I was brought up in the north of Scotland when I say the north of Scotland I mean the most northern bit of mainland in the United Kingdom is where I was brought up life was hard like there was not much money life's not fair everyone is capable of achieving the most unbelievable things in this world and it's just about having that belief hi my name is Paul Hamilton I'm CEO and founder at Halo We employ 225 people and this is my D what does resilience mean to you it's remaining positive in any scenario you find yourself in embrace it and make the most of it and get through it as quickly as you can success does not come overnight but if you love what you do your work becomes Leisure you ever get burn out from doing something you love doing and I know you don't Alo is a great case study that youth work what is different that you're doing that others are not doing Halo is not for everyone like it's a very chaotic environment I call it chaos with framework yeah absolutely that's brilliant it's so exciting there's so much variety unicorn what is it un what's your du flip what gets you out of bed in the morning to flip the DU yeah the thing is oh welcome to my du flip how are we I'm very good Jack you're making me feel very welcome and comfortable well you got you got your nice cup of tea I've got my cup of tea so what what else could go wrong right just a just a chat I'm really excited to have you on Paul because we've had some fantastic leaders on but most take the corporate Route M yourself you're a Founder CEO you figured it out run rates burn rates everything in between and you've done it by bootstrapping so my first question to you what is bootstrapping for those tuning in so bootstrapping is when you take a business and you grow it organically yourselves without any so it doesn't mean you do it just on your own you're employing people but it's a self-funded business so you're you're uh yeah using the the resources of the business to help grow the business and why did you want to go down that route when you see all the time so we're a bootstrap business as well you see it all the time where oh you have to raise investment you see these fantastic shows like Dragon's Den and all those things why did you decide to say you know what we're going to bootstrap it I think I think the answer to that is that so all the leadership at Halo We're not actually fin people we're not the primary goal is not Financial we're all we're all actually programmers we're technologists we we're very passionate about technology we are passionate we literally are customer obsessed and we just want to deliver great solutions for our customers all we ever want is for them to tell another customer that's our marketing engine and and honestly in terms of financial targets and stuff good things in the software industry like there is if you do a good job there's there's lots of money around and it does allow you to just grow and and we being honest we've never had the any point in time where we have wanted to grow quicker than we've just organically been able to grow if that makes sense it makes perfect sense and it's brilliant because lots of businesses rais and then have lots of shareholders and investors it takes the business into a direction that the founder never wanted to take it in so we're going to talk a little bit more about business and today I really want to break down to really Inspire and motivate those who want to start businesses but also I want to learn a lot more around technology and software and what does it mean but before we get into that I want to talk a little bit about your journey yeah like would you say you said you stood outside uh selling newspapers would you say and then you obviously went on to Ernest and Young for a year would you say that your your career is also bootstrapped a little bit yeah I'm just winging it day by day my life is running Instinct it's a I mean as as you get older you do begin to reflect and uh yeah you you just dig into your like philosophy and trying to understand what is it about your upbringing that ended up um yeah forming your character and I think so let's just go back to I was brought up in the north of Scotland um there's very few opportunities out there there there's not a lot of money um most of the job jobs are in the public sector my and when I say the north of Scotland I mean so go as far go to iness and drive another 3 hours North that's where you were literally the the most northern bit of mainland in the United Kingdom is where I was brought up and what was the town called so the village was Castle Town Castle my high school I went to was thoro high school so thoro is a town of about 10,000 people the whole County so Kess 50,000 people perhaps um but if I as a kid if I wanted to go the cinema the nearest cinema was a 3-hour driveway so it was a totally different life for for me and it up there no one locks their doors like um it's everyone knows everyone as a kid I used to hitchhike lifts like sounds crazy um and I was just left to I'm the youngest of three siblings and I think um yeah what was the saying that if if your first child drops a spoon your mother will pick it up and uh they'll go and get you a new one second child drop the spoon mother will pick it up give it a rub and give it back to you third child mother just tells you to pick it up yourself and and I think that I learned um I was just yeah had to figure out life and indep became very independent and developed bags of initiative uh very much a cander approach I realized that whatever happens in my life is down to me not external factors and forces and in control of my own destiny so and I think the the upbringing I had in the north of Scotland was very much uh an important part of that um but I would say it's a double-edged sword because having all this freedom is great but I nearly lost my life when when I was 7 years old um I got hit by a by a van uh and I was knocked out and I was in the hospital for a couple of days and very lucky escaped lightly really when you think about it but my best friend at the time he uh he was hysterical shouting screaming saying Paul is dead Paul is dead went running into my house cuz it was just just down the road from I was living um saying um Kathy was my mom uh Paul's dead Paul's dead my mom thought I was literally just been killed in a r accident uh and yeah so I think in terms of as I say it's a double-edged sword like giving your kids freedom and and obviously these are completely different times now in 2024 um and it's just getting that balance of it you I think sometimes you people can maybe just be a bit too uh trolling of yeah not maybe not giving their kids as much Freedom as as what might help the kid themselves become more independent but but obviously is a huge balance to you need to be responsible and make sure yeah they're safe I I totally agree getting run down by a fan at seven has that add any knock on tra trauma or anything to you do you believe anything around that experience I think experiences make you and some for the better some for the worse but was there anything in that experience that has you believe has helped you throughout your bootstrapping career like is there anything I always I always look at a glass and I go okay the glasses are full it' be nice if it was full but what can I take from it and how what can we do from that experience I know you was young seven it's hard a lot hard to remember but having that memory you're talking about it today I think 25 years later right yeah I think I think it it does probably contribute to these days it to be successful I it's all about resilience like there's other things but one you can't unless you're resilient you're going to find it hard I think to to get on in this world uh and be yeah hugely successful however you define success um so for sure I think it did help to to build a bit of resilience and what is resilience like what is resilience to you and I when I'm going to pull up the dictionary and cuz there's a word in there and I'm just ltic so I won't do that anyway but like resilience means different things to different people and how you show up in resilience can be different to how someone else show up Res I don't I I believe I'm very resilient but I wouldn't be resilient in a big corporate working in a big corporate with 10,000 20,000 staff I just don't know if I could be resilient cuz it's a different type of a good resilience an interesting fact about me uh when I left University I was handing out newspaper is outside Tes School earning minimum wage so what does resilience mean to you as an entrepreneur as a Founder as a CEO for me I think it's it's remaining positive in any scenario you find yourself in uh and there there will always be hard times difficulties um and it's kind of just that I'm going to coin a phrase here from that's um instrumental and development of it switch Town Football Club is's a partner of halos um their whole thing and they've got it above their chain room is running towards adversity so in adverse like situations just approach it like embrace it and make the most of it and get through it um as quickly as you can and uh and I think these this is all about resilience um I remember so going on from the north of Scotland so after living up there as a young kid I then had the cultural extreme which was to move to chel and Essex Essex y I'm from Essex rord Romford yes you you went from where you were all the way to Essex was that like not a a huge culture shock for you oh massively it so my parents split up when I was I don't know probably 8 9 10 perhaps um I was living with my mom Council hous in tho one of the most deprived Council Estates in Europe um and it was life was hard like there was not a much money there was it was it was a hard life uh my dad there were again no jobs up there so he was offered some work um he relocated down to to Essex um myself my brother ended up going uh on a holiday just to spend some time with my dad um and it must have been so difficult for my parents because my dad then saw how like we we loved it down there like it was amazing there was so much going on and there and M we're now like teenagers like we're yeah 11 12 13 and it just go to the cinema just go to football matches it was your London on your doorstep not three hours away but yeah it was incredible 20 minutes right so we loved the idea of like living here so my dad's obviously had to speak for my mom the boys kind of want to come and live with me and what that must have been like for my mom I got no idea um but she so she was with my sister up in the north of Scotland for a while I was with my brother and my dad down in in Chels Essex they did also end up moving down in essics and um yeah my mom lived in south end and different places in essics so still yeah we weren't one family again but um but what I was going to say so in terms of but that then raised I think an awareness in me that almost like life's not fair like you've got based on where you're you're brought up or your scenario circumstances that kind of determines like the opportunities you have um and it's not everyone's got Talent there is for any young person listening to this today like everyone is capable of achieving the most unbelievable things in this world and it's just about having that belief I didn't when I was when I started doing this at Halo I I was going into meetings with people with 20 years experience of it directors or whatnot and I felt so out of place it's like what am I doing here I'm not I'm so underqualified and um the imposture syndrome that just comes in right imposter syndrome so I going catched out and you think and going back to why companies I'm going off on the tangent here but why companies raise money often is because they think there's a hell of a lot of stuff they don't know that they need to know to grow and scale a business but they don't they know so much more than they ever think they they know that they realize um and it's just about it takes time and this is the thing these days 2024 Tik Tok social media instant gratification and um like success does not come overnight unless you're very very lucky um they can do but for 99.9% of people who and you might only see or hear the highlight reels and you and it's but honestly it's a SLO that it takes time but if you love what you do and you're growing like all these experiences you're just developing and growing all the time and that's what makes like for us at Halo it's the journey it does it's not about like where we yeah it's cool where we've got to and it's amazing to be um yeah when people talk about being a unicorn and stuff like that is amazing but what's more amazing is like how we're all doing this together we are pretty much almost all School levers or graduates at Halo um we've made loads of mistakes don't get me wrong we made loads of mistakes along the way where we we figure stuff out it's like yeah that works that doesn't work you're always looking for these marginal gains um and that's the fun like that's what when people are excited to come in to work on a Monday morning at 9:00 a.m. because we're very unusual that we've got a 100% in-office working policy which for a tech company is like wow it's blows people's minds So you you're talking so much sense to me and I want to tackle some things so firstly unicorn what what does that mean in the world of business for those who tuning in who want to be entrepreneurs who are listening in like what is a unicorn so unicorn is a privately owned business that has reached a valuation of over 1 billion so US dollar within a period of time which there's different definitions but either between 10 and 20 years so there is a there's kind of a limit so if you've been doing it for a 100 years you wouldn't be classed as a unicorn because it's been such a slow Journey um I started employing people in 2011 so it's been a I guess a 13year journey uh for for us in in the company um and the thing with software as well like it takes CU it's a bit of it's a product is a bit of technology that and what what I saying like how you can't just keep throwing resource at software to speed up the development you really can't there's no there are no tricks you just have to consistently keep developing your technology over the years and it takes honestly there probably about 15 years cuz I was also develop with um my business partner um Alan as well so in even before 2011 when I started hiring people I was working doing custom software development just building up this library of C so there's years and years and years of software development that eventually you get to the point where you do have product Market fit and what I would say whether it's a any product any service again any young person out there who's got a business and they Wonder what going back to raising money why do you raise money it's either to massive marketing campaign to get your product or service out there so people can uh you understand it and hopefully subscribe or purchase um but the problem with that is that if you do it too soon the 90% of software start startups fail because they scale way way too early way before the software is at product Market fit when you're and what I mean mean by that product Market fits so I would say if you're bidding for a a job so you you're being considered there's a short list maybe of I don't know three or four companies that a business might be look at for the the software platform um if you're consistently winning those so more than 50% of the time that's when you know that your software and your service perhaps is good enough and until you're at that point the worst thing you can do in the world is Market it because all you're doing is you're actually saying and you're raising all this money you're spending a hell of a lot of money on this campaign to tell the world that your software is actually worse than the competition um so so the aim is to get to product Market fit through having loads of conversations but not marketing it to to extent once you get 50% or more of the bids that you bid for then you start realizing that your product Market fit and that's when you can then start eating it up exactly so how long did it take you to become Pro product Market fit you and Allan you and Alan sitting there well Allan was he retired back in 2010 but when I started he was you both were sitting there coding uh so we were doing custom software development projects from Halo's point of view in net help desk um I started employing people in 2011 2011 so that was when Allan yeah he's 25 years older than me and he did didn't want to go into this and do it do it for proper business and uh uh yeah he was ready to retire so he just but and this is the thing Allan taught me how to c in 2004 when I started working with Alan doing custom software development and installing Wi-Fi networks building websites it was Allan who taught me how to c he mentored me Allan made me realize that like in terms of software that any any one person can actually develop I saw some Allan stuff was like cuz he'd been cing since the 70s as I say he's a lot older than me um and he was very much I guess my mentor uh during that phase and he gave me the confidence to be able to to know that I could and I was flying all around the world in 2008 2009 how has code changed like in terms of like development how has it changed from 2011 till now cuz there's lots of kind of new technologies out there's a concept uh re recently well a couple years ago called No code and now they've changed to visual development there's a number of different things of and we we had a a a lady in the COO of Rackspace who said every line of code has been developed it's like a it's like a dictionary putting the words together and then kind of creating your own sentences which then creates Your Own Story to it how do you see code and how has it developed as it developed as it changed as it got easier to code to become a coder or more difficult where do you see it the tools have changed so the actual um the way I describe it is coding and producing software so imagine Photoshop so it's a bit of software you learn how to use it you learn how to edit images and stuff and put captions on and so you're learning how to use a bit of software to write software you just learn how to use a bit of software to that's used to write software and it's so that's called a development Studio it might be Visual Studio it could be yeah there's all sorts of different tools software programs that are used to develop software now in terms of the actual syntax and the coding itself so when you use this bit of software and you start typing stuff and things magically start appearing in places on the screen um the that's so you need a certain level of you need your brain to think in a certain way so that's your aptitude y um and this is the other big myth with the software industry is that a lot of the massive tech companies think that to develop the best software you need people with 10 years experience uh who are on hundreds of thousands of dollars of salary um who have worked at the best companies developing the best platforms that's a complete myth so at Halo We the majority of our software software Engineers had not done any software engineering before starting at Halo so they joint without software wow that's and so going back to the aptitude don't get me wrong these people are maths Geniuses they're very good at maths and if you look at their grades and and what I say again any young person if you if you're good at maths and maybe you've not thought about a career in software but if you are good at maths you will make a great programmer um and can you make a great programmer if you're not good at maths no I don't think you can there's bits of the software industry like ux design um there's definitely parts to it where you could be very instrumental and successful and valuable in a software company if you're not so good at the math spit but the actual cing of telling instructing giving the computer commands and then that determines what appears in the screen it requires extreme logical thinking and Clarity of thought which even if you don't and I'm not academic I didn't really like school I didn't try hard that hard at school and but maths came easy to me so hence why you went to Ernest and Young and did the accountancy yeah I mean I didn't or was that more of uh someone around you're saying to you I didn't know what to do I honestly didn't know what to do and a lot of people who when they don't know what to do you just fall into cuz I wanted Financial Freedom I like the idea of having choice I as I say I grew up without money and then you realize that there's if you have money life it seemed a lot easier and more comfortable and um I like the idea of having choice so I wanted a career that would have allow me to have Financial Freedom and a secure route to that is often working for one of the big accountancy consultancy firms um but that then brings a whole new set of problems and because there's such massive organizations that are very hierarchical structures um command and control everywhere I went into Ernest and Young and they rolled out the red carpet for the partners yeah it's like what you doing like even like reserved parking spaces based on how can't go on a certain floor yeah it's all this stuff and and Halo is the opposite of that like there's no Reser I had a look at I went down your uh Instagram it's so cool oh did you your offices are like really cool and we're it's a totally flat structure we the most senior people in the business are sat right in open plan office with all the new graduates around them um I was at an event yesterday I brought two people with me had' only been there two months going to an event next week in Amsterdam bringing another guy who uh he's only been with us maybe three months and you just the rule of Halo is if you're a senior and experienced and knowledgeable and you find yourself doing us doing something on your own that's a waste of mentoring time like try even if it's just someone watching or listening or well you got two superstars here today exactly yeah what does you what do you mean by if you're senior senior yeah so I guess what do that mean like in the Grand's Game of Things so for Halo it's about if if let's it's actually if you're a leader if you so you're a leader yeah if you're a leader so if you've demonstrated and some people get to leadership within honestly within two years they're they're that driven and they're that in line with the values of Halo and for us like culture is so so important it really is everything and I think um and some people just get it immediately and after a couple of years like we when we when you then have someone who who demonstrates all these leadership skills and then they can like it's contagious like and it can it works both ways as well by the way so if you're not like we don't like eagles in the business and if you're someone who does have an eagle and then that's that can get rid of it quickly it's uh so you've got to make sure that you've got yeah what was it they say get the right people on the bus but then put them in the right seat um what I see I mean I love I love transport I Love Trains planes buses quite nor for it people laugh about in the office but um what I say is like the the train left the station in 2011 uh I started hiring people and uh it keeps stopping so let's just say it left London it's going to in vaness stopped at Peterborough York um Beric wherever Edinburgh um and it's and we're going somewhere we're on this journey and it keeps stopping people get on at different stops um but we've literally just scratched the surface with where where we're going and and people get off right at certain stops as well no and again people get off it's um Halo is not for everyone like it's a very chaotic people think that's negative connotations with that word but I think it's great because if you got a chaotic environment it's so exciting there's so much variety I call it chaos with framework yeah absolutely that's brilliant yeah like if you can have an environment where you can actually make a difference but you've got you still got framework in place yeah there's like there got the guidelines the rules like we have a rule no gossiping like that's the worst thing in the business you ever hear anyone like gossiping it's so when you first started did you think you would get all the way through to where you are now which is a really exciting successful business compared to obviously you and I are both entrepreneurs and Founders and uh leaders we I see all these businesses pop up just raise this R raise this and I'm just like you can do it bootstrapped you can achieve and make impact did you ever have doubt like um like when Allan left and said you know what I'm retiring if you want to carry on go for it did you ever thought put a moment oh actually should I I'm now on my own or was it all for you I want to have the freedom I want to create something special and I don't know how I'm going to get there but I know that the next train station is this it's been such a gradual Journey like literally from so when you start employing people and like we've now got 4 and a half thousand customers every customer cont has contributed to where we've where we've got to every deal we've won has contributed every deal we've lost has contribute every time you lose a deal it hurts like it it lights the fire inside you and you don't whatever the reason is why you lose that deal you do everything in your power as an organization to make sure that that never happens again whether it's some service related thing or something in the product that doesn't quite do as long as it's aligned and it's the right as long as we think we should have won it we could have won it sometimes it's just a different requirement altogether and we when that's fine we just say it's not the right fit but in terms of like did I ever have doubts no um it's not because you don't and I think this is a thing cuz Halo believe it or not is is a very relaxed environment and it's so chaotic and going so quickly we've gone 100% 8 years in a row now but it honestly and I'd love you to to visit our officers one day people say when they walk in they feel like this energy that is just like no where the experience else well I'm feeling it here Paul I'm feeling it here so Paul Alo is extremely a great case study that youth work what's the secret formula like why has it worked like how has it worked people come in with not much experience not even know how to do software development and then they come out the other side as these Superstars like what how is that happening and what is what what is different that you're doing that others are not doing to make that work yeah I think it's just we we have a culture where we truly believe in people so we believe that any person coming through that door at Halo on their first day like they can achieve anything like the world really is their oyster um they can they're they're capable of so much more than they think they are and in terms of how we've developed this culture it's because we we we just we've experienced ourselves like me when I was first doing this I had imposter syndrome and I I thought I wasn't qualified to be in the room with these people with 10 20 years experience and then you realize that actually AG is is just a number and it's just about what you do and like how how well you do it and uh yeah and it's just and I think once you so we've now got a company that has leaders like worldclass leaders all over the business that have come from below average State schools um some cases spe special measures schools uh and they've gone on and become world class at what they do so when people see these people almost as a role model and an inspiration and they don't they still think initially they think oh yeah but maybe they're just like really talented and that that's an exception to the system and but then they realize that like Halo is just full of people almost everyone at Halo like has this exact same story and then they think well that' be a hell of a coincidence if 50% of everyone you hire and suff ends up being so so then you think well it must be to it can't just be about those individuals there's something about the culture and just how we it's and and so in terms of how you do it it's like just trust people delegate throw people in the deep end and this is where it isn't for everyone because people always end up swimming but yeah sing back to that point isn't it that with uh with framework right yeah chaos with framework you talked about earlier which I didn't pick up on then because you was talking about something else about 100% in the office tell me about that because I think right now there's a there's like a massive kind of you see it in the news remote hybrid this that I When leaders ask me what do I think around Youth and how they should be where they should be and what environment I use this simple thing I say if you've got less than five years worth of work experience you need to spend as much time as you can around people in an environment that helps you thrive that's my opinion yeah I totally agree and then you see you see others that go we have over 10,000 young people that join US Weekly at the moment yeah and we don't do Market K we we do the show but like and over 70% of them will only opt in for a remote role mhm where do you think it's going wrong why have you opted for a fully in the office environment which by the way personally I would subscribe to means I could have more air time with you and learn from everyone else around me yeah why do you why you done that rather than listen to what the generic yeah I think there's two bits to that one is if you just look at the human primitive needs for community and connection like let's just talk about that so is it healthy for any human being to just be in their apartment day in day out and not seeing people no that's not healthy like you I think there was a stat recently where your average high security prisoner in the US is spending more time Outdoors looking at the countryside than your average teenager in the Western World something crazy like there's a there is a minimum I think it's it's it's over an hour that they spend every day and it's and then you could correlate that with mental health and there's so much data now you can just see the all the problems with um a lack of social interaction uh so that's almost like a more Society level so that's yeah one very very strong reason it's just for keep people saying mental health um but then from a a commercial like work level there's so many reasons to so yeah you're Absolut so if if you're new and you want to learn you're going to learn far far quicker by being physically around people and it's all the serendipitous stuff that happens in a like by the water cooler or whatever these conversations that um stuff is so nuanced but so much happen Happ s away from the scheduled appointments that if you were just doing teams call after teams call and it's very um defined and you're not deviating from the agendas of all these meetings and the the magic doesn't happen and it's all this collaboration and stuff and even even having an awareness of like um what I saying about how when someone comes in and they see all these people and they get to know their rules and start learning about their backgrounds where what schools they went to and and and realizing that ah I can I can achieve that if you were all just working remotely like you wouldn't it just would not be the same so I think yeah just in terms of knowledge transfer and how much people enjoy the work and the the energy like there's so much energy like when you come in the office and people feed off that like and it's times are like why I still do after 20 years and still coming in it's it's I want to feel that energy it's almost like addictive it does become adct doesn't you're around people and if they all understand the mission and where you're trying to head to just makes a lot easier interesting fact about Halo is earlier this year we became the UK's first everever uh unicorn totally bootstrapped and self-funded what is your opinion on business plans uh put big plans together because everyone has a crystal ball right and they all know how they go like there's some great incentives out there for youth um and I think everyone does great stuff but then um I go on somewhere like um the prince's trust which is now called The King's trust and downloads a massive 70 page business plan and and I'm like I remember when I first started from a coffee shop I created this 70 page business plan from the king's trust and none of it was right it went out the rout window what is your advice to young entrepreneurs or anyone who's trying to put a career plan together what any type of plan yeah how should plans be so firstly we've never done any business plans we've never in terms of documents or we've never done any of that kind of stuff um even cash flow forecasting you wouldn't believe this but a business now of our our side we don't do any cash flow forecasting we don't need to because the business business has run so efficiently that it's very profitable and there's and because we don't because we're just almost growing it in this organic self so you have no cash flow forecasting no cash flow forecasting and it's still been a success yeah and we still we have we have the cash to be able to like we're now about to we've reached the capacity of our current office and we're looking at another office and and we're looking the te when everyone's like selling their buildings we're like we want to buy a building that's going to be our home for the next 10 20 years and we're going to have the most spectacular building um and it's it's something that again going back to the culture and being a part of bringing a Salesforce type organization or service now type organization to suffk and being proud of that and being a part of the transformation um it's all do you look at the competition or the people closes you know you know we talked about the the there's there's there's potentially five other there's four others on the list than you and you look at it and go oh they won they won the deal why what happened when you look at do do you have a list of uh competitors that you look at and go oh sometimes you go oh why didn't we think of that sometimes you go what are they doing where do you get your inspiration from Paul where does that come from and how do you how can others get inspired when they're first starting at and they go online it's easy to go online and go down a road and think oh this one's doing this this one's doing that but they some someone's version 50 is your version one and it's easy to get into that trap right where do you get your inspiration from and then how do you stay focused so firstly we very much just focus on what we are doing so in terms of yeah we we really believe in what we're doing and we believe we will become market leader in the different markets we operate in um but that journey and when you do if you lose a deal it's so so important to get the feedback so you understand deeply why you've like it it honestly it hurts our team like we it fires us up we we hate losing deals and but it's such a good it's like every every closes Sil Ling every time we lose a deal often it's better than winning the deal because you get the feedback that allows you to then make an improvement that allows you to get 10 deals or so it's you've always got to get that feedback so in terms of advice for for any young person uh listening today I would say like keep getting that feedback whoever it's from wherever it's from um it's one of the most important things in business uh but in terms of uh yeah I can't remember the original question you asked me before that about inspiration where does it where does your inspiration come from and do you look at your competitors's lists and go oh they're doing something really like yeah so I mean what we actually do is we just keep listening to our customers like what are our customers requirements and it might well be that their requirement and they say um maybe we're migrating from one platform to Halo and they say well in this platform we were able to do this and then we say all right we have a do a feasibility study can we can we do something like this as well and quite often we'll just yeah we'll just make it work and build it in and and that's how a product develops and that's that's why I think and the best thing you can also do in ter is not just like yeah get the feedback but like properly listen to your customers and as long as you're going for the segmented Market you got to kind of go for a segmented Market don't just try and do one thing for everyone um but then listen to the customers in the market and really tailor what you're doing to the customer feedback don't worry too much about the ah there competitors this and there other ones doing this and use your customers to help you use your customers as the sense of truth and how you grow yeah and just part partnership like really partner with your customers so um yeah they're helping you and and you're helping them and it's it's very much a two-way thing as an as a business owner and a CEO an entrepreneur starting your own business do you I'm a big G that action speed will make you succeed yeah I like to move really quick how do you balance your brain wanting to move quick compared to what's possible in that moment or are you on are you on the understanding that anything's possible if you want to get something done we'll get it done like yeah definitely that the latter anything anything is possible um there's always an opportunity cost so any resource you have and um any time you spend doing anything you could be using that time to to spend doing something else so you have to make sure it's in line with the goals of the business I mean you are in terms of how quickly you can move and our biggest the biggest challenge right now is and people might think like because there really is so much opportunity and we are doing great things and we could really scale and um bring so many customers on board very quickly but we're very careful not to do that because we want because we think so longterm so far ahead we want to just keep bringing people on slau we know they'll might sound a bit overconfident but we we have the mentality that they will come to Halo eventually because of the way we the way we are the way we do the business and we know the software is a great fit um so they'll we just have well they'll come eventually so just focus on the deals we've got and just do absolutely everything you can to make it work and for that customer to tell another customer um and that means so we have for example we've got rule that we will never grow our head count by more than 50% cuz then you start diluting culture diluting knowledge how did you come up with that number 50% from experience so when we're a little quite a considerably smaller as pools you do you realize your technology is really great and you're winning more ders than you're losing uh and then you think okay well let's let's scale let's hire load of people so there was a year when we doubled our head count and it was too much too soon it just it it it just doesn't work and we see time and time again in the industry people making these mistakes where you think you can just go and hire you have have might have a 100 people and you go and hire a thousand people just does not work absolutely does not and it's because people are in too much of a hurry um maybe because they're publicly listed and they've got their biannual results to worry about or or even a private Equity driven company where they want to return within three to five years and but for us as I say we're thinking 10 20 years ahead and the power of that is is unbelievable when you do have a whole company that thinks like really doesn't is really not focused at all on the current years's performance and results so like for example in may we announced that for unused logins we're like crediting them back at the next year's renewal we had a waiting list for clients we're actually saying no to people um because again going back to we were bringing on too many customers and we wanted to just slow that down a bit because we don't want to harm our reputation um so all these things that when you think long term you know like this these are the best decisions you can make for the business um all the AI use cases we're one of only six vendors in the world that is recommended by Gartner which is the world's Authority on technology um uh amongst other things uh and and yeah we're one of six vendors and we were pretty much the first to Market with all these AI use cases in in service management technology um we're just giving all that to our customers for free everyone else is charging an arm and a leg but for us value right rather than a a value say how can we're always thinking how can we create more value make it fairer for our customers and again it just comes back to yeah if we if we wanted to maximize Revenue in the next 12 months and yeah we charge lot of money for the AI technology but all we actually want is for a customer to tell another customer maybe in two years time five years time somebody might at then point migrate to Halo and it's all about just thinking long term looking at the longterm big picture longm interesting fact about the software industry is that you cannot just keep throwing resource at your software engineering teams to make the the software better or to develop more um it's unlike any other industry in that regard what would you say has been your biggest lesson since you've been an entrepreneur like whether it was early doors whether it was last week or something yeah relatively recent as last couple of years maybe um I've always like that and Halo's had a culture forever to have like the most senior people most visible so that the new people can learn off those senior people and I always knew that but you do and again thinking long term because you do have short-term pressures you might have some really big deals that are coming along and then of course you want your best people to work on those big big deals that are so important so then you do start and i' we have as a company made the mistake of taking some of this great resource from and you think it's temporarily it's like oh it'll be fine just for a few months you'll take the resource away from training up and inspiring the new starters and the youth and you work on these big deals but that's when you begin to create that segregation layer it's like all right so all the experienced people are now working and all the really high valuable stuff and you've not really you've now got the the new starters learning from people who started 6 months before them or or a year before them and that's when everything like really slows down and the culture becomes a bit more Us and Them and honestly we did have a period it was probably probably a year maybe two years where uh it began to get like that and and I realized like yeah as a I mean I'm a Problem Solver it's like this problem was developing it's like what's going on here and you're analyzing it and it's like and then I began to realize that I'd actually fallen into the Trap of doing the very thing that I knew knew that you started not to do yeah I knew I knew so but it's yeah and it took it took going through that experience to actually like reinforce fundamentally like how important that is and and I say to people no and people think I'm biased and maybe I am but honestly right now for any young person anywhere in the world if for me Halo in terms of a graduate scheme for graduates coming in think is the best graduate scheme in the world not just because we're in the software there's lots of big software companies that are growing quickly so there's lots of opportunity um but there's very very few organizations in the world that understand the importance of having those knowledgeable people absolutely key to the business working with the the people just starting and giving them like such like we have a checklist for every single person no matter where you're going to end up in the the business whether it's marketing software engineering commercial selling consultancy they all have the same checklist and there's about 20 boxes and some of these items is things like um attending a trade show in the UK attending a client site visit abroad um suggesting an efficiency gain anywhere in the business so it's like a real holistic alled list of things that allow people to just have this awareness so like all the different departments that what they do and if everyone's got the same checklist then it gives the opportunity for everyone to start from be on the same page right oh what did you do uh with that when you add efficiency to your when you tick that box what was your one it gives people the opportunity to then expand their thinking right M absolutely then the other two points I didn't mention about why it's such a good graduate scheme it's in suffk so commuting time is almost zero like there's no rush ARS it's it's um compared to again to go back to where that you do have these huge software companies with huge opportunities they're in San Francisco they're in Miami they're in London um and if you don't want to have expensive time consuming commuting Journeys you have to spend a hell of a lot of money on rent or buying property that's located near to where these places of work are so in terms of the cost of living and suffix is like you must come and visit visit us Jack cuz it's beautiful I want to come down this slide that you got and uh so that's another reason the whole the cost of living and then the final thing is just this whole Siege mentality that's for like the David versus Goliath it's so exciting and uh I think that as well that that is yeah I'm probably biased but I genuinely think is the best place for any young person to come and just have a whole lot of fun and learn a hell of a lot and if any young person does want to come because I think you've uh you've sold it you you've done it where where can I sign up do they just go over to the website where do they go to do that yeah there's a go to search for Halo careers there's a careers page and you'll see there's different profiles of different people in different departments and you can hear about their Journeys um but yeah anyone from any any background uh we the interview process so we it's it's very short it's just a very informal conversation like we yeah you've got a CV which is kind I guess it's a bit of a filter because don't get me wrong like software you you kind of have to it's quite have to have good maths yeah mathematical skills think logically if you're going to go into any technical roles um and even commercially like selling our technical our sales people are still yeah they've got good techn you need to have a technical understanding because it still is listening to the problems and suggesting Solutions and um uh yeah so the CV is a bit of a filter and we we'll have maybe a 10-minute video call as well where somebody will do that as a bit of a screening filter as well but then just come in the office and it is an inperson interview cuz it is an inperson job as well um but uh and it's in suffk um but we do have about a third of people relocate from all over the UK from Glasgow and Manchester and even Italy and Essex Essex we've got quite a few people in from Essex now um but yeah it's it's just such an informal chat where we and and you know how it is like you know within 5 minutes you have an instinct of whether or not that person will be a good cultural fit yeah Y and if they it's things in terms of what we look for it's like obviously you want work ethic curiosity is important like do they seem like they're curious like because that's how you learn that's how you really Embrace stuff and learn and will they adapt to the chaotic framework um do you try and gauge all this but it's such a hard thing by the way as well cuz um I'm sure we've all been there we've gone for an interview and it is a bit of acting you you you're trying to put yourself in you just say yes to everything and and it's so it's difficult to act actually and that's where it and the importance of like just your gut feeling your instinct it's almost never wrong like just go with your gut go with your gut rather than rather than oh yeah but look at their CV and now we got to give them the benefit of Doubt cuz their CV is so perfect and yeah go with your gut I think oh AI can create a perfect CV now can't it so go the Gap yeah we sit down in 5 years time where is the where where is the business where's Halo like what's happening where's your what's your vision yeah so our vision we honestly believe we were bringing a so you got three massive SAS PL Platforms in the US you got service NOS Salesforce workday we are bringing one of these types of scale and size of organization that's run in a much more democratic meritocratic way to suffk we're transforming that tone um with everything the football club's doing as well with our back-to-back promotions to Premier League there's so much excitement for the future of of what's going on in suff and I think and with our in-office working policy so you got loads of insurance companies and buildings that are 15% occupied um we're planning for a thousand staff in 5 years time uh which will again office imagine the the Boost to the economy of lunches uh drinks after work and uh and it's it will be right in the Cent such as well so um and that's so that's really exciting in terms of the the we're actually going back to the youth side of it so we're just about to launch Halo Scholars so we're again taking people from disadvantaged um or less privileged backgrounds we're paying for them to go to university um because we want to and this is something we're starting off locally um but we hope we're going to re roll out this initiative Nationwide and they can go off to any University it's not that they have to go to university in in the local area but just yeah if they are resident in that local area um and we will we will work with them even and this is how long-term Halo thinks we're literally going into all the high schools we're talking to them we're promoting our scholarship program um and we're literally identifying people and there is an application process um but uh yeah if you if you're interested then do apply and um we will there's a mentoring process so we basically go on that Journey from high school through University and then and we hope that you'll come and work for Halo at the end of it but if you don't want to and you change your mind different career path that's absolutely fine but um yeah we just want to we just it's just so deep in our I can hear it in the heart I can hear voice I've literally gone through it myself I know that it doesn't matter what educational establishment you've been to it doesn't matter what experience you have not got if you want to achieve something you can just go and grab it like just want it be driven be ambitious um and yeah it's just about trying to if we can even if there's three four people that we can just make believe that and that's that's what this is all about I I love that and my final final question are you ready for it what's your duv flip what gets you out of bed in the morning to flip the duv I think my duv flip is probably it's quite obvious now it's just that energy so the energy is addictive so I want to I want to flip that dovy and get out get into that office and get around people feel that energy um and there's so much purpose and mission to the whole David versus Goliath the the transforming suffk the there's so much learning like it's just yeah it's all that all that all that great stuff I can start thinking can I do you go a bed do you do you sleep like well this is the thing like because there's so much um over the last few years I it probably has become a bit more fashionable to be a CEO or whatever and and but people also have this picture that to be a CEO you're like you're only getting four hour sleep and it's horrendous and your SCH I always get it or asleep I I I spend I've got three kids I spend a lot of I go and watch them play sport and um it's very important to have a balanced family like people say like work life balance and the thing for me that I find interesting in fact I haven't even mentioned my original inspiration which was so there's a book called Maverick which is about this Brazilian businessman I read this book while I was at eron Young and that made me actually believe that oh there is a different way to this command and control structure um and he took took a company that was very toxic traditional hierarchical completely transformed it became Latin America's fastest growing company um and anyway and it's a great book go and read it it's called Maverick but one of his things in there he said is he was questioning well what is the opposite of work is it Leisure or is it idleness can work be leisure if work is Leisure so I.E if you find your work fun and they say if you can you never work a day in your life but genuinely if you can find a way to enjoy coming into work your your work becomes Leisure and then in terms of burnout and stuff like like do you ever get burnt out from doing something you love doing and like no you don't like and so you can you can and don't get me wrong there is times and I'm sure my wife like who's been an absolute Rock through all of this um there'll be times when she's like they can she can just see my head's like somewhere else I'm trying to I don't know some when we got that problem earlier we spoke about about when the you begin to get the segregation and then how can we how can I solve that problem what's going on there it's your brain somewhere else um but in terms of actual like it's it's a very sensible like working time and family time and it's not like it's portrayed in the media and that you can definitely achieve remarkable things without having to work crazy hours and you can still enjoy I love football do do what was right for you right yeah and it's you can still do all your hobbies and still run a business absolutely well I just want to say thank you for joining us on the show for sharing your journey your wisdom but also just like really I I just so fasinated about how your mind works and I've seen that today it's like you're having a conversation with your own mind through me like oh and we did this and it's just passionate and and you you know what you've you've turned up as poor and authentic and honest and just real and I love that there's like no kind of script and you just got oh yeah and this happened and it's like you've gone back in kind of time in terms of oh what did we do when we did this and this so I just want to say thank you and I really just want to see Alo do so much success and take on those uh organizations I've got their name already take them on make a difference for the local area and you're already doing that mm 225 yeah people that's globally there 175 175 like and if that's going to grow by to a th in the next 5 years that's just incredible so I just want to say thank you and I will come down we will find time to you got come to is it is it down is it up I don't know a little bit up I will come up and I I will come and uh check it out and uh cause some chaos myself maybe absolutely you can show me your chaos and I just want to say Jack as well like what you had I I have so much respect for what you guys have done and how you've done it even the in all the interactions we've had have been so um to the point efficient uh just it's been great working with you guys and and your team um and yeah hats off to everything you've achieved and your mission is fantastic well thanks po this is this is may be the first time we're sitting down for a cup of tea but it won't be the last thank you