SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome everyone to another episode of Beyond the Case, which is a podcast where global leaders from Harvard Business School's OPM community join in a personal capacity and they share the real decisions, life lessons, mental models that go behind building enduring companies and also satisfying personal lives. My guest today is Rusty Russell. He's part of OPM67 in the same cohort as myself. Rusty, I don't know much about you, but we've we've started getting to know each other better in the last couple of weeks. So I'm glad to have you here and uh I'd love to have you introduce yourself to the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Thanks, Alan, and thanks very much for all you're doing in uh allowing us to take a deeper dive into all the cohorts there and in at OPM. It's been um it's a really good initiative and I and I thank you for it. Um yeah, so a little bit about my background. Um I'm dialing into your chat here from down under in Australia. I'm from that um country background, uh grew up on a uh regional property in in regional New South Wales. Yeah, so my background uh is essentially I'm what you'd probably call a minority group for uh Harvard OPM. Um I don't think there'd be too many of us, but I I did not finish high school and I'm ending up uh joining you at the Harvard OPM course, which my three beautiful daughters like to uh raise that question. I wonder how how could this be? But yeah, it's just to to back it up a little bit. Grew up in a on a farm with two other brothers, so three boys running around as in a childhood on on an agricultural property in Australia, motorbikes, horses, hunting, you know, all those sorts of um boys' own adventure kind of upbringing. And then as we roll into the career side of things, I was convinced that a life on the land would be where I would uh see myself and followed my older brother's footsteps into a large cattle station in northern New South Wales, uh sorry northern Australia, up in in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, to basically think Yellowstone and um without the Hollywood flare. So as a as a teenager up there, thought that the um the romance of a fugal life on that on a horse chasing cattle would be where I was where I was destined, but that was belted out of me pretty quickly. So I came back after seeing a good chunk of Australia, pretty determined that I wanted to go and see the world, and to the best way to go and see the world that I could find was to undertake a a uh an apprenticeship with the caterpillar dealership. So I set out in my late teens there to and hunted down the the work with the caterpillar dealership and became a technician for a heavy diesel, diesel mechanic for the caterpillar equipment, where I had a enjoyed my career throughout doing that apprenticeship uh in regional New South Wales, construction equipment, maintaining construction equipment, and then moving into the mining equipment with the clear focus on I'm gonna I'm ready to go see the world. Uh in my early 20s, my first uh work in getting out of Australia. I didn't get too far when I went over to Papua New Guinea, north, just north of Australia. Might only be a stone's throw from Australia, but it's a whole nother world. And um working in the mine site for a caterpillar dealer in in a uh remote mine site in the uh mountains there was a terrific um introduction to international work and um the leadership skills and working with the local workforce uh was was a good start to chasing that down. And then from there, after more than a year in in Papua New Guinea, my wife, then girlfriend Kate, beautiful Kate, she uh she and I went and uh took some time backpacking around. We took off and went starting in Southeast Asia. We ended up in all through Europe, as you do, and um as is reasonably common for a lot of Australian New Zealanders. They want to get their overseas experience under their belts. So they they head off for the look around. We landed in Europe and got as far across um on the eastern side as Turkey. You certainly lose your inhibit you certainly lose any inhibitions you might have when you're hanging out, you're washing across park benches at Warsaw, and and uh you're it's a self-inflicted poverty when you're uh trying to squeeze the the life out of your budget to get as far as you can. So we went through Europe and then landed ourselves in to the UK. London was too big a city for a country guy like me, so we ended up living in Edinburgh for eight months before it got far too cold. But I always wanted to get to South America and I always wanted to get back to the career that I I'd left behind working in Papua New Guinea. So we backpacked through South America, covering off on you know Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Peru. And I was knocking on every caterpillar door that I came across until I actually got some work in the North Chile in the in the um the desert, grimy desert town of Anafagasta, where um I first started learning Spanish. Um, you know, up until that point in time, all I could really say was tienes agua caliente and cuanto cuesta un habitación, which was how do you have uh hot water and how much is a room? But then I'm in a workshop with the local workforce and I'm starting to understand the the starting to build conversational Spanish. And the, and of course, the tool as a technician, your your toolbox is every single item within your toolbox has now got a different name, fraction. So a spanner, which was 1516th, is now a quince DCC Ciave. And so there was a lot of learning that was required to uh start to build on a Spanish capability, and then from there I was able to secure the um the work that I was really looking for, which was uh at a caterpillar dealership in Peru. And um, you know, I've spent so I took on a supervisor role, the the work in the Peruvian Andes there at a mine site called Antamina, living living a boys' own adventure. Kate was there joined me. Um I was the resident with the permit, permit to work. Fortunately, Kate and I had done a lot of travel by then, and the passport was full of stamps already because her passport required to be renewed every three months, and um it looked started to look like a drug mill by the end of it with so many Peruvian stamps in and out. So we were able to we have a great adventure there. The work was terrific. I I enjoyed working with the the Peruvian workforce there as supervising the team and a whole new level of Spanish. You know, it's one thing to be a contractor on a mine site and then have all your emails in Spanish and then your daily huddle meetings with the with the owner of the equipment can get quite heated. So to be able to hold a conversation in your second language is one thing, but to be able to hold a heated converted argument with a in your second language was a whole new level. So our time there in South America, we were there from uh heading to Papua New Guinea and the backpacking and that and the traveling throughout and living in South America. I was out of the country for about six years, and towards the end of it there, unfortunately, sadly, and and suddenly and unexpected, Kate's father did pass away. So we didn't rush back to Australia uh at that immediately, but the writing was it was a crossroads. Okay, what what should we do? Do we live this expat life like a lot of the people I was or some of the people I was working with indefinitely, or do we start to think a bit more entrepreneurial and consider starting a business? So I was reading a couple of books that had an influence on me around that time, Rich Dad Port series and especially the Cash Flow Quadrant, and then moved into myth around that early days before we started our business, and that was probably formative of getting some entrepreneurial spark. Yeah, so we 20 years ago now we returned from South America. Well, just before I return, we did go up to the northern seaside surf town of Mankara, where I asked Kate to marry me, and thankfully she said yes. So that was a nice bookend to our time in South America. But uh we we came back and started the business double R, which is essentially what from day one, which was just one man in a service vehicle myself. We were providing contract maintenance service to mining equipment in the regional New South Wales. Uh and that, yeah, we just had our 20th anniversary recently. And since those days, we've grown from the one man startup operation to about 250 team across. We've got eight locations, half of those in New South Wales on one side of Australia and half of them in Western Australia on the other side. So we're we're quite spread by geographic distance and operations now. Now is you know what started in a essentially a pure contract maintenance sense has continues to do that in the um mechanical repair and engineering activities, but we also half of the business operation now is dealership-based where we sell trucks, construction equipment, and agriculture equipment as well as doing the maintenance in the regions that we cover.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Phenomenal. Thank you for that very detailed background on your journey to starting your business. Given the amount of traveling you did in the six years that you were outside of Australia, how do you think those moments of discomfort when you were traveling, when you were probably close to going broke, or when you were adapting to a new environment, learning a new language, how do you think that came into play when you decided to start double art, right? Where you essentially had no foundation, nothing to build off? Were you scared at that point, or were you used to that mindset of being uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

It's a good question, Swan, because the independence that working in these remote locations and in in um challenging, sometimes challenging environments, the independence that that built generated uh has definitely been a good assistance to the the evolution of myself personally and and the and the leadership of the team and the double us. I think so there's there's a strong level of of um what's the worst that can happen kind of kind of situation. I know that you know we s we the countries that we up that we passed through and spent time living in, you know, they had their cultural challenges and there was a lot of poverty. And and uh I do remember leaving the small town in the Andes where we used to live. Um our our house was at three and a half uh three thousand two hundred metres in altitude, and the workshop that I used to spend them one week on, one week off thereabouts was uh at 4,600. So it's well high in the Andes. And yeah, the the slums on the edge of town, the slums on the edge of Lima, it certainly opened your eyes up to um you know the fortunate life that uh you can live with a roof over your head and uh everything catered for. So there was certainly a level of, especially in those early days, well, what have we got to lose? Let's let's let's give this a crack and see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Talk to me about your relationship with your brother. What was he doing during these six years? Because I know he's a he was a big influence in your lives.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Yeah, I have uh two brothers, brother Geordie and my older brother Jack. So my older brother Jack, which is jumping ahead a little bit, but um unfortunately, I'll try not to get too emotional in this part of the conversation, but un unfortunately, just before his 49th birthday, he uh he left us. He was living that life in northern Australia and uh through a light aircraft crash, and but it involved some power lines and uh and a river that was crocodile. Unfortunately, he did leave his beautiful daughter and 10 years of age and son behind, Henry and Georgina. So, you know, that double R was quite well established by this point in time. And it did really bring home the importance of what we build as a business to make sure that you know, that it didn't rely on myself to be the one that needed to be able to do everything to keep everything running. Since the early days of double R, we've built a a really strong team. We've focused on culture, and a lot of that early days uh team are now held hold executive roles within the business. So when something like a major family tragedy occurs, it's really good to know that you can you can place one phone call, send one text, and say, I'm offline for as long as I need to be. That's that's really the positive out of that really challenging time. But yeah, we we um the loss of Jack, he's he's terribly missed by many every day.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Uh may he rest in peace and again exceedingly sorry for your loss. Rusty, the reason I asked you that is because I'm aware that you know that led to a lot of introspection for you as well. And you spoke about being a key decision maker for a business, maybe in a in a business pers perspective. And could you walk us through what that introspection was like for you in terms of how you took certain decisions in life going forward?

SPEAKER_01 12:57

You know, the the decisions taken there was a lot of validation on on beliefs and decisions previously taken on once something like that really took hold. Like I touched on there earlier, I think it was there's a couple of I I love books I I read and devour as much as I can. And, you know, books find you at a at a certain time. And and I do remember, like I touched on before, I know I've mentioned a couple of times, but they find you when you kind of need them. And and um, you know, what was it that emiss quote early in the piece when he's talking about building systems and building people that do it? He's like uh if you if your business relies on you and can't operate without you, then it's not a business, it's a job, and you're working for a lunatic, something to that effect. But uh, you know, so early in the piece I was focused heavily on, you know, let's build a team, let's not make it reliant on me. So and you know, so as things evolved and you know, something like there was there's a number of you know, number of things that happened, you know, bucket list items that might have got pushed further forward. Um, you know, I wanted to write my own book. It was on the bucket list, and with Jack passing, I thought, right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take that project on and make sure it happens and call it a a yeah insurance policy if you've made three beautiful girls, Abby, Bella, and Lucy.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

You could have written about your business, you know. Um, you could have written about how great you are, how how how big your company scaled, and you chose to write about everything you've learned in life and leave it behind for your three beautiful daughters, like you mentioned. Um why why go that route?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Well, I for me, like I said, I do like to read, and I didn't finish school, so all the education I, if I've had any at all, has been self self-inflicted. Biographies are uh you know a terrific way to trial and error is a wonderful way of learning, but it's much better and more efficient if you can learn from other people's mistakes and successes. So the biographies of of other people are are uh high up there on my preferred leading list. As uh, you know, I'll I'll read several self-development type books. I'll read, I really like the analytical type of books that drive in and find. I take um Malcolm Gladwell's style of writing where he really finds a a direction that something has taken and delves deeper and deeper. But all of those books, to be successful, I feel they've got to be entertaining. There's nothing worth nobody wants to sit through a textbook style to try and educate themselves about a topic. So hopefully my book that I put together meets that. But that's the whole thing, it's you are trying to share the you know, the educational elements too, but at the same time, you're trying to wrap a real fun story about it, about what it's like to ride a dirt bike from the from the Andes down to the coast in in uh Peru and end up on one hand at the start of a glacier and end up at the sand of the Pacific Ocean. You know, you've got to build a story around at the same time. So hopefully the message is still captured within that, but the reader gets a um a good laugh at the same time and an enjoyable.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

I'm fortunate that you shared a soft copy of that book with me beforehand. So I just wanna pick on a few of the takeaways that you have at the end of the book, and maybe you can elaborate on you know what you're trying to communicate there, what your daughters may want to latch on to. You are already an ovarian lottery winner. That's what you start off with.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Yeah, I stole that one from Warren Buffett, so credit to Warren Buffett. So to to uh to uh to add to that, yeah, so what what is my interpretation of what the ovarian lottery winners are? Yeah, I mean that's growing up in a loving family, be being given the opportunity for education, and it doesn't mean that you have to be born with millions and a trust fund, and but but yeah, you got the basics, you got a roof over your head, like by saying that you're not in the slums of Lima on the outskirts of town. You're you've um you you're not hopefully you're not living on the streets, but even in in every situation, it's often a case where you can find somebody who's in a worse situation. So it's it's about um seeing the benefits and the of what you've what you've got at hand and what you're doing with it, you know, not trying to trying to find blame or excuses as to why there's no hope.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

The next one you say is you are who you hang out with. And I'm curious, why did you feel the need to put that in? Were there any experiences in your life which made you realize the power of your circle? For sure. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

There's um times in my wayward early teens and later teens that I I could see that, as the saying says, you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. Tony Robbins was probably the first person I heard mention it, but I think that the credit needs to go to Jimro. But yeah, there's definitely, you know, the times when I've realized that I wasn't being aggressive with my own goals or self-development. You know, it's the people that you are sp spending your time with. You want to be the you want to be the bottom end of the spectrum of everyone else performing better than yourself, so they don't drag you up as an average. I managed to bash the tennis ball around the tennis court quite a lot as a kid, and and you always play better when you play against somebody better than yourself.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

And then at one point you are encouraging your daughters to get out of their comfort zone.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

And getting out of your comfort zone is is where you're gonna find success. Yeah, it's not gonna be where you where you've been spending the last five years. There's no doubt about that. Out of comfort zone is the worst thing about a comfort zone is it's comfortable. So you know, it can be a bit of a challenge to uh to push yourself out there. But every every major success that I think of double R have having over the years, or the growth of ourselves, myself individually, Kate and I as a as a mother and father, our family as it's it's always been associated with some level of okay, we need to push this out of the comfort zone. Double R as a business, you know, double R as a business, um, probably our biggest comfort zone leverage point was when we'd been growing and we had all of our activity in one geographic location. We had customers, we had about 40 staff, and of that 40, um, we were servicing customers that I could count on one hand in one location in one industry sector. And um a downturn came upon us, and within a relatively short period of time, you know, we were staring down the barrel of not having nearly enough work required to keep that number of personnel active. So we were looking at opportunities elsewhere in a hurry and and time. But it an opportunity present, an acquisition presented, it was over in Western Australia, it was three and a half thousand kilometers away from our existing base. It was at two locations, two workshops in the hands of administrators, liquidators, and over the course of this would be a record acquisition for us, even for ourselves now, but over the course of 24 days from finding the advert for the expression of interest to settling on this acquisition and trading in day one, it was only 24 days, and there was a a clear case of well, we really don't see a lot of uh future in in our current uh existing location. We either do this or we'll we or we'll go out the back door anyway, and uh we did it, we made it work, and then it it it really gave us the strategy of okay, that worked. We're now spread geographically uh across different same sort of sec same industry but different sectors. You know, we still had teams of technicians and you know, we're still fixing equipment and but essentially that spread of geographic location and and industry activity gave us the strategy and and gave us the uh the roadmap, if you will, for that essentially has built the uh the company to what it is today. So that was a big step out of the company's own institutional effort for the organisation.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Incredible. Why do you encourage them to take a gap year? What's the significance of that and what's your thinking behind uh writing that?

SPEAKER_01 21:17

For the younger generation, I I do think that and this is where Australia probably differentiates a little bit. Not everyone in Australia takes a gap year, but it's not that uncommon either post your studies or before your studies to to go and experience and go and work in a another location or go and experience another country. I I'm re I'm an advocate for it because I think that ability to escape your own silo of of what you're used to seeing, you'll mature yourself beyond the what otherwise would have been. So yeah, for young people, I think it's got a lot of merit. Go out and and see the world a little bit before you lock yourself into. Your chosen career, or in the case of what I did post my apprenticeship, was sort of fortunate enough to build my career into the into the extensive gap years slash travel. That was a little bit different, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, the next part's my favorite. I want to know about books. You're encouraging them to read books, and I know you're an avid reader as well, as you've mentioned here. And at the end of your book, you've you've listed out quite a few books that have influenced you. Um could you name a few and talk about why those left an impression on you?

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Yeah. Um, you know, there's terrific biographies that are really well known. You know, Walter Isaacson's list of of all the famous figures that you would expect, you know, like like Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and and Elon Musk. Those ones, of course, should be on your list and you should know that. But I really enjoy coming across the obscure biographies of people that you that are they don't have to be business people, but the people that are in the stories. Uh the one that comes to mind that um I'd like to share with the podcast is only two seats left by John Anderson, who was the founder of Contikey Tours, a New Zealand guy who in the 60s went over to the UK, wanted to see Europe, so hired a bus that had 12 seats, including the driver, put a note up on the hostel to say only two seats left, and then so great marketing, and then decided that he would, you know, he would divide the uh cost of his planned trip around Europe in this minibus um by 12 because there was 12 seats including the driver, and then he realized he should cross that out and divide it by 11, so he didn't have to pay. And and then, you know, the I don't know if you're aware of it, but but um can I never been on a Kentiki tour, but they're they're very well known, and there are lots of Aussies and Kiwis, and I'm sure other people from all around the world that have spent time in their teens or 20s uh traveling around Europe on Kentiki tours, it became a massive business. So the the biography, for example, is is uh a roller coaster ride of of trial and error, wins and losses, and with a surprising end. So um, yeah, there was terrific learning in that. So I'll share that one. And from one of those examples of a really analytic but fascinating read for me was Grit by Angela Duckworth. This is a little bit like Malcolm Gladwell and then and uh how they delve into, but it's a a delve into success and what makes up success and and how the world is not necessarily ruled by naturals who just seem to be amazing at things, it's actually ruled by people that have passion and perseverance and and uh little things like the importance or the or the the knock-on effect of long-sustained practice in childhood can actually deliver more perseverance and in adulthood. So, regardless of how good you get at the thing. So if you practice the flute as a girl, uh as a young girl or boy during your schooling years consistently, you you get this level of grip that actually pays off in whatever your chosen field is, regardless of how good you actually get at playing the flute. So you know there's there's two books that I find uh are standouts.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Rusty, do you expect your daughters to to get into business once they grow up? Do you talk to them, do you coach them on an active basis on how to think like an owner, or has that stage not not come yet?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

No, it definitely has. You know, I think I think from a business, it's very easy, especially in today's world, that employees think of what they're entitled to, what they are expected to receive. And I think that's really healthy for even an employee. So as they enter their workforce post-schooling, to think about value and what value you an employee can deliver to a organization and how their actions impact the customer. So I think even those types of conversations, you know, whether they end up uh moving towards business of their own or not, I think the the message is still still clear. I I am um a big fan of that cash flow quadrant analysis of the of the three four characteristics that uh exist in in today's corporate world or um commercial world, you might say, where you know the employee, the self-employed, the business owner, and the investor, and and the each of those four quadrants have a different characteristics. None of them are right or wrong, so there's no place to be, but it is interesting to actually look at what makes up the employee uh characteristics, what makes up the self-employed characteristics, and what makes up the typical business owner characteristics, and then the investor, so so that they can think, well, which one would I like to which which one do I would I aspire to be in? So yeah, so in the there's definitely conversations that happen. Some of them are subtle and some of them they're probably, Dad, would you stop talking about this again?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

I want to also focus a little bit on OPM because that's how we know each other. Given all the success you've seen, everything that you've transpired to as well in your journey, what encouraged you to go back to school and choose OPM as a program to participate in?

SPEAKER_01 27:35

Yeah, I mean, as I've discussed, any level of education that I have is certainly self-driven. I'd live in regional New South Wales, where so it's a you know a small country town. So any you really have to go and find those opportunities to to uh get the experiences and get the the outside of the the the you know open up the blinkers, so to speak. YPO as organization has been very helpful for that reason over the years. I've found you know just meeting with fellow YPOs, you know, that organization that is really driven by leaders of uh medium to large size businesses, you know, that's been a terrific benefit for somebody who you know lives regionally. And you know, so on the back of that, I've met a few that have participated in the APM course and and and it's always been on my bucket list, you know. Harvard APM, um, you know, that if you if you're not going to finish high school and then and you want to skip everything in between and go straight to Harvard APM, I I thought that would be a a pretty good way of going about it. And um I think it's pretty cool that um that having missed all that earlier education, that somehow there's a Harvard alumni status in there in the mix there, which I actually had to ask the girls what that meant. I didn't know what it meant when I first started looking into it.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

And what's been your biggest takeaway from Unit One that you find yourself revisiting?

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Uh yeah, and there's a lot of there's a lot of relevance to what they discuss at the Harvard course, uh at the APM course, to to double R our business. We run a very much an operational business where we have a team of technicians, half of our executive team have a trade background, and you know, that's probably part of why we are the good stuff that we do. So there's no there's no doubt there's there's good parts to that aspect. But the OPM operational excellence that was Anarth Rahman's side of things, I found quite relevant to what we do. You know, that sort of mantra around building a an operating system where ordinary people, people that haven't finished school like me, can uh deliver extraordinary work. You know, that really resonated as he was going through the case studies of Toyota's production system, Oberoi and and um Zara the clothing. I saw manufacturing, luxury hotels, and retail logistics, you know, seemingly very unrelated types of business, but seeing how they're stringing together of you know building a competitive advantage through operations. So that was that was really effective. Also, the Barry Barry Wim Miller case was a case about I found a the strong connections there with what we do because a lot of the growth that we've achieved has been done through acquisitions and a lot of the the growth in that organization's was a far larger scale, was done through acquisitions, yet it was tying in culture and tying in strategic acquisitions. You know, they never went and competed against private equity for and they also actually hunted down ex founders that wanted to exit their businesses the but were really focused on supporting their team. So, you know, that that resonates a lot to me as far as you know future growth of double R. How do we find those next acquisitions to continue what we do without it just being uh a race to the top on on uh the acquisition price? So there were some good connections there. I really got a lot out of the negotiation piece because, like I touched on there, acquisitions has been a a strong part of the growth that we've uh undertaken. You know, I learned a few things that I could probably I was probably being a bit too nice. And one of the messages within the negotiations that was had the training that was done through um Kevin Mohan is uh, you know, to to be more aggressive with your targets. Yeah. I probably can see in the past that that was probably something left out. But we all we went through the the the role-playing exercise when we were buying real estate and and how good was it? So when you actually at the end of the role play exercise, you got to sit down. I had Rafael from Brazil in my the pair of us and and hear what they were thinking and and and what the responses against. And so I actually was quite pleased to hear that my extreme anchor that I led with had some impact on his response back to me. So, you know, I learned a lot uh on the negotiation side of it. I found that really and then of course everyone likes Das's lectures and and uh I think a bit like the books that I spoke of, education learning should be entertaining. And Das certainly had us all laughing as he was going through the make the customer a hero and adjacencies. So lots to learn, lots relevant to what we do. And I need to, you know, the whole point of going to Harvard for OPN course for for myself and double R is really trying to get a clear picture in my mind and strategy and direction of what what are we going to do in our third decade as a business? So it's still evolving, but I'm I can certainly see the connections to the what we were being taught to uh what we need to do in our third decade.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Rassi, do you see a role for AI in your business, or have you already started exploring that?

SPEAKER_01 33:13

We're very early in that stage. I would like to sit back and say we're all over it, but we're not. But we we have identified the operational ways that we can see efficiencies and improvements. So we are in a very traditional style of business where technicians undertake repairs and products get sold, parts get sold. On the positive side of it, is as we have uh 2026 is a year that we are really starting to see probably which organization is best to help us. I think we've identified that we're going to need some outside help, even though we've had a close look internally and we know what we want to do, but we're probably a bit concerned that we'll go about it internally the wrong way around. So we are likely to draw on on some outside expert help. But the positive side of it is that this industry is pretty flat-footed that we currently work in. And if we take the approach of of uh seeing where operationally we can get efficiencies, it won't be hard to be it be a step ahead. But so I am actively investigating how we are going to do it, but I can't stand, I can't sit in front of you and say that we're leaders of the pack by any means.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Fair enough. My very last question for you is how would you define a wise man?

SPEAKER_01 34:43

Wise man, in my opinion, or would definitely relate to the experiences that they've had and the learnings that they've got out of those experiences. The bucket list items that we've had over the years, those out-of-comfort exposures that the business has had as the peop the the people within the business has had and the family have had, that's definitely in my description of how do I see people w of of a career, of a lifetime, just because they're got a number of years on them, if they've failed to realize that their task on while they're on this earth was to just ram as much life experience in as possible, then they're probably going to be a little bit further down the the wise spectrum, if you might uh if you might say. I know that as we've the adventures that Kate and I went on in our early, earlier years before Double Art, traveling and living overseas, the the bucket list items that that we've taken on, we did manage to it was 18 years into the business, and we decided probably a little bit of pressure from myself for thinking that, you know, after losing my brother Jack and and uh soon after losing my my mother who who didn't survive the the trauma and the and the heartache of losing her elder son and let some cancer come back in, or if some cancer come back in, we um we decided that it was our time to take a family gap year. We took a a full year off and uh went and lived in Spain and give the girls the opportunity to learn Spanish and and uh give the team at double R the opportunity, or not that they needed necessarily the opportunity, but I'm very thankful and indebted to the team for for how they stepped up and took full control and gave us as a family the opportunity to to go and have that experience. It's one thing to to take a month off work and uh make yourself available to go to Harvard ABM and and leave your work behind, but uh it's quite another thing again to uh walk away and and uh be in uh another continent for for a full year and uh have the experiences. But um, you know, so the wiseness. I hope that the the um that all that uh you know want to gain wisdom will will do so by the experiences they put themselves out there to to get amongst.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Thanks, Rasi. Quite commendable the the love that you have for your family, the fact that you chose to write a book for your three daughters um called Freedom of Choice, where you're downloading all your life experiences and best practices uh in a concise uh format for them. So I really uh applaud that. And uh I hope we all get a copy or get our hands on it. We uh could you tell us where we could buy it? Is there a link?

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Well, I haven't actually put it out there for sale. I've only done a uh self-published uh small batch print and handed it out to anybody who showed any interest in it. So so and I'll leave that up to you. You you finish it and you tell me if uh I should uh make a way to get it on the onto a shelf somewhere. I'll bring you a hard copy next time we catch up in uh and and for my LG, which were a great LG to have have on board in in um Harvard when we were there.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Oh man, sounds good. Thank you for it, Dame Rusty. I truly appreciate you.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Thank you, Son. And I and I just want to add there that um you know we we talked about the adventures and the and the growth and and success of the company, but we're well and surely still on our journey. We're still making improvements as we go. We're we're still still finding ways that we're gonna continue to grow. So we we've certainly by no means arrived at our destination. It's all all a work in progress, but I'm I'm enjoying the journey as it goes, and I'm looking forward to the next couple of OPM sessions. And and thank you for yourself, Soin, for for uh allowing ourselves. I've been an avid listener of all the podcasts, and it's been terrific to extract a bit more wisdom and knowledge out of how what what other people picked up out of the sessions, and and it's been like having somebody else being a scribe for you and all the notes that they've taken on your behalf. Thank you, Rusty. That means a lot. Appreciate it.