The sales deal that saved the country

So, welcome back to the podcast this week and it's an absolute privilege and honor for me to have a wonderful gentleman in front of me, a guy I've known very well, but he's very good golf, but also a fantastic businessman.

And we're going to talk a lot about business and sales.

And I'm going to say I think it's.

He's too.

He's too modest about it.

I think it's a sales deal that saved the country, but we'll come to that in a bit.

So, Tom Waldock, welcome to Darvish's expert podcast.

Pleasure to be on, first time doing something about this.

Always a pleasure to do with meetings, exactly what you didn't buy.

Obviously you're the MD of CineTech.

Talk to me a little bit about who Syntech are and how you can.

Do in that role.

So cinematic document management consultancy, I guess, is the easiest way to describe who we are.

We basically specialize in donating, listening to customers issues and then building a bespoke solution that meets their requirements, either the requirements of people sending it or the people who are receiving communication.

So I guess some examples would be we work with a lot of NHS trusts doing their appointment communication, but also results letters.

And we go and build a channel communication that is either print and mail upload to portals that are available in that market, all sorts of different things.

So.

And we don't really mind how that communication gets to people as long as it's as effective as it can be.

And we provide consultancy through that process for any customer that uses us.

And it's funny because when I first started working with you guys, I always described Citizec as a bit like a diamond in the rough.

It's like, you look at this sort of big rock, you think, where's this stuff there?

Because you guys were never the most vocal about who you are, really.

You did a lot of this stuff you did in the background.

And even though you're a massive organization.

It was like, no, it's not about.

Us, it's about the customer.

Yeah, we've never, I guess maybe the last three years we sort of changed that.

But yeah, historically we've always been very, very quiet about who we are and what we do.

Back in history, that would be because the intellectual property we got would have been.

We'd have been worried about somebody copying it or something along those lines.

And the strategy sort of changed when we realized toward 20 odd years in that the technology got complicated enough and efficient enough that actually some people wanted to Come and compete with us then we were in a much better place to defend ourselves in that, in that market than we ever had been before.

Which then allow us to be a bit more expansive about talking about who we are and what we do.

But yeah, we have always hidden sort of behind anything and sort of being a small southwest family business I guess is the.

Well you say small but you don't.

You're not small because the business is a significant size business that employs lot of people and has significant revenue.

So yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean I guess we employ somewhere between 290, 300 people across the country and four sites and turn over a decent chunk of money.

So it's.

Yeah, I think, I think it's probably certain element, it's.

I call it small business because when I joined it was.

But it's.

But we'll talk about that in a minute because obviously there's some background stuff but what were you doing as an 18 year old?

What was 18 year old Tom Boulder like?

Were you always interested in business or were you a bit sort of like entered in what was that?

I hope none of my friends watch this because they'll laugh at this because in reality I was 18, I was at university studying geography and specifically wanted to do flat risk management unfortunately I think sort of coming towards the back end of that, sort of.

I'd have probably just gone onto university when I turned 18 maybe or just before that.

But I've always been interested in work basically so I'd have been, I would have been even pre university I worked two jobs just to earn money and that sort of stuff.

So I went to university and came away with no debt because of the fact I built up enough money from it.

I spent a lot of money on pool and beer during the period as much as you.

But yeah I guess earning money in a way, that sort of stuff.

So I started my own car fleeting business at like 13 or 14.

See I know what you think, yeah two in cars out of my parents house.

It was a perfect business model because they bought all the equipment and I earned the money.

So it was, it was like zero cost, maximum revenue.

So yeah, I guess I've always been interested in earning money and basically just doing a good job because I did that work for a game, keep put and basically this then in the pub.

So quite often I'd get up at 4, go and work for the game heap of feed pheasants in the morning, come back, clean some cars over pub lunchtime and then work in the pub in the evening waiting on tables through a day.

When I was young so that sort of went all the way up until when I left to go to university.

It's funny, it's Nick because I always say I started working when I was 11 and I'm a bit older than you but that's ethic of being able to.

To work hard is such that, you know.

Were your parents really be encouraging you to do that when you were younger?

I don't actually ever remember them re encouraging it but my dad was always sort of career driven and had various different jobs at different companies when I was.

When I was younger and had succeeded greatly in terms of what he'd done.

I guess to a certain extent that rubs off on.

When you see somebody else that see you, you go oh, actually maybe I can do a bit of that as well.

So yeah, I don't remember them ever pushing me to go and do work and that sort of stuff.

I've always.

I guess that's always driven me is I've always liked to learn.

Yeah.

And I feel like that's.

If you go to work and you do that, you've got an opportunity to learn and do different things.

I've also been really fortunate.

I think a lot of people I've worked for when I was younger were particularly good at teaching me that actually it's not worth doing.

I know it's now sort of cliche.

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

But in reality that.

That was brilliant to me from.

From a really young age in terms of specifically the game, people taught me both the meaning of hard labor and also the like.

Actually, no, it's worth doing it well.

James.

Sorry, can I just check one thing on this one for one second while you're.

Which are good.

Yeah, that's fine.

Okay, cool.

Crack on guys.

So if you think back to those times when you're working, were there any particular.

You mentioned the gamekeep.

Were there any particular.

Just as I digress, were there any particular role models or people when you were in those early stages of your career, before you got to becoming an MD that you'd say were real inspirations or people you looked up to?

Like you say they gave you something that made you think, yeah, that's really good knowledge to have, I guess.

I mean I was like before Citizen there was all sorts of different people in terms of different things where I just learned different areas and they got different experiences to give me as part of that process.

Like and MCD brought all the way through to the family that run around the village pub that I work.

They've been there and done different things over time and actually learning off those guys.

Once I started sitting at Darling, I was really fortunate that actually the group of directors that were there when I joined were had a really wide breadth of experience across the sort of.

I guess the four major ones that I dealt with mainly at that point in terms of.

One was previously in the Marines.

One worked as effectively electrician for Swept in the white goods piece, the soil repair business at the other.

And then my father was one of the directors at the time and he worked for a company called Checkpoint who sold check signs.

So you've got a really.

Then there was the sort of standard, technical sort of genius, I guess is.

And that's a phrase that's probably overused these days that gave me a load of sort of experience.

I had four really good roles when I joined CineTech that I could let up from my old career.

I think up until my role sort of changed into being managed to actually they would probably be the only people I really lent on in that process was there's a lot for me to learn from those and I really learned off those.

And then since I've been in my manager, I've gone out and found role models, mentors from other businesses and other areas.

Again, it comes back to that.

I just like to be able to learn.

So it doesn't matter to me.

I'm not one of those business people who sort of has to be shown to be the best at something or anything like that.

For me, actually, I just rather be learning off of people and seeing how much I can pick up and improve myself in that process.

But that's also why you're successful, because.

You'Ve got that mindset to be able.

To just carry on doing things like say, you know, we all learn in those ways.

I mean, just background, obviously.

Yeah.

What was that first day?

Can you remember your first day in the business and what was it like?

Well, expense.

You mean my first official day or my first.

Yeah, well, of course, when you've done working in the business, you probably were involved before, but can you remember that?

And how did they come about for you actually?

Because what were you going back to it?

What were you doing in between the university and.

And sort of joining Cinetech.

And at what point did you think.

Actually I just need to go work for this business.

I'll take it.

If I mean this, this is a semi.

I mean this is the complete truth and probably not the answer that necessarily helps in any way, shape or form.

So I had absolutely zero intention of ever working for Cineta and that was a well known fact across the family and that sort of stuff.

But as any good student, you need some money as part of your process.

So I was there doing work experience and had done work experience over a number of years for them and during my second.

Between my second and third year of university had done some work in the summer and the production director at the time offered me a job, weirdly under the proviso that I had to get two.

One at university, I can't remember.

Did you get one?

I did manage to get to one being here, but I can't imagine where that particular stipulation came from him.

I imagine that was something to do with my father saying no, because if he stops working I'll kill you.

Somewhere along the line I would imagine he wasn't.

Time to move off and go and do what I was doing what I wanted.

Yeah, collectively go and what I do what I wanted to.

Oh really a four day.

So four days was my gap between finishing university and starting full time at Clinton.

In hindsight it would have been nice to have a bit more of a gap in that process, but it's.

Yeah, it's a long time ago now.

Can you remember that first, that first.

That first Official date on 28th of May.

Can you remember it or was it.

A bit of a blur, I think.

What's the actual role you came in to do then?

So I was the distributed printed project manager, so I was working directly for the production director, basically running specialist projects across the production environment.

So one of my first jobs was to move one of our production sites so comically the warranting production site we still have now it was my job to open that site was one of my first jobs I did when I first joined the company the first thing is it doesn't really stand out and I guess that's because I don't work experience in a very similar role I remember having to go through all the company induction training and sitting there thinking I'm not sure I really need to be in here but it was one of those tick box exercises you had to get done and reading the IF policy or information security management system policy and that sort of stuff which I think you might have had to read at one point but just it's.

It's a long read.

Yeah but it's right for the right.

Reason for the right reason but it's.

It's a long read so yeah I don't remember specifically what that first aid felt like I think I would have been silly nervous I mean I was still wasn't particularly confident at that age.

But because your dad was a director of the business.

Yes and I guess it must be people might say oh it might have been easy for him My experience in those sort of situations is harder is that you know the people are a bit tougher on you because they especially certain business directors that I know at that stage that are like no, no, he's not going to get an easy ride was it.

I mean how was.

Can you remember conversations with your dad.

About things like that?

There's sort of two bits that really stand out from working in your father with your father or for your father in that situation ultimately one was he was incredibly hard on me to achieve things to the extent that we I lived at home for the first three months when I started work university and it was a 45 minute drive in the car so being a student I just finished being a student I got lifted with him every day which meant leaving at 5 or something ridiculous I'm sure but basically on the way in I'd get 45 minutes of being quiz about what I was going to do that day and then on the way home I'd get 45 minutes of what I'd achieved in that day and basically that was just every single day for the first three months until I eventually found a house to buy and move out which was obviously apparent stations at that point I was thinking geez, I'm not sure I can not sure I'm going to cope if this carries on for 10 years but yeah I think that was sort of a piece was he was really hard on me and learning and pushed me really, really hard in the early days to.

To succeed and to prove my worth if you liked.

And I guess the other bit was the other way to look at it.

I've always been pretty self reflective and actually I knew people would think it was I've got a job because of my dad and what I wanted.

I spent a lot of time in my early career proving that actually I wasn't there for my dad because of my dad and I wasn't succeeding because of the violet match.

And I think now look like I probably just wasted effort in that I should have been concentrating on something more important than that.

But yeah in reality that was kind of.

That felt at the top and in.

Terms of back then.

So Obviously you got 300 odd people now how many people reported synth at the time?

Do you remember when I joined?

Probably 120 maybe.

Yeah.

So it was like it was an established company but it wasn't the skies of scale that it was now.

No, yeah we'd have even.

Yeah probably 12% of the size we are at the moment.

So much smaller.

Yeah, yeah, amazing.

So and so obviously you know, you've got into the business and you started working, you know and obviously at what point?

And I believe maybe if you want to share a bit more about that overall process because again you have to invest quite significantly to make that happen.

Right, Yeah.

Well they went through a process called vendor initiated management buyer.

So they basically went to the management team and said we'd like you to buy this.

And how did that feel to actually be to put your own cash on the table at that point and to.

Must be quite a big scary moment.

Nervous or you quite comfortable and confident about where you were going with it?

No, it's an interesting one, isn't it?

Because I guess I'd have been 29.

Yeah, 29 at the time.

So I was still relatively young to be investing in a business.

What was a reasonable size chunk of cash, I mean nothing compared to the value of the business ultimately because the way it works is you put a subscription price on it and then the business pays loan notes back to the owners.

So it was, it was a big amount of money but not huge, that sort of stuff.

And I think it just felt like the right thing to do.

So it was going to come to that.

Yeah, it wasn't long after that sort of process where it was a slightly terrifying experience as a new director of a business of actually how what we do here.

But yeah, I think the business was growing and it always rang.

We've always experienced probably double figure growth and sort of 10 to 13% sort of pretty easily.

I guess it sounds stupid like you mentioned, not market typically not talking about who we are but that's partially because we've always been really successful in that process.

So.

Well, I guess intrigued me because obviously you've been in that role for sort of in the business for five, six years but you've always been particularly, you know, I know from talking to you and going to.

You've always been particularly intrigued by winning business and doing was that even though you were in a production side people think oh that's not your role.

You still made it your objective and your role to go and help the business win business.

Right?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean my brother was a really successful service but he's a really successful salesperson in his own right.

And I think to a certain extent there was that element of I enjoyed learning off him and I process as well.

But yeah, I think even when I was just a project manager for production we used to well still do tours for customers to come and do production site visits so they can look at what we're doing and get a picture of it.

It's just, it's both a bit of a jolly and a great way to show the scale of the business.

And I volunteered basically to do those tours.

So I did that for probably five or six years and that was because I enjoyed engaging with customers in that process.

And I think it comes from a real Pride in terms of what the business is capable.

I think that's where the drive to where your business comes from is.

I want people to understand how valuable synertech is in terms of how much benefit we can provide to them.

So, yeah, I think I've always wanted to learn and try and win in business as much as I can through engaging with customers and doing all sorts of other pieces.

One of the things I'll put in a link in the podcast actually to the video tour of the silic facilities because one of the things that Tom's been very humble about this, it's quite an incredible.

When you see it, and obviously the company is very secure around what you can see at home.

But there is a video that shows this on book.

And so to give an example of.

Scale and you're going to tell me.

I've got the numbers wrong, but I should know this from what I did recently.

It's 900,000 ish per day letters that go out from sensitivities around that figure.

900.

Well, it's fair to say not in the.

There was a cloud, but it was a lot more difficult at the moment.

But that we can do about a million a day.

We generally average, depending on what's going on across Both meetings, about 650, 700,000 pieces of communication a day.

Yeah.

And you think about it.

And again, I'll put the link to the video because when you see this size of scale of, you know, and, you know, organizations that are just sending out thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of letters, but also making sure that each one goes to the right person and, you know, done in the right way, it's.

It's an incredible operation when you see it.

And that's the key to us.

And one of the things that I guess we really focus on slightly differently, it's not about bulk and really throwing out the door.

It's the communication.

Every communication matters.

I mean, obviously the company vision has recently changed to include that as a, as a phrase.

And I think that's.

I think that sort of rolls through the whole culture of the business in terms of every communication does matter to pretty much everybody in the business.

And they're all important for a reason.

I think that's really driven by the cancer results, letters for people and all sorts of stuff like that.

Is if, if you can't spend the time getting that right, then you probably shouldn't be doing what we do for a business.

But, you know, and it's something we talked to and I sort of Helped a little bit with that in the early days, because that element of every single letter, whilst it looks like 9,000, just the numbers, like I say, that letter is either a test result for something or an appointment to go and see the Doctor, which they'd be wanting.

Or it's a communication to a client to, you know, tell them there's a new product good available that communicates myriad of different communications and each one, like you say, matters to that individual.

They've got an inherent.

Everything you do to an inherent security value.

The sort of way to summarize it, I guess, is whether it's a payment company sending a invoice to a customer that they don't want and pay the company with different customer to see because there are deliverance benefits left from accounts.

They're all different types of communication we do, and they all equally important to the people who are sending it or the people who are receiving it.

And I think that's what you have to sort of keep in mind in terms of what we do is valuable to somebody somewhere.

Every time you send a piece of communicator.

You mentioned actually about the talk, and I think it's a really interesting.

I talk about it as a validation about in a sales environment whereby when people are going, oh, do I want.

To work with this company?

And then you get them to, hey, come along and come and see us.

And I've, you know, again, some of the stuff that we did, you know, when I worked with you guys last year, I saw a couple of tours and you can see people's jaws drop.

Yeah.

As they go.

I mean, they must be quite good.

You know, we're going to move on to the business side of it.

But they must be quite fun to do because people put.

It's a bit like the tardis.

You don't really realize what's there.

You go and go, wow.

Yeah, it was a great learning curve for me in terms of the questions people ask, I think give you a real hint in terms of what they're interested in from a sales perspective.

And I think that's.

That early days of doing those production talks really built my knowledge of what people were really interested in and therefore what the value was.

And you're right, it is really.

It's a nice thing to see.

It really drives home the designer passion for a business.

When somebody comes in and they go, oh, wow, look at that sort of thing.

That's.

That's a real nice experience.

But somebody particularly early in their career, sort of to see you go, oh, okay.

Actually what the company I'm working for is interesting.

It's not.

It's not just a print and metal company, it's not just a software company.

There's something special here if you like and I think that's.

That's the bit that.

That really drove home and I think.

Just to add a little special bit one of the things we're going to move on to the bit that the.

You know, one of the deal that I'd haul to save the country.

Tom hates that phrase but I'm going to use it anyway for the moment.

One of the things I also love about Cinep business that you built up is that you've got an incredibly loyal team and the amount of people that have been with you for years is extraordinary.

Actually just talk a little bit about that and how the business fostered that culture of people being a family because it felt like a family in many cases.

Yeah.

I mean as is the case with.

It's varied a bit over the years and that sort of stuff but in reality the way I've always sort of joked as if somebody stays for two years they tend not to leave.

Especially in the old days for going back sort of five, six years.

Synotech was a weird place.

It felt very different to pretty much any other business because it was very much a family environment.

We've got people who've worked for us for 20 plus years and the business is only 25 years old.

So it gives you an idea.

Some of these guys have been through every stage of the business and in reality it's because we.

Nobody ever becomes a number at cinecon.

I still, I still try and make sure I know everybody by name.

That is now that's quite a scary thing with 300.

It's a lot more difficult than it used to be.

I agree with that.

If somebody can you can you literally remember most people.

Yeah.

I just said if they.

If they've been there more than a year I will definitely remember many like that sort of thing and I still wear like there's little things that like little things that I do that I suspect are relatively rare but across people blow me but I, I still want every.

Every beast first day I said I've got personal email.

So on my first day I send them a personal welcome to the business and offer my help and regardless of.

Their role in the business.

Yeah it's.

And it's definitely.

I mean it's cost beyond beyond scary moment for people over time and they've.

When I've Said, oh, look, if there's anything I can do to help you, please let me know.

And they've not had the induction training at that point, so they've got no idea who the person is, is emailing them.

They've come back saying, oh, thank you very much, can you let me know what role you do?

So I have had a couple of those.

So I now time it slightly better so it's towards the back end of the first day or on the second day so that they don't do it.

But yeah, I personally try and do that and if I'm on the site, I'll go, I'll actually join their induction session and go and say hello.

So I try, try and do that, try and actually separate to them.

And as a leader, what makes that so key for you?

Is it the fact that you just want them to realize that they matter?

Yeah, I think for me there's two sides of it.

The first side is, yeah, I want them to come in and I want them to enjoy the work.

And I think, I think that's important.

If people enjoy the work, they tend to be more productive, they tend to enjoy their role, they tend to get, you'll get the best out of them.

The second side of that is if you feel the people, you know who they are, you can get information as to what they need support with.

And as a managing director, one of the, I think one of the weaknesses is sometimes you get too far away from what's going on on the ground and don't know what's going on and therefore you can actually miss things.

So I still, as you know, facility question answer sessions for every member of staff every six months.

So everybody gets the opportunity to ask me questions directly.

And they're great because it gives people the opportunity to feel like they're involved, engages staff, but it also means that I can, from the questions they ask, I can work out what people are worried about and then that means I can start putting plans in place in the background.

But in terms of, okay, well, okay, that's come up across 6 out of the 10 Q&A sessions.

I probably need to look at that and go, is there actually a problem?

And it gives me an extra information feed.

But you don't get from performance Reunite solo interviews or areas, you tend not to get that sort of over communication from people who've been there a long time.

It's so important as a leader.

So look, I think it's great that you guys do it just a little bit about the clients that you Know, obviously CINESET works for a number of large organizations and we'll talk about some of the public sector stuff in a moment.

But can you, you know, in terms of winning those deals, can you remember your dad talking to your brother?

Because obviously your brother was in sales, can you talk to him what, how they went about winning some of those deals?

And because, because when you're young, company starting up, it's tough to get your contracts right.

Yeah, I guess it changed over the years and again in the same way as our people have been with us a long time, so have some of our customers.

So some of the customers actually predate me in terms of.

And we very rarely lose customers unless they've either got bus or they've gone and spent a lot of money on our IT system to replace the OBD if you like.

So we very rarely lose customers.

So.

So in terms of what is used to it, it's varying massively over time because years and years ago we used to sell a folder insert, a machine with our software package Prism to get the best out of our folder insert so people could get the best result in house.

So we'd sell that.

And that was basically a capital purchase with a software piece attached, which was a bit of a no brainer because it meant getting more out of the capital purchase and save money and all sorts of experts.

So that was sort of the first original value sale, if you like, in terms of what we were doing.

Your software package is capable of doing this.

Is there any chance we can outsource it to doing to you?

So, and as at the time, as all the business people do, you say yes.

And then afterwards, and basically that's growing from there.

That was, that's sort of how I started.

And then once we sort of built the value that we were providing to one or two customers, you sort of rinse and repeat that across what was the original hunting grounds, the wholesaler market.

So we worked with a lot of builders, merchants, electrical wholesalers, all of those wine merchants, all sorts of stuff like that deliberately.

And because we knew that actually they've got problems with document design from old school ERP systems and that sort of stuff.

And the thing with Prism is because it's so flexible, you can morph it to suit the problems of the time.

And I guess that's what makes it both easy to sell and difficult to sell, is now when you're selling it, you can't go in and say, we've got this great software package, Prism.

You've got to find out what their problems are first and then go, oh, yeah, we can definitely solve that, but you have to find the hook to get you in the door first.

You do.

But I think that's the nature of it.

As people learn when they listen to the podcast.

I talk about problems and desires all the time.

And a good example of that is.

An organization that I introduced guys to last year who, who are in the financial space who have a problem around sending communications to people that are slightly old, elderly and can't view stuff as they used to in terms of communications and are going, well, we don't know.

How to solve this.

And it's like, okay, well there's a solution because there's a company that can make that happen.

And that goes back to the idea of fixing problems is what sales is all about.

Yeah, no, exactly.

And I think, I think that's, that's all how sales has always worked is we go in and find a. I mean, if you name any of the sort of top 30 biggest builders, merchants, we work with the vast majority of them and then we go in and speak to them and go, well, what's your problem?

Have you outsourced this?

What do you need doing?

And then we build a solution that specifically fit their needs basically, and go from there.

So I guess that's always been the approach for us, is you have to go in and listen first and then don't talk.

Yeah.

The benefit with prisoners, because it's always been our own intellectual property.

Back in the old days, somebody would go out and my father would go out right on the star, speak to a customer, find a problem, got called the R and D directs are on the way home and say, look, we've got this problem.

Can you, can you develop it?

And the R and D develop it.

And by the time I went to work the next day, it being developed and tested.

So like that, that sort of process was going on constantly.

And now we're sort of 25 or 26 years in to building solutions for customers.

It's now pretty rare you go to someone and they come up with a problem you've not seen before.

But even then, we still, when we do still put it in the development queue and get it developed.

It's not as of.

It's now still the same process going on.

And you touch on that because your customer focus.

Right.

So what I want to talk about is obviously, obviously we started working the builder's merchants.

Talk to me how business got involved in the nhs, because then we're going to lead on to the bit that, you know, the business part of things.

So how did.

How did that happen?

Difficult area to sell into.

A lot of companies want to sell into the NHS.

And at the time we only had one production facility in Wellington, Somerset.

And as part of that they came down, they were really interested we could help a lot of some of the.

Is it a local trust in Southwest.

Or was it human?

I don't think it was.

I can't.

I actually can't remember who the customer is.

There's somebody who could tell me.

But.

But yeah, they came down and we're looking at what our software do is their patient administration system didn't allow them to easily do it and they were spending a lot of money at post from.

From the trust themselves and they looked at us and go, you could aggregate the volume and actually save us a lot of money and all sorts of things like that as part of our process.

And it also came down to going, well, look, we're going to contract with you, but you need to put on a disaster recovery facility in the next few years.

And that was where we sort of had to make a decision about whether we were really going hunting in the NHS or whether we were happy doing what we were doing.

And we took the decision and that one, to open a second production facility at the time in Ratlet in.

Yeah, just outside St Albans.

So that was the second one.

And we then sort of scaled the production facilities, cope with that.

And from there we basically rinsed and repeat that, repeated that sale across the nhs.

Don't get wrong, maybe that sound incredibly easy.

Serving to the NHS 75% of any.

Was it a 70% of NHS?

75.

We were about 75% of the NHS person.

But we.

I think the key stat in that is to give you an idea of how tough it is to sell it to the NHS.

We work with 75% of the organizations, but we get back, we've got about 35% of the volume, so even in existing customers, you can still double the size of Cinetab, you know, just from existing customer.

So it's an interesting piece to look at in that environment, but that is just because of the.

The way the NHS works and the segregation and the way people work.

Yeah.

And each different department works in different ways, but.

But was it always obvious you were going to become the MD in that situation or was there anyone else that was key for that role as well as you?

No, it wasn't obvious for me certainly in that process.

I mean I don't know if I've told you this before but the whole process of me becoming managing director was an interesting experience.

Called a board meeting didn't tell me what it was about.

Didn't tell anybody what it was about really we all arrived and he announced in that meeting that he was retiring basically was going to take a step back from the business.

So which I'm thinking oh it would have been nuts for him to mention that seem to have mentioned that before before I walked into this meeting at which point the real curveball came was because they then nominated me to become the next managing director as part of that process.

The comedy is.

And I can't remember if this is actually true or whether this is just.

I've made a story in my head now but I'm fairly sure it is.

It's basically it went around a room of directors and basically I was the last one to vote at which point they'd all said yes and it was pointless where you're in a position and go well I don't actually know what happens if I say no now.

So I, I took that on from.

Was my first official day as managing director but and.

And we're just going to be eventually because Covid had just started at that point.

Yeah so yeah we were in.

We'd sent everybody to work from home on us so we were a week ahead of the lockdown so we were swapping 13th of March.

Haven't we sent everybody home because we were lucky enough to send some communication of public health and then a vast.

That gave me a bit of as obstructor gave me a steer that I might want to.

Might want to get ahead of the game.

So that.

That conversation I didn't.

I didn't know actually that was.

Your dad didn't even tell you that he wanted you to know it was you but and it's quite interesting going back to those.

Those three months when you were in the car with it when he been hard on you or whatever else.

It Was like now's your time.

Something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's.

Yeah.

It was ultimately like if I look back over the.

What have been 10 years of my career up until.

No, eight years of my career up until that point I'd be effectively.

The directors had always been working to try and push me to end up in a position where I was in the right role, right place at the right time to do that because they've seen it early that there was probably the opportunity to me to be good at what good at that role.

And other than that, conversations relatively early on with the production director saying he was worried about.

No.

So the previous episode I called my plea.

He couldn't say he was worried that it wouldn't take very long for me to run out of stuff I could learn from him.

So I think there was already.

There was always sort of a plan in their heads.

Ultimately that was probably, I guess the way out for them.

It's the way to look at it, I guess from a business person perspective.

They will.

None of them wanted to work forever and they see me as a potential opportunity to facilitate that before I go.

On to the stuff.

That's good.

You must have, you know, when you saw your dad, you Sunday lunch or when you go around to your parents, you must have said cheers, thanks for.

I'm in the comment because it was Covid.

We were in a lockdown.

It was quite a long time before I went around to see him.

But yeah, it would have been one of those.

I mean the comedy is actually because the family.

We always worked together.

Mum is definitely the boss of the family in there.

It was absolutely hard and fast rule that there is no work to be spoken in her house.

So yeah, it was completely not optional to have a conversation with her about it at that point.

And my mother is scary enough for you to harm me with her.

Tell me some of the stories about her grandparents and all parents and wherever.

I will do it.

So was it your grandfather was accountant to the Queen?

Yeah.

That's quite a big thing.

Is it?

To me.

Yeah.

To be accountant to the Queen.

That's quite a scary, scary world to have.

But yeah, I can imagine that's.

There's some big numbers knocking around in that process and I don't want to get rocked.

I could imagine.

So you've just taken over as MD Covid's now happening.

Yes.

Talk to me about what that.

Firstly, that was like as a business owner.

Obviously a lot of people.

There was a lot of People that struggle within that whole process, the whole journey.

There's a big learning curve for you.

You've just become ND and suddenly you've got a world phenomenal.

And there's a great quote, actually, someone always tells me from.

And I use this a lot, the guy from McKinsey once said when I was at an event, he said there's always a high probability of a low probability event occurring.

And I guess for business owners, Covid was exactly that, wasn't it?

It was just, we'll talk about it for years to come.

Yeah, I mean, I guess it was equal parts absolutely terrifying to start with.

I think my first job basically as managing director were like, went through and worked out when we run our camp was basically the first thing I did.

And we got about six months.

So from that I then go back to the employee focus, sort of looking after people.

First thing I sort of did in that process was I went out and communicated to all staff that actually they needed to not be spending money frivolously.

They needed to make sure because the business would protect that for as long as we could, but there was no guarantee.

And then I guess, I mean it switched into.

I guess there's that classic fight or flight response process, isn't there?

I could either go down swinging or I could run away, basically.

And I chose to swing, swinging.

So I just went out and just made sure I was in front of and talking to as many different customers as possible, communicating with them about what was going on, what they might need to be considering in terms of communication and basically offering free consultancy advice to basically anybody that needed help.

We're engaging with Public Health England and NHS England here and we need some help about how you can communicate to any time to the entire country, basically.

Which sounds like an interesting sound still when it.

It's one of those things.

Yeah, that's the challenge I didn't expect to have to help and solve and say.

I spent a lot of time effectively just asking questions of them because we thought about this.

What have you considered what you might need to do here?

Is there any luck?

And of course to sell it, they could tell them what it was.

I mean, it was pretty obvious in terms of how that process works.

And I've spoken to the health ministers time since then about what it looked like from the other side as well, which is an interesting take on it.

But yeah, effectively I lighted up on it.

I was thinking, okay, I've got the opportunity here to make a.

To basically protect the business and that.

Build and build the stage of culture.

Yeah, that's your craving, definitely.

And at the time it was definitely a case of I can protect the business here and I can make it, I can make the business safe definitely for this year and then go from there.

So that was really the focus where I was going to provide that free consultancy and to get, you know, to.

Take a step, you know, to make everyone aware on the podcast because it comes from too humble to that.

But so silatech were in time.

We'll talk through this.

Start.

Say you were appointed by the government, UK government, to roll out the COVID vaccine across the whole of the uk.

Yeah, so we did all.

We managed the communication part of that process.

So it was via contact with the hsa.

We went through the process of.

So for anyone who can't remember that time or wishes not to remember that time, you've got the blue envelopes to text onto the emails.

That was all so obviously signed, 100% paper based.

But we moved into more digital communication later on.

But yeah, we managed that process.

But three years, I guess, four years, I guess.

But if I go back to sort of, I can't and I'm, you know, there's a lot of stuff around the COVID times that, you know, people forget and whatever else, but I think it was towards the end of that year, if I remember rightly, that I could be wrong.

I mean, you'll know the times goes better than I do, that Boris Johnson was like, you know, and whatever people think of him, whatever, he was very pushy on the fact that the vaccine, when the vaccine was going to come out, he wanted to make that happen.

Can you remember the whole sort of conversational, sort of, obviously you know, with the ministers and stuff about the whole element of how it was going to come together and you remember you telling a story of.

Actually, actually, how did you find out that you were going to do this?

So, I mean, I went through a tender process which obviously haven't consulted on it.

There was some advantages during that process.

Alan provided the advice.

The tender was advantageous for cinetech definitely in terms of the way it was written.

And we were originally successful on a national flu campaign, which is the first one was because the original plan and strategy from the government was instead of focusing on Covid because they haven't got a vaccine, let's get flu sorted and cut the lengths off that.

So that.

That was the original plan.

So it doesn't add to the problem.

Basically we've got this massive problem.

Let's not double down and get flu really bad at the same time.

So they work really hard for a national flu vaccine in that year.

And then basically in Sid Amosov October, bringing to December, we would do a national flu.

How many people, I mean just in terms of communications.

How many?

24 minutes.

It was still.

4 million.

Yeah.

Cubicles.

It was still a decent chunk and it kept us busy as part of that process and at that point the business was safe.

That was enough for you that it kept us safe in that area.

But the second time as we did that, we were still tendering for the COVID vaccine because that had come.

That was then looking like in March.

March, yeah, February, March.

Finally the vaccines were going to become available and they needed to start inviting people from that time.

And then we found out we won that in January.

So we then had four weeks to boost to get into a position where we could facilitate the campaign.

But yeah, in terms of the ministerial pizza, I guess the whole campaign was a bit of a.

An interesting experience because a lot of the time we find out what we were going to do off the news like everybody else did.

I'm not even joking.

It was math.

But yeah, it was an interesting experience as far as.

We'll come to that in a minute.

But just you remember the moment when you were told obviously I talk about a sales deal that saves a century.

I mean, let's get to the change.

We're talking about a deal that was worth multi, multi millions of millions of pounds.

Probably the biggest sell doing you'll ever do, I'm guessing.

And you hope in the next one, even if you did do another one of the things on the side, it's quite incredible.

Can you remember how you.

You felt, you felt where you were when that.

When you were told that it was going to be you.

I can, I can remember where I was for both the flu vaccine and the COVID vaccine tender awards.

I would.

For the flu vaccine.

I stood.

It was August time and it was.

They'd allowed them to be out for like still isolating small groups.

I was stood on a pontoon in Tuckenhay on the River Dart where I'd gone for two weeks on holiday just in the summer down there, that my dog had just jumped into a puddle of mud and I was carrying him around whilst on the phone dealing with NHS England.

So I turned that call there and found out about that.

And then the COVID vaccine found out in January time and I was sat in my front room of my house and I got a very nice upholstered Blobster rugby chair because sadly I'm a Blobster rugby fan.

And I was sat in that as the email landed in my inbox.

Let me know about that.

In terms of how I felt, I guess that's probably one of my biggest weaknesses is I almost never celebrate anything particularly well.

Drive the O and I'm like, what?

Yeah, so it's.

I guess I was really happy for the business in that situation.

But I think the first, I immediately went from managing director of sales in that environment to backing the abstract issues of going up.

Am I going to deliver this sort of part of that process?

So, yeah, I don't think I ever really stopped and celebrated that success.

And it's difficult because maybe when you're a bit older you look back and think, actually this is what happened.

But I do call it the sales deal the same country because you know, the reality is back then for the uk, you know, there was huge amounts, furlough was being cost in the country, billions.

You know, we're going to live with the cost of COVID for a long time to come in people and in financial circumstances and you know, and to get.

And the only way at the time, I'm trying to remember back to that point, the only way at the time was to try and get people back out and to get people healthy again.

Yeah.

So the fact that you were given this job to communicate to 69 million people or whatever that is is quite an incredible thing.

And to go through that whole process and maybe there's a separate podcast we'll do around that whole journey, how it happened.

But did that weigh on you guys?

Did you feel a little bit like a sense of responsibility?

I could say that.

So certainly me, there was me and one project manager who works directly for me at the time who basically carried the brunt of making it happen.

And it was single handedly the best experience and the worst experience of my life in reality because I mean, it's stressful enough being in a managing director as it is with 300 people without having to suddenly go, oh crap, if I don't get this right, potentially we extend everybody else staying in lockdown by months.

It was nearly your fault.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's one of those things.

So we were really focused on the outcome and making sure that basically whatever we got thrown at us, we do it with minimum fuss and get it done.

I mean, we were really lucky to be launched because as Oxygen, obviously it wasn't that long before the Brexit and the official end date was the year before.

And I put a lot of paper sucks because I wasn't sure what the.

As part of that process, I wasn't sure what that looked like in terms of bringing paper into the UK with the borders.

And I didn't want to run out of paper for existing clients, which then obviously, because work dropped off early part of the year, I've then got a huge stockpile which then managed what I'd do with this, okay, we've had a safety account.

I get started.

I'd got more paper than pretty much anybody else in the country, which was one of the real things, meant we could get going really quickly.

But that was almost accidental as far process for.

Yeah, for me it said it probably meant to be running, was very, very pressurized and she certainly put in a huge amount of hours in that process to make that happen.

Were you getting pressure from central government to basically, how did that go?

Was it a case if they were like, can you get more?

Can you get more?

How did all that sort of that go?

Ins and outs of it.

It was basically like everything was last made so accident.

You were like, oh, really?

Yeah, like that was.

I can't remember there was a day saying, oh, we will start sending vaccination letters tomorrow.

And I'm sat listening to the news going, right, okay, like, okay, that's an interesting game.

How am I going to do that sort of thing?

And like, then you get a phone call the next morning from people who've got, well, the Prime Minister wants us to start sending letters today.

What do you need to get the letters out the door?

And it's like, well, some data first would be great if you want me to send the letters.

And I guess that was symptomatic of the campaign.

It was because everybody was on the balls of their feet.

Effectively everyone would do fairness to the government.

They didn't know they were juggling stuff.

It was live at the time.

Exactly.

It was one of those classics of there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

But yeah, we had all sorts of little variations and that sort of stuff and curveballs.

And then you get into the politics side things and that sort of stuff where I think raw mail got involved.

At one point we went from having white envelopes, blue envelopes, because they wanted to be able to sort it easier and that sort of stuff which sounds like a simple change until you realize that it made the envelopes the slipperiest things in the world to count and turn some of my operators hands blue in the process.

So it's one of those things that like people still talk about like this.

You could normally you can pick up a batch of envelopes or about this big and it'd be relatively easy to hold with those middle ones drop out because they were so slippery.

So it just like little things like that just added complexity to the whole campaign.

It was constantly dealing with all that sort of variation and process that they've gone through.

And I want to ask this question because this is.

We could talk for a little bit of car because you've got a lot of busy data.

But commercially negotiating with the government at that point, how did it feel?

Because obviously the deal was worth, you know, yeah, tens of millions of pounds in terms of.

But there must have been part of you that was like, I don't want.

To be in lockdown anyway, I want.

To get this fixed.

But also there's part of you going, well, I'm sick here.

I've got to maximize the value for the business.

How did.

How did you make that work?

It's a really interesting one, isn't it?

I mean completely mental.

I've always had a policy.

I will not profit over the top of other people's misfortune.

And that plays into some of the products we call.

But accessible information and all sorts of stuff like that is I probably don't charge what that service is worth because I won't profit off people not being able to read because they're blind or something along those lines.

And I'd say the same process with COVID So I went as cheap as I could without risking the business in terms of not knowing what the variation was looking like that sort of stuff.

So we made a good market, but it was not ridiculous.

Some of the people that made.

Yeah, I mean we like, let's be honest, you could probably charge 20, 30% margin on something like that.

Net margin.

And we were nowhere near that.

I mean in some ways over the years as they've got eroded by becoming more business as usual.

We've ended up at a much lower margin doing it now than we have, but we're doing it there.

You look back and go, well, I'm always getting punished because I was honest up front.

But I think it was the right thing to do at the time.

So yeah, we didn't go as high as we could have done on the price, I don't think.

No, that process we deliberately went in for.

Let's make this an easy decision for everybody and just.

Yeah, let's roll.

I think that's incredible credit to you and Synotact that, you know, we've seen in the last couple of months.

There's a lot of people in that sector that, you know, profited significantly from.

From that situation.

So I think it's huge credit to you guys that you said, look, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna cover what we need to do to cover our costs and to make.

Manage the business.

But to.

To then be in a position where we, we're not gonna.

Yeah, we want to get the country back to work, I guess, and, and see.

And just, you know, as we conscious of time today, but seeing it as it all came through and starting to see when the country was coming back to life a little bit because it was, wasn't it?

Vaccines came out, people started to come out and people started.

That must have felt just quite like for you guys, like, wow, we've made this happen.

Not making it because the vaccine obviously do, but yeah.

You must have felt incredibly proud to.

Be part of that.

Yeah, I mean I think the bigger like the pride for me comes back from.

I think I've seen some of its value.

It's described as one of the most successful communication campaigns in the history of mankind and that sort of stuff.

And so have been involved in that.

And don't get wrong, our part of it is relatively small.

Obviously the data and all that sort of stuff is a huge chunk of that campaign.

And we just facilitated the physical get communication to the right people say just.

But it's a pretty big job.

Yeah.

Exactly.

But it's.

Yeah, it was that process of.

Yeah.

Proud about what we achieved in that area.

I don't think again at the time, I don't think we ever really stopped because even after that first vaccine rollout, obviously we knew very early on that we would need a second booster jar.

So by the time we were finishing the first invite, we already knew that we were going to end up doing more invites and that sort of.

I mean that culminated in the peak volume.

I think we did 21 million invites in a month.

Yeah.

Which was obviously a million a day plus business as usual volumes we were doing.

So as you said, you didn't swap the current existing customers out.

No, no, we car.

It was.

I was completely clear as part of the process that we were not to impact existing customers.

It is not there.

It was not there for that.

We were in that situation that we'd won that piece of business, so we had to maintain a quality of both as far.

Amazing.

So, I mean, there's loads of stuff we can talk through as a.

As well in conscious of time today.

But to me it's.

I think it's, you know, incredible.

I would say people, when I talk to people, they will have come across SimmerTech in some way because they will have had a blue letter coming through the door or they've had a communication.

So I think it's incredible.

I think there's a lot of people that worked incredibly hard at that time.

But did you ever get.

I was asking this advanced question on this.

Did you ever get a thanks from anyone in government for.

Because government is a bit sort of, you know, sometimes they sort of like pay the money.

But did they ever actually thank you for what you did or how you did it and how quickly you did it?

Never officially at the time we were invited to join.

So during that process became the 75th anniversary of the NHS and we were invited to be in a book that commemorates the history of the nhs.

So I. I always took that as the facts of.

I think we're one of the only companies to appear in that book.

And if you look at that final price at home, that's a.

That's a real nice to have.

And we've still got a copy of that, every single one of our sites and that sort of stuff.

So I've always looked at that.

I've since spoken to the health minister at the time about the whole piece and he was pretty like, oh, thank you for that.

In that environment that we were talking, well after the fact, that's this year then I've had that conversation.

So it's Was never a fancy at the time and to be honest, I never really expected one.

I just.

I just saw it as doing our job.

And I know that sounds a bit tweet, but in reality I never saw it and I've.

Good job, but.

But actually, you know, all right, some people might say, oh, we could have done it, but actually the speed and the accuracy in the way in which you did what you did and to be able to get people and all right, there was like, you say the whole, you know, the whole operation was a British success story, I think, to build some.

But, you know, for you guys to be the people that were actually making sure that people knew where to be and how, you know, I remember when I got my letter, I went and had my Back to heal at Taunton Race Course.

Right.

But it come from you guys and I think that, I think that's incredible, the fact that, you know, you made that happen.

It must even have a sense of pride.

Yeah, it definitely does.

And I think, I think, I don't think it could be underestimated that.

I mean the easy choice would have been for the government, NHS England to choose somebody else to do that.

I mean we were a relatively small Somerset based business, not a massive sort of PLC or anything like that and actually it would have been a lot easier to choose that.

But they obviously felt we were the right people for that job because of the variation and the flexibility that we were able to offer.

Amazing.

So first of times there and I think that a lot more you.

Yeah, I, I'm probably going to do a second.

I'm going to put into more time in time, talk about other stuff, but just, just, you know, obviously now the business has grown you recently as a business, I mean, which I guess has left you as an MD going, wow, it's another stage in the journey process.

I mean, how.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean look how.

You're still young, right?

Because I was getting.

No, you're annoyingly young.

You hit the bloody golf ball a mile and you're annoyingly 33.

34.

Is that 35 now?

35 may get a bit of.

But.

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean what does the.

What's your goals?

Because obviously you've.

Yes, the business has been acquired, which is.

Which is great.

Yeah.

Personally in the business.

But what I've learned about you is you're always hungry for more.

You don't stop.

Your drive to carry on is just like a bit unwavering, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, I guess it's weird, isn't it?

I suspect there's a lot of manager nurses who sell a business and almost take a fill for gas a little bit.

I was reflecting on the other day.

I reckon I've been working harder now than I've ever worked.

Yeah.

Just because actually I want to prove that actually I can, I can carry on and I can operate in a different environment and been bought by a company.

It's been a great experience, like for me, I've enjoyed learning and they've got a lot of experienced people in their business.

When we just released a book actually, example building businesses and that sort of stuff, which is a great read and it's, it's one of those things that I'm enjoying learning from that experience at the moment, whilst also got the Opportunity to drive Synerteca for at least the next three or four years with the support of a bigger entity and a better financial backing than we've probably ever had.

We were weak financially, but more.

But it's much easier when you're a PLC to build strength in terms of that side.

Also, I remember from the conversations when I was doing some work with you guys, that the opportunity, in terms of being able to work with the restore who have taken over the business, the customer base, there's so many elements where there's totally perfect interlapse in terms of size of company, types of companies.

It's like, wow, this is.

There's a great opportunity to upsell and.

Mix between the two.

They've got an unbelievably strong customer base in terms of who they've got in there, which very conservative.

The business could grow massively.

What's that?

And that's a really exciting challenge for both me and them in terms of.

They see the value in terms of what they can bring to us, as well as potentially maybe my normal blunt self and providing a bit of.

Of questioning to that as well as part of the process from a different perspective.

Amazing.

Well, I'm constantly.

We've taken up a lot of time and there's a couple of things you've got to do today.

So I'm.

Hey, before, you know, we finish, obviously, you know, there's one.

One final thing, like one final question I'd like you to.

And how people can reach you.

But.

But that motivation.

You always.

You've always come across to me as someone incredibly driven.

And, you know, what is that?

What's that?

What's that candle of birds inside you to be that driven.

What is that thing?

Because I've played golf for you and you're bloody driven to beat me on a golf course.

Even now and again you do.

But.

Yeah, but what is that drive?

What's that?

Can you see entrepreneurs and business owners and people listen to this.

What's the thing that makes.

Because people.

I always think people say to me, oh, if I had their resource, you've got that.

But you're still so driven.

What makes that so key for you, do you think?

Is there anything inside you can pick on then?

You know, I. I genuinely do.

You know, I've.

I've been asked this quite a few times over the years.

I don't know what it is that drives me and my wife asked me constantly in terms of the process of like, obviously following the acquisition.

But why.

Why are you doing it?

Sort of like, what.

Why are you driving yourself this hard?

Why that sort of thing.

And I think I, I've always had a sort of self doubt and sort of self like a lack of confidence in my own ability.

And I think partially it's because I'm constantly trying to prove that I am capable of doing what I'm doing.

Not.

I've never had, I've never been overconfident in terms of my abilities and capability and that sort of stuff.

So I've always been a case of okay.

Always trying to prove that to myself.

Not really to anybody else.

It's not.

Yeah.

I mean, I know you mentioned that, the competitiveness in golf, but that's just because I think that's how it comes out of.

I know I can do this.

You get frustrated because you frustrate it yourself.

Yeah.

If somebody's a better golfer than me, then I think I don't mind.

It is what it is.

There's nothing I can do about it.

But.

And I think that's.

It is, I think the drive comes from wanting to prove myself that I am as capable as at least some people suggest that I might be.

Well, it's a very humble way to end the podcast and I think it's an incredible thing that you said there because as the MD of a business that owns 300 people, that's where it employs 300 people and does millions of pounds of revenue and be involved and do a deal or save the country, as I would call it, I think it's incredibly humble that you're saying that and I think smoke at your backside.

But you're incredibly, very goodly what you do.

You understand the business elements and you work incredibly hard to make it happen.

And I don't think business is overly more complicated than that.

If you focus on the customers like you've always said about what we can do to solve problems and to do things.

And that's what I call the nub of sales.

It's focus on being a problem solver.

Right.

If you're, if you solve problems, the rest can, you know, positively.

So the reality is it's like how do you make sure that you can keep solving them?

Things become easier.

But how can people reach you?

Because obviously the podcast can go out, they'll share it.

But can people.

LinkedIn's normally where you're at.

I guess a lot of times.

Is that where the best place for people to reach you?

Yeah, I mean LinkedIn is one way or the website's got ability to get a hold of and address it to me that they're pretty good at getting it across me at some point in that process, especially the sales team know if somebody's asked me directly how to get in contact.

But yeah, LinkedIn is probably the easiest way for most people to get on.

Yeah.

And we'll put Tom's link to Tom's profile on there.

He's a great connector.

Shares lots of insights and stories around what he's doing as an MD as well.

So, look, thank you very much for coming in and giving me your time today.

It's been absolutely privileged for me to hear the story.

So many stuff I didn't even know and I've worked with you for.

For a little while and some incredible stories in there.

So, yeah, thank you for being.

Thank you for doing what you did.

You know, all that hard work that you guys and the team did in Covid, I think people forget about it a little bit now.

I'm hoping that they're going to maybe involve you in some of the COVID inquiry stuff, actually, because I think it'd be great to hear what, what the background stuff that went on to make that happen.

But great to have you on the podcast and thank you.

Yeah, thanks very much.

Well, there you go.

That was Tom Border, the managing director of cinetunk.

Then I'm going to call it a deal that saved a country.

He's probably going to kill me if I keep putting that out there, but the fact that they were responsible for communicating, communicating the promote of COVID vaccine to the UK audience, sending communications to 70 million people, wow, incredible achievement.

But hope you enjoyed the podcast this week.

If you have, please reach out to me and share it with me or put you in contact with Tom.

We're welcome.

If you can, if you do enjoy the podcast, share it with others.

Let's review it.

That always helps us to make sure we get more guests on board like Tom that can share some incredible stories.

But that's it for this week.

Thanks for listening and watching.

I'll see you all soon.

Take care.