:24:23
Daniel Franco
Well, it's one habit. Whilst we're on the topic of atomic habits, what's one habit that holds you back the most.

01:33:24:26 - 01:33:44:18
Grant WIlckens
Habit that holds me back probably detail on I it's not a habit necessarily, but I think if I, if I think about the business because I'm the founder of the business and I've bought all the packs, I know a lot. And so one of the challenges I think is as a I've got I've got to Robyn jumping to the to the solution, I've got to actually sort of step back in the detail.

01:33:44:18 - 01:33:57:22
Grant WIlckens
I know not talk about it and other people. So there's already a habit, but it's probably something that I'm very conscious that I have to do in meetings. Yeah, I need to actually let other people solve problems rather than myself jumping in. Yeah. With the ounce.

01:33:57:22 - 01:33:58:21
Daniel Franco
Getting caught in the weeds.

01:33:58:21 - 01:34:02:13
Grant WIlckens
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get sometimes I get too detailed, I hear.

01:34:02:16 - 01:34:06:07
Daniel Franco
What's your biggest pet peeve? what's one thing that pisses you off the most?

01:34:06:09 - 01:34:16:06
Grant WIlckens
Probably laziness. I'll, I'll. Yeah. Excuses. Excuses. I'm a firm believer is you work hard and you get rewarded. So anyway.

01:34:16:08 - 01:34:24:19
Daniel Franco
Not leave it to them. If you could pay one. If you could pay someone to do one of your chores, what sure would it be? Not mowing the lawn.

01:34:24:21 - 01:34:28:06
Grant WIlckens
Mowing the lawn that's probably ironing my work. Shit. I think I've done a great job today.

01:34:28:06 - 01:34:33:17
Daniel Franco
You have? I got. Yeah. With you on that too. What's one word you absolutely hate.

01:34:33:19 - 01:34:34:11
Grant WIlckens
Can't.

01:34:34:14 - 01:34:35:13
Daniel Franco
Yeah. No such word.

01:34:35:15 - 01:34:36:02
Grant WIlckens
That's actually it.

01:34:36:02 - 01:34:48:14
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Yeah. That was one thing my parents drummed into me from a young age. There is no such word as God. Yeah, and it's one thing I tell my kids and I tell their kids because you're right. Yeah. What's the first thing you would do if you became invisible?

01:34:48:18 - 01:34:59:13
Grant WIlckens
I reckon I'd go as long it was going to come back. Because I'm too young. I'd like to go. I'd like to jump into a spacecraft spaceship, go up with them and come back down with them.

01:34:59:15 - 01:35:00:04
Daniel Franco
Yeah, because.

01:35:00:04 - 01:35:08:28
Grant WIlckens
Then you get to see that. You get to go because I'm never going to go spaceship again. So. Well, ever. If as I'm so you know, if I was invisible somehow I'd jump into the spaceship, go for a ride and come back. That'd be.

01:35:08:28 - 01:35:12:11
Daniel Franco
Pretty cool. Yeah, but you wouldn't be set up with the right? Yeah. No.

01:35:12:13 - 01:35:16:29
Grant WIlckens
That would. I can't think of that. Whether walking through the halls of the White House would be a pretty.

01:35:17:01 - 01:35:17:20
Daniel Franco
That would be.

01:35:17:23 - 01:35:22:24
Grant WIlckens
Interesting. So imagine just going in listening to meetings like you're, you just go into a meeting.

01:35:22:24 - 01:35:23:26
Daniel Franco
Into that top secret.

01:35:23:29 - 01:35:27:10
Grant WIlckens
Room, listen to stuff that's going on in the White House. Pretty cool.

01:35:27:10 - 01:35:31:27
Daniel Franco
Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty cool. What's the most useless talent that you have?

01:35:31:29 - 01:35:34:21
Grant WIlckens
I can juggle that. Yeah, I can juggle.

01:35:34:24 - 01:35:35:12
Daniel Franco
How many.

01:35:35:12 - 01:35:40:26
Grant WIlckens
I can go for. For Vega. Yep. I was a as a student when I was at uni, so.

01:35:40:26 - 01:35:43:24
Daniel Franco
Good. Useless habit. I've got a 3 to 4. Yeah.

01:35:43:24 - 01:35:53:25
Grant WIlckens
I just I didn't actually get to flat. So in my happy place I was a young fella. We had the group also a softball. Yeah. And. Yeah. Yep.

01:35:53:28 - 01:36:04:00
Daniel Franco
Yeah. You're the, the clown at the party. Is that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So last my favorite question of the whole podcast is what's your best dad joke?

01:36:04:07 - 01:36:07:22
Grant WIlckens
I thought maybe the best day jokes have something to do with camping in it.

01:36:07:24 - 01:36:08:21
Daniel Franco
Yeah.

01:36:08:23 - 01:36:13:21
Grant WIlckens
Why did the why of the robot? Why the rabbit can't go camping?

01:36:13:24 - 01:36:15:09
Daniel Franco
Wanted to go camping.

01:36:15:16 - 01:36:17:21
Grant WIlckens
Because he wanted to charge you batteries.

01:36:17:23 - 01:36:19:05
Daniel Franco
Yeah, well.

01:36:19:07 - 01:36:19:25
Grant WIlckens
That's pretty bad.

01:36:19:25 - 01:36:41:05
Daniel Franco
Isn't that what it's supposed to be? It's Dad. Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you for your time today, Gran, I. I was very, very excited to have you on the show. I am. I really. Yeah. I can't speak enough. I guess some of everyone in the community about what you and the team at the group and Discovery Parks and Wiki camp and everything.

01:36:41:05 - 01:37:02:19
Daniel Franco
I mean, you are, you are recharging people's batteries. You are creating memories for people I think, which is the one thing that really sort of resonates with me the most is that and you know, your thought process on family and how much that means to you is exactly what you're doing for everyone else, right? Like you're giving your opportunity to spend with their family.

01:37:02:19 - 01:37:16:26
Daniel Franco
So I just want to say keep it up to you and the team. And I'm really excited about watching you guys continue to grow and and the offerings and that are coming our way. So, yeah, on behalf of everyone across Australia, I would say thank you for all that you do.

01:37:16:28 - 01:37:17:21
Grant WIlckens
Beautiful. Thanks.

01:37:17:21 - 01:37:19:00
Daniel Franco
Dan Frechette No, it's.

01:37:19:04 - 01:37:19:18
Grant WIlckens
Good to be part.

01:37:19:18 - 01:37:41:06
Daniel Franco
Of it. Thanks, everyone. We will catch you next time. Thanks for listening to the podcast so you can check out the show notes if there was anything of interest you and find out more about us at Synergy IQ dot com today. I am going to ask though if you did like the podcast, it would absolutely mean the world to me if you could subscribe, write and review and if you didn't like it, that's alright too.

01:37:41:13 - 01:37:45:01
Daniel Franco
There's no need to do anything. Thank you guys. All the best.