EP 430 — Investors are betting AI-native businesses will outrun traditional operators by stripping out human overhead.

Ben Thompson argues that the real divide in business is now AI-native versus everyone else. Legacy companies are still structured with humans at the centre, while fast moving AI-native firms start with agents and add people only where judgement is required.

This episode breaks down how AI-first businesses are built, why investors are pricing SaaS firms like they will not keep up, and what SMEs should actually do as AI shifts employment, recruitment and productivity. It also digs into UK and Australian policy choices that shape hiring.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Build an AI stack that puts agents at the centre of operations

• Rethink recruitment workflows using AI screening and interviewing

• Spot where employment regulation increases risk for SMEs

• Prepare for labour market disruption without panicking about automation

• Understand how tax policy influences where founders build companies

This episode is for founders and operators who want a grounded, practical view of how AI is reshaping work and where SMEs can still win.

*For Apple Podcast chapters, access them from the menu in the bottom right corner of your player*

Spotify Video Chapters:

0:00 AI native businesses

02:00 Early work, first jobs

05:00 Building Employment Hero

10:00 Employment complexity and trust

15:00 Unions, awards and compliance

22:00 AI replacing labour

27:00 Building an AI stack

33:00 Recruitment, screening and agents

40:00 Remote work and scaling globally

48:00 Tax, capital gains and policy

55:00 Culture, work and incentives

1:02:00 Business or BS

Watch and subscribe to us on YouTube

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If you'd like to be on the show, get in contact - [email protected]

Investors are making a bet that legacy businesses will not compete with AI native businesses.

So you know, you've seen stock prices drop by 50, 60% for these SaaS companies.

Right.

And the reason they don't believe they're going to survive is that AI native businesses don't need as many humans.

And their approach to running a business, starting a business is start with agents, build agents that can do the work.

And when you have enough agents that they need human supervision because you need to have a human in loop.

You need to have somebody who has judgment, taste and accountability for the output.

You need to have a human that oversees the agents.

AI at the core, agents first, humans on top.

Welcome to Business Without Bullshit.

I am delighted to be joined by Ben Thompson, CEO Boyman hero.

Welcome.

About Ben.

Thank you very much, mate.

Good to be back.

Yeah.

You are probably our first third time guest.

Ben's an incredible guy.

Built billion dollar.

Well, how would you cry.

The employment technology company or what's your shorthand?

A platform for managing everything.

Employment.

Very good.

And we, we use it more and more and more and it's available in many countries.

Let's start.

We're going to do just some quick fire to get to know you, Ben.

So what was your first job?

Working at McDonald's.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

On the grill.

On the grill.

Only for a few months before.

That's the top job though in coming to America, isn't it?

You start on cabbages.

Not if not in French's forest in Sydney.

No, no, no.

We weren't allowed on the counter back then.

Only women were on the counter.

That's how, that's, that's when I grew up.

I, Mr.

Darling works for me, worked in McDonald's and she like, she's one of our most amazing employees and she says that what she learned at McDonald's was found fundamental like about service and stuff.

Yeah.

It's amazing training.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No one regrets working there.

Yeah.

Well, there we go.

Unless you there for too long.

But yeah, yeah.

And design your own burgers anyway.

Worst job.

Worst job.

Cotton picking.

Cotton chipping.

So massive farms out in western New South Wales and you, you would walk along rows of cotton and, and with a little hoe, dig out the, the weeds between the cotton plants.

In 45.

This is nothing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was like eight hours a day.

Yeah.

Today's 35 degrees.

Yeah, yeah.

This is, this is definitely very hot.

But isn't picking cotton's a nightmare too?

But you were picking the weeds.

Done that.

But no, we were just Chipping.

Cotton chipping.

Wow.

Yeah, I think it's all done with.

With robotic sprayers now.

Okay, very good.

Favorite subject at school.

Economics, special skill.

That's a good one.

Pattern matching.

Pattern matching.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're quite good forward thinker too.

Yeah.

Yes, but that's kind of the same.

Well, that's a.

You.

You can use pattern matching to try and see.

See where it's going over the horizon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ever been fired from McDonald's?

Were you fired from McDonald's?

Yeah.

Yeah.

What did you do?

Showed up late for multiple shifts.

I just.

I was so laid back.

I was 14.

14 And nine months was when you could start.

Well, you could start working 14, nine months.

Yeah.

13 And nine months.

13 And nine months or 14, I can't remember.

And yeah, I sort of just would rock up and rock up half an hour late or.

Or not at all.

And I think on the third time they said, you're.

You're just in time to finish.

Forever.

Just in time to pick up your P45.

Very good.

Office dogs business or.

We all work from home at employment hero.

So all.

All in.

You know, everyone works from home now.

Everyone working from home.

Your karaoke song.

I don't have one.

I can't sing.

It's not.

It's just not.

It's not me you could do.

I'd back you up.

That's right.

Okay.

We might do.

Yeah.

The best.

Ice bab baby if I had ice, ice baby.

Very good.

Along with Trump, apparently, you know, really well.

No, as in like these.

That's who he booked.

It's the only place he's paid at his.

You know, he had this big event, this big musical event, and no musical artists wanted to play.

Vanilla Ice is the only place dropped out.

I mean, it was like.

And then meanwhile, if you missed it, Obama had the launch of his Chicago Presidential center and they had like the creme de la creme of musicians just to wind him up.

What's your vice?

Ben Corona, I guess.

Good answer.

So you're a lawyer who went on and built software.

It was your.

He was your dad's firm, I think, originally, wasn't it?

And you sort of got a bit fed up with.

With being a lawyer.

Yeah.

Dad wasn't a lawyer.

He was a.

He was an HR consultant.

And I started a law firm.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then just thought, I can do this better.

No.

Well, ended up I was going to do a technology law and ended up being introduced to a Lot of small businesses and through my dad and became an employment lawyer and then thought, well, what's the point of treating the symptom?

By the time I was helping people, they were already in trouble and so I wanted to figure out how do I treat the cause rather than the symptoms?

So how do I make employment easier for small, medium sized businesses before they get in trouble?

What did you start with?

What was the first bit?

So.

Well, first bit was Employment Innovations, which was a services company.

So it was a law firm and a services company and we were effectively the HR department for thousands of small and medium sized businesses.

But then we needed software to make it run and so we built employment Hero to power what we were already doing.

And then the software was obviously much more lucrative than the service.

You once said starting up is being in the jungle.

Is that still true now?

Absolutely, yeah.

Every single day.

And like in the current environment with AI and the way things are moving.

Absolutely.

There's new predators on the, on the, on the prairie.

Are you like, because you're USA, you're sort of a SaaS platform.

Is SAS apocalypse, is that?

Yeah, yeah, no, we're, we're definitely like squarely in the cesspocalypse sites.

I'm a bit, I'm a bit, you know.

Yes, you could go and rebuild things faster.

They still got to rebuild it and work out how it all works.

Do you feel threatened by, you know, someone, someone could rebuild what you've built quicker.

Not really.

I mean like we've got the same tools as everybody else, so we can, we can actually move really, really quick.

So it's not like they've got AI and we don't.

Also, what we do, compliance wise, is not something you're going to vibe code.

No one's going to vibe code payroll or if they do, don't use it.

What's a Vibe code?

Payroll.

So vibe code, you know, just basically using a, using AI to.

Claude, Claude vibe code.

Like, like, like it's just, like, it's just, just a vibe.

Hey, Claude, build me a payroll solution and Claude will tell you it's doing a great job.

And then when you underpay all your staff and end up in, in all sorts of legal trouble, then yeah, it may not be worth the cost of the tokens.

So let's so employment here to give people a sense.

Now, I mean, I'm reading here I remember you becoming an Australian unicorn, but it's saying a two billion dollar valuation.

Yeah, yeah, probably more.

How does that feel?

Ben?

You're like you're like a big deal.

You, you, you.

And this is great, I guess.

Look, it's, it's, it's, it's good fun, you know.

Like I don't do it for the, that's kind of a scoreboard thing, you know, that's like the, it's the wrong.

Way to look at the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No like the, the enjoyment comes from innovating and scaring ourselves.

Like should we do it?

Should we try something new?

Let's go for it.

And like you still, you're still thinking.

Like almost like startup literally today, you know, literally yesterday.

We're, we're making calls about, you know, what we're going to do, how hard we want to push something.

It's, it's, that's the bit I love.

You don't care about the valuation.

Two million employees on your platform, is.

That two and a half?

Nearly.

Probably closer to three.

And what, and what countries are you doing now?

Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, uk, Canada.

And that, that's for us, that's for our whole platform like from, from recruitment to retirement in all those countries and then like another hundred countries for what we call heroforce, which is employer of record services where we employ people for other companies across border.

Okay, so we're in, we're in many, many more countries but not in the same way that we are in those 6.

Do they give you if you've got a big trophy for that?

Yeah, yeah.

So what, what, what, what was the one bet nobody else saw, you know, what, what, what what what did you.

See that like it.

You literally come, came down to the, the sort of founding principle which is the, the same principle today that drives everything we do to make employment easier and more valuable for everyone by making employers feel confident to employ people.

Like what I saw as an employment lawyer was time and time again people would come to me and say I, I love being in business, I hate being an employer.

Yeah.

And, and when you realize that 98% of all businesses are like that, small and medium sized businesses, people, mums and dads doing it themselves, if they don't feel confident to employ people, then we're all screwed.

You know, there's just not enough jobs if you're not employed.

It's a terrible situation.

So how can I.

All I've been thinking every single day just about is how do we simplify it?

How do we take these complex laws, these complex systems, these requirements and streamline them with technology so that you and every, every business out there can, can employ more people.

And, and, and in addition to that, we've gone into like, how do we make employees more employable?

How do we help them find better jobs, how do we help them earn more money as well?

So it's, you know, it's, it's.

And no one really is focused on the, the small business, you know, like, that's, that's probably one of the major things for us.

Like we said from the start, SME, SMA only.

And I used to take grads and walk to the office window in North Sydney, back in, back in Sydney and point at the CBD where you had all these skyscrapers with logos on the top.

And I'd say to all of our new starters, look out the window, see the buildings and all the names on the top of the buildings.

And they'd all go, oh yeah, Westpac and you know, anz and blah, blah, blah.

I'd say, right, we don't want to work with any of them.

It's the businesses at the bottom of those buildings that we care about.

And we, and we still say it.

That's still our audience.

I resonate with a lot of the things you're saying that it's, it's hard to explain to people that if you make employment more complicated, you get less employees.

You know, it's very, you know, why is it so hard for people to understand the new act we've got coming here is just going to mean less employment because it's going to be more complicated, more expensive, more difficult.

There's the unemployment rate in the 16 to 24 year old bracket in the UK today is nearly.

It's, it's that, it's, it's like 8%, I think.

I thought it was, I read it 17 or something.

Yeah, 17.

I could tell you.

We just put an ad up for a grad and we had to close it in three hours.

We had a thousand applications.

We're seeing it all the time.

It's like, yeah, yeah, the unemployment.

And it's going to get worse.

Like there's safety nets.

Right, like that.

Sure.

A minimum wage is important.

Minimum conditions have to be protected.

You can't have people just.

Absolutely.

You need to do something about maternity.

Really complicated subject, but again, keep it.

As simple as possible with just a nice safety level that everybody understands if you make it complicated.

The other thing that happens is that employees don't know whether they're getting ripped off, employers don't know whether they're doing employment properly and so the trust layer of employment, which is really important, employment, marriage, if you can't trust your partner, then it breaks down.

So you want to have it, you want to have it simple.

Everybody understands both sides of what of their entitlements and their obligations.

And more people can be employed and everyone feels more confident about it.

The trustworth is so fundamental because the new Employment act in the uk, I can't get my head around it.

I sort of have now Labour's own figures estimate 50,000 in job losses and they're introducing an act that's going to caused that.

So it doesn't make any sense, but it was literally, let's give more rights to the unions.

But trust this word because you read it and it's like, hang on, the only reason people lose their job is because you don't have enough work for them or you're going bust or their shit.

And it's kind of.

There's an idea that there's actually a third reason they seem to be legislating against to say, oh no, no, no, there's evil employers or there's no, you can't trust these people.

You know, we've got this system in Australia called the Modern Award system where every, we've got 122 of these things called Modern Awards.

They're about 150 pages long, pure legalese and it dictates every condition of employment and a single business can be covered by 2, 3, 4 of these modern Awards.

Employees don't know what they're entitled to, employers don't know what they're entitled to.

But it means that if a union knocks on your door and says we think you're in breach, then they've got something to look at, right?

So it's a, it's a foot through the door.

They always design the laws around the large companies, don't they, who have the fleet of people to do it.

It's kind of.

Well, the way it's done in Australia is it's been arbitrated for 120 years or more between unions, industry units.

So that representing the whole, in the industry and in employer associations, not at a individual business level, at this like sort of industry arbitrated level.

And that's what creates these modern aw and has done over time.

And so it's not even, it's not even at a large business level, it's at this sort of arbitrated industry level.

But the, you're saying that a union can knock on what, an SME's door and You've got these, they're called Modern awards.

Are they?

Yeah.

So they're called.

1500 What, separate set rules?

Yeah, every state had, you know, hundreds and they all went national, which was a good thing.

And then we got down to 122 and.

Yes, yeah.

And, but it means that, you know, there's enough uncertainty that if a union knocks on the door and says, we believe that you and we, we have reasonable doubt that you're in Britain, they're probably right.

The incidences of un, of non compliance by Australian businesses when they're audited by the Fair Work Commission is like 70% in many cases.

So if everybody's uneasy, then unions have a really good role to play protecting people's rights.

But no one knows what those rights are.

So the union is the organization that gets to step in and make sure of it.

If you just brought it down to, you know, a dozen important conditions.

Fundamentals, fundamental conditions, everyone would understand what they're entitled to and what they have to do.

But the, the, the, the unions wouldn't have the same role.

It's a bit like up until recently, they've, they're just removing it here.

But we had capped, capped amount of money you could get if you basically went for unfair dismissal or something like that.

And it was sort of capped at about a hundred grand.

So it didn't matter if you earned £10 million.

But for me, like, okay, say you've lost your job.

I think this may even be similar to how it works in us.

For me it should just be like, you get a month, a year.

You've been with us 10 years.

His 10 months wages.

Sorry about it.

Good luck.

You got almost a year to find another job.

You know, you've been here 20 years, here's a massive check, two years.

Money, you know, but it isn't like that.

It's all sort of complicated and you've got to go through a whole sort of process and then if they don't like it or it goes wrong now there's going to be uncapped again, which the French uncapped and then have recapped it.

So here you think, why are you uncapping it?

The courts are already busy.

You're basically making, you know, everybody's unclear, the employees unclear now they don't, they've got a lawyer, they don't know what's going on.

But if you just said they've ended your employment, here's a decent amount of money to find another job.

You know, again, to your point is like, keep it simple, everyone's happy.

It's the same in Canada, it's the same in New Zealand.

Like it, you know, I guess for my.

Is Canada uncapped?

Is it?

Or New Zealand's uncapped?

Australia.

Don't you just do like.

Because everyone just tells me it's.

It depends.

Depends on the circumstances, depends on the type of employment.

So if you're an executive, then you.

Depending on how you were terminated, there can be uncapped or capped amount or nothing.

Contract conditions.

Like, it's complex.

Yeah.

The whole point is it's complex.

But hey, one thing that you were just saying before about the complexity leads to the destruction of jobs, which seems ironic that you think unions should be maximizing.

The objective would be for unions to maximize employment.

The more members, more employees, the more members you have.

Like, it would seem that they've got a, a role to sort of maximize employment, obligation employment numbers as well.

But the Australian manufacturing industry is an interesting test case.

Right.

So the car manufacturing.

There is no car manufacturing in Australia.

Yeah, it's gone withholden.

Completely gone.

Yeah.

So.

But what you saw was over decades, you had unions going in and negotiating enterprise agreements over and above these modern awards, really complicated pay agreements, higher and higher and higher salaries for people.

Ultimately, it destroyed the industry.

Yeah.

Because it's uncompetitive.

What's the point?

You move it overseas.

You've just got, you've got, congratulations, everyone got paid a high salary for three years and then lost their jobs.

Yeah, well, the whole industry got destroyed.

That's because they don't think exactly the same happening here.

You make it harder to employ, make it more expensive, make it more complicated.

Then you just say, oh well, sod it, I'll employ overseas, you know, and they'll work harder or whatever.

You know, it's, it's really hard to get through.

You know, it's funny, we did a little pod on it and I was looking at the comments and the comments were just like people sort of angry saying like, you know, oh, this is typical.

The establishment trying to tell us that, you know, we.

And what about the employee who lost their jobs and stuff?

It's like, let's be really clear, nobody is saying that losing your job isn't a really shit thing to happen to you, you know.

But how, you know, as we're saying, it's like.

But the employer, you, you're just, you're a business.

You're a business competing.

You haven't got some endless pool of money.

I can't, what I can't work out in my head, Ben, is what is the bit that they're missing in their head to understand this mathematics?

Is it that they believe the, the companies have loads of money and they're just ripping the employees off?

You know, I can never quite.

Yeah, it's a, it's a good question.

I wish I had the answer because then we'd be closer to the solution.

Right.

But it just breaks like pay people more.

You know, we.

The thing that's happened more recently that is pretty scary is, you know, artificial intelligence and robotics provide employers with an alternative to humans.

You know, if you don't know what your obligations are as an employer, if you're not confident about employing people and somebody walks in and says, well, actually we can build a agent, an AI agent to do that work and it's going to cost less than a human.

Well, you know, more and more employers are going to go, happy days.

I don't need to employ humans.

That's the absolute antithesis of what Employment Hero is for.

That's, that's exactly what I've been fighting against for, you know, 14 years with building Employment Hero.

I want to make sure that whenever an employer is faced with the choice of creating another job for a human versus outsourcing it to, you know, AI or robotics or ever, that they'll lean into the employment option.

But that, you know, those options didn't exist.

Now they're, they're springing up every single day so our job becomes even more important.

So, yeah, bizarrely, yeah, I get criticized, you probably get criticized for being anti employer or anti work.

Yeah, actually we're all like, we are the ones that want more employment.

More jobs, More jobs.

Better, better, Better employment.

Yeah, more of it.

Yeah, yeah, Just, just, just, just make it easy, make it, make it flexible.

There was a great one.

I don't know if you saw it, it was, it was an hilarious example.

It's slightly different, but I think Adidas.

Someone did this campaign for the World cup and they got these people in the mountains in South America or Mexico or someone sewing these garments.

And this big social media star came out saying, it's outrageous, they're paying these people nothing and did this huge hate campaign and everyone spoiled over.

But I was really like at the New York Times at home, which is very nice.

They deliver it in London.

And so the New York Times, when they did this investigation on it and they went and I forget, I forget, I can't remember.

It was in Mexico or somewhere in South America.

But they went and found these women up in this mountain.

Yeah.

And they're super happy and they're working this really nice conditions and they're paying them 50, 50p an hour.

An hour or something like that.

But it's much better than all the other work they've got going.

They weren't aware of all the big dispute.

This big social media star didn't go there, didn't actually look into it or anything.

Created this hate campaign.

And so they were really confused and they were like, well, Adidas might have, you know, it's got into all this trouble.

And they were just like, oh no, no, we love Adidas, you know, and that's a slightly silly example, but it's like it's the, it's the case that, you know, they create an employment there.

I mean I, I don't know actually all the ins and outs of it, but you know, underneath it, quite often people want flexibility or people are happy with, with what they're getting.

Do you know what I mean?

They're crate.

They're creating all this sort of sense that it's not fair and it's like better than no work, isn't it?

You know, you end up sort of, you know, outsourcing it or as you say, it's going to AI.

It's like, well, this is a very competitive world, you know, if, if the company's gonna only pay X. Yeah, tricky.

We haven't even seen you know, human, human like robots yet, you know, like competing with humans.

Like it's only five years away before they're on the scene, you know, so late like physical labor now becomes, has a competitor.

Yeah.

Is that quite real that's coming.

That's coming 100.

Yeah, there's no, no doubt.

There's no doubt because the Tesla robot's coming soon, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, next year.

And what you just went to open AI?

Yeah, we went to, we went to.

So my co founder Dave and I went to.

Yeah, open AI we also went to the Tesla Gigafactory in Texas, behind the scenes tour there.

But yeah, robotics AI.

Did you see the robots in the Tesla factory?

No, you couldn't see the robots, but certainly saw a factory that's a mile long and 330 meters wide, five stories high.

That's a mile automated.

Yeah, yeah, fully automated from floor to ceiling, end to end.

One, you know, one, 1.6 kilometers long of just full Automation.

I mean, there's a lot of humans in there too, but it's, it's incredible.

It shows you what, you know, what, what is what automation can look like.

But AI like OpenAI was yet again, like a, a big eye opener too.

What, what, what did you feel after OpenAI?

What, what did you get out of that?

It kind of, I'll tell you what it boiled down to for me was there's a new type of business.

And the reason for the Sasmageddon to sort of what we were talking about before is that investors are making a bet that legacy businesses will, will not compete with AI Native businesses.

So, you know, you've seen stock prices drop by 50, 60% on the stock market for these, for SAS companies, right?

So they're saying, well, we don't believe that they're going to survive, otherwise we'd be calculating their value for longer and they'd be higher.

And the reason they don't believe they're going to survive, although I don't think they think this deeply about it, so they're sort of all following the crowd, but is that AI Native businesses don't need as many humans.

You know, they can operate with far higher leverage.

And so what we saw in San Francisco, we met with like half a dozen AI Native businesses and their approach to running a business, starting a business is start with agents, build agents that can do the work.

And when you have enough agents that they need human supervision, because you need to have a human in loop.

You need to have somebody who has judgment, taste, and accountability for the output of an AI agent.

You can't just let it run.

We've all seen what happens there.

You need to have a human that oversees the agents.

But you need about 50, 60 hours work for a human to come in and oversee a group of agents.

So an AI Native business is AI at the core, agents first, humans on top.

Okay.

A traditional business is humans.

And then you might have what I would call a level two, level three AI business, which is where humans are augmented by AI.

But these things, these new businesses that are coming, AI first and human second.

And, and you've got every business on earth, every services business, you know, unless you're like a construction company, all of us have a new project on our plate which is to create that AI stack that will help run your business.

No one even knows it's coming out other than these AI Native businesses in San Francisco that are just doing it day in and day out.

And they started a year ago.

You've got to Basically turn your business inside out.

Everyone does.

You've got to wrap your business around AI.

You don't, you don't sort of inject AI into the existing business.

You have to take, you have to put AI at the center and then wrap your existing business around it.

Wow.

And I can sort of explain how you do it.

You have to have all of the enterprise, all of the company data in a, in a data repository at the bottom need to have a semantic layer, which is how you can speak to the data and query the data on top of that.

And then you need to have agents that sit above that and then you can build workflows with those agents.

And, and when you, when you have that, what I call the AI stack that sits at the, at the core of the business.

And then you need to go back and examine everything you were doing before and think about, well, how do I do that with agents first and humans on top?

And if you don't do it, you know, you'll, you'll see these AI native businesses just go bullet.

Why are they there so much faster?

Because what is otherwise just sort of strapping a jet engine to a horse and car rather than.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You know, what's the point of trying to get agents to do something if humans are trying to do it as well?

Like, it just, it just doesn't work.

If you start with a blank sheet of paper, you can start with the agents.

It's going to be a really hard transition for a lot of businesses.

I think we're fine.

I think we're like way out in front and we're making that transition hourly.

But a lot of businesses will really struggle, I think.

I mean, this is going to take a decade.

It's not going to happen overnight.

Yeah.

And we all knew, oh, shit, we all need a website.

Yeah.

You know, every, every company is going to need a website or what?

And.

Yeah, what a funny thought.

Yeah.

What are we going to do with a website?

And you know, have you got a website yet?

What's your web strategy?

You know, it's like that.

Well, it's, it's all happened again, but.

With AI, I guess.

Yeah, it's the first step is getting your data in one place.

That has been coming up as a sort of.

That's not an easy task.

The semantic layer.

Semantics is obviously a word.

Otherwise that just means what, a query?

A sort of.

Yeah, you can.

So you.

Some way also of protecting your data I guess because you're going to.

The agents may be external agents.

Is it?

Yeah.

So the semantic layer also provides like gated access depending on your role in the organization.

So a good example was, you know, one person in the organization might query the semantic layer and say what was our revenue last month?

And they'll get gross revenue.

And then a finance person will query it and they'll get EBITDA although they'll get gross revenue.

That an accounting, an accounting structure.

So just depending on your role in the organization you'll get completely different answers.

Well you answered that, you answered one of the questions I want to ask very nicely.

What the hell should an SME actually do about it now?

I guess get your data in one place.

Start, start.

I mean it's hard.

I don't think SMAs are going to do this themselves.

I think there will be, you know, products that are offered to them.

Think about again go back to the analogy with websites.

Right.

You know, you didn't, some of us at the start had to, had to code CSS and HTML and actually build the website from, from scratch.

And then nowadays you can, well until very recently you could just go and sort of use some applications and have a web take a website off the shelf almost.

So I think, I think small and medium sized business or small businesses will, they'll have pre built solutions they can draw on.

Well it'll get baked into the software they're using anyway.

That's what happened to us all over the show.

Yeah, yeah.

Like us as well.

We've put AI into everything.

Yeah, but that doesn't do what you're saying that you recenter your business.

But I guess as an SME you might only be five people anyway so it's not like the transition isn't so crazy, is it?

It's kind of like you're sitting in a room and you're going to say oh let's get an agent to do it and then we'll monitor the agent and now we could grow, you know.

Yeah, I mean we'll do that.

Like we're, we've, we're lucky in that we already have the org structure.

We know the permissions for every employee in the, in the business because they, because we own the org structure and so we'll be able to help build that data layer and the semantic layer based on your org structure.

So there's opportunities for people like us as well.

Yeah, it's really interesting if you're there.

I'd never heard you Say it quite like that.

But if you're there effectively trying to remove the friction between employment and employee and improve the trust and just make that whole experience better and you want more jobs because I mean that suits you.

That's your, that's your whole sort of thing.

AI is such an interesting thing to add to the equation that it, you know it's going to cause these job losses.

But yeah, at the same time you're in a position to help businesses and employees find their new roles, retrain or.

Well, a good example like so we've gone into recruitment.

So we're doing like we've gone really hard into recruit, into the recruitment layer.

I mean we already had a HR and payroll and.

And then we're like, well, we need to help businesses find people, find the right people.

We need to help employees find their have the right skills and find the best jobs.

So we've gone up into that recruitment layer.

That's because people are using AI to write that to apply for jobs.

So now employers need.

That is what's going on as well.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

There's a higher unemployment but like the legal system is now just being absolutely smothered with cases because everyone just chat.

GPT.

Yeah, application.

Same with job applications.

Everyone's using AI to do it.

So we've released a recruitment, an AI recruitment agent that actually runs an interview and screens candidates and gets you down to a sensible shortlist of qualified candidates that you will interview.

And it will do a first round interview.

No, yeah, yeah, you can talk to it.

It'll do a full first round interview.

We've also got one coming out for candidates where it will be their career coach.

It'll talk to them about the skills they've got.

Often they don't realize they've got skills like a mother or somebody who's cared for a child with a rare disease or something.

They're actually carers.

And then you say, well what's your skills?

And they don't realize that they've already done years of care work.

Just need to tease it out of them so that you can actually identify the skills that they have to apply to a role.

So we're building and that we're releasing an agent very shortly that will help every person find their skills and present themselves in the best possible way.

I had a conversation with an AI Boardie, which has got an Australian accident, actually, but it's an American company.

But they found an Australian accent was the most appealing accent to people, apparently.

It was such a nice conversation.

They rang me on WhatsApp because they listened so well.

And rather than doing what humans are thinking.

Yeah, but I'm going to say what I want to say.

It's.

It's like, okay, Andrew, I think what you're saying is this.

It's like, yes, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

You listened.

That's amazing.

I just spent Sunday walking around.

Never been to Ireland before.

And we were looking at going into Ireland, and I spent Sunday in Dublin walking around.

Had my AirPods in and Grok on my phone open and I was just chatting and like, showing it buildings.

Tell me about this building.

Like, what's that?

You know?

Oh, you know, what's the history of this?

And it was the best tour guide you could possibly imagine.

It was patient.

Wow.

It never knew everything.

Yes.

You're never worrying about upsetting it or asking too many questions or.

Yeah.

So you can do those.

You could, you know, we can be your career coach, we can be your counselor, we can be your help you find a promotion.

So where does this all go?

That's what I can't get my head around.

It's like, people can start more businesses, people can do more things.

So there's more stuff, you know, but I don't know what.

So the future of work, is it.

Is it.

Is it a real shift or.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

You know, I think unemployment is higher today in, you know, in Canada and the U.K. it's, thankfully, for the time being, it's, it's okay in Australia.

But, you know, I'm pretty optimistic that, you know, we're going to see an explosion of productivity.

We're going to see the economy grow faster than, you know, it has in decades and that, you know, there'll be more jobs, not less.

Like, I'm very much on the side of AI will lead to a abundance of work.

Not, not, not removal of work, I don't believe, but a disruptive period.

Perhaps there'll be a disruptive period, but there's.

You've got to remember that we've got different tools available to us today to deal with that disruption.

Go back to, go back to, you know, the 90s.

You know, if there had been a big change and we all had to apply for jobs by printing a cv, sticking in an envelope, posting it to a, to a recruiter, and taking a week to get There and then they'd read it and stick it in a pile and you know, things would take, literally, it would take months to receive applications and screen candidates and make an offer.

All that can happen in minutes today.

And skills identification, like I was just saying before, can happen in minutes in better ways.

So we've got more tools to deal with disruption than we've ever had.

And so I'm hopeful that thanks to technology we'll be in a much better position to deal with disruption at pace.

And if you just think that it's all the same, there's this new disruption, but there's no acceleration to how we manage that disruption, you'd be wrong.

Another example of the pace of change in employment is an experiment I ran on my son who just graduated from a business marketing degree.

And I said, before you go out and find it and start looking for work, come and come and work with our AI enablement team at Employment Hero and just learn the skills because we've got all these like absolute gurus at AI.

And so I threw him in at the deep end and on an internship for six weeks.

Within six weeks he, he was, you know, and this is a kid that's not, he hasn't done engineering, is not a, he's not an AI native or a technologist.

Within six weeks he, he has become the most proficient, one of the most proficient people I know at AI and solving problems with AI and it only took him six weeks, you know, but learned from extraordinarily good first real invention.

That tells you how to use it.

Exactly.

You know, a year or two ago in the office, some people are like, yeah, but I just don't know how to use it.

It's like ask it.

You know, it's the first time ever you've got something you can, you know,.

And I was, yeah.

So like, you know, if you think you've got kids, you're going through three year degrees at university and coming out with no AI knowledge.

Well, every student that's graduating from university on the planet should be forced or required to do four, six weeks of AI literacy training.

Yeah.

So that they're skilled up already, you know, and, and you can learn that in a month.

Yeah, it took three years to learn marketing.

Yeah.

It's interesting he did it 6 the, an older guy who said, quite a bigish client of mine who, you know, very clever people out of America and whatever.

But yeah, they, they just took one of their very clever people and just took him off all his other jobs and said just go and Just learn it.

So six months later, now this guy is as expert as you can be in a gentle.

You can ask him anything.

He's building it all.

It's just like, so that's how.

I mean, and he's obviously shifted to quite a high level because they advise pretty heavy clients and stuff.

And but it was like, I was like, oh, how the hell did you learn all this?

And he's like, six months ago they cleared my calendar and I've just sat down and learned it.

And I was like, wow, that is a fast transition to expert.

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you can do.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the, the biggest problem.

So yes, there's going to be a bigger disruption than ever, but there's going to be.

The mobility of, of skills transfer is going to be faster than ever.

It's quite exciting.

Although I'm a little bit sick of the emails already.

I don't know what happened in Oz, but British people all started emailing each other and telling them everything they meant to say for years.

Like, oh, because people was finally right.

They hadn't, you know, people weren't really writing letters and then they were suddenly like writing these long emails and just saying too much.

Just saying these viral emails that I go around where like somebody would criticize someone for stealing something from the fridge in the office and then it would get a.

Become an email train and the next thing it was in the news.

Yeah, yeah, but a lot of people falling out at the moment.

The AI equivalent is.

It's like, oh, joke.

You know, we used to send reports.

Now people keep sending me reports and it is a bit like, oh, there's bullet points and everything.

Now as a dyslexic kind of being an idiot, I quite liked it initially.

Oh, it's nice and clear.

But honestly, those emails now I've already only gone blind some.

Every time I get one of the emails and say, oh, for.

Not even emails, it's for us.

Even at a leadership level, we.

Dave said the other day, he's like, okay, guys, we need to stop this.

We've got people using AI to generate papers on strategy or whatever and AI will chew the tokens.

They're incentivized.

Anthropic and OpenAI are incentivized to use More tokens because we're paying for the tokens.

So it'll create a 10, 20, 30 page document and then they'll throw that into the leadership channel, say, oh, you know, can you please read this document for our next session?

And so then you take that document, put it into AI and say, what does this say?

Can you put this into a tldr?

Yeah.

And then you're chewing tokens on that.

And Dave's like, the number of tokens.

That we are wasting is your pay by token like that at the moment.

Yeah, of course.

And the price is going to go up.

I mean, a lot.

Not necessarily, but because I guess the.

Thing is the energy thing's going to cross over because energy should get free effectively.

I've just put solar on my home.

I'm basically off grid now.

Yeah, I didn't think, I mean I have so much energy.

Yeah, well, I have a little bit of aircon upstairs so it's kind of screwing it up for this.

But yeah, it is summer long days and everything.

But I'm 98 efficient at the moment.

Yeah, I have like, you know, all sorts of electricity going on.

But yeah, it's, I think, I mean, I guess the token price will go up and up.

But someone is saying to me, yeah, but what happens if the token price goes up?

You know, we've got rid of John who's 60 grand a year and now we're getting this AI to do it.

And I'm like, well, anything less than.

60 Grand you won't, it won't keep going, it'll keep going up on the, the best frontier models.

Yes, right.

But you're also like right behind those models, Open source models.

Yeah.

And you don't, which you can run.

On your own server, literally the cost of electricity.

And to summarize a 20 page strategy document, you don't need a frontier model.

It's a very basic process.

So the cost of tokens will actually normalize to the work that needs to be done.

And if you, if you're working in the cutting bleeding edge of medicine, then yeah, you might need the, the frontier, the best frontier model, but not for 90% of 95%.

And actually also the AI hype is a little bit because when you break down what you need to sort out, some of it's just like, oh, we need a Vlookup and an Excel or we need a bit of, you know, it's not like super, we need a thing to go and get that thing and fill that in and put it over There.

You don't need a Ferrari to do that.

Yeah.

So AI is the next one, I guess.

Yep.

You had Phil on here the other day.

You had Phil on here a few years ago.

Remember Phil, Frank, kp.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

How's Phil doing?

He's doing.

He was the one who said, oh, they put AI and everything.

He said, he said, he goes, oh,.

AI in your sandwich, catch up with.

Andy and do the pod this today.

And he's like, oh, I remember when I did that, it was, it was a fun day.

But he said I, I made some, I made some predictions and I said, oh, did they come true?

He said, absolutely not.

I said that AI was a croc.

It was never going to come to anything.

Well, yeah, he was saying lizing bloody everything, actually.

I mean, yeah, I guess he is.

He has been turned out wrong.

Although I haven't got any AI in my sandwiches, which was one of his things.

So let's talk.

So in Oz, what, they've doubled capital gains tax.

So as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, well, you could say they doubled it.

They've removed.

They've removed, yeah.

Which is the same thing.

Right.

But well, they haven't now.

They've, they're.

They're in a consultation process because the entire country has just lost their.

Okay.

Yeah, it was.

I saw it on LinkedIn.

I saw your post.

I saw all these posts as, you know, proud Aussie founder.

Our first time in my life, I'm looking at leaving the country.

I don't think I said that.

No, you didn't.

Someone else.

I did never look.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It would take a lot more than a doubling of cgt.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just, it's just a home goal.

It's just, it's just crazy that a country that's so far away, that wants to attract talent to, you know, to, to, to work and build businesses inside Australia, would go and double the capital gains tax on exit.

When you've got Singapore, that's a, you know, seven and a half hour flight away that has zero capital gains and 10 corporate tax.

What, so what in reality, how much is roughly the capital gains tax then?

So it's, it's based on your bands or whatever.

Yeah, it's based on your income.

So if you're the high, if you're the highest income earner, which is 47 plus 2% for, for healthcare, so 49, then you pay at that rate with a.

It used to be a 50 discount.

So 25ish.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And so now they say, yeah, well, they're talking about doing it here and you.

That we'd be preaching to the converted, each of us.

But it's just so hard to explain to someone that people say, well, it's not fair because they're earning.

They pay less tax than I do on my income.

It's like one, they pay the same tax on the income.

But I find rule of thumb as a tax advisor for 25 years is that people will pay up to 50% on their income, maximum after that.

They just think, that's not fair.

You're taking more than half my money.

And they will pay up to about 20% on capital gains.

And if you tax them more than that, they don't.

The thing is, you don't have to sell it.

That's that, that's the bit everyone misses.

If I own something, I don't have to sell it.

You know, and if you're suddenly saying, and you give, if you give an example to someone, they seem to understand that you say, okay, let's say you own something and it was worth a hundred grand, but would you sell it?

If I'm going to take half of it away from you in tax and there's something, oh, no, I wouldn't, I'd rent it out.

You know, I have a second property or I borrow against it or I do something else and it's like, exactly.

For whatever reason, it will just stall everything.

But entrepreneurs are more extreme case because most of the ones I know just sweat bollocks and don't earn much money, you know, exit.

I didn't earn an income for many years.

You know, like when we started employment Hero, we were bootstrapped for, for three years.

Like, we didn't, we didn't take salaries.

Like, you probably didn't see your kids.

It's like, my kids, I worked, you know.

Yeah, it's just, it's, it's a tough gig.

It's not the same as employment.

You know, back to you said about that being in business is like living on the prairie, being in the jungle.

Well, yeah, it's, it's not the same as.

That was the analogy my dad gave me when I started my business.

He's like, if you're employed, it's like being an animal in the zoo where someone cleans your cage, they drop in your food every day.

You know, you get, you have to sit there and behave yourself.

But if you do what you're supposed to do, you're going to get fed and watered and cleaned and.

Yeah, no responsibility.

No responsibility.

That's not the same as taking.

Starting a business which, what, 80% failure rate.

Oh, higher.

It must be.

You know, I think it's like 1 in 20 or whatever.

But yeah, you know, like the chances of getting a successful exit that is better than being employed.

Minuscule.

So why shouldn't you be rewarded for that?

Taking that risk, employing people.

I employed 16, 50 people today.

That's amazing.

Like, it wouldn't.

It wouldn't exist if we didn't take that risk.

But, you know, risk taking is the other thing that then gets misconstrued too, is.

And Dodger who had on the podcast, he's an amazing guy, but he was talking about it being an extreme sport is the other thing.

Then they're, oh, it's not fair or something.

Look, starting businesses are for the risk takers and there aren't.

They aren't for everyone.

You know, there's only.

I had this great analogy about the bees, which is with bees, apparently 90 of bees will follow all the other bees and they go to the food and they get the food and then come back to the hive and happy days.

There are 5 to 10% of the bees who are nuts.

Some of them go off methodically.

Some of them are like crazy running around and they find the new food source.

And you need these 5, 10 of bees or they all die, basically.

And I think.

I think it's exactly what neurodiverse is in humans.

It's just there's five December people who are a bit bonkers, who take risks and da, da, da, da, da.

And I like you, I'm sure I've seen.

Because people see the good side.

They see the bit.

They want to be envious.

Oh, and Elon's got all this money and he's a bastard and all this, you know, stuff.

And he does say some probably pretty unhelpful things on social media for him.

But anyway, that aside.

But, you know, they seal that.

But they don't see all the people I see as an advisor who lose their kids because they fall out of their marriage and they get blamed or lose their house.

And this happens.

I mean, it really does happen.

People, by the way, people lose a fortune.

They lose everything.

And I've seen clients say, when it's been really bad, and I'll be like, oh, man, I'm so sorry.

And they'll be like, oh, it's only money, Andy.

I'll start again, you know.

Yeah, those type of people will start again.

I'LL start again if I lost everything.

We, we.

Yeah, just do it.

But so they've, so they've, you know, having, having the benefit of running a business that, you know, that's global and understanding like the different that you can and, and having employees that are all mobile, like remote work.

We've got people that live all over the world because so long as you're online during the hours that your client facing, then you live where you want.

That level of mobility, you start to double capital gains tax.

People will move.

Yes.

People will find reasons to start their business somewhere else.

Now, the government doesn't believe it.

They just really don't believe that will ever happen.

They think that we're captives, that they can do what they want with tax and founders will just, I think, I.

Think governments, they don't.

In this country because none of the people I speak to, they just, they think, they think you could.

Yeah, exactly.

They don't think people are legal.

They think we can fix these things in the uk.

They think you can do a wealth tax tax here.

Now, I'm not against a wealth tax globally for those billionaires out there who aren't American.

45 Of billionaires are American and they will always pay tax in America.

And yes, they have lower tax in America, but trust me, they've got plenty of tax in America.

So, you know, those people are always going to be taxed somewhere.

But the other 55 of billionaires, you know, if you came for a meeting with me, it'd be like, well, you know, you can carry on living here.

You know, how do I pay less tax?

Which is a question everybody asks whatever walk of life they come from, poor, poor, rich, and you say, well, you could just live here.

You can live in three different countries and stop being resident here and you'll save 100 million a year in tax.

They're like, well, it's, you know, what do you do?

You don't have to do it.

But the government, I don't.

People just don't understand these are global problems.

So you could conceivably look at some sort of global wealth tax to just try and fix some of this issue going on, that there are huge pots of money.

But wealth tax, I think it's actually, I know it's really hard to capture, but I think it's, it's actually the corporate tax, you know, like if, if the value accretes to a handful of businesses like Google, OpenAI and Thrive, SpaceX,.

Hit them hard, kick them hard.

Like that's if they're the ones that are getting all of the, the value and good on them for building things that people need.

But if, you know, if they're, if.

That, how would you feel about that?

You, you're sort of ending up one of those companies and suddenly we say to your corporate taxes at 40%, I mean that you, you're trying, you're still growing and stuff, isn't it?

Yeah, we're profitable but I guess that's capital gains, isn't it?

But it, I don't know, it's like there's always a complaint that Google doesn't pay enough tax in Australia.

They, they, you know, they, they move their profits to the, to Ireland to the lowest taxing regime that they can find.

So if you can chase that down and actually collect a reasonable corporate tax that can be distributed, there's a hell.

Of a lot of law without boring people about.

It's called BEPS based erosion of profits.

And you know there's loads of stuff there pushing that, pushing that back.

But the transfer pricing, yeah, it's all trash, it's all there.

But the thing is intellectual property is very valuable.

You know, easy are examples of like Starbucks.

You know, I still remember the interview in Britain with the guy going like sorry, you don't make any, really any profit in the UK and he's like I buy my Starbucks every day and it costs me, me £5 and it must cost you 10p to make it.

Like where are your profits?

But the thing is you go into Starbucks because it's Starbucks.

You don't go in because it's any good.

You go in because of the brand.

You go.

And so the brand, wherever the brand sits is very valuable.

So you can sort of charge the shit out of the UK because the truth is you didn't go to Starbucks because the products are good.

I mean, I'm sorry Starbucks but they're not amazing.

But anyway we'll get into sort of boring tax there.

But the very simple thing is it's not a national game.

These problems are not national problems and it's a self armed bullet in the foot.

If you go and just jack these taxes up and hope that it's going to be all right.

Well and then where they're landing in Australia with this capital gains tax to placate everybody, they've said well we won't, we'll leave the capital gains where it is, up to $10 million of turnover.

So now you've got a business owner who is doing really well and then they're faced with and they double their, double their capital gain.

So you've created an incentive to minimize this.

They won't get more money.

The truth is they won't get more money.

I saw a headline that the UK increased capital gains and the revenue went down.

Yeah, yeah, it has gone down.

It's spot on.

They put it up to 24 of the revenue.

It always does laugh for a curve.

I mean, that's within reason, but you know, you get the opposite.

And that is again, a bit like the employment thing.

These are counterintuitive things.

I mean, that's what I'm trying to, trying to explain through the medium of rap and rebel account.

But it's like, it's not a zero sum game or it's, you know, it is counterintuitive taxes going up.

The highest ever corporate tax receipts in this country was when our corporate tax rate was the lowest at 19.

You know, it's, it's, it's.

And they get so wound up about inheritance tax and.

Are you guys there?

Does Australia have inheritance tax?

I can't remember.

No.

Oh, God, no, no, no, no.

That they, they snuck it in into this budget and that's why people lost their.

Right.

One of the many reasons that people.

Here, they're like, it needs to go up, it's not fair.

And it's like, first of all, again, only like 30 countries in the world have inheritance tax.

And they're like, well, everyone in Europe does.

And it's like, yeah, well, quite a few European countries, but trust me, a lot don't.

So, you know, again, I mean, a complicated issue, but I mean, where do you think is the best place in the world to build right now?

Do you have a guess?

Look, putting lifestyle aside, if it's just looking at tax law, then Singapore.

Absolutely Singapore.

Smashing.

Zero capital gains tax.

10 Corporate tax, you know, income tax, I think is.

And it's on fire.

Yeah, it's absolutely smoking.

And my thing that I, because someone says, well, low tax never work in the uk, I was like, what example is this?

Like, well, Singapore.

And by the way, that's not a stupid example.

That's our system.

That is a British system with low tax.

Yeah, yeah, but as in, it's our legal system.

It's like he took our.

And ran with it, you know, and he's absolutely killed it.

Like, look at it, they're absolutely killing it.

And then you've got people.

But then does it all come down to politics?

Is it all this game of envy, you know, that we can win votes, we can stay in power.

If, if we get them fighting amongst each other and we throw a big.

Simple solution, it's the immigrants and the rich.

And, you know, as I've been joking in this song recently, you know, God help you if you're an immigrant rich, because it's like you're.

You're like, oh, you're like, you're actually the people we want.

I mean, our lovely neighbor over the road, he's worth a few quid, used to work in Apple and stuff.

And I mean, they're starting to talk about exit taxes again.

And they started talking about them a couple of years ago and he came to see me and he's like, he's Canadian.

He's like, I'm out, you know, I've got to get out.

You know, the moment you introduce an exit tax, which is you're trying to tax people on the asset so they don't leave because we're going to turn the taxes up here and then close the doors, it's like, think about that.

I mean, you have lost the argument of being an attractive place to come.

Yeah.

You might be able to keep some of them.

No one's gonna turn up anymore, are they?

And.

And you've lost the argument.

I mean, it's a bit like saying, I want to create an invite.

You know, I'm.

I'm gonna hold a party and, you know, and I'm going to keep them there by locking the doors or something.

I don't know.

I need to come up with a good analogy for it.

But it's like the moment you're.

It'd be like your staff, like you're trying to lock them in, you know, and then it's not going to work, is it?

You know.

Okay, well, I would agree.

Singapore, I mean, Arnold was doing a great job.

They were smashing it.

Exactly.

They've had a bad year or something.

Someone was saying to me, but again, low tax, they've gone for it.

Get anything out of Brexit because rebate on R D?

Well, no, it starts at 35, but it can get all the way up.

Like you can get other ones it the uk.

So now they're like, you're, you know, if you're American and you're trying to come over, you go to Ireland, you know, it's.

Ireland's killing it.

Like they're really like, smart.

Yeah.

Singapore, Ireland, Estonia, a little bit.

But yeah.

But anyway, we're naming the low tax places.

And that's why the irony is too, for the uk and Australia's got A lot of this too is, it's like there's a lot going for it, you know, common law, good entrepreneurial societies, whatever.

So all if you do that, they'll come back, they'll come back from Dubai and everywhere.

Well, they feel like we're just having a giant whinge but.

Yeah, well we are.

But the, the other thing, the, the counter side of this is that government spending just keeps going up.

So you know, we've got 10% of Australians work for a government.

Wow.

Highest it's ever been.

More people working in government jobs than ever.

So they keep pushing up taxes on entrepreneurs.

You know Andrew Craig, who's a great friend of their, Sharon, an amazing economist and thinker but he did this great analysis.

He calculated the USA when it was the ussr.

There's estimates on the size of the black economy which was enormous.

So you could take that as the capitalist economy.

And how big is the government?

How big is capital?

The British government economy is now bigger than the USSR state was.

I, you know, we're basically.

That's hilarious.

But we're.

Australia and Britain are very matched on this, isn't it?

So I think you're right.

It's the politics, it's this narrative.

Yeah.

Blame the rich.

Blame the rich, it's their fault.

Blame the.

Employ more people in the public sector, they're going to vote for us, tax people more.

Get them hating the rich people.

Like it's all politics.

So.

Yeah.

So you, you are completely remote.

So did you have it.

You had offices and you had officers.

So again we had 122 people.

Yep.

120.

Yep.

When you all moved home.

Yep.

So we had a person come back from somewhere with COVID and.

1650.

1650.

Yeah.

So we've grown quick but like because most people weren't here, everyone's really been remote first from, from the get go.

Do you not?

There's nothing you miss about an office or being together or.

There's nothing I miss because you know, I like, I've got a nice house, I've got, you know, family and kids and you know, live near the beach.

So I am happy as Larry.

I do feel for young people.

I met my wife at work, most of my friends met their wives at work.

My son off went in, we were running through the AI training.

He came to me after about four weeks and legitimately said that I don't know if I can do this.

I'm stuck in my bedroom working from my flat.

I like the social side.

And now he's gone off and he's working somewhere else and in an office and he's like, I love the social part.

So I think if.

If I was, you know, a grad, 20 to 20 to 25, I think that's really important to offer that.

I think there's ways to do it.

I've.

I've.

I may have even said it last time I was here.

I've got this.

This idea.

I just haven't had the time to do it.

But I've got this idea for a.

A social app where if you work remotely, you can put your rough location and you wouldn't give away your address, but a rough location, then all the people who are working remotely within 5 kilometer radius of that, you can say, hey, I'm looking to meet up with people and work from a cafe, like anyone else interested.

And then you can create like a social hub.

That's nice.

I'm looking for some sex.

Yeah, yeah, we would.

So we had a.

We had an app called Swag sw. Yeah, yeah.

Which we retired for.

I won't bore you with all the reasons, but Phil, who we were talking about before, I said, oh, I've got this idea for like a social app.

It is like shag.

We were just doing it on this.

There's this VAT case yesterday we were doing anyway that they were trying to work out what the dominant supply of a matchmaking organization that offered consultancy.

It was like sex.

I mean, it's not complicated, it's not consultant.

Also, like the.

You have a absolute duty now to, like, not.

Not sexually harass.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's where everyone met their partners.

So true.

Yeah.

It's like, go.

Go and look at anyone over the age of 40 and where they met their partner.

Yeah, it was in the office.

Like.

Like it wasn't sexual harassment, it was flirting, which is perfectly fine.

Yeah, but they tried.

They're trying to kill flirting in the office.

Like, no wonder the population's declining.

Yeah, I said it wrong because it's the legal language.

It's like, we have to make all efforts to stop any kind of fraternization effectively.

Yeah.

So what's the point of being in the office if you can't flirt?

No, but I wouldn't.

But.

Yeah, yeah, quite so true.

So there is, like.

But for Development for so more just that people have a social aspect that they can meet together because there is this Covid generation.

It is a bit of a problem, don't you think?

You know, they're sort of struggling a little more with the interactions.

Yeah, definitely.

We find it harder.

You know, we were just talking about it this morning.

Like, we're like, we're trying to get them to go to events, to go network, to get business and stuff.

And we used to all do that, but it was free alcohol and like, you know, something to do or.

I don't.

I don't know why we used to do it, but you try and get them.

It's like Tumbleweed, you know.

Really?

Yeah.

And then interesting.

Another really interesting happened at our winter party.

We have this.

We pay a fortune for the band because obviously I like my music.

So every time they shut, you know, I don't want some band turning up.

We're gonna have a band.

Let's have a band with the horn section.

You know, they cost a fortune, the really good bands anyway.

And all the old people dance, like none.

No one young danced like at all.

And they're playing like the best, like funkiest with music and everything.

And I was like, like, oh, my gosh.

Because these young people, they've.

They're embarrassed to do.

We ask them a bit after and they're a bit like, well, you know, we haven't feel embarrassed to dance.

And it's like, oh, man, they've killed dancing, you know, So I don't know if we're going to do that again.

Well, we do the global gathering.

So what we like, the balance we've got is you're remote from remote 51 weeks a year.

And then we fly everybody in the world to a global gathering.

Wow, that was a fortune.

And then we spend a fortune on good bands and.

And everyone parties for a week.

Wow.

Yeah.

And where did you.

This is where you said you feel like you've become a cult leader or something.

It's like, how many people were there?

So much fun.

Last year we had it in dubai.

This year we're having it in the Gold coast.

1400 People there.

Wow.

Yeah.

In the Gold Coast.

It's going to be interesting.

Well, it's always so nice to see you, Ben.

I think, as you say, we're just having it.

We're having a rant about all the things agree about.

But we're right.

We're right.

Exactly.

They'll Catch up.

They'll all catch up eventually.

Yeah, we're not against employment.

Like, we're all for business.

We actually want more jobs.

We, you know, want people to be happy.

Okay, so we're going to play business or.

Or.

Or I'll name some things.

You tell me whether you think they're business or.

And we'll go from there and we may discuss.

Okay, so number one, we're like a family.

Who's we?

I don't know.

Okay.

When a business says, oh, we're like a family, do you say, come join our family?

I would say for small businesses, it's business.

I've always said, like, sorry, this is probably supposed to be quick fire.

No, no, no, you can take your time.

Okay.

This is one of the things that I believe strongly about advantages of a small business versus a large corporate.

If you work for a while, you're the size of a business where you can remember everybody's name.

You can be like a family, you know, the, you know, the people who you work with, you know their partner's names, you know, their pets names.

You.

You literally can be like a family.

Families have breakups, families have fights.

But, you know, you still can be very supportive and, and you have a relationship and you care.

It's true.

You care about them.

Yeah.

You really care about everyone there.

Once you get to the size where you don't know everybody's name because there's just too many people, which is probably about slightly more than 50, you.

It's.

It's no longer a family, you know, and so I think, I think.

And that's it.

You can get a lot out of people at the small size.

Like, you go through these.

As you scale a business, you get to about 25 people, and you actually see a reduction in productivity because you lose that.

That relationship side to.

To just like all hands on deck.

Let's just do what we have to do to get shit done.

As soon as you get past that and it's like everyone's got a role and we're going to communicate through writing and those types of things.

Productivity drops off.

Is there a next level?

That.

It gets like.

I think you sort of.

I think there's like up to 25 is family.

From 25 to 100 or so is.

Is kind of.

It can still work.

It's.

But.

But then once you sort of pass that 500 mark, it becomes.

It becomes different.

One of my triggers, I always hear on the radio that one of the narratives that again, I think feeds this distrust is that companies only are only trying to maximize shareholder value.

That's what they always say on the radio.

And it's talking about, I guess, listed companies and what exactly what you're saying.

I get so frustrated because all the SMEs I. I work for, I can give a.

About the shareholders.

I mean, that's a bit unfair.

But they care about their staff and they care about the problem they're solving.

Yeah.

And that, you know, sometimes, I mean, when I say they couldn't give their.

About the shelter, sometimes you'll talk about the captain.

I have no idea who these people are.

They're all a bunch of bastards.

I can.

You know them, you know, I mean,.

That's classic Peter Drucker going back to the 60s and 70s, you know, like he said in business, you know, it's all about shareholder value.

Oh, is that where it comes from?

They repeat it on Radio 4 every week.

It's like.

Yeah, they do.

They go like, oh, you know.

Oh, of course.

Well, companies are here to maximize shareholder value.

And I'm just like, ah, like, stop saying that.

Like it.

Because that's what made me think.

Yeah, that's all times water came out of.

I mean, Peter Drucker.

Who is Peter Drucker?

Peter Drucker was like the world's best sort of consultant, management academic.

Oh, God.

He.

No, he wrote really good, good stuff.

I mean, you boy anyone else to tears.

But.

Yeah, he had some like from first principles.

He was good.

Yeah, yeah, but he did.

But it's when you simple it down to economics, isn't it?

It's like it's all just levers and try and it just takes out the human element.

It's like.

No, it's a fan.

It's like a whole bunch of people who know each other really well.

And then.

Because I've seen.

I've seen it quite a lot too, over my.

In my years, you know, I've seen bosses like, not cannot pay themselves, so they make sure their staff get payroll, you know, and they're like it.

And they'll take all these.

I know one at the moment in Manchester, amazing guy.

And the personal debt he's put on himself and everything just to try and look after his team, you know.

Okay, business or unlimited holiday.

Oh, you're on the.

Yeah, yeah.

I think there's got to be some limits.

I mean like idea.

Very idealistically.

You never tried it.

Unlimited holiday for everyone.

Yeah, no, I mean like all regions provide sufficient.

You know, do you Think they take, they take, they take the piss.

We're working from home.

And because people always say, well, people take too little holidays.

The problem.

Well, that's because the UK's got a different.

So there's.

It depends on the law.

Right.

So in Australia, you, you accumulate, you leave, even if you don't take it.