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Five years ago, we did basically lose everything. We went through 11 rounds of IVF. We had a goal with this company to grow it to $10 million and then sell. My business partner, he came to me one day, he goes, "I wanna grow this to $100 million." Just to go to 100 million, that's a different level. I've gone from paying IVF to salary sacrificing to a company, and now I'm paying lawyers. We went down the path of setting up this self-managed super. There was a fund, and it was averaging a 15% return, and we felt really relieved for the first time in years. I came home one day, and I walk in the door, and my wife's just like, "It's all gone." There's people out there, their business is burning, their relationship is failing. You have to step back, take a breath, take stock, look after yourself. Tomorrow can be a brand new day Welcome to The Business Game, the show that breaks business down into real levels from zero to over $50 billion so founders can see exactly where they are and what comes next. Today's guest is playing at level two, which sits in the $1 to $3 million bracket, the early builder stage. At this level, you've proven the model works. Revenue is coming in, but now you're hiring your first team, installing your first systems, and trying to stabilize delivery. The challenges? Letting go of control, managing people for the first time, and moving from chaos to consistency. The goal? Stop doing everything yourself and build a machine that runs with structure, not stress Welcome to The Business Game. I'm Steve Plummer. And I'm Kalina Stenno. Be sure to like or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. Today we're joined by Gary Capps, playing at level two, the builder stage. Gary is the founder of My CRM Sim, a platform born from a problem he was trying to solve inside his own agency. What started as an internal solution to costly SMS messaging and compliance challenges quickly became a scalable product for other agencies facing the same issues. Now generating up to $3 million in revenue, Gary is focused on optimizing processes, improving efficiency, and building the systems needed to scale predictably. Today, we're diving into his journey of turning an operational headache into a scalable business, and what it really takes to keep moving forward when the problems never stop. Let's dive in with Gary Capps. Welcome, Gary. Yeah. Gary, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much. Thank you for having me. All right. Um, you have a very fascinating story, including some financial struggles that we'll get to, um, that you've come out of very quickly. So firstly, to kick things off, though, tell us about what you do and about what help that is for agencies in the marketplace right now. Yeah. So in a nutshell, what we did, we made a system so that people who are sending text messages through, uh, CRM, and we started with HighLevel- Yep uh, which is a particular CRM. Uh, we made it so that they could connect their mobile devices and send text messages through their mobile phones instead of using like cloud solutions, Twilio and Lead Connector and so forth, which were quite expensive. Right. Yeah. A- and so why was that a problem, though? So the problem is the, the cost, or the... That's where it started for us. It was the cost- Right of text messaging in Australia. Yes. So what, what a lot of people don't realize is that when you send a text message through these CRM systems, they're connected to, like, these cloud services. So Twilio's the big one- Yeah effectively, and then it costs you for every text message you send, and people don't realize that when it's like a CRM 'cause we have these phone plans where you pay, you know, 10, 15, $20 a month, whatever, for your, for your phone plan, and you just send as many text messages as you want. You're not being charged for every text. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That becomes very expensive when you're being charged per text message and you're doing that as an agency for clients. Yeah. They get these hefty bills. Right. We wanted to solve that problem. And were you getting pushback in the marketplace over the bill? Basically, yeah. So what we did, without getting too detailed on it- Yeah like, we, we would sell a solution to a client, so they were using our, our CRM, and we would include a certain number of credits in that for their text messaging. And then they might go over it, and then they would get this little bill for like, you know, $10, $15, whatever it might be. Mm. And I, I just started having these conversations with clients. They'd ring up and they go, "Well, I just got another $10 bill. We pay you this per month. What, what's the-" Yeah, yeah. And you go, "Do you remember the conversation we had about the credits, and if you use more you'll pay more?" And I could have, like, half-hour, hour-long conversations about a $10 bill. Yeah. I'd just... "Oh, my God." "I can't stop this." Yeah. Okay, and, and so to be clear, it... The, the 160 characters per... 'Cause someone who's written lots and lots of SMSs- from a marketing context, right? Yep. 160 characters, it's very restrictive. You don't solve that problem. That doesn't change, does it? Uh, yes, it does. It does? Okay. It does, because, I mean, I wasn't gonna get into that depth of it, but- Yeah the 160 characters is a text message, so it's, it's a segment. Yes. Mm. And what people don't realize is even when they send out text messages through these CRM systems, if they write 200 characters, it goes as, like, one block, but that's actually two segments. Mm. They'll get charged twice. Twice. Yeah. Yeah. So it does solve that problem because you don't get charged per segment with a, with a mobile device, and you can send as many segments as you want. Like emojis, you know, like thumbs up- Yeah little hearts, whatever- Yeah fist bumps, to put some emotion in, in your text writing. They actually cost even more. So when you've got emojis, one emoji could be 10, 20, 30 characters. Yeah, wow. And people don't realize- Right. Yeah that they're actually spending a lot. Mm. But it does solve all that 'cause you can send as many texts as you want with emojis, fist bumps, hearts, whatever. Yeah. And then you're not being charged per segment, so it's- Yeah, right it's fixed cost text messaging, basically. Because a space is a character, right? Yes. Absolutely. So- It all counts any, any, um, punctuation or whatever. Anything, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, that's really interesting, right? And that pricks my ears up as someone who's in marketing. Yeah. So, um... And why is it, do you think, that no one had done that yet? Yeah, yeah. 'Cause it seems pretty straightforward. There were some other people that, that were trying to do it. Okay. They were not doing a good job of it. Yeah. We'd tried some other solutions, and they were- Okay very, very poor. They didn't work well. Okay. They also had very, very poor support. Mm. Right. Um, and I was just like, "Look, we need one that, like, A, it's gotta work." Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's gotta be reliable for us. Yeah, yeah. Right? So we needed something that was reliable, and the other systems weren't, so we made one that was reliable. And then I wanted to make something that worked for agencies well, 'cause, like, I knew all the problems. Like, I was going through all this and building it. Yeah. I was like how do we do this and then sort of scale it and make a good solution and provide really good support to people? Mm. Because, you know- SaaS solutions or whatever, or technical platforms, you've gotta be able to use them easily. Yes. Yeah, that's the- And that's what I was gonna do and offer good support for people. That's the key. So- Yeah, absolutely that's what, that's what we set out to do. I- i- it's a beautiful, typical entrepreneurial story. There's a problem. Mm. Entrepreneur solves the problem at a profit. Yes. And so- Yeah it's just, it's, yeah, it, it's, it's really good. So let's dive into that a little bit more then, Gary. So take us back to where it all began for you. So before MyCRSM, SIM, CRM rather, SIM existed, um, you were running an agency, experiencing the problem. What did your business look like way back then? Uh, so way back then we were doing, uh, we were trying to scale out of like traditional agency. So we had, uh, like for years I'd been working in, um, digital marketing. So SEO predominantly- Yeah was like my main thing. Yeah. Um, but you know, we did paid ads, meta ads, built websites. Um, and that's got like l- It's got a ceiling, right? Yeah. It's headcount. It's an hours job. Yes. Mm. So it's like pay per hour. And I was trying to find a way that we could kind of scale out of that, 'cause effectively, like, I was mostly working really as a consultant with, you know, some team members on the side, but I was like the head of everything, everything went, went through me. I was like, "How do we scale out of this," right? Yeah. Um, so that we then found High Level, um, which is an amazing platform, and we started using that and building things for clients and tools, and we're trying to build systems there. And then we started doing a lot of database reactivations for clients. Yeah. And then that's where the problem kind of hit us, where it's like, okay, we wanna do these text message campaigns for clients. Yeah. All right, well, now we've got the cost. That was an issue. There's also issues around, like, regulation. Yeah. So you have these things here called reg bundles where you've got to go to the company, say, "Oh, can you just give me some proof that, you know, your company name, your, your address of business- Mm so that you can get the number registered?" All that stuff takes time, so it was delays in time, there was cost. Yeah. Uh, there's A2P in the US as well, which is even more strict, so any people in the US are trying to get these numbers, they've gotta go through this A2P regulation stuff. Yeah. Um, so all these barriers basically that just caused us problems- Mm we wanted to resolve. Mm. Yeah, right. Speaking of problems, before we jumped on air, I think this is a really interesting... You're probably knowing it Yeah, yeah. You mentioned that you had lost everything and that you had to rebuild- Yeah from scratch five years ago. You had nothing, I think is what you said. Let's go there. Let's go there. Yeah I think we need to take the conversation that way. Yeah. Well, it's, it's like the, the journey of the entrepreneur, right? Yes. Yeah. And also, like, things can change in a heartbeat. I mean, it wasn't a heartbeat for us, it was a couple of years of, of changing things. Yeah. But, like, our journey, like five years ago, we did basically lose everything, right? Yeah. Was that when you were in the SEO doing the, the agency work? Yeah. Okay. So, like, I guess going back, we'd... Like, I've been working for myself in sort of digital, like predominantly, like, as a consultant. We, we made pretty reasonable money, me and my wife. She was doing her own thing as well. She made pretty good money, and, uh, but kind of to take it back, like, where this all started, I guess, like me and my wife got married, and then we wanted to start a family, so you know, and having kids. Um, but that wasn't an easy journey for us, right? Mm. So we had 10 years of trying to have a child. Wow. And it was like five years of trying naturally and natural remedies and stuff. That didn't work. And then five years of IVF, and we went through 11 rounds of IVF- Wow. Wow before we got our son that we have now. Yeah. So that 10 years was like, that's pretty traumatic, and then the finances of, like, running IVF for five years, there's no budget on that, right? Yeah. That's expensive. Yeah. Yeah. It's very expensive. Yeah. Uh, we ended up doing IVF actually overseas in Spain 'cause they had different technologies there and stuff. Oh, wow. Like, that's a whole other story of why we ended up there. Yeah. But then that was very expensive 'cause it was more expensive than in Australia Also the cost of going there- Yes. Yes the travel, the time out. Yeah. So, uh, I guess kind of where I'm coming with this anyway is that, like, we were, we were making some decent money, but everything was going out, like, all the time. Yeah. 'Cause, like, rounds were like, yeah, it just kept going out. Yeah. So we were basically just sort of pay off one round, okay, we're onto the next round 'cause- Yeah like I said, there, there's no budget for that. Yeah. Yes. So it's like what are we gonna do? We can try and get there or, or what? Yeah. And emotionally, like, the hardest time I've ever been through- Yeah I would say. Like, such a struggle. Like, really, really hard to go through that. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're... Like, as the guy, you... Like, our, our thing is we wanna fix everything. Mm. Here's a problem, I wanna fix it. Yeah. Yes. Can't just fix it. Yeah. And then it's emotionally devastating for both of you. Mm. So, but, like, I'm emotionally devastated after every round that doesn't work. It gets worse and worse. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to support your wife 'cause she's emotionally devastated, but, like, you're not in a good place either. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a problem. So we, we went through all that. We were successful in the end. We, we have our little boy now, Finn, who's eight, who's awesome. Um, and then towards the end of that- journey, I, I ended up in a, in a partnership with someone in another business. We basically had a goal for that business, which was... He, he'd already started it. I joined it and, and bought into the business, basically. Yeah. Um, which meant my, my buying in was me salary sacrificing. Yeah. So I got paid a bit less, and my money was going in. Yeah. So we, we're coming out of this time of not really having any money. Well, we've, we've kind of got through. We're paying everything. The lights are still on, but yeah. The lights are still on, but we, we don't have any savings or anything. And that was during COVID too, right? This was a little bit before COVID. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. COVID actually worked out really well for us. Oh, that's good. Okay. Yeah. Right. Like crazily. Yeah. Um, so this was a couple of years before COVID. Okay. So then I joined this other company, and salary sacrificing. So again, we're, we're paying the bills, but we're not really saving anything. Mm-hmm. So we don't have a lot of backup in there. And we had a goal with this company to, to grow it to $10 million and then sell. Yeah. That was the, the goal. Yeah. And the plan for that was to do that in three years, and we w- we were, we were off track, right? Everyone's got a business plan, looks amazing on paper. Mm. Doesn't always work out. So we were two and a half years in. We could see that we were on track to actually get there in about four. Mm. Which was still pretty good. Yeah. But then my business partner, he, he came to me one day. He goes, "I wanna grow this to $100 million. Are you, are you in for that?" And I went, "No." I was like, "I'm not." And I mean, I was working my butt off- Mm at the time in this company. I was- That's right. You would've seen there's no capacity to go to 100 million, right? I'm, we're tapped out as it is. Well, we're tapped out, but also, like, just to go to 100 million- Yeah is, like, that's, that's a different level. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Even to go to 10, that's a big stretch. Yeah, yeah. Mm. Right? To 100 million, like, that's a whole other game. How, where, like yeah. Yeah. And I was just like, "I'm not in for that. I, I want... We agreed to 10. I wanna tap out." And it changed the dynamic in our relationship- Mm really, really quickly. Yeah. To the point where I, I'm not exactly sure. Like, uh, we haven't spoken since things went bad, basically. Oh, wow. But to the point where he obviously felt like I wasn't aligned anymore. I didn't wanna go, and I, I told him straight up, like, "I'm not in for that." Like- Mm "It's too big a journey, and I don't wanna do it." Yeah, yeah. I had my vision of getting to the 10, selling out. I was gonna get a nice cash payout from that. Yeah. Yeah. Wouldn't be enough to retire on forever, but would've been very nice. Pay off the house, take a year off. Um, and I had this perfect vision for it. Yeah. That that was gonna happen. My son would've been three by the time we'd have got there. Okay. Just before he starts school. So I have this perfect vision of, like, we're gonna tap out, son'll be three. Out of the terrible twos, right? So life is Life's better- Life is starting to calm down then. Life calms down. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. We could go, we could take a year off. We could travel, do all that stuff- Yeah before he starts school, have time as a family, 'cause we'd been through this- Yeah this big journey anyway- Yeah of IVF. The work was very hard, you know? Mm. As in a lot of, putting a lot of effort in that. You know, we've got a baby and so forth, right? At, at that time we had a baby, so he was, like, six months old at that time. Yeah. So I've got my, my plan, like my vision is in my head of where I'm going. Yeah. And then that all fell apart, and he didn't trust me anymore and he, like, fired me out of the company. At which point I was like, "Well, that's not cool." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was pretty rough. Like, literally he, he fired me out of the company by someone else. So h- hang on. Talk, talk me- Yeah, how did that work? talk me through that. What, so y- you turn up to work one day or you're online and, and w- what does that look like? I got a phone call from an- another guy who was a consultant for us, who we had as like a third party. Yeah. He was vetting some stuff that we were doing. Yeah. And, uh, he rang me. He goes, "I'm just ringing you about the email that you've got." And I thought, "What email?" Mm. 'Cause I'm, I'm working. Yeah. I'm like, "What email?" He goes, "Oh, um, have you not seen it?" And I was like, "No, what are you talking about? I don't... I've, I've not read this email." And it's like, "Basically, your services are no longer required." "You'll be finished up." But hang on, you're a partner in- Yeah, how did that work, like- Leaving contractually? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That was the problem. Oh. So that, that happened basically, and I was, like, cut off. That was, that was near the end of the day and I was cut off. Like, everything was cut off 'cause everything's online. Yeah. Like your, your Gmail- Yeah, yeah, yeah you know, access to everything. Yeah. It's gone in that day. I was devastated 'cause at the same time, there was all these things that I had in place, and I really tried to do the right thing 'cause I was like, "Oh, but this is happening next week. We've got this event." Yeah, yeah. "I need to give you all these things." 'Cause, like, it was my company too and my baby. Yes. Yeah. I was a, I was a partner- You're part of it I was a minor shareholder in it. Yeah. But it was still my vision and my growth. I wanted these things to happen. So I was trying to give everything over and I was like, at that point, a little bit in shock. And I was like, "All right, well, that's happened, so I guess, uh, well, we haven't got to there, but the company is worth this much money, so we should do a valuation of the company. You can pay me out." Yes. And my business partner at that time went, "No." He goes, "You've been paid. You're not getting anything. Don't you, don't you think you've been paid enough?" I was like, "No, I don't actually." Wow. Wow. Like, I've basically been salary sacrificing, this is all recorded, that like, was getting paid a certain amount, but a certain amount was going back to the company. Yeah, yeah. I was like, "No." Like, like, "We should get the company valued, and then you should pay me whatever my shares are worth now." Yeah. Which he basically disagreed with, like completely. He wouldn't agree to getting the company valued, so I said, "All right. Well, I'll do it. I'll pay for it then, and I'll give you the valuation." So I did that. He disagreed with the valuation. Yeah. I said, "Well, but then we need to come to an agreement, so we need to get someone to value it independently." This went on for three years. Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. What a jerk. So three years of like legal and lawyers and stuff going back and forth, back and forth, to the point where... And again, this, this goes back to like the beginning of our journey through the- Yeah IVF and all that, 'cause we don't really have finances. So now I'm back at the point where I've gone from paying IVF to salary sacrificing to a company- Yeah and now I'm paying lawyers. Yeah. And I've, I've gone back to, like doing my digital and I'm trying to sort of build up some work in consulting. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So now it's like- Oh my gosh now I'm paying lawyers instead of IVF or, or- Wow salary sacrificing. So three years of that went on. We were just at the point where it was like, "Okay. Well, we either need to go to court here now- Mm to actually like sue for this. My outcome could be this- Mm but it could be worse." Or, yeah. "I don't have the money to go to court." Yeah. "So if I do that, I have to take equity out of our home." Mm. So now I'm potentially risking our family home to go to court- Gee for something I might or might not win." 'Cause court's like- Yeah. It's, it's a lot. Yeah, it can just- It's a lottery there's no budget for that either. It can just go on and on and on. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what the cost is going into it, like it was hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to court. Wow. Yeah. And at that point, um, they actually sent me a letter and said, "Okay. We will, we will pay you out. We'll give you $100,000," which is way less than what I was owed. Wow. And I was like- Three years of strain and pain, and I thought that's basically what I've spent on legal fees in the last three years Yeah. Yeah. But what's the risk here? I either- Keep fighting keep fighting. Yeah. That could go on for a long time anyway through courts, and I'm risking a lot, or just take that money and just move on with life. So basically we took that money, went to move on with life. So now we've actually got a little nest egg, you know? So we've got $100,000 and we had a little bit of savings as well- Yeah. Yes. Yeah on the side. And we'd always been talking, me and my wife, about like what, what we do if we get some money. We wanna kinda- Mm grow and change things. And one of the things we wanted to do was set up a self-managed super fund, 'cause again, we'd been consulting for, for time. So we didn't have a lot in super. We had, uh, it was about $250,000 basically in super. Yeah. Uh, so we've got that, and now we've got $100,000. So I... All right. Well, let's just start figuring out what we're gonna do. Um, we wanna set up a self-managed super fund. That was one thing we'd always talked about doing. Just never had the head space to do it before, really. Yeah. My wife, um, she'd had a phone call from somebody. They were setting up self-managed supers. "Would you like to speak to someone?" She went, "Yeah, cool. That's something we'd like to do." Spoke some- someone else called her back. We went down the path of setting up this self-managed super. We talked to the company. We kind of vetted them a bit online, had a look at what they did. Uh- And I, I'm, I'm sensing this is not gonna end well. It's not gonna end well. Right? It's not gonna end well. But it looked really good at the time. Yeah, yeah. And it, it was quite an interesting thing, 'cause I spoke to the, let's call him the advisor, financial advisor. Yeah, yeah. Um, Australian guy. He knew a lot about investments, 'cause I'd, I actually had a trading license years ago. Oh, okay. Um, w- we traded for another company, and I knew he knew what he was talking about. And there was a fund, which is a real fund. It's, it's still a real fund. We looked it up. Um, but you needed a minimum of $5 million to invest in this fund. Mm. And it was averaging a 15% return every year. We didn't have $5 million. They explained the way they did it was they take, like, a consortium of people. They put everything together. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Of course, yeah. You know, your piece of the pie in that. Yeah. Um, so we're like, "Okay, look, that seems like a pretty good-" Yeah. Especially at 15%, right? Yeah, that's a good, that's a good return. Yeah, yeah. Normal superannuation funds are what, half that, is that? Yeah. Yeah. So good return, and we spoke to someone else, said, "If we did that with our super, we've got this cash on the side here. Could we put that in as well? And is there any, um, restrictions to that? Or can we get that out when we want? 'Cause we're trying to figure out what we're gonna do, but we're better off parking it there if we can for even three months, six months, 12 months while we work out what we're doing." Yeah. Makes sense, right? Yeah. They're like, "Yeah, yeah, you can do that." But? But so we set all that up, and as well, we had $3,000 on the side for our son as well, like as a little savings to keep him- Yeah, yeah. We said, "Could we put that in there as well, and can we segregate all this money?" They went, "Yeah, yeah, sure. You can do that." Yeah. "Just bear this in mind." So we've got our super- Wow our $100,000 cash, $3,000 for our son. They went, "Yeah, yeah, you can do all that. We'll have it all separate." All got set up, signed off. It's like official, an official super fund, and then we transfer our cash, we transfer our- Yes son's money. Mm. We get logins to a dashboard. You can see the, the account. Um, it's showing a return every day, 'cause it's, it's a daily return for this 15% whatever, and you can actually see your money kinda going. And we're like, "Wow, this is cool." And we felt really relieved for the first time in years- Yeah after that journey- Yeah it's all tick. Yeah, yeah It's like, okay. Yeah. Finally exhale, yeah. We've got a little bit of ground. Yeah, yeah. And, uh- A- and then And then. Yeah. And this was, like, for a month. So we've got this thing, my wife's checking in. It's like, it's all good. And then we wanted to do something with the $100,000. So she's trying to reach this guy and say, "Oh, look, we, we wanna do something with this." And this was when COVID actually started. Oh. Like, COVID was just kinda kicking off at this time. Okay. Yeah. And, uh, he kept coming back with these excuses about, "Oh, my wife is sick," or this or that. Mm. "I can't meet." Oh, no. And I came home one day from, uh, walking our dogs, so been out paddleboarding. We, uh, we had two dogs at the time. I came back and my wife was there, uh, with a friend of ours, and I walk in the door and my wife's just like... I was like, "What's going on?" She goes, "It's all gone." I thought, "What?" She went, "All gone." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "The whole thing, like it's all gone. It was fake." And the whole thing was a complete scam. Wow. Wow. And we got- Wow caught up at this, like I felt like the biggest idiot on earth. Yeah. 'Cause as far as I'm concerned, I forget the guy's name now, I'll call him Tom. As far as I'm concerned, we've been scammed by Tom, right? Yeah. We've just been done over- Yeah by this guy. And we'd looked at it and checked his backstory. They had a proper AMP license number. Yeah, yeah. They'd very cleverly tied this up, and he had this story about how they were previously working with AMP, but they'd taken this department over, set up a subsidiary thing. Yeah. And I'd worked through my digital career with a lot of startups. Mm. So it all made sense- Yeah the, the story that he gave me. When we looked online now about that company, like four weeks later, there was all these things in forums and stuff about, you know, this- Oh scam, this, that, and the other. That hadn't been there 'cause we'd been right at the very start of it. You were right in the middle of it. Yeah, wow. So when we'd looked and vetted, there was nothing about them, and it all looked legit, like a new startup. Wow. His story made sense. And we found out, as this kind of went on, obviously we'd gone to the police and- Yeah a few other things. It was a huge scam. Huge. They, they took money from hundreds of people in Australia. Wow. Like, it was massive. Like, tens- Have, have they been caught? tens of millions of dollars. Wow. It was all run out of Thailand. Wow. Like a big call center. Uh, we, we know the people that are involved. We ended up talking to this PI. There was so much around that. So then we go on a journey of like, "Well, what do we do about that money?" We had this, this private investigator who's specialized in recovering funds from these kind of frauds. He wanted $30,000. He said he knew who they were to track them down. Oh. Oh, dear. You're like, "We're in again." Not again. Three times the charm at this point, like... But, um, my, my wife's friend who was there that day when I'd actually come back in, she was very high up in banking in another company, and she looked at all the documents and stuff that we'd signed, and effectively, like I said, we, we'd kinda handed over our money, like we'd transferred our- Yeah cash over. But to get your money out of super, you have to set up a real super fund, right? It's, it's regulated. Yes. So we had actually set up a super fund. I, I won't say the bank 'cause I don't wanna get in trouble here with them or whatever. But we'd set up a super fund, a real one, a self-managed super fund with a real bank, and our money had been transferred from our other super fand- super fund to this real one, and my wife actually already had an account with that bank as well. What the fraudsters had done is when they give us the paperwork to fill in and sign off to go, "Yeah, we, we're gonna transfer your money from this account to this new self-managed super fund with this account," they'd basically put in a different email address and a phone number from my wife's contact details so that when the money was transferred, they could then access it because they can do- Oh the 2FA off of the number. Yeah, yeah. Wow, yeah, yeah. Now- You know, you guys know, right, when you sign anything like legal, financial- Oh, it's, it, it, yeah like it's, it's like, it's this thick. Yeah You don't read it, you go, "Pff." You're signing a million things- Yeah 'cause you're just trying to get through it. Sign. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. At that time as well, I'm trying to regrow finances- Yeah in the business because of what happened with- Geez my other business partner, so I'm pretty busy, and my wife has been doing it, and this is not her fault in any way- No, no shape or form. Yeah. We had that discussion. She's like, "You blame me for that." I was like, "No." Like, "You did it- Well- but I agreed to everything." Yeah. Like, you know, we both kind of spoke, so it was our decision- Yeah not your fault. Yeah. But a- again, like she came in to me with the paperwork and I was going, "Yep, sign." She signed it. Yeah. That's what you do. We didn't realize that. But our friend who worked for another bank was quite high up, she saw this in the paperwork. She looked, 'cause she looked through it, and she goes, "Ah, this is a big problem because you're already a customer of this bank, and the details that are being supplied for your new account do not match the details on your customer form. If they didn't realize that, they should have picked this up- Mm then that's a big problem for them, for their- They, they're liable they're liable- Yeah, yeah their licensing. Yeah. So we're like, "Okay, a lifeline?" Yes. Yes. Like, let's grab that. So we grab this lifeline, and then we're trying to... We, we're contacting the bank, but I mean, we, we're just going through the service desk or whatever, and we said- Mm like, "We need to speak to someone about this. This is the problem." And we're just hitting the, the gatekeepers, like, "Yep, we'll put your contact across." They won't put you anywhere. You're just hitting the, the service desk, right? So that went on for a few weeks while we're also dealing with this PI who says he knows everyone who's involved. And, and he, he's, has a record of like recovering funds and stuff, but we're talking and we go, "Well, what's the reality of getting the money back?" We're talking to the police. The police don't do anything. Yeah. Like, they're just like, "Well, there's nothing we can do. It's offshore." Yeah. Yeah. "Can't waste the time." Sure. So for a couple of weeks we're kind of just chasing everywhere to see what we can do, and, um, we went away for a weekend, like with, um, my wife and, and my son. And, uh, I didn't know while we were away, my wife went to see a psychic. She didn't tell me this, right? She didn't tell me this at the time. This is the cool part of the story, right? So- Okay, th- this is getting even more interesting. All right. All right. So weird. So she went to see a psychic, and this psychic said to her, "You need to contact the CEO of this bank and, um, you'll get your money back." She's like, "Well, I don't know the CEO. How am I gonna contact them?" Yeah. She goes, "Look, you need to do that and, and this will get resolved." So again, my wife didn't tell me any of this- Yeah at the time, but she's- It's, it's a lifeline too, right? It's- She's a resourceful woman. Yeah. So she came back and she went through LinkedIn, and she looked up everyone she could on LinkedIn who had email addresses at that bank, and then figured out there was, like, four or five combinations of email addresses, so like first name first name.surname Yeah, yeah. Figured out, like, four or five combinations, and then emailed the CEO with the four or five combinations. Yeah. And this was like at 5:00, 6:00 at night or something. She, she didn't tell me. And then two hours later, she got a phone call from second in charge at the bank- Ooh who rang her and said, "We've just received your email. Uh, we're having a meeting with our team tomorrow. We'll get this resolved for you." Wow. Uh, I, I didn't... Like, she's having this call on the side, and then she got off the phone and she's like, "Um-" I think it's gonna get sorted out. I thought, "What?" And then she told me what had happened, like this thing. I was like, "Really?" So the next day we got a phone call from the third in charge at the bank, said, "I'm organizing the meeting with the team now. We're gonna go through, we're gonna go through your case. We'll have this resolved for you this afternoon." Wow. Nice. So we're just sitting there for the day. We're like, "Oh my God." Checking your phone. Are we... What's, you know, ring, ring, ring. Ring, ring. What's gonna happen? Are we gonna, are we gonna get this back? And by the end of that day, we actually got all our super money back. Wow. We, we never got our cash back- Yeah 'cause we'd, we'd effectively handed that over. Yes. We kind of gave it away, right? Yeah. It's our fault, and the lies of the banking. Wow. But at least you got your super back. But we got our super back. Phew. Um, I can never, ever complain about my wife going to see a psychic ever again. It's like my wife loves all that stuff. Typical bloke, probably like you, just like, "Oh, whatever, love." So no more complaints about that. But we got our super back, um, and then we just worked incredibly hard. Um, COVID worked out well for us in a, in a, in a way because everything moved online. Yes. Yeah. So it actually made things a lot easier in terms of digital agencies. Everybody wanted online work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we actually expanded a lot, and that's how we ended up getting a lot of clients in database reactivations, all that kind of stuff. We sold our house. We had a, we had a house in Noosa that we'd always managed to keep hold of while we were paying the mortgage. Yeah. Um, house prices went crazy. Yes. Yeah. Um, so that was very fortunate for us. Like- Mm we were very lucky in that, that house prices went so sky high. We were able to sell a house that we'd built 10 years prior- Oh, right um, in Noosa so, so quickly for cash. That allowed us- Wow to pay that off, and then we, we moved just down the road. We couldn't obviously do the same and rebuild in Noosa, but we moved just down the road to Blaby, which we absolutely love. Built a new amazing home, um, that we, that we pa- built for cash. Yeah. Which was really, really awesome. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Grew one business to allow us to fund this business that we're doing now. Um, and we actually, we also have now have another business. My wife is now running a health retreat, which is probably a whole other story- Yeah um, that came out of something else. Um, and we went from, like I said, that was, that was kind of five years ago where we kind of hit that bottom. Mm. But one of the things in that as well was that- When all that happened on that day, like I came back and my, like my wife's in bits, right? Honestly. And like, so it was, I was like, "Oh my God," like we've just gone through all this- Yeah, yeah and like now this. And at that time my son was three, four, somewhere around that range. Uh, he's obviously got no idea what's going on. No, they don't. Right? And I, I'll, I always feel this, 'cause like I don't get stressed anymore, because we went through so much stress, right? It's, it's put the threshold... It put the threshold so high. And the day that that happened, I came home, whatever we did, I, I forget the, the blur of the morning, but I took my son and we went and sat down by the river at Noosa. And he's happy as, right? He's not like any of this is going on. Yeah. And he was just running around on the rocks, having a good time by the water. And I just sat down there. I always remember this, 'cause like I'd just taken an apple down, like cut up an apple, and was sitting there sharing an apple with him. The sun was shining, and I was alive. He was having a good time. My wife was at home, devastated, but alive. Yeah. Mm. We're both healthy. We had a roof over our head. We did have income coming in, so we weren't... Yeah, we didn't have nothing as in like, like- Not like destitute, yeah destitute. Yeah. We'd just kind of lost everything, though. And I just remember sitting there just looking at him running around going, "That's all right. We'll just, we'll figure this out." Yeah. And the struggle that we'd been through for like the, the 10, 12 years of- Mm of the IVF journeys, the building one business, the legal fees. Yeah. And then to this, I was like, "Ah, God, we'll, we'll just sort this out." Yeah. And I was... I wouldn't say I was over it, over it, but I didn't stress about it in the same way I did all the other things. Like I had so many- Yeah sleepless nights and problems and troubles- Yeah and- Yeah. So Garrett, what did you learn about yourself- Yeah through that journey? Resilience. Mm. Huge amount of resilience. Also being able to step back and just go, "All right, well, this is what's happening now." Now is not tomorrow Yeah Like, tomorrow can be completely different. Yeah Like, I, I really see that now, as in whatever's going wrong, and, and I hope people who watch this will listen to this. Like, there's, there's people out there, their business is burning, their relationship- Yeah is failing. Yeah There's all these problems. You have to step back. Like, you gotta be able to sit back and just go, "All right, take a breath. Take stock." Mm. "Look after yourself as well," is really important, and then tomorrow can be a brand-new day, 'cause our, our life changed in the next two years- Yeah so much that we, like I said, now we, we built a home for cash. We don't have a mortgage anymore. We have two seven-figure businesses that we're running. Great family. Yeah My son is amazing. It j- it just changed so much for us. Yeah. It, it- Yeah, wow it's one heck of a story. It is. Like, I- I was- I'm exhausted we went there, but- Yeah, yeah. like, that was big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that, I mean, it's, it's easy to say, "Step back, take a breath." Mm. You know, when you're in the depths of the emotions of all of that stuff- Yeah like, you know, "Yeah, Gary, just, just breathe, Gary. Just take a step back." You know, "Well, screw you, I'm hurting." Like, how- Oh h- marrying up those words with making- Action it meaningful- Mm in, in your life, how did you do that? That, uh, that I d- I don't quite know, 'cause you're, you're exactly right. The words are really easy to say. Yeah. I think when you've had enough hits over the head- I guess, at a point- Enough you just go, "All right. They're dull." Yeah. Um, so maybe there's a, like I, I'd hit a bad breaking point. When we were going through the, the, the legal stuff with- Mm my old business partner, like to me, I was devastated. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I didn't sleep. I didn't know what my future was gonna be like. Like I said, I had that- You'd had that plan I had that vision. Yeah, yeah. You know? That vision got dashed on that day. Yeah. Like, I had, I didn't know what my future looked like. Yeah. Like, I had no idea. Now I kinda know what my future looks like, kind of. Mm. But I also am not so attached to it. Yeah. Okay. And it's a weird thing to try and detach yourself from all the physical, financial things in your life. Mm. Like, care about them. I mean, having a nice car is nice. I'd much rather have a nice car than a, than a junker. Yeah. But a junker will get me from A to B. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm still really lucky to be able to drive that, you know? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. In, in this day and age. We have so much stuff. Mm. Trying to detach from that stuff- It's difficult, and I, I don't know how to advise anyone to do it quickly. It's taken me time- Yeah and years to do that. Do you have trouble trusting people now? 'Cause I would. Oh. Do you s- read everything you sign now? No, I get ChatGPT to do it. Okay. Um, look, I'm more c- I, I would say I'm more careful, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. More, more thoughtful about things. Um, I just like, I mean, I do like to believe in the good in people. Yeah. You know? And I try to operate from a real place of, like, if I say I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it, and I will do this to the point- Yeah that if I've said I'm gonna do something, even if after a little while it ends up that's gonna be a detriment to me, I said I'm gonna do it, so I'm still gonna do it. I, I just believe that you should really stick to your word and be honest, and I like to think that people are like that. S- unfortunately, some people are not. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which is a real shame. Um, I just, I, you know, hope for the best, plan for the worst kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. The Business Gain is proud to partner with High Level, the all-in-one CRM and marketing platform built for growing businesses. With CRM funnel, website, and course builders, marketing automations, email builders, and so much more, High Level software will drive your customer retention and your profits through the stratosphere. And High Level is fully white label, which means you can brand the platform and mobile app with your logo and company colors, and then resell it to your customers for a monthly subscription. Ready to go High Level? Click on the link below to begin your 14-day free trial. I'm interested, 'cause I know in my own personal experience I had a bit of a, um, rough time with a business partner. Certainly not to the extent that you went through, but I think that there's... I'm sure there's a lot of listeners, um, tuning in that could relate in some way to having, uh, because it can be y- you're choosing someone and trusting them, and then that can happen, right? Um, so from a legal standpoint, like I, I know I was told, "Okay, come up with something ridiculous even, like it comes down to a coin toss 'cause at least you've got something." But... And I remember re- like them telling me that, and going, "I'm not putting that in a document." And they're like, "No, seriously, do it." Because if something does go wrong, you need something, like a fallback plan of like, okay, things aren't working. Did you have anything in writing or n- did you not get that far, or? Y- yeah, so the... So this was part of the problem, and as a like part of my naivety back then. Mm. The person I was in business with was, uh, was a good friend of ours. Ah. We did have something in writing. We'd, we'd written it. Yeah. Um, but we'd never finalized it officially. Yeah. So everything was written. We'd never like signed it off and lodged it. Okay. Yeah. So we had this legal agreement- Mm-hmm that we'd done, and then we were kind of figuring it out. So it was done, and we had some notations in there that we were gonna get legally done. Yep. But his goal and my goal then was to grow the business to this, and it's like, okay, well, we're gonna get that done. Yeah. This, this is more time and effort- Yes legal fees. It's expensive, especially when you're trying to start something up- Yeah and yeah, yeah. Like we both agree this is, this is the end goal for the company. Yep. Like I said, he was a, he was a personal friend of mine. Mm. He- Yes I, I didn't think that someone would do that. I, I- Yeah I would never do that again with anyone. Anything that I do now in terms of with people, it's like even if it's not a, a legal agreement- Yeah things that we go into now with partners, it's like, "Okay, here's a letter of what we agree. We're both signing this before we do anything else." Yes. Don't have to take it to a lawyer as such and spend $1,000 on legal fees. But it's signed off. But I definitely do do that with everybody now. Yes. It's like, okay, this is what we agree. We both said this. Just sign that. Yep. And if anyone says, "Mm, I'm not signing that," which has happened to me a couple times. They go, "No, I'm not signing that." Like my word is my bond type thing. I go- Yeah. That doesn't work for me. Yeah, no. Then you just, then just sign it. If you won't sign this one-pager- Yeah that says we agree to these three points- Yeah Yeah your word is not your bond, so we're not going anywhere else. Yeah. So that is definitely something that I put in place now- Yeah to have something signed. I think that's smart. That was my fault in terms of... You know, and that was part of the whole argument why we went through for three years. It was like, well, we have this agreement. He- like here's our thing we wrote out. We've both got notes written on there. Yeah. It's all lodged. It was all s- lodged. Sitting there. Sitting in our- Yeah Google Drive as an official company document, but it'd never been signed off and legally done. Yes. Yeah. That happened to me too. Yeah There's, there's, there's a little lesson, right? Oh. Make sure you see it all the way through, I suppose- Yeah, yeah you know, in hindsight, right? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So fast-forward to today, congratulations on the turnaround though. That's, um- Yeah, amazing that, that is remarkable. Um, what does success look like for you now in business? In business it looks like just trying to grow, and I'm trying to figure out to build the best thing that we can build. Like, I have a sort of a vision now of our product which constantly changes, 'cause the way that tech goes. Yeah. Trying to build the best product that we can build to make things as easy as possible for our clients. Mm. And trying to grow a team as well, 'cause growing a team is a challenge. Yes. You know? Everybody... We, we're at a point now where we're two and a bit years old- Yeah as a company, so it takes a while for your team to start to settle in and understand their roles. Even, even at two years, like, we're still figuring things out. Yeah. You know, new stuff comes up. Keeping, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, so we're at that two-year point now where- The team are becoming more autonomous. Mm. Um, trying to just give them roles. So we just got to a point now where like we've always just been very scrappy in terms of startup. It's like, "Here's an idea. Go do that- Yeah build that, add this." Yeah. Very... I mean, it's not a great way to do things. We, we never had an A to Z plan or- Yeah even a sort of a growth plan. It was just like we started with, with a product- Yeah then we added in other products, we added in WhatsApp and iMessage and SM- uh, and RCS, and then we added in AI agents and all these other things, and it was just like, okay. And it was really driven by just talking to our customers and, and listening- Yeah not by what we wanted. It was just like, okay, how do we make our customers happy? How do we listen to them? How do we take that feedback and, and build that in? Mm. Now we're at a point where we've built a really good system, and we're trying to sort of refine that, make it even easier, trying to make the team understand the company dynamics, 'cause it's, it's not just the platform, it's running a company is- Yes is a huge thing. Like support for a software product- Yeah is a whole other division- Mm and ballgame and thing that you've gotta manage. Mm. Um, so building that autonomy into the team, we just did... Like I said, previously we were very scrappy, just, "Here's an idea. Let's, let's get that done." Yeah. Uh, for the first time ever a few weeks ago, we rolled out 90-day plans for everybody. Oh. And I just said, "Hey, like, this is what I want you to do. At the end of it, go and write me a 90-day plan," and just gave that to team members. So you just gotta write your own, and I'm gonna review it with you, and I'm not gonna change it, and you're gonna see if you get to the end. Yeah. So I got to a point now where I'm comfortable with the company... I mean, the wheels are probably always wobbly, right? Mm. But I'm comfortable letting them wobble- Yes and sitting out and just going, "Let it wobble," and then let them straighten it, let them put- Mm the axle grease on. I like that. Trying to give the team the autonomy to fix their own problems. Then they feel like they're part of it a bit more- Yeah right? Giving them ownership, and you can't grow- bigger than your own capacity, right? Yes. I've only got so many hours in the day. Yeah. Yes. The, the first year of running and, and growing this when we launched, I didn't sleep much. Yeah. Like, um, not much at all 'cause I tried to balance, we were mentioning- Yeah this before. Yeah. Like, trying to balance family life with, um, business is really hard. Have you ever done that? Yes. Have, ever got to a point- I don't think it's- where you think you've balanced it? I don't think there's ever balance. Do you, Dan? No. My, my s- my attempt to balance has been sacrificing sleep. Uh-huh. That's been it. Hmm. Mm. So where I've tried to balance out is I, I, I basically work in shifts. Hmm. So my, my son is the most important thing in the world to me. He absolutely is. So I work, um, after he's gone to school, and we, we take turns to, to do drop-off or pickup e- either end of the day. Yeah. But once he's gone to school, I work from 9:00 till pickup or until he comes home from school with my wife. Hmm. So it's basically I'm either finished at 2:30 or at 3:30 when he walks in the door, whichever of those times it is. And then I spend time with, with him until he goes to bed. Yeah. The g- it basically gives me, like, a, on average a five-hour window of work in the day, which is not a lot. No. Hmm. But with AI, are you finding that you're able to get more done in that five-hour period? Well- Are you using AI in your work at the moment? Yes and no. Yeah. You can give yourself more work. Yeah. Um- So it's trying to, like, learn it all and everything? But- Trying to learn it all, and then you come up with all these ideas, so you put- Yes like, you can spec- And it can be super addictive. You can, you can spec something out really easily- Yeah like, in five minutes. Yeah. But now you've gotta build it, test it- Yeah check it out. Sure. But, uh, but also, sorry, I was saying it's like if I work in two shifts, so I'll do, like, five hours- Hmm once he goes to bed. Oh. Then I was going back to work at, like, 8:00. Yeah, right. And in the first year, that was 8:00 until I, un- until- 2:00 AM or something Oh, wow And then I'm back up at 6:00 the next day Mm. So I was running on like four hours sleep for the first year, which nearly killed me. Mm. Jesus. And that was, that was for a couple reasons. Like one, 'cause there was just so much to do. Mm. Also, we have a lot of clients in the US. My development team is in Pakistan, so when they start is literally when my son gets home. So I'm like, "Well, I can't talk to you now. So the only time I can talk to you is once he's finished." And then I would get on Zoom calls with them and run through stuff. Um, now we've got past that phase- Good. and I've, like, definitely pulled that back a heck of a lot- That's good where I'm getting six hours sleep a night. Oh, that's good. It's really comfortable now. That's good. Wow. It's crazy. It's so crazy. So, so based on that experience then, Gary, what tips have you got or advice have you got about hiring as, as the business grows? Uh, you've gotta, you've gotta allow people time to sit into a role, I think- Mm to a, to a degree as well. Um, I think it's your responsibility to train and educate your staff and make sure they know their role. I think it's, I've seen this with people where they expe- they expect to hire someone, bring them in, and they're gonna solve all their problems. Mm. That isn't gonna happen- Yeah in my experience. Yeah. Yeah. You're gonna hire someone, bring them in. They're gonna bring their own problems or ways of doing things, and you kinda then got to adapt, figure out what works for them, what doesn't, what you need to mold in or out. So having adaptability with new hires and training them, um, is really important. Trying to find that right fit as well. Mm-hmm. Um, w- I, I used to have this rule when we were, when we were running the consultancy company before, I had the rule of, um, the, the have a beer rule. If I wouldn't have a beer with them, I didn't wanna hire them. Mm. Wow. I like that. Yeah. So- We've heard that one before, right? I feel like I've heard that before. Yeah, yeah. Yes. We, we, we had a guest from the US- Yes and he said it was the glass of beer test. If I get down to the end of my first glass of beer with you and I wanna buy you another one- Yeah you got the job. Wow. I think that's really important. I, I read this somewhere before as well about, like, 'cause you gotta have the team dynamics, right? Yeah. Yes. Uh, 'cause I've had this in other companies where- Yeah you have someone and they might be incredibly good at their job or incredibly smart- Mm but nobody likes them. Mm. Yes right? They, they might be arrogant in it 'cause they are so smart, whatever it might be, so they- Yeah could be the best person in the world intelligently- Yeah but if they don't have a team dynamic, you don't want them in the company. No. Mm. 'Cause like the bad fruit theory, right? Yeah. It just kinda spreads and- So- Yeah I think it's better to have s- uh, have a team where you got a dynamic, you get on with the people, than it is to have the smartest people, 'cause you can train and you can educate. Yes. And now with AI as well, like people can- Yeah, yeah you can just go, "Listen, right, we're gonna build a little system for this." Yeah. "And like that can take care of it." Yeah. So yeah, team dynamics, I think, would probably be one of my- Mm most important- Yeah tips to do that and make sure that people fit in and, and are comfortable working with the rest of the team. Mm-hmm. I'm interested too, because you're, you're at level two, so you've gone through the first, you know, that level one startup phase, and now you're kinda easing into things. What is the timeframe or, um, element of measure that you use when you are trying and testing something within the business? How long do you give it? 'Cause I think it's pretty, um, normal for most entrepreneurs to just wanna throw things at the wall and see what sticks without actually, like, waiting to actually see if it sticks. They're kinda just like, ah, ah, ah. How do you measure and how long do you give it to see if something's working or not? Still figuring that out. Yeah. Oh no, that's not the answer I wanted. So I think, I think we're figuring that out, because like I said, we're, we're at that stage now with the 90-day plan. So I would say- Yeah moving forward- Mm-hmm now- Yes it's gonna be 90 days. Okay, 90 days. That's how I've literally just kind of brought that in. Yeah. I'm going, "Okay, we're gonna do 90 days." Okay. 'Cause I've- I think that's, that's reasonable I think if you have an end goal- Yeah and say, "Hey, we got 90 days to get to this thing." Yep. Figure out how you get there. Mm-hmm. And let's see whether we got there in 90 days. Okay. 'Cause it's, I guess, you know, it is a bit of a marathon, not a sprint. Yes. And we've been running in very, very short sprints- Okay for the first two years, which I think is fairly natural for starts, where you're just like- It's... "We're gonna throw this, that, and the other." Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we just got this customer feedback on this. We need to fix that. Oh God, the button's- Yeah, yeah in the wrong place. Yes. People can't find that. Whatever it might be. So yeah, our test- Okay and measure for the first two years probably didn't really exist that well other than- Mm customer feedback. If someone was shouting- Yeah that was our test and measure. Yeah. And yes, and just asking clients, "Well, what do you like?" Yeah. "What don't you like? What should we do?" Sure. Okay. Um, but now I, I would go with 90 days moving forward. Maybe I'll- Yeah. And we'll see how we go. I'll come back in 90 days. Come back and let us know how 90 days worked out. I like that. Yeah. So looking back over the journey to, to get yourself and the business to level two, what's the biggest mistake you've made? The biggest mistake we've made, chchch Maybe not planning earlier. I think we probably could have, like, planned earlier rather than having, um, putting so much immediacy on things. Mm. Like I said, being reactive- Yes. Yeah. True rather than proactive. But it's very hard when you're going through that- Yeah. Yeah through that stage. Messy. It's messy. Yeah. Y- I, I kinda look back now and go, "Oh, if we'd have planned that better or thought about those things," you know. And then it, it's such a balance too, right? I would- Yeah again, this isn't a mistake, but hiring people sooner and having a bigger team- Mm to sort of spread the workload, figure out those things, but you don't have the funds for it, so you're balancing- Yes, yes. Such a pinch point, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. You know, you're balancing growth, customers, hiring- Mm all those things. So yeah, I, I think better planning, but just didn't, just didn't know what to plan in those first two years. So I, I look back now and think that, but also being in it, I don't know how you really get around it. Just know that it's gonna get better and you, you're doing the best that you can. Mm. 'Cause you don't know. No, it's true. You, you grow through this journey as well massively. Yeah. Mm. Like it's a massive growth curve for any business owners out there. You- Yeah I don't think I sit in the seat the same way that I did two years ago. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And- So what does that look like for you then? In- As, how have you changed? How have you grown? So much more patience. Wow. So much more patience. And, and a lot of that came out of, you know, that, that story and the journey that I told you where I can kinda sit back now and go, "All right. This is on fire." Yeah. Yeah. "But we'll put it out. We'll get a bucket of sand and some water, and we'll put it out, and then we'll rebuild it, and we'll fix it." What- whatever that thing might be. Yeah. Sure. Um, learning patience, learning to sort of breathe, sit in the moment. Mm. Uh, you know, patience for your team, your staff. I could definitely be annoyed before with team members. Maybe sometimes if, if they listen to this, they'll probably go, "Gary, you still are sometimes." But you know, just getting annoyed sometimes you go, "Look, God, why isn't this done yet?" Or, "Why have you done it this way?" Yeah. Yeah. I, I do try very much now to s- to step back- Yeah and evaluate before giving my opinion- Mm and, and asking people why. And a lot of that, my patience, has come from my son. Yeah. Like, honestly, he's been the biggest teacher to me- Mm as well as the business. Like- Mm. They'll do that to you, won't they? Yeah. Like, unbelievably. Yeah. Unbelievably. So, so Gary, where's the line then between being patient and letting things drift? Ooh, good question. Uh- Within the SaaS context in particular. Yeah, yeah. That's a, that is a good question. Where is the line? Where is the line? Um- The best way to measure that drift is if you've got some really good measurements in place, and you can see whatever the goals are, whatever you're trying to track, whether it's customer growth- Yeah customer satisfaction, all of that. So we have that stuff in place now. We, we didn't have it for the first two years. We've literally now, we've built dashboards for all these things, like for onboarding, when do people come on, traffic- Yeah acquisition, all this stuff. Mm. Um, so that's the, the best thing is if you've got that that you can point to as well. And also, that makes it easier if, if you're dealing with a, with staff, I'd say. Like, if something's drifting with staff, it makes it much, much easier for staff because it's now not you just telling the staff member and say, "Hey, this is wrong. You're making a mistake," whatever it might be. You go, "Hey, look, this is the problem. You can see here, this is-" Yeah "this is the end goal. This is where we started, and right now we're here." So you try to remove yourself from telling them what the issue is. It removes the fr- the fric- immediate friction between you and them. Yeah, the friction- Yeah from you. It's- Mm like, this is about the company. Yeah. This isn't about me. Mm. It's not about you. This is what we need to get to this point on our map. Mm. So if they can understand that and- Yes nev- it's never personal. I do try and make sure that my staff understand that, like, this is never personal. Yeah. Like, I've had conversation with our team and go, "Hey, listen, this isn't personal, but you're screwing this up right now." Yeah. Like, basically. And this isn't a tech- this isn't about you. I like you as a person, but you need to fix this- Yes because this is what your role is. Yeah. And I, I do have very honest conversations with my staff, and, um, like, they know, I mean, I can be quite blunt. I've definitely been told that, right? Mm. But my team also know that with me, that they know it's never personal. Mm. This isn't about I don't like you. Yeah. I like all my team. I will have a beer with all of my team. But when something's wrong, it's just like, "Hey, this isn't personal." So that's- Fix it that's my thing in trying to make it about the company, so if it's drifting, giving them another point to look at. Yeah. Mm. I think that's powerful. Well, before we jump into our quick-fire questions, I would like to talk about potentially a cheat code. So we've got, our listeners are global with businesses, you know, sort of spanning from level 1 all the way to level 10. Um, so rather than what have you done wrong, what's something that you've done right, um, and what would you say is like a cheat code to get you to, to where you are now without having to fumble? Um, I think actually having to struggle through financially- Mm at the start was, is actually a benefit. Okay. I think if I'd have started this business with a big fat bank balance- Yeah it would've made me lazy. Mm. Yeah. You know? Yeah. The fact is, like, I had to put I went through all that, that I explained- Yeah and then we'd saved up some money, and I had to put that in- Mm up front, and then I had to not take money out of this company for a year. I had to make money another way to still pay the bills- Yes, yeah and so on. I think that- I don't know if you'd call it a cheat code, but not being very uncomfortable makes you really, really go for it. So if, if you're sitting on a bank balance, you know, or someone's just giving you money and you don't have any stretch- Yeah or any stress behind it, I think that was right for me anyway. Mm. You know? I think that's good advice. And the people might feel the comfort of that better, or if they're co-investors, that's maybe not a bad thing. But for me, that was definitely, I think, a real driver. It's like, "We're gonna make this work." Yeah. I've just got two quick questions. Okay. Um, Gary, the next two years, say, what does that look like for your business? So for us, it looks like- But hopefully massive growth, right? Best business plan in the world and all that. Uh, we've scaled out of... Not scaled out of, that's not the right word. Um, we only worked with HighLevel in, in our first two years, and that was very deliberate. So actually, this is probably a good answer to your question, right? Now, now coming back to that. Uh, it was focus, right? So we deliberately only focused on HighLevel for two years. We could of built our solution for other, uh, CRMs- Yeah in that two years. Yeah. But I deliberately held back, said, "No, we are focused here for two years," because I understand the HighLevel platform. Yeah. I understand the agencies in there, and we just stay in this lane- Yeah until we really figure this out. Yeah. So actually, because that's a good... This focus- We'll take that focus is a really good thing. Yeah. Um, and then for us, now that we've come past that, after two years, we've now built into other CRMs. We've built ours as a complete standalone platform, because now we've got capacity in the company. Yeah. We've got staff with kind of tenure that understand HighLevel. We now understand our platform. We can support other things. Whereas I knew that if we did that earlier, we would just fallen apart. Like how do, how do we market- Been too scattered. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. How do we manage support for people that come in for HubSpot or another CRM- Yes what we just don't know how to use it. Yeah. So now we know exactly what we do with that one for two years. Yeah. Now we can manage all the other stuff as well as it starts to grow. So- I like that that's our growth for the next two years is to really expand beyond just HighLevel. Yeah. Okay. I, I get... I know we touched on it at the start, but typically, and this probably is a how long's a piece of string question, but typically how, how much would a, a business, an agency save by, you know, by going over to MyCRM Sim? Um, oh, there is a calculator on our site and I should get the exact numbers, but it, it depends. It depends on save in terms of the country that you're in. Yeah. So, um, in Australia, we mentioned before, it's five, 5, 6 US cents per segment. Um, I think on an equivalent number of text messages that you can send through a mobile phone to Twilio, it was about $1,000 a month, I think. Someone can look at that and probably tell me I'm wrong, but around about that. Yeah. Um, there are other countries where it's significantly more. I just came back from, um, a HighLevel event in Manila. Ooh. I was talking over there. In Manila, it's 25 cents US per segment, so that's nearly five times the price of here. Wow. So their savings financially would be significantly more. Yeah. Wow. Um, it's not just the cost saving thing though as well, it's, it's- What we talk about and try and train and educate our users on is, like, natural conversational language- Mm through text message marketing. That becomes very expensive to do through Twilio because as, as a person, if I send you a text, it will just be like, "Hey Steve, we're gonna catch up this weekend," send, "Meet you at the Dog and Ferret Pub, 5:00 PM on Saturday," send. And you'll get two text messages, right? That's how we communicate. Yes. People don't do that as marketers. They try to squeeze it into, like- Yeah this one text. Th- a very markety talk. They'll be like... You know, it ju- it, they don't do it the same way. Yeah. And they have these, uh, reply stop to opt out, like, foosteps as well. Yeah. You know, they look like marketing messages. Yeah. But you've gotta have that for compliance, right? I'm not a lawyer, so there's, yeah- for that, depends on the country you're in. Yeah. We still adhere to that stuff, so if people reply stop, you can still take them out. Yeah. Um, but it definitely reduces your response rates- Yes 'cause people know they're being marketed to. Yes. Yeah. Okay? So we're, we're trying to send nice conversational messages. So that is definitely a, a, an advantage, and then there's a whole A2P thing in the US. Like, it's really challenging for some s- definitely some verticals in the US to get numbers- Mm-hmm in A2P. So it's, it's not just the financial saving. There's, there's advantages in the, the conversation, there's advantages with the A2P. There's iMessage in the US. Like, iMessage gets massively more conversion rates than sending Twilio messages, which are green bubbles. Yeah. This doesn't mean that much to us, right, in Australia. Yeah. Like, we just send text messages. We don't care. In America- I don't know. It means, I mean, 'cause I'm American, I'm like, I- Oh, you get- I trust a blue one better than a green. Okay, so you get it. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so no idea what you're talking about. Exactly, so you don't know. You know- Yeah, yeah, yeah they trust blue messages. I did not believe it. When we, when we first launched iMessage- Yeah and then I started getting feedback from our customers, they're going, yeah, they're getting, like, three to six times higher response rates- Wow Yeah from iMessage than they were to standard text message for the same campaigns, the same messages. I was like, "What?" Yeah. There's something about it that just feels- Yeah well, 'cause it's, it matches... Yeah, I don't know. So that, so there's no, there's no dollar cost saving that you can attribute to that. Yeah. It's, it's even ar- it's even arguably a bit more expensive to use iMessage 'cause there's, there's lower volumes you can send and stuff. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? So, I mean, we tell people all this is. But yeah, how, you know, if you're getting a better response rate, you're getting engagement. Yeah. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. Yeah. If they're ignoring your other messages, it doesn't matter whether it costs more or less- Yeah when they're replying. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one other thing too. You've got your own podcast- Oh, yeah and you're almost third season. Yeah. Do you wanna tell us about that? Oh, yeah, sure. Um, yeah, SaaS Dads. Yeah. SaaS Dads. So, um, I started that a year and a little bit ago because We, we grew a lot through doing webinars with partners, and we would go on webinars and we would talk about, like, our product and how, you know, obviously, you know, the benefits and all the things for the people. And they were great podcasts. I enjoyed them. We met a lot of good people, good partners. And then I was doing a podcast, uh, with a, a friend of mine, Bryce. He runs a, an AI agency called Closebot. Great dude. He's got a massive vision to get to a nine-figure exit, which I, I hope to God he makes. I support him in every way that I can. Yeah. And we were chatting one day. He, he invited me onto his podcast, and we were doing the normal thing about, uh, you know, just our product, his product, how they work, and et cetera, et cetera. And then we started talking in the middle of it just about what it's like being a dad and, and growing a company, 'cause he was at a similar stage to us at that time. Yeah. Young family, how hard it was. Yeah. And then we got off that podcast and I was like, "Oh my God, I wanna have more conversations like that and like this." Yeah. Thank you guys for having this conversation. Yeah. Pleasure. 'Cause I think that these are the real conversations that people need to understand this. So that's how we started SaaS Dads anyway- Yeah just so I could have these conversations and bring all these other people on, because there's so many great people in the high-level space that I know, and I know them personally. Mm-hmm. And I've had lots of great conversations with them But so many people see the, the shiny- Yeah stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I was talking about it before. Yeah. Like, how do you detach yourself? Like, I'm not attached to- Yeah shiny things. I don't need, I don't need a Rolex, I don't need a Mercedes, I don't need that stuff. I, I, I, I am lucky I have a very nice home. I do have a nice car, but I'm not spending a fortune on these things. They're not the most important things in the world, but- Yeah but people see that, and they see a level of success that people have got to, and they don't know what happened, how people- Mm got there. Yeah, makes it difficult to connect. And like... That's right. Look at Gary. He's, he's, you know, got seven-figure business now. He's at level two. Gosh, lucky guy, successful. Can't relate. Suddenly that's not a part of my story- 'cause we're not... Yeah, yeah. Let's just peel the curtain back a bit- That's right. Yeah and go back five years. My goodness, right? Yeah. Yeah. Lucky Gary. Absolutely. Yeah, so a year ago, like- Yeah building this and not seeing- Yeah like- Yeah exhausted. And nobody sees that. Long chats- No one ever sees that every year. Yeah. Trying to balance that family life of spending time with my son and my wife, and how do you manage all that? It's really, really hard. Yes. It's not, it's not a nine to five. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's... I think it was Mark Cuban when he said, he said, "Being an entrepreneur is great. You get to pick any 8- 80 hours a week that you wanna work." That's good. Like, 80, 120- Yeah whatever, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. But- Yeah. My last question, anyway, is, um, have you had the psychic back? Oh. My wife has been to see her multiple times. Yeah. And I encourage her every- She- single week to go, and she loves it she's probably gonna be a long-standing customer now. Can she get lotto numbers? I don't know. We haven't got that far. Has anything else dropped in that's been useful? From the psychic? Mm. Uh, nothing springs to memory that was as- Not as big as the Commonwealth bank? Not as... Yeah. The, the bank one. It wasn't Commonwealth Bank. It wasn't Commonwealth. Okay. All right. You were all gonna... Yeah. Yeah, the bank one. I wouldn't get you guys in trouble. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What was the big four? But it wasn't that one. Wasn't that one. All right. So only leaves three. All right. Yeah. Yeah. The bank then. The bank. The bank. Yeah. Um, yeah, nothing as memorable as that, but, you know, my wife does see her. She's sent other people to her. She loves it. It's not my thing. I'm not- Yeah I'm not a psychic. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being vulnerable- Yeah and sharing your story. Um, pulled so much from this. Yeah. I think it might be time for our quick-fire questions if you're ready. Sure. Yeah. All right. Mm-hmm. So what we do to get to know the person behind the microphone just a little bit deeper, Gary, is that we fire 10 questions at you alternatively, and we ask you to answer in a sentence or less if you can. So you ready to go? Okay. All right. Okay. All right. Are you starting, or do you want me to start? Yeah. I'll, I'll start if you want. Okay. Okay. So I think I know the answer to this one, but are you a build business guy, or you'd prefer to buy a business now? Uh, I would say a build business guy. Yeah. Do you focus on revenue or profit? Uh, hmm, good question. Definitely profit now. Sorry. Have you heard- Yeah, profit. Definitely. Yeah. Growth or stability? Ooh, growth. At this stage, definitely growth. Mm-hmm. Hire fast or hire slow? Hire slow. Yeah. Mm. Take the money or keep control? Keep control. Mm. Uh, bootstrapped or venture-backed? Bootstrapped definitely for me. Yeah. Um, big idea or great execution? Ooh, big idea with great execution. I've got the big ideas, and on my team- He's got- we're doing some great execution. Yeah. Uh, the perfect product or first to market? Uh, first to market. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. And what's one piece of advice you wish someone would've given you at 25? Network more. Mm. Yeah, definitely network more. Put yourself out there. That's something that I didn't do that much of before. I was very much a builder guy behind the scenes. Yeah. Very happy sitting there. Um- Yeah networking, getting out there- Yeah is incredibly important in terms of the relationships that you build. Yeah. Building relationships is really, really important. More than I ever understood. Mm. Wow. I agree with that. Mm. So what's one business mis- mistake that you'd happily make again? One business mistake I'd happily make again? Um, I haven't got a quickfire answer for that one. Mm. No, I would happily make again. I think you learn from all of them. I mean, I had so many mistakes over the years. Yeah. They're, they're all learnings. They're all part of the story, yeah. Yeah. That's okay. That's an answer. I don't know one that I'd happily make again. Yeah. But they're all learnings, right? Yes. I wouldn't change... I wouldn't... I l- I look back, and I wouldn't change anything, honestly- Yeah for where I am now. I don't s- I think if you, if you're happy where you are, then you shouldn't be wishing to change things. Yes. I, I'm happy where I am. Yeah. That's a good answer. That's what got me here. And, and those scars of all of the things that have happened, have they healed over? Or do they still play on your mind at some point? No, I'd say they... It's, that's all kind of healed over. It's like that's, that's all done. I haven't seen my old business partner. I'm not sure that- I'm not sure that would be a great meeting to be honest. My wife says I need to forgive and let go of that, and like, I don't really think about it honestly, but that's something I don't understand. Yeah. I don't understand people who would do stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That for me is, is a complete, a complete difference to me. Yes. Yeah. I don't understand those people. A- and it's also the human battle, right? Yeah. That, that, the sh- the... When we deal with humanity, we're dealing with all of those different things, and- Mm. Yeah. Okay. So, um, if business truly is a game, Gary Capps, what's your definition of winning? I think if you, if you can be happy every day and you're excited about what you're doing- Mm you're winning. Yeah. Like, there are some days that are not as great as others, but overall, I think if you're getting up every day and you're excited about what you're actually doing and you can see something for the future- Mm then you're winning. I think that's a great answer. Yeah. So, uh, where can our listeners find you and your business online? Uh, little Google can go to- MyCRMsim, uh, website mycrmsim.com. Google SAAS Dad's on YouTube, you'll find our podcast, which is on our, on our MyCRMsim channel. Great. Facebook's just Google MyCRMsim, you'll find us. Perfect. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation. Yeah. And yeah, thanks for sharing such a big story, a big part of your life, um- A vulnerable part quite vulnerable. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's easy not to talk about that, right? It is. Because it's a, it is, it's a vulnerable moment. Mm. All of these mistakes happened and all of these things went wrong- Yeah at that place. Yeah. This is the first time I've actually really told that story to anyone- Wow on a, on a podcast. I've never really told that whole story. It was, there's not that many people that know it. Wow. And I kind of deliberately have never told it that much because, uh, I, I don't like this word, right? But people see, start to see you as a guru, you know what I mean? Yeah. Ah. I've been called that a couple of times, and I kind of don't like that. Yes. I'm not being a guru, I'm just trying to figure things out as I go. Yeah. And every guru seems to have a sob story. Yes. Yeah. And I don't like- Yeah the word- You don't want it to attach to you, like, as your identity kind of? Yeah. I was sleeping in my car, eating every second day, you know? That's- Yeah. Yeah. So I've never really deliberately done that, but then- Yeah I told a few of my friends in the high level commitment, Oh my God, you should tell people about- Yeah what you went through. I was like, "Yeah." Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you for choosing to share it here. Yeah. It was... Yeah. Thank you. A, a few more people know about it now. Yeah. I think a few more, yes. Yeah. All right. Well, that's all we've got time for. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe to The Business Game and check out the playlist for the level of business you're currently playing. Because every founder is somewhere on the game board from zero all the way to $550 billion. 500 if we want. Well, hey, why not? Go high. Choose your level, and we'll see you next time.