Transcript Synced · select any line to jump ▾ 0:00 Chad Stephens: When I tell people what I was working on, everyone laughed it off and said, it's a form, you can't make money from a form. It's not a business. It's not a good guide, it's a horrible guide. We started with $5. We said, for $5, we'll save your details, so if you need to go back through, you don't have to start from the start. Within an hour of putting it up there, $5. We're like, oh my goodness, someone paid. Someone saw the value in this. Woke up the next morning, we'd had 2 more payments, and we're like, we're onto something. All of a sudden, it became a really good model. By the time we got to the point where we were ready to sell, The business had really good margins. We went from being dead broke to making really good money. Usually what sounds like the worst ideas tend to be amazing ideas. 0:41 Megan Luttrell: Welcome to Life After Launch, the podcast that takes you inside the hearts and minds of founders navigating the startup world. I'm Megan Luttrell. I run Aussie Founders Club, a community for founders, operators, and investors, and Karrus Recruitment, a company supporting startups and scale-ups. 0:58 Geo George: Hi, I'm Gio George, partner at Mayfly Ventures. We're a venture studio building industry-focused AI and software ventures. 1:04 Megan Luttrell: This is Life After Launch from Aussie Founders Club. We cut through the startup noise with unscripted stories and tactical advice from the founders who have built before us. This show is about what happens after you launch, the business lessons, the life lessons, and everything in between. That's Life After Launch. 1:20 Geo George: Today's guest is Chad Stevens. He's built 2 businesses out of essentially the same idea and sold both of them. The first one was Oneform, which started with 4 blokes who just couldn't get a rental in Brighton. Where that ended up was being bought by REA Group in 2014. The second business, Filler, sold to Rakuten in Japan at the end of 2020. What I liked about this episode was just how unsentimental he is about the Hajus. He'll tell you that they sold their cars and moved back in with their parents in the same breath that he tells you what the conversion rate was. 1:56 Megan Luttrell: Keep an ear out for the lunch. A fine dining restaurant opened up just for the man they were pitching, and a plan to ring his business partner's mum for her credit card if they got stuck with the bill. Then there's a boardroom full of the people behind car sales where they couldn't answer most of the questions and drove home sure they'd blown it. And years later, his wife ran the legals on his second exit while he walked the pram around the block. That's the founder journey. It's not as clean as it looks from the outside, but let's get into it. 2:23 Chad Stephens: I grew up in Melbourne, born and bred Melbourne, actually born and bred Bayside. So I'm kind of Bayside bubble boy. I grew up very active, loved sport, loved football, loved tennis, always outside. had a good friend who lived in the same street as me, which meant that we were always riding our bikes, causing trouble, building treehouses, going down to the beach, lifting up rocks, trying to find crabs, whatever we could do. You go through this natural progression when you're young, especially if you're into sport, where you're like, I'm going to be a tennis player, I'm going to be an AFL player, VFL back then because I'm old. And then you slowly realize those dreams get crushed along the way. When you're like, oh, if I wanted to be a tennis player, I needed to be Andre Agassi, Williams sisters training at 4 years old with a racket in your hand. That wasn't me. And I didn't have parents, pushy parents that were going to help me with that dream because I'm one of 6 children. So that was never going to be my path forward, professional sport. So I think the next best option for me was a milk bar owner so that I could eat mixed lollies all day because I thought that's what you did if you owned a milk bar. 3:31 Geo George: You just ate— That's quite the progression from tennis star to milk bar owner. 3:35 Chad Stephens: Supreme athlete to eating mixed lollies all day. day, making no money. I grew up in a household though where my dad worked 6.5 days a week. He had his own business with his brother-in-law. So without knowing it at the time, and it wasn't until, you know, I became an adult and had my own success that I was able to look back and go, where did my entrepreneurial side come from? And although I was never pushed in any sort of direction like that, my dad had naturally set a bar of you have your own business, that's what you do in life. I didn't really know anything else. So I think in the back of my mind the whole time I was like, one day I'll have my own business. I didn't know what it was. I certainly wasn't interested in taking over his business, nor was that ever offered or on the table. 4:18 Megan Luttrell: You said though that your dad instilled this in you, that, you know, you'd go run a business, but you're one of 6 kids. Did all of them go start their own business or was there something that sort of was different about you? 4:30 Chad Stephens: Yeah, a good question because no, I was the only one. I was, I was always the black sheep of the family in a lot of different regards. I have, so I was 3rd in line. I had 2 older brothers and then 3 younger siblings, all the same parents. And my 2 older brothers both tried really hard at school, studied, both became accountants. And then I came along, I partied through year 12. I was out at nightclubs, you know, on a Thursday night every night during year 12. And my parents were just pulling their hair out going, what is with you? Like, what are you doing? 5:09 Megan Luttrell: It's gonna end up in jail. 5:11 Chad Stephens: Yeah, that's right. I was still working in this cafe and I'd kind of worked my way up and I knew the owners really well and they— I ended up becoming manager and then general manager and ended up running this, this business. And I really enjoyed it. Still learnt a lot about running that small business. That whole time I was like, as much as I loved hospitality, I was like, I don't wanna work in hospitality for the rest of my life. So the whole time I was working in hospitality, I was living with my best mate at the time and he was working in corporate world, earning really good money for a young person in the corporate world, really good money. But he kept saying he was frustrated. He was going to his boss and saying, I've got an idea how we can make this business better or more efficient or make more money. And his boss was just like, good on you, mate. Good. You know, just stay in your lane. So he was getting really frustrated. at work, and he clearly had an itch to do more. So he would come home and complain about his job. I would go, yeah, I don't want to work in hospitality forever. So we were like, well, let's, you know, we should be trying to come up with something that we can do. So after hours and on the weekends and whenever we had time, we'd be brainstorming stupid ideas. 6:19 Geo George: So that's where it starts. The black sheep of 6 kids who talked his way into 2 uni degrees with just a letter and then walked out of both of them, is now running a cafe in Brighton. He and his best mate Chris both want out. So what do they do? They spend their nights brainstorming for ideas. The first idea they actually launch is VenueHQ, a venue search engine where they sign up close to 500 venues by hand. But here's the thing, they're spread so thin across Australia that a search for a venue barely turns anything It costs them a lot of money, and you'll hear a little bit about that experience. The second idea is the one that actually works, and it starts with a house hunt in Brighton. 7:06 Chad Stephens: As we were building the venue search engine, VenueHQ it was called, we were living together. We were also living with another guy who was briefly part of that business. So there was the 3 of us living in a, in an apartment, and another friend of ours, a 4th friend, He'd just broken up with his girlfriend or something and he was like, I wanna move in with you guys. Like, let's, the 4 of us, we can get a house and probably be paying less, you know, 'cause economies of scale, right? So we're like, yeah, cool, let's start looking for a house, you know, 4 or 5 bedroom house, kind of frat style. So we started looking, we started applying for rentals. And of course in the area that we grew up in, Bayside, it's, you know, quite a well, in Brighton, we're in Brighton at the time, it's quite a wealthy suburb. And of course, no landlord that owned a house in Brighton wanted to let out their house to 4 20-something-year-old boys who were clearly just gonna party and whatever. So we ended up applying for a ridiculous amount of properties. And every single time we applied for a property, the real estate agent or the property manager would hand us an A4 piece of paper, stapled, you know, 2 sheets, 100 questions. Same thing, you gotta fill it out. To us it looked like the only thing that was different every time was the real estate logo and maybe they swapped the order of the questions around, but it was all the same information and we just got sick of filling 'em out. And even with the same property manager and we'd say, we've already filled, if we got rejected from one loan, we said, we've already filled all this in, mate, can we just give you this and cross out the address and put the address of this property? No, no, you gotta do it again because you're signing off on, you know, terms and conditions and privacy policy and— 8:50 Geo George: Yeah. 8:51 Chad Stephens: Like, this is ridiculous. Well, like, surely there's an online version of this now that we can fill out and save and send to them, or even a PDF that we could save or something, you know, to make life easier for ourselves. And so we looked and there wasn't. I'm like, well, this is interesting. So we looked overseas, we looked in the US and the UK, didn't have anything like that either. I'm like, this is interesting. Maybe this is a better opportunity than venue HQ. 9:16 Geo George: Roughly what time period was this? 9:20 Chad Stephens: Well, we launched OneForm in 2006, so this must have been 2005-ish. So we almost immediately when we came had this thought of this, here's an opportunity. And the opportunity removed, it was removed some of the blockers that we had in the previous business or some of the difficulties. And so we saw, yeah, there's definitely opportunity here. And we are playing in a space, or this idea, this business, if we make it into a business, would be playing in a space that's already adopted online in real estate classifieds in general. But we're not competing with the big player. It's kind of like an add-on service or, you know, we could kind of hopefully ride the coattails of these bigger companies. So we almost immediately shelved VenueHQ and we're like, that's just, lost and we've lost a lot of money. And so, and we were in debt, like we were heavily in debt at this stage, but we're like, nah, we're gonna change. We're gonna completely not just pivot, we're going to just shelve that company and start again. So we started collecting these tenant rental application forms all around Australia, downloading PDFs from real estate sites and going to inspections and asking for rental applications and just getting all the questions down. We just started building like immediately. We didn't do any market research. We didn't speak to any property managers or real estate offices or people in real estate. We were just like, if we want this, other tenants will want this. And we could see the benefits to the property manager. I mean, have something filled out, forced to be filled out completely, no handwriting that they have to, that they can't understand or read. We can make it dynamic for each agency. And so we just started building. 11:06 Megan Luttrell: So you're starting, right? You're already in debt. What did that look like? Like, where are you building from? Did you ever find a new apartment, like a new house or anything like that? Where is the start of this? What ends up being this journey? What does that look like? 11:18 Chad Stephens: Yes. Yes. So we did find out we've— some idiot actually let us have rent their house in Brighton. And so we were— it was, it was 4 of us living in this house, but only 2 of us, Chris and myself, were the one with this business, building this business. And yeah, heavily in debt. I was still working in hospitality at the time full-time and just working on this after hours. Chris, my business partner, he was initially still working full-time as well, but within months of starting to build what became OnForm. He left his corporate job and was— 12:02 Megan Luttrell: And you guys both had like, I'm guessing, personal loans that had been funding this as well. 12:06 Chad Stephens: We had maxed out credit cards. We had a loan from one of the major banks because back then you could actually get a loan, a personal loan from a bank and say it was like for a car or something. We actually— so we said we went to the bank and said we want a loan for a car. And they gave us the money. And so that was, we spent that. We had both borrowed money from parents. We had sold, and we, I'm kind of getting through, this is going early days of the business as well. Sold, but we had both sold our cars. We— 12:44 Megan Luttrell: So you had a loan that you were paying that wasn't for a car, but you also had— 12:48 Chad Stephens: Yeah, we already had cars. Yeah. We— what else do we do? I mean, and the whole time I was still working full-time, so I was essentially providing for the two of us. I was paying his rent and my rent for a long time. We were both in a very fortunate position where if we lost everything and shit hit the fan, we could both move back in with our parents. 13:14 Megan Luttrell: Yeah. 13:14 Chad Stephens: We weren't— we knew we weren't going to be homeless, which is a which was a big thing. You know, if you— if we didn't have that safety net, when would we have pulled that? We probably would have pulled the pin at some stage, you know, and gone, well, we can't do this forever. So, you know, as it turns out, we did both move home for a bit because we couldn't afford to pay rent for a while there. So that was not fun moving back home once you've been out of home for quite a while. So I moved out of home when I was 19 or something. So to be 8 years later or something, move back home. It's not the best feeling in the world, but you've got to do what you've got to do. 13:49 Megan Luttrell: I want to just stop here though, because it's easy to skip past when you see the founders on the other side. But at this point in time, he's working full-time in hospitality, working on his business, paying his business partner's rent as well as his own, feeding them both. And this happens for years with no revenue at the other end of it and no revenue in sight. They had max cards, A car loan and no cars. He says the safety net at the end was knowing that if they needed to, they could just move home, but then they actually had to. 14:19 Geo George: This next stretch is the most useful thing in this episode if you're selling into an industry that doesn't know you exist. They had no money and no reputation, so they went and found the single most respected property manager in Melbourne and then asked her for her feedback. Then they went away and built every single thing that she asked for. All of it, and came back a month later to show her, at which point she isn't a prospect anymore. She's a co-author. Then they did the same thing in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. This is how a product with no marketing budget ends up with 95% share of the rental market. You're building this thing, you've got high conviction, you're going all in. What, what was the journey to your first customer like where you've actually been like, okay, hey, there's something here and it's not just a feeling, but it's an actual business? 15:09 Chad Stephens: The first customer. So for us, we took an approach with OneForm that if we build it, there'll be tenants like us who will want to use it. But how do we get those tenants? Because we didn't have any money, we couldn't market to them. And marketing to a tenant, I mean, we could try and go to a rental inspection and sneakily try and hand out something to them, but there's a property manager there. They're not going to really like that. 15:31 Megan Luttrell: Wait, so you went for the tenant rather than going to the— 15:35 Chad Stephens: No, we didn't. This is like, What we could have done, because we hadn't, as I said, we hadn't spoken to property managers. We didn't know if this was something they would want or would use, right? So we were like, we know the tenant will want to use it 'cause it's all upside for the tenant. We knew that that was gonna be hard. We didn't have the money to market to them. So we were like, how do we convince property managers to use this tech? So we started, our strategy was we learned a bit about the real estate industry, that they have these conferences and whatnot. And so we were like, well, there's these people. We went along to a couple of conferences and there's always a property manager who's kind of well-known or well-liked in the industry who gets up and does, you know, does a speaking session or whatever and talks about the latest best practices in property management. So our strategy was, well, if we can convince one of these people that does these speaking at these events to use our product and mention it, then that would go a long way to giving us a bit of clout. And so what we did was we found one of the best well-known or most successful, whatever you would call it, property managers in Melbourne, went to her and said, look, we're building this product. It's a rental application platform and we're building it for property managers. We want it to be amazing. We want it to do everything that you want it to save you lots of time and we want it to save you lots of frustrations with your tenants and all those sorts of things. So here's what we've built so far. We really want just some feedback on it. What would you wanna see if you were gonna use something like this? And what's it missing and all those sorts of things. And the first time we did that with one particular program manager, she gave us this, she was very helpful and kind, gave us a lot of great feedback, constructive criticism and feedback. And so we went away and took all of her feedback and constructive criticism and changed our product accordingly and then called her up a month later or however long it was. and said, hey, we've taken on board all of the things you said. Can we please come and show you where it sits now? We think we've done everything that you said you'd want to see. So she's like, okay, yeah, sure, sure, sure. And I think she was kind of like, how do I get rid of these guys? But yeah, okay, I'll come, I'll see you again. So we would drive out to her office and then we'd show her what we'd built. And she was like, oh wow, you've actually listened to everything I said and actually done everything I said. And at that point we were like, well, she can't not use our tech now. She's invested. We've done, we've built it essentially primarily for her and based off her feedback. So we said to her, well, you know, would you use this now? And she was like, yeah, I guess I would. So we're like, okay, great. So then we just replicated that strategy and started doing that with property, other well-known property managers who had big rent rolls in the area. And we said, oh, this person's using it. And they'll be like, oh, if they're using it, then, then we should be using it. 18:28 Megan Luttrell: Yeah. 18:28 Chad Stephens: Okay. We'll have a look at it and so on. And then we'd go into Sydney and find those same people in Sydney and same people in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth. And that was our strategy for growth and it worked amazingly well. 18:39 Geo George: And are they paying for the product or the service? 18:41 Chad Stephens: No, they're not. No. So the product was completely free for everyone. We didn't have no idea how we're gonna make money outta this thing. I think it was 2 years after launch that we turned over a dollar and even that ended up being not the way we were going to make money. I think we originally thought that we would have banner ads. This is going to take you back. We had banner ads on the site where, you know, we had— would have traffic and we would know everything about our users. We'd know because we have over 100 data points on the user. So we'd know everything so we could target the advertising. But of course, the more targeted you get with advertising, the less you're going to be able to show them. So we did a couple of deals with some companies to show some banner ads on the site and in emails that we'd send out. I've been— 19:22 Megan Luttrell: I applied for some house a little while ago and it starts showing you furniture shops 'cause you're moving into a new house. I mean, it's really— 19:29 Chad Stephens: Yeah, so there's a lot of relevant advertisers, that's for sure. So, but we, yeah, it was free. It was free for the property managers and free for tenants to use. We just wanted to get people using it. And coming back to the question, first customer was that property manager. First time we got a tenant though, we had done, some tenants had found us online and sent the odd application through. The way we'd built the platform, all you needed was the email address of that office or the property manager's email address to be able to send your application through. There was no barrier to it. We didn't need to be connected or to have signed that property management office up or whatever. So there were some applications, the odd application going through until then. And so it was good to see, you know, the first couple of applications go through. But the problem was that the property, when it went to that property management office, that property manager would either ignore it or go, oh, we don't use this system. So then we found out we had this other challenge. It's like, we definitely can't market to tenants because until the property manager will accept it, it's gonna be a bad user experience for the tenant. We're like, no, we definitely have to concentrate on signing up the property managers, which is why we, like, that was our strategy. 20:40 Geo George: Did you raise any investment? 20:42 Chad Stephens: We did one round of investment and it's funny, there was no startup scene back then. There was no ecosystem, there was no, there were VCs, but they weren't, it wasn't what it is today. We were like, where do we find money? Who do we know that has money? We just ask people. 21:00 Megan Luttrell: People at your cafe. 21:01 Chad Stephens: Yeah. Well, that's right. That's where it began. It was like, well, I know people who've got money. Let's start asking these people if they wanna invest. So we started asking those people and they would just go, it's a form. Like, it's not a business, it's just a form. I'm like, no, no, but it's more than that. Like, this is, you know, this is where we're going. And we created a what if I wish I still had a copy of it, a pitch deck. It wasn't called a pitch deck, it was just a, like, I think we called it a business plan, I guess. And we were asking all these people and— 21:32 Megan Luttrell: Where were you finding these people? Are you still working at the cafe? Have we gone— 21:35 Chad Stephens: I was, yeah, for quite a while, but also knew because they were from the area. I knew them, I had a relationship, some sort of relationship with them by then anyway. Um, and just, we were just asking anyone we knew. And, and along that time, my business partner Chris was Very loosely connected, like his his mum's friend's friend was the then chairman of Car Sales Group. And so Chris had got his email or something and was every every six months or so would email him and go, "Hey, this is what we're working on." And his name was Wal Walwood, and Walwood always emailed back correcting his spelling and saying, "Good on you." You know, basically a pat on the head, saying. Good on you, keep going. And then Chris, my business partner, was pretty persistent. And once we had some traction with OneForm, we could show that people were actually using it, even though we didn't know how to monetize it at the time. Well, replied once and said, oh, I'm happy for you if you want to come and have lunch with me and tell me about it. So we're like, oh, finally, you know, like, let's, let's, we hadn't had any luck raising money anywhere else. So this is our shot. And, and Well, had invited us to a restaurant out in Glen Waverley or somewhere where, near where he, near where his offices were at the time. And so we, it was, we looked up this place that he had invited us to, this restaurant, and we're like, oh my goodness, it's like a fine dining fancy restaurant. We're not gonna be able to pay for this. 23:03 Megan Luttrell: Like, here you go. 23:05 Chad Stephens: He's invited us. We have to offer to pay, right? And so we had said to Chris's mum, hey, we might need to call you if we have to pay. We can offer to pay. If we have to pay, we need to call you. Can we put it on your credit card and over the phone and we'll pay you back? Promise. So she was like, okay, yeah, yeah, sure. And so we went out to this restaurant. This restaurant was closed. He had essentially booked this place out, not for us, but I think they were like, he was such a heroic client of theirs, they just opened it up for him. And so we're sitting in this empty restaurant with this guy. Telling him about our business. 23:44 Megan Luttrell: I want to be there, Rich. 23:46 Chad Stephens: Yeah. 23:46 Geo George: But also, are you thinking, man, am I on the hook for the whole place now? That's right. 23:50 Chad Stephens: Yeah. What does this look like? And anyway, so we had the lunch. It was, it was, the lunch was okay. And, but at the end of the lunch, he said, oh, look, this is actually interesting. You know, do you want to come and present to my team? I've got a family office. It's made up of the guys that are on, you know, basically started Car Sales. And so we're like, yeah, yeah, absolutely, we'd love to. So a week or two later, we, we went to the Car Sales office, which then was in Oakleigh, uh, this tiny little office and a little tiny boardroom. And we were in there with the CEO of Car Sales at the time, Wal, and a couple of other guys. Very intimidating. And here's Chris and I. Fumbling through a presentation of of what OneForm was, where we thought would we know where we were trying to get to, and they absolutely grilled us. Like the questions they were asking, we were just so we were in so deep, and we had no idea of the answers to most of these questions. And but we didn't try to bullshit our way through. We just said we don't know that. Like so we left that that presentation when I remember getting into the car. driving home and we were just like, we just like, we just blew that, you know? No chance. No chance at all. And Wal called us on the way home and said, oh, the guys were really impressed with you. You didn't try to bullshit them when you didn't know the answer. You didn't try to make something up. And they really liked that. And they They want to back you. We're like, what? He goes, we'll have an offer to you by next week. And we hadn't even talked any numbers. We didn't, we didn't ask. We didn't tell them how much we wanted. We're like, it was just like, here's the business, what we're trying to do. And so we're like, what is this offer going to be? What's, you know, based on what valuation? No idea. Anyway, so we went back a couple of weeks later and they just basically put a piece of paper on the table and said, this is what we're offering you, offering you. And it was $250,000 for 25% of the company, and we were just like, yep, we'll take it. 26:12 Megan Luttrell: So the money's in and it's almost immediately gone, straight back out to the developer and to the debts. They sell one advertising package to Optus for $40,000, and then the GFC turns up and nobody else will spend a cent on banner ads. So they're back to the same question they started with. If there's a product being used by thousands of people who legally can't be charged to use it, So where's the money? 26:33 Chad Stephens: And we didn't wanna slow down our growth with the property managers by charging them either. So we were still in this uphill battle of convincing them to use us and convincing it not just to accept them, but to push us and actually when they go to inspections, actually tell the tenants to use us. So we don't wanna put a paywall and put a, you know, hey, you're paying for this in front of them. We really wanted to keep growing that side of the business or that side of the market. So We're like, well, what's the convenience that we're providing to the tenant here? It's saving their details so they don't have to start over every time. So what if we charge them to save their details? Which today sounds really backwards. I mean, any, you don't charge someone to give you data these days. It's probably the opposite. So, but then we're like, that's the convenience. That's the value that we're adding here, right? So what if after someone sent an application, we would put a little popup and say, hey, that was, We know that was tedious. If you're applying for another property, would you like to start from scratch or do you want to save your details so you only have to put in the details of the property you're applying for? 27:37 Megan Luttrell: Prior to having this idea about charging them to save the details, which actually like last year we tried to look for a house and I seen that pop up. Thank you, Chad. Were you saving the details and then you were like, or yeah, because obviously that was what you were like, the problem you're solving. But now you're like, if you love this convenience, you need to pay. That's right. 27:59 Chad Stephens: So the change was we're going to wipe your details essentially if you don't pay. So we started with $5. We said for $5, we'll save your details. So if you need to go back through, you don't have to start from the start. We got $5 and it takes, could take over an hour to fill out that thing, right? So like $5, surely I would pay. 28:21 Megan Luttrell: And also to save the convenience, like to hold those references because it's the references you feel the most ick about, like having to hit up your old boss. 28:29 Chad Stephens: Yeah, just everything, just all that type of information is just painful to fill out. And so we, I remember we went live with that late, like we, our developer built that. We had the idea and he built it that day, put it in that day and we had enough tenants by then flowing through the system, sending applications that we, we testing was easy, like as in knowing if it worked was easy. So we went live really late on a, I think a Friday afternoon, like a developer finished maybe at 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock that night. I'm like, all right, it's there, it's in. Let's see what happens. Hopefully someone pays. Within an hour or something of putting it up there, $5. 29:14 Megan Luttrell: It is so fun to see that. 29:16 Chad Stephens: Yeah, it was the best feeling in the world. 29:18 Geo George: $5. 29:19 Chad Stephens: We're like, oh my goodness, someone paid. Someone saw the value in this. Someone paid. We went to bed very— had a few drinks, went to bed very happy. Been there, 5 times. 29:27 Geo George: Yeah. 29:27 Chad Stephens: Woke up the next morning and I think we'd had 2 more payments and we're like, we're onto something. So we started working out a conversion rate, you know, like, oh, look at this. And so then we're like, well, hang on, if that works, we need to now start playing with the amount, how long we save their details for. Maybe it's not just saving it for the next application. Maybe it's saving it for a week or saving it for a month or for 3 months or for a year or for life. So we started playing with all these different tiers and doing all that testing and we would just keep putting the price up as well to see what was the place where people would stop paying. So with all that testing, no matter how much, so we got to a certain threshold of money, which I think was about $30 or $40 or something. for, and that might've been for a week or for a month or something. And it was kind of a sweet spot. And then it got to the point where no matter what we changed, the conversion rate was always hovered around 5%. So 5% of people saw the value, the time value, time money value, and the other 95% didn't, no matter how cheap we made it or how expensive we made it, no matter what time we put on it. And so we kind of got to this point where we're just like, yep, that's what we're charging, right? And the, so 5% conversion rate on that. And then we had the idea, had an idea to, you know, that gave us a lot of confidence. We're going, what other ways can we make money? And like we're asking these tenants over 100 questions, what if we just chucked in a few extra questions and they were like lead generation questions? So they had to be related to the move. Would you like 3 free moving quotes? Would you like a $20 voucher to Appliances Online? Would you like, your utilities connected? Those lead generation questions each time, I mean, who wouldn't say no to 3 free moving quotes? Who wouldn't say no to a $20 voucher to buy an appliance? So we were all, the questions, the rules that we set in were it had to be related to the move, it had to be something giving something of value to the applicant. And there can never be more than 3 questions to any one applicant because we don't wanna make it too cumbersome and we wanna make it easy to just tick a box or pre-tick the box and have done ticket or whatever. And By the time someone had got to send their application, we would've made a dollar. So every, every one of those things might've been worth 50 cents or a dollar. And so the time they sent their application, we might've made a dollar or $2 off that, as well as then the 5% of people that would pay X dollars to save their details. So then all of a sudden it became a really good model. 32:02 Megan Luttrell: What is it looking like? So you're now making money. Do you start hiring people? What takes you through to this? Yeah. 32:08 Chad Stephens: Yeah. So as soon as we start making making some money, we, the first thing we do is obviously upgrade our development side of the business. 32:16 Megan Luttrell: Yeah. So you actually have a developer, not a developer. 32:19 Chad Stephens: We found a uni grad who we brought him on board full-time. He'd just finished his uni degree and we were like, oh, sorry, he was finishing his uni degree and he, it was like, oh my goodness, that last person that we had, no disrespect to him, but this is what a developer looks like. 32:37 Megan Luttrell: He's probably amazing at what he was, but he's not a developer. 32:39 Chad Stephens: He could do everything. He could do front end, back end, everything. 32:41 Megan Luttrell: We would say, oh, we wanted to do this. He could just do it all. 32:44 Chad Stephens: You know, he knew all the knowledge, he knew everything, he could just do it. And it was amazing. And then all of a sudden, things just sort of would, you know, ramped up quite quickly. And then we hired a generalist to just come in and help sort of do account management, sales stuff, to help just support Chris and I with everything. He was just sort of like a, you know, 2IC to us. And he was amazing, was happy to do anything. 33:13 Megan Luttrell: And also at this point, is Chris CEO, your CEO? 33:16 Chad Stephens: Chris was CEO and I was, yeah, CEO operations. I mean, if you can even, we were founders, you know, it was just wanky titles. But obviously, yeah, the business really started to take off at this point and we were signing, we were going to all the real estate conferences. We had a formula for how we were getting the property managers on board. We had the monetization happening and we were kind of off to the races. I mean, there was, there were struggles still, you know, we were constant challenges in the, in the industry of, you know, pushback from certain agents saying, well, you know, one of those challenges was some property managers and some of the real estate industry didn't accept tick in a box to be signing. You know, they didn't believe in online signing. They, they still thought you had to have a pen and paper. 34:08 Megan Luttrell: Is this pre-Docusign as well? 34:10 Chad Stephens: Yeah. 34:11 Megan Luttrell: Oh my God, we're in the dark ages. 34:13 Chad Stephens: Maybe DocuSign, but they certainly didn't— weren't like— didn't have these online signing software. And so we had to try and convince the whole industry that ticking a box was as good as putting pen to paper. They just wouldn't have it. For years we tried to battle, like we will give talks on it, we'll bring in all this evidence and we'll, you know, we'll get a letter from a lawyer, you know, so that we've got something. If anyone questions it, we can give them this letter from the lawyer saying, you know, la da da. It didn't matter. It didn't matter what we did. They just wouldn't. You know, most a lot of them wouldn't just accept it. So, how do we get around this? And we anyway, so eventually we came up with this idea that what if what if when the user ticks the box, we generate on screen a squiggly version of their signature, and we dump that squiggly version of the signature onto the PDF that the property manager gets, even though it's exactly the same thing. It's been generated by a tick box. Da da da da. That solved the issue. We never had a complaint about it again. And it's crazy, right? And so little things like that that took a long time, you know, just little bits of things that we had to just work our way through. 35:20 Geo George: So you guys are at this inflection point and it sounds like things are looking great and you realize that you're at this real turning point. Was there any moment that you doubted that you had a business here? 35:32 Chad Stephens: Not No. And I think that, you know, we had down days and whatnot, but I think the beautiful thing about having a business partner was that if one of us felt a bit down or negative, or are we, is this gonna be able to be big enough to sustain us and to be a business that we can make any money out of, the other would always pep you up. So it was this beautiful balance of just being able to go, no, no, no, we're good, we're good, we're good. You know, there's all this upside, there's hard times and there's great times. And, but it will balance like that. And we could just see the growth, the growth never stopped. So it was— we had this, this belief that just nothing could stop us. Like, the only thing that can stop us is if we give up, and we're not going to give up. 36:13 Megan Luttrell: So— 36:13 Geo George: Okay, quick pit stop on the timeline because this moves slowly and then all at once. So they launched OneForm in 2006. Chad kept working full-time in hospitality the whole way through and then built the business after hours. The first real revenue landed around 2009. They eventually brought in a CTO who had done it before, but the team never got bigger than 5 people. And by the time they handed the business over, there were 3 of them running it. 36:40 Chad Stephens: It was so efficient because we had nothing. Because we— this is the benefit of having no money. We ran that thing, we automated every single piece of the business from day one because we just didn't have a choice but to, right? So it just became so efficient. And, and by the time we got to the point where we were ready to sell the business. We had really good margins. So we went from being dead broke to running a business that had, was making really good money. 37:08 Megan Luttrell: What did it look like? What did the revenue look like? It was like— To start getting into conversations with REA? 37:13 Chad Stephens: I can't remember the numbers, but I remember we were, had like a 50% margin. 37:17 Geo George: Yeah. 37:17 Chad Stephens: And so we were just, we were banking money at this stage and we, our shareholders were like, Well, what are you doing with money? We don't want you to get a fat bank balance because then you'll start being stupid. So you should, we should distribute money, start distributing money to shareholders. And we were like, hey, we're happy with that. So we started distributing money to shareholders. And so Chris and I were walking, you know, and by this stage we were paying ourselves a salary eventually, and then we were getting checks distribution checks from the business, which was— so we went from nothing to something decent really quickly. And it was fantastic. It was amazing. But we were also getting to the point where we had most of the industry using us and we're kind of going, where are we on this curve of of opportunity. Do we take this model into the US or the UK? Do we take this model and go into other sectors, other verticals here in Australia? And we decided that having a dabble in the US would be our next move. So we did some preliminary work, signed up a couple of sort of pilot customers over there. And like I said before, in the US you're allowed to charge a non-refundable application fee of, they were charging $100, $120 just for the privilege of applying for a rental property over there. So we were like, our revenue model's totally different over there. We just take, we just collect that money on behalf of the property manager and we take a percentage of it and provide the rest to, you know, we can just make it, if they're charging $100, we'll charge $120 and we'll take $20, give the $100 to the property manager. So we had, Signed up a couple of clients over there, testing it out for a bit. We soon realized that if we wanted any sort of traction over there, we were going to have to set up shop over there and that every state operated differently. And it was like, if we're going to just, if we do, we just go over and concentrate on California. And if so, we still need to go and set up over there. Do we want to do that? If we're going to do that, do we want to do that with this business or do we want to do that with a different type of business? So there was a few contributing factors there. Although we were then earning really good money monthly and Chris and I were taking home some money, we still had nothing to our names as far as assets and whatnot. So it's like we were still, had personal debts that were there in the background as well. So we were like, it's probably also a good time to take some money off the table. One of the other factors was when we looked at taking one of them to the US and going hard, like we were pretty much starting it to putting everything at risk by doing that. So if we are going to do this, we need to relook at how forms get filled out and we can't be the form provider. We need to look at the data like from different aspects. So we were like, what if we flipped the model on its head and it was a, rather than being the form provider, we were the place where a user could put data in their phone securely into their phone and then use that like a remote control to whoever was asking for data. So everyone keeps their own forms. We'll just build this technology in and out where you can put all your information in and then we'll then go and do B2B sales and convince a bank or convince whoever has a form, any enterprise that has a form to put a little widget on that form on their website or whatever, so that, and that widget would communicate with the user's phone and would populate their data straight into that form. And the form is only an interface for a database anyway. So we're like, well, the evolution of that is that you actually just, company asks for your data, you approve what you want to give it to, and just go straight into their database. You don't even need the form. It's just a funny interface, right? So we're like, this is, this is worth going to the US. Well, this is a, this is a better product. And so One of the other reasons we ended up deciding to take OneForm or put it up for sale was that this was a totally different model. And it's global scale, it's all verticals, it's whatever. So I'll just rewind a little bit with REA because when Chris and I first came up with the idea for OneForm, when we first, as soon as we launched it, when it looked horrible and a couple of tenants might've used it, we were like, we're booking a meeting with our, with real estate company because this is an add-on to this. And what, yeah, like I said earlier, this is an add-on service to what they do. We went to them, got a meeting with some people quite high up in the company and we said, look, this is what we've built. We think it's a great add-on service. You know, it was on all your rental listings. You know, how good is that? And they're like, and what we said to them was, we will give you 50% of this business if you put us on your rental listings. Very naive, very green obviously. And they said, It's a great idea. Thanks for the idea. We'll build it ourselves. We walked out of that room very deflated and we're like, oh my goodness, this massive company's just told us we're just basically— it was a risk going and telling them, but they have said, yep, we're going to build it. We'll build it ourselves. Thanks. Anyway, we got home. We were like really deflated, but we're like, nah, you know what? Let's just keep building it. We've already built it. Let's try and use the fact that we're ahead of them. We knew that there was a real estate, companies didn't love realestate.com.au because they do every year, they put their fees up and whatever. So we're like, maybe there's an angle where we can get on side with the real estate agencies instead of the property portals. So that's just a precursor to where we landed up. 43:16 Geo George: So you had some sort of an existing relationship with them? 43:19 Chad Stephens: Yes, yes. Yeah, very loose. 43:22 Geo George: Very loose. 43:22 Chad Stephens: But right from the start when we built One form, we were like, real estate would be our natural acquirer. They're the biggest real estate business in Australia, right? So that was always lingering in the back of our mind. And in fact, our logo, we built our whole, even our logo and branding was always with real estate in mind. Our logo at the time was black and red and white, just so we could fit into their psyche. And so when it came time to sell, we were already working with real estate and Domain at this time. So we were on their list, on their rental listings, both platforms. And real estate provided us about, were providing us about 50% of our traffic at that time. So it was a difficult thing to go to them and, but they had always said, if you ever wanna sell, come and see us. So we knew that they were interested, but we also were like, well, they're providing us all the traffic though. So if we go to them and say we're interested to sell, do they just go, oh, we're just gonna turn you off for a bit. 44:15 Megan Luttrell: Right. 44:16 Chad Stephens: And then you come and talk when you need to sell. So we're like, we're in this precarious position, but Thankfully they didn't do that and they said, all right, yep, yep, let's talk. And we thought, well great, we can drum up, now we'll go to Domain and we'll tell them that we want to sell and we'll try and drum up some business from some other RP data who provide all the big data, real estate data platform and anyone else that we think that might be interested. And no one else was interested. And the only, Domain just said, no, we're not going to get into a bidding war with Real estate, we'd like to have it, but we're not gonna get into bidding war with real estate. They're too big. Like, great, that's fantastic. RP Data said, oh, we work closely with real estate. We'll, you know, let them. They were like, oh great, nice. So we couldn't, couldn't, so we had no competitive tension, couldn't create any competitive tension at all. And we were still worried about them turning us off to try and lowball us. Anyway, they came to us, we went to PwC to help us with the sale process because we had no idea what we're doing. And they put together a big document about how to value us. And the valuation range was all over the place because it was just very difficult to value. And we ended up just sort of negotiating a price in the NSLs and we're kind of a bit bullied, but they just said, this is what we're paying, not paying anymore. And we're like, all right, we're happy with that anyway. 45:39 Megan Luttrell: So we What did you mean? Are you— 45:43 Chad Stephens: Yeah, so we sold it for 15. In fact, the price was actually 17 mil that we'd all agreed on. And then literally a week before signing, they'd done all the due diligence, all the legals were done. A week before signing, they came to us and said, I don't know if this was just a big bluff. They said, oh, the powers that be have said we are not paying any more than 15 mil for it. So you can take it or leave it. 46:02 Megan Luttrell: No, I'm gonna take it. 46:04 Chad Stephens: We'd done like a year of negotiation, you know, of doing And, you know, working up to this point and it was just, we were just too far down the track and we didn't have anyone else. There was no other buyers on the table. So we're like, all right, fine, whatever. It actually ended up working in our favour because my business partner were eligible for the small business concession because the value was our, what we were getting from it made us under the $6 mil threshold or something. So we ended up getting a 50% tax break. So we ended up getting more money each. 46:32 Megan Luttrell: Yeah. 46:33 Chad Stephens: than we would have if we'd taken the higher amount. Our investors didn't have that benefit, but we said to them, look, this is what's happened. This is, we get a benefit from this. And they were like, yep. Which was great. They were like, nah, that's fine. Happy for you guys to get that benefit. In the end, once the deal was signed, it was very smooth. It was a 6-month handover, which all went really well. And they essentially, even though they bought the company, it was more of a tech handover. They said, nah, keep your office. We don't want your office. Because we were still working. We never had any stop. Yeah, we don't want your office. Yeah, we don't want your crappy offices. We don't. And you can keep your staff. We just need them for that, you know, some people for the handover. But once that's done, you know. So it was really clean and that suited us because we were already working on our next thing. 47:22 Megan Luttrell: So think about where this started. They took one form to REA before it was anything, offered them half the business to put it into their rental listings and got told, thanks for the idea, but we'll build it ourselves. And then they bought it 8 years later for $15 million. Even the ending isn't clean. They'd agreed on $17, and a week out from signing, REA came back and said $15, take it or leave it. Which turned out better for them personally because the smaller number put them under the small business threshold and halved the tax. A year of negotiating, and the thing that decided it was a tax bracket. 47:55 Geo George: Right, so he just sold a business that never had any money and ran on 3 people. The next one burns $300,000 a month. $11 million raised, a team of 20, and a Series B that was days away from being signed in March of 2020. You already know what happens in March of 2020. 48:14 Chad Stephens: Yeah, so we went from one form earning really good money to the day we handed it over, we'd, we had a team now of about 10 people that were all working on, on Filler, which is the next venture. And OneForm was kind of, was subsidizing that cost at this time. And so the day after we handed over, we went from making money to burning through crazy amounts of money. And, um, it was mobile, it was mobile development intensive. So we had to bring on a lot of expertise that we didn't have. So we built out a development team of a number of, you know, went from one developer to a full team of developers. And for a couple of years there, we were burning through. So we raised some money straight away. We needed to. And so our previous investors in one form or another— 49:06 Megan Luttrell: And this time when you go to people, you're like, I'm an exit advisor, you can trust me. 49:10 Chad Stephens: Yeah, that helped. And our previous investors in one form, they're like, yeah, we'll come along for the next ride. So that helped as well. So they were like, put money in straight away. But we were burning through $300 grand a month. for quite a while and we were miles off generating revenue from that, from that business too. And a couple of years in, it was nothing was going right with this business. It was just— 49:33 Megan Luttrell: You raised $11 million? 49:35 Chad Stephens: In total. 49:35 Geo George: Yeah. 49:36 Chad Stephens: Yeah. 49:36 Megan Luttrell: Over the journey. 49:37 Chad Stephens: Yeah. Over the journey of Fila. And we just were just burning through the money. Weren't able to, weren't able to, to convince enterprises to install the widget that we needed to connect it to so that people could populate their forms. And we ended up pivoting about halfway through to what ended up becoming Filler, which was helping consumers check out on mobile. Because we could see that we'd built this whole autofill platform that could fill out all these lengthy forms and whatever, but it just, we needed to go where the value was. The value was in an e-commerce transaction. That's where money was changing hands. That was where we could clip the ticket and get some value. So we concentrate all of our development efforts on just the credit card fields basically of a checkout and found that there was a huge problem with mobile at the time where consumers were browsing on their mobile, but they weren't transacting. They were waiting until they got to their desktop computer at home or at work before they would actually buy. And then obviously there's dropout and there's drop-off and there's whatever. So we're like, well, there's a problem here as well. So we're fixing, we can help fix a problem, but Also, there's money in it. And we were fortunate enough that the buy now, pay later sector blew up at this time as well. So finally something went our way and we were able to ride that wave because our technology allowed the buy now, pay later companies who had previously, the only way they could grow was to sign up merchants. They would go to Nike and say, hey, put our button, put our Afterpay button, not buy now, pay later button on your merchant. And then, you know, remember, I don't know if you remember, it got to the stage where you'd go to a site and they'd be like, 8 buy now, pay later buttons. 51:16 Megan Luttrell: No, there still is. I still like shopping and yeah. 51:20 Geo George: That's right. 51:21 Chad Stephens: And so our tech allowed those businesses to create an app for their consumers, give that app to their consumers so their consumers could shop anywhere without the need for that merchant integration because our tech would track everything and also pass the virtual credit card to the, through the checkout. 51:40 Megan Luttrell: And so that the consumer will get a nice experience on their mobile being able to buy now, pay later Do you know, I actually use Afterpay to buy stuff on Iconic just because it has all my details in there and I don't pay anything more for it. Yeah. So I can see that. 51:58 Chad Stephens: So that was great. That really helped us. So we rode that wave and in one of our funding rounds at the start of late 2019, we started doing a funding round. It was doing a Series B, $5 mil round. And we, by early 2020, we had gotten a local VC to, was committed to the whole round and we were due to sign early March and then COVID hit. And they didn't pull out completely, but they downed, they said, oh, we can't put in $5 mil anymore at this valuation, but we can put in $2 mil at this valuation. We didn't take that money because it just wasn't enough to get us by. It just wasn't going to get us to where we needed to be. And it was going to be a down round. And it was just like, it's not— this is not good for anyone. So we were sitting there for a couple of weeks thinking, what do we do? Like, do we— and also there's people dropping dead in the street in China. There's mass— This is what we're seeing on TV. There's mass grave sites in New York. We're like, are we even going to be alive in 6 months? 53:06 Geo George: Like, this is It was chaos. 53:08 Chad Stephens: No one knew what was going on. The markets had crashed. Everything was chaos. And so like, what do we do? And as fate would have it, one of our clients came to us and said, would you guys be interested in selling? And we said, if they had asked us that question a month ago, we said, no, not a chance. Like we're only just sort of hitting our straps now. We've got so much growth ahead of us. And, but because of the timing, we're like, yep, Let's do it. We wanted to secure, by that time we had a team of about 20 people. We were like, we want to secure their future. So we took the deal. We ended up selling to Rakuten. Fortunate and unfortunate timing. Anyway, so we did that deal obviously all done remotely because there was no travel. Took us about 9 months to get the deal done. So end of 2020, signed that deal. And meanwhile at home, my wife, And I just had our second baby, was born March of 2020. And my wife was doing all the legals on the deal for us. So I was in this personal predicament where every time the baby cried, my wife would say to me, do you want me to look after the baby or do you want me to work on your deal? So I was constantly walking the streets, pushing the pram, looking after the child. Which in hindsight was fantastic. It was a great time to spend with a kid. But so the deal got done. We did a 3-year earnout period and that was, I was like, oh, there's no way I'm gonna last 3 years in a big company this size. I'll do a year and then try and work my way out. And, but did the first year, which was probably the hardest. I ended up doing all 3 years. The first year was the hardest because there was a lot of handover stuff and a lot of getting used to their procedures and processes. But then after that, it became a lot easier. So I was like, well, yeah, I'll stick around. 55:05 Geo George: So you just sold your business to Recordturn, second time exit, feeling pretty good. So what are you working on now? 55:13 Chad Stephens: Yeah, so throughout that journey, ever since I sold OneForm, I've been doing a lot of angel investing and advisory work. wherever possible. So I've made a lot of angel investments now, especially the last couple of years, been doing a lot of startup advisory and I've just jumped into my next startup. So I've got the itch back and I'm back doing another startup. So every time I've exited a startup, I've said I'm never doing it again. And here I am doing another one. So this is, this one's called Formalytics and we're basically a data capture platform using links and QR codes to collect data in physical spaces so that businesses small and large can collect information on the fly about their customers, their staff. And then, you know, it can be triaged. We can create forms off the back of those. So collecting really rich data from people in spaces and places. So yeah, early days. So look out for the launch of that. 56:15 Geo George: Chad, you're like the form guy. You've found a formula, you know, and you just write it down. 56:19 Chad Stephens: I'm just the same thing. What is it with me and forms? Why do I keep falling back into forms? I hate forms, but that's probably, that must be the, that must be the thing. I don't like forms. 56:28 Megan Luttrell: Yeah. 56:28 Chad Stephens: Yeah. 56:30 Megan Luttrell: Every episode we ask our guests for 3 life lessons, 3 things they wish they'd known earlier in their journey. Chad's comes from 3 different places. A business everyone he knew told him was just a form. A road that got blocked so many times he stopped reading it as a sign, and a business partner who balanced him out across 2 different companies. Let's get into the first life lesson. 56:49 Geo George: Okay, so Chad, there's 3 life lessons that you told us before we started recording. The first one is, if friends and family say the idea is bad, you're onto something. If they love it, pivot. Tell us more about that. 57:04 Chad Stephens: Yeah, so in my experience, both as a founder and then subsequently doing a lot of advisory and investing a lot of startups. What I've found is, generally speaking, when you, in my own experience, when I tell, I've told people, especially with OneForm, what I was working on, everyone laughed it off and said, like, it's a form. You can't make money from a form. You can't make, it's not a business. And then in the next business I had, same thing. You can't, you can't make money from that. That's not a business. That's, you know, and this is family and friends. Same when I am advising people and they go, they sort of say the, oh, my family and all my friends think this is amazing. I've spoken to all my family and they think it's amazing. Like, well, that's, I've just found that it's not a good guide. It's a horrible guide. And usually the worst, what sounds like the worst ideas tend to be amazing ideas. And you only have to look at Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and the things that they, everyone thought they were crazy. And there is a certain amount of crazy obviously that goes on. But if, if you come up with an idea or you tell your family and friends about an idea and they think it's amazing, it's probably because it's obvious or it's too easy to imagine, in which case someone's already done it before or tried it before and didn't work for some reason that yours won't either. Right. So that's, that's where that comes from. I just, I just think don't listen to family and friends. when it comes to ideas. 58:32 Geo George: Is that the same case with Formalitics? 58:34 Chad Stephens: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. They hate it. I mean, I love that. Yeah, no, absolutely. That seems like a simple idea. And it's like, yeah, that's, that's right. 58:45 Geo George: Chad, your next life lesson is about when a road is blocked, you find another path. Talk a bit more about that. 58:53 Chad Stephens: Yeah. So I think what I've learned, I used to say it's just sheer grit that gets you through as a founder. And there is a lot, I still believe that a lot of the time, but I think to refine that even more, it's the people that I've seen fail as founders, more often than not, they come to the first hurdle or as I've put it, a blocked road and they go, it doesn't work. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm turning back. And in my experience, Sometimes that blocked road is just a stop sign. It's like, yeah, it doesn't mean you can't get to where you're going. You just find another way. Like if you're driving somewhere or walking somewhere and there's roadworks going on, you don't go, oh, I'm gonna turn back and go home. You just find another path forward, right? And I think that a lot of founders don't do that enough. They hit it, they come to the first hurdle and they go too hard, I'm going home. 59:52 Megan Luttrell: Do you think that reflects on how much conviction they have about how the problem they're solving and the idea that they're having? Yeah, 'cause there is like 2 parts to that, right? So sometimes you might get so like, we've had other guests that might say, you know, quit early, uh, because sometimes you just really do have a shit idea. But if you've got real conviction in your idea, when it gets harder, like it sounds like this is the whole journey you had with OneForm is everything was hard. You weren't making money, you weren't doing this thing, but you had such conviction that one way or the other you were going to solve this problem. So you just made it happen. 60:28 Chad Stephens: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And look, there is— there are times when you should quit. Yeah, 100%. But I just think that people do it too early, or they shouldn't have started that in the first place if they didn't have that conviction. 60:41 Megan Luttrell: Yeah. 60:41 Chad Stephens: So that's— yeah, that's probably the balance there. 60:44 Geo George: Uh, Chad, your next and final life lesson is about knowing your strengths and weaknesses and using that as a way to So see who you should partner with. 60:55 Chad Stephens: Yeah. So I think everyone has a superpower and unfortunately we don't all discover it or don't sort of recognize it in time. My superpower, if I have one, it is knowing who to partner with and finding the right person that complements me because I know now especially where I lack in skills and it's It's everywhere. But if you know what you're good at and what you're not good at, the sooner you know that, the better, because you can partner with people, whether it's in business or in life or whatever, who fill those gaps or fill a lot of those gaps, and you can work really well with them. And I was fortunate enough to have my business partner in my first 2 businesses. Chris was, him and I, we complemented each other so well in skills, but also in emotions. Like I was saying earlier, ups and downs and being able to balance each other out. And if one of us is having a bad day, the other one's going, no, no, we'll be all right, we'll be all right, and vice versa. So just being able to know where you lack in your skills and where you are great, you know, what skills you have is so important as a founder, but also in life in general. 62:12 Geo George: Yeah, and it's also so rare. It's rare to have that level of self-awareness where you can be self-critical about yourself without, you know, being hard on yourself. 62:22 Chad Stephens: That's right, exactly. So, you know, I think if we all spend a bit more time, you know, looking inward or even there's some great personality tests and other things out there. I could never have done and have no interest in being a solo founder. I don't know how any solo founders do it. I work with a lot of solo founders in my advisory stuff. I tend to sort of, they tend to gravitate towards me because I kind of act like this pseudo co-founder when I'm doing it with advisory. And I don't know how they do it because it's hard enough even with 2 people trying to get the skills, cover the skills gaps of one person. Hats off to them if they can do it, but it's really difficult. 63:06 Geo George: So in one episode, we've gone from a kid who wanted to own a milk bar so he could eat lollies all day to a founder with 2 exits and a 3rd form business which he still can't explain. The thing that I got out of this person is that I've moved 5 times in 4 years, and that bloody form saved me days of my life. So Chad, from the bottom of my heart, thanks for that. 63:27 Megan Luttrell: For me, the moment that sums up this episode is a Friday night. They shipped the $5 Save button, the developer knocked off around 7, and Chad sat there hoping just one person would pay because that was the whole answer. That's all they needed. And then the first payment came in within the hour. 63:43 Geo George: hour. 63:43 Megan Luttrell: Huge thanks to Chad for being so open about the money, but also the debt, the cars, the moving back home in his late 20s. I know there'll be listeners out there who find comfort in knowing that you can grow a business, you can exit, even when you might be in the thick of figuring out how to pay those debts off. If this one landed, please send it to a founder who's been told their idea is too simple to be a business. And if you've got 30 seconds, please leave us a review. It is the single biggest thing that helps other founders find the show and equally us grow the show and our guests. The Aussie Founders Club Slack has thousands of founders and operators in it, and you're gonna wanna join, so we've included the link in the show notes. I'm Megan Luttrell. 64:25 Speaker: I'm Gio George. 64:26 Megan Luttrell: See you next week.
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