hello I'm Steve rastell on the poding alone podcast again I've got another guest today um this is Port Paul Hamilton Paul's going to introduce himself in a minute but he's done very successful business but over many years and picked up on a few things to do a little bit different to do with growth and taking investment not selling themselves and just how all got to here but enough for me Paul could you introduce yourself please yeah sure hi Steve thanks very much for having me on your podcast my name is Paul Hamilton I'm a CEO and founder Halo serice Solutions yeah I've been doing this 20 years now a bit differently to to your average uh or your typical business yeah so 20 years I've um I've had about the same with my first business I'm in another one now but it's a long time and you wonder where it go so could you just give us all a little bit an iidea how you got started and what how did those 20 years kick off yeah sure going back to 2004 I graduated in 2002 actually worked for about a year at ernston Young so one of the big four uhany firms um fell into it after un didn't really know what I wanted to do and as with a lot of people when you don't know you don't really have for anything as such when you you need you need you want Financial Security and you're kind of interested in uh a decent firm with a good reputation and all that but I hadn't really worked in an office job at all and so I didn't know what to expect I very quickly realized that the typical corporate environment wasn't for me and it seemed flawed in many ways actually so I I left the onon young environment and I I started just doing some freelance it stuff uh building websites installing networks is basically part of a Forman MSP from 2004 to 2008 and as part of that along with Alan who was basically there was the two of us working on we were called net help desk back then so it was a a basic ticketing platform but Alan sort of retired 2010 2011 at the point when I wanted to uh properly make a go of uh the ticketing platform business and so that's when I I started enying people was back in 2011 my first employee but I'd already been doing it for seven years by that point it was only 2018 when I went fulltime fully dedicated to selling developing supporting implementing and traveling around the world uh yeah setting up and training people on on how to use net up deaths but there's a couple of interesting points that I picked up at I was a bit like you at University too I thought it was off around Anderson was a place where I thought I should be going afterwards and I had you know the big the big idea about going into that large structured thing and then realizing that's not for me in one word those cultures and those environments what is it about you don't like about them restricting I would say very restrictive environments they don't promote uh know someone who just wants to to get on and do stuff and um make a difference and I don't know they're very much about spend do your time and you'll I don't know get promotions to manager senior manager director partner whatever it is and it wasn't it's not really they're not really run as a meritocracy in my my no I know you mean they I think the AR Anderson once they used to call them Androids or something along those LS want to come in and manufacturers that and yeah you went going to be yourself you're going to fit in you're going to do that it wasn't me either you feel that's changed and you built your culturing your business and where have you taken that because of that yeah it's really funny so when I was working at Aron young I read a book called Maverick which is have you heard of Maverick I read that back after the university as well that's funny um so 200 yeah we mean 200 I read Maverick a guy buying Ricardo semler Brazilian businessman inherited a to a business with a toxic workplace and he just thought I'm going to do this business I'm there's no way I'm going to have people coming in unhappy only living for the weekend and and hating their work so he completely transformed the workplace and became that's America's fastest growing company and and created a democratic workplace that was a merit opy all the things that I kind of felt bearing in mind I'd only ever had one like corporate job really and that was my only experience it was that kind of yeah similar as company was the kind of environment that made sense to me so and I just thought I I thought I was weird when I was young and everyone else seemed quite happy with I know just conforming to the way that um conventional corporate businesses are run without even questioning anything it's just people just take it is just the way the way it is um yeah I think yeah I think that book and and I'm thinking back to it now I almost really I was reading by junian Rich and richer sounds I was reading a lot about culture because one of the big reasons I like to go my own way because I didn't like that culture so it wasn't about money just thought it could be done a better way and you could treat people Lally you could go to work and be yourself as what in the other jobs I had in corporate I felt like I had to be somebody else while I was there and I think he was a manufacturer wasn't he in Brazil and he did some really things and it would be free out then people today and the millennial generation you found that well that's white back then it wasn't like that so I know exactly where you're coming from so the business has got going you've got a small team you want that freedom you come out lead uni you you started getting some it work and you've got a business it like it was just going slowly steadily you're building up and then I know take enough more and then the compies grown along often you'll see businesses get going very early and then they just stay at that same rate but it sounds like you guys have a a step change why do you think that is so going back to that phase between so back in 2008 that was a pivotal moment that was when I realized IED that the most lucrative thing I could do out of all cuz I was charging my time out by the hour as I say as a man service provider as they did back then it was all pretty much like break F break fix kind of arrangements and I could I could see that the future could make way more money and it was way more fun developing the bit of software rather than doing all the the the service work and it began to make enough money that it was an easy decision to make in terms of there wasn't too much risk to take on I was still living kind of from month to month and you got no Financial Security whatsoever and I didn't up until up until 2011 probably when and that was when it got to the point where it as I say I was from 2008 to 2011 I was just flying R the world all over the place and it got to the point where there was just way too much demand for me to to do on my own um so I started employing people but even then it wasn't because there was enough so even then it I sound very like I'm not willing to take on risk it's it's not really like that but it's just the way that I think an important lesson is to create the demand for the resource or be very careful about taking on too much resource until you've actually got purpose for that resource I've learned kind of that as have done along the way um a lot of startups fail just because they take on way too much resource initially and there's no I don't know it's uh yeah they try and make things happen without I know what you mean I've seen that I've always tried to Ste it's like feeding the Beast you put that overhead in you've got to keep it fed you got to keep the work and then it can be a distraction from your real strategy of building that product out doing other stuff because you're trying to meet feed Mouse aren't you yeah it sounds like you have that Services business you had a good space for that you could find the work yourself you overwhelmed take more people and it does go and you can make money out of it I've built a Services business I built a couple of different types of ones and the more you add people in the Haier it gets isn't it and managing them finding that work the cash the problems that come with that delivering constant services and keeping people happy talk to me a little bit about that if you would but about how see would you keep control of the services business and then blend the services with the product yes so what just before going on to that yeah so cuz people as you said what happened to ignite this explosive growth we've just had eight years in a row of 100% growth in our business and honestly it's not like it's not like that it's not like there was one thing that happened there was all an overnight um magic button that was pressed and it goes back to 20 years ago when or even 30 years ago when the very first bit of cold that makes up halo as it is today was first written it was in 1994 and it was just an iterative process for certainly I've been doing this for 20 years iterative process for 20 years that yeah from 2011 there was one person hard 2012 another person 2013 two people 2014 another two people and then we slowly and it was about 2018 when we up when we had a big regand and that help us became healer and that was strategic that was the point where we were beginning to realize that the technology site was getting close we still weren't the best technology in the market we still weren't winning more tenders than we were losing but the technology was it was good like we were beginning to the product was beginning to sell itself rather than the people and the the the service and the relationships being the reason people were buying it and so you could see that the signs were there so was when we began to to ramp up the the recruitment side but it honestly was a very very long game and this is where I think one of the most important things of business is patients um and we we're in a society in a moment where it seems to be people just think that uh you can very easily achieve huge amounts of success because they maybe seen I don't know YouTubers or or just celebrities who who have managed to be very fortunate and and by the way some of these YouTubers work really hard as well and it's not an over likee success for them either um but yeah the moment when people begin to go viral it like it's not like success but yeah there there is no quick solution to and honestly it's quite a boring story when people do because we we valued over a billion dollars we've got 100 million Revenue we're very very profitable in terms of our our profit margins are about 30% we' got tens of millions of profit a year that which has meant that we we become a unicorn and we're probably one of the only unicorns in the world that has got to this size without ever having had any debt without ever having taken on any external investment as well um in the software World anyway yeah I've never come across another software company that has got to this size we are we we yes it's quite incredible really what a team have achieved as a a gner magic quadrant that's just been released today I can finally talk about it we're one of six vendors worldwide six service management vendors worldwide that Gartner this is for AI service management and we're we're in there alongside let service now Fresh open Tex like these companies that are are worth tens of billions turning over 12 billion or whatever it is and and we're just uh yeah we've done it very differently because all these companies are massively I mean they're either public companies or or they've had hundreds of millions of of financial backing and we've just done it our way where we pretty much exclusively done it with graduates where we taught ourselves everything with never hired an experienced person member St we worked with other agencies and kind of yeah contractors and whatnot to help us learn as suppose but um yeah it's a real success story and just as to what you can achieve as a human being now if you look at my first 10 hirers they they're all from like below average comprehensive schools in the local area in supper still Market I still probably four of my first 8 maybe and they've gotone on to become like world class leaders of what they do and so it's not about like anyone can achieve anything and that's the whole EOS at Halo and we get told Time and Time Again by feedback from clients and partners that like nobody's doing it like we are and how do we do it what's the magic ingredient and it's it's just finding a way for your staff to come in to work on a on a Monday morning 9:00 a.m. and look forward to it and love what they do and that it their job isn't actually just about money it's about a whole higher level of fulfillment and purpose shared ownership comes into as well because we're 100% employee on business and we've got all the yeah the most valuable key people in the business are also shareholders so just I this I'm glad it's going in this direction because I picked up on this that I noticed on your website saying we're not for sale we're not buying anyone you you're on that unicorn path because of where you're and I and I then read a bit more and I realized I'd heard of the business um and then I realized yeah it's had a massive lift and the P I pick a few things out of that I think the patience is really interesting because it sounds like you just going along way showing the signs quite a while about the potential so do do you mean it was patience as in it just took a long time or it was we didn't have it quite right so we had to persist with patience to get it right yeah so it's it's the way I would describe it even going back to 2008 when it was pretty much me doing all the customer interactions are selling I'd get an inquiry so in 2006 I thought how am I going to get more inquiries I know let's get get our website to number one in Google so I got VI search for help Des help Des software in 2006 in UK we were the number one organic search result that was just just me went off and and and adjusted all sort the techniques you could use back then that would work now but uh yeah it was a it was possible it was it was tricky even that in itself that's something where you have to that was cor that was that was knowing that you're not going to get any return from your investment for at least six months there all the stuff you can do to make your site R well in Google you're not going to see any benefit for 6 months so it's kind of even that in itself is about just every day doing little things consistently and if you do as 1% Improvement every day of the year ends up 37.6 X return on on day one of the year if you grow something by 1% every day of the year and it's that kind of mentality that just a little bit every single day so when we get these inquiries come in you win some you lose some back then we'd lose far more than we were winning when you lose it you find like what's the main reason you lost it and if it's something that's easy to develop we just go away and develop it often I mean I remember doing some demos for a just spe that I don't know it did 90% I wanted but there was something missing so then so they'd be a little bit down beat and they're probably looking at Alternatives but then I'd email back at 24 hours time and I say oh if you don't like can I just have like just 10 15 minutes of your time and I get them back on a demo and I'd show them it would be developed so I'd have stayed up to like 2: a.m. or whatever doing some programming to add in this bit of functionality so I could sh them 24 hours later and it was that kind of thing but obviously we were dealing with much much smaller clients back then or maybe just very small Departments of large organizations but it was very they basically were the decision makers and they they could sign off and they just absolutely love the the can do approach and okay it was probably quite obvious we were a small vendor and there's a bit of risk there going with a small vendor but we solved our problems at the end of the day and and made it work um so again it's just going back to every time for me personally I I like to win but not in a very big I like competition I'm very I am competitive and I love competition I love Sport and I always see Halo as like a a sports team it's a very big sports team now with hundreds of people in Five offices around the world but we still just have a sports team mentality we're we're in a tournament there's like a there's a league going on and and we win some we some but when we lose it really Firs us up and we drill into that we find out like what could we have done different to win that next time round and I've had that like ever since I've been doing this um and that's what I mean by in terms of the perseverance and the patience that as long as you are learning for all it's not even mistakes you're making it's not mistake when it just doesn't do something a client wants um but there's definitely an opportunity to improve your you're offering every almost every day of your working life for and as I say for 20 years every day there's been an opportunity for me just to incrementally improve something about the business whether it's product related whether it's our proposal documentation where we might we might be shared someone else's documentation we think it's really good and we could do something similar there and and it's or it could be something to Brand could anything in the business I I I can really I I hear you with this cuz um I I've had a similar thing in where I've always thought right it can be a little bit better I want shouts AC crosses in your answer and it's a good answer because you're only saying there's no magic to this it's little hard work hard yards always trying to get better learning your lessons trying to not make the same mistakes twice and keep it going and eventually that all adds up to quite a lot which it has to you yeah Millennial and I don't mean in a critical way I just need to phrase this mindset I'm the YouTuber all and I think it's the instant gratification and maybe there's a media piece saying that you can get stuff without lots of hard work and you can buy Bitcoin and be rich the next week and all these other things what you and I are saying or our experience and I'm not saying people haven't done it the other way is that hard yards hard work doing all those things still work that's no surprise is it so if you look back over that time what would have speeded it up if you knew now what you didn't know then yeah I mean so cuz people might think cuz we didn't do any sales activity for 20 years we didn't do any marketing actually that's a lie we did one trade show done it every year in London it's called C since or it was stits back then it's that Excel have you ever been to that one I know how when years ago okay okay so it was at Earl score then it moved to Olympia and then Excel honestly it was me just pulling up in a car getting a popup stand thing out the boot of my car um had a tiny tiny bit of space on the floor filled it up and had had some conversations with people and honestly every year we got some sales cuz he there's all there's always people there with all sorts of different budgets and and again it's about people buy from people we all know that and you make some relationships and people I probably like the passion just the naivity of U me just stood there back in 2 2009 with a PO that Banner but now we're we're like the the headlines we got the the biggest FL space SP front area we just we had a Formula One car there in in April this year um and it's yeah it's quite a show in fact we had two stands we had um one at the back of the ball as well so it's yeah it's just in terms of that story in itself just the journey um and you can you can see over the years how we have progressed as an organization but other that one trade show until 2023 so about a year ago we had not engaged in any marketing whatsoever we didn't do any direct out bone selling we didn't have a sales machine at all it was all the the business and the the eight years of of 100% growth all came about through wordo wordo selling and I think so going back to what could we do could we have done to get to where we are know quicker there's nothing obvious because what so let's say we Market it sooner and N startups fail because they Market too soon they haven't got the product Market fit we got to the point where once we begin began to win more tenders than we were losing and this is against the entire Market service not fresh an BMC openex all these massive organizations we got to a point probably a couple of years ago when we were beginning to win so this is tenders where we don't we don't know the people there's no one it's no it's a pure Fair Level Playing Field exercise and we were winning more than we're losing it's like okay well now is the time to tell the world about it um but if we had marketed sooner all that would have done is increased demand and what would happen if you increase demand so there'd be more fires to put out cuz there is yeah you do fight fires I mean you got implementations and there's a short stopper or something and you we go do some development and make it we always make it work for our customers we we find ways to to just make it work and I think that's what you get from from retaining that sort of private all we all like such a key part of the journey and the the pride and everything that it it's yeah as I say there's so much pride in what we do and people are almost embarrassed like if we if there ever was a situation where it was looking like Halo wasn't doing what it was s to do then we'd be embarrassed about that so and it's a totally different mindset like our sales people aren't on commission so if you can imagine another organization where their sales team are just on commission they make the sale they don't give them monkeys about how that project goes and if it goes like because they've had their commission you may have retention teams that are on some kind of churn based commission or something but it's a different department team and for me it's just so it's the wrong way to run business oh if I'm many there I think I think you mentioned a really good phrase and you said something that's SP back to me you were talking about when somebody had got a feature and you stay up all night writing that feature so indirectly you were building that product Market fit in a real way over time yeah and in your answer I got the feeling where you thought yeah we could have done things different we could have hit the gas harder because that is a real big part of this story growing like that without money and that shows you built a great product because how else would it go forward otherwise but I got the feeling where you think yeah I could have done that differently but it would have come at the expense or something else so maybe you don't regret it and you're little detail so even though even though because we've got a Formula 1 partnership with McLaren we've got a premier league partnership uh through switch tone and um it's we're now selling to tier one Enterprise and the the business is is going so great I'm worrying that the product is going to be compromised it's like are we going to be able to keep up with this this demand and so last year we actually so we take our standards and the quality of service and reputation so seriously last summer we actually put a waiting list in place and started saying no to customers of a certain profile we just didn't take their business we just put on a waiting list and then steady the got our ducks in a row got more resource got them trained up and then we opened up the Taps again uh and we we started on wording them as so we're very much in the phase of building the partner Network as well so we're working with Partners as well allowed to because we we want to share this journey with as many people and organizations as we can so we've got like 90% of the projects we do now are being primarily done by our partner networks Mr partner we just on boarded dxc technology um Global organization operates in almost every country in the world we're going through a program at the moment to to enable um dozens of their Engineers to to be able to um deliver Halo technology as alternative to service now to their clients there just too too much demand at the moment for people wanting an alternative to to service now service now is great they're very good at marketing but it's very very expensive and I think people are beginning there was case recently we heard that the business case had a 30-year returnal investment to justify the expense service which absolutely it's mind Bing to me is staggering because I think this links to something else and there's a couple more things we talked about got the business to hear those lessons you know and I get the feeling we could sit and go through a lot of this for hours because I can see it all in you all those dots you're joining you know backwards but I think I think there's two things I'd like to push towards next if we may if that's all right with you one is you've done all of that organically youve got that growth you sounds like you're leveraging Partners but you've never taken investment and you've done that without investment okay You' got the cash now profitable got that Revenue why did you did you have a look at it what do you like about it and what was the thinking about why you've gone different way than a lot of people did in the last 10 years the key here is I'm not actually that materialistic yes I'm I'm certainly was money driven as a as a 21 year-old I wanted choice I wanted Financial Freedom to be able to make whatever choice I wanted it's so happens that my choices are not even know I I I have never paid more than 2000 pH for a flight I can't bring myself to part with I don't know a business card flight is8 hours and 7,000 I can't do it if I've got billions in the bank I will still never be able to um just for myself and maybe certain scenarios if it's if there's time constraints or is really difficult to get somewhere there might be scenarios but it's just if there's an option available where you can get and for me it's about efficiency like I'm I'm passionate about efficiency whether it's cost efficiency or labor efficiency or whatever so going back to why the the temptation of of selling out and I guess getting a big check all of a sudden there's never been the desire to buy a b uh buy a y or a fancy property or um don't know and as well I think it it we're having so much fun on this journey fig learning as we go and figuring all out ourselves the F fill M against it from I mean I we have no had offers play I mean it's n figure sums of investment yeah could easily raise sell 20% for for hundreds of millions if I wanted to uh I get emails every day from private Equity uh companies wanting to to invest but it would change everything we even if we because you might think oh you could um re liquidate a little bit now can still carry on doing what you're doing and then 10 years time sell fully or whatever still it was still me I picked up on something for you yeah and then try relay something back and see if you this Rings C you're see I Know Myself CU I have fallen for buying a little boat and an extra house or two and all that and you realize there's no part at the end of the rainbow but what you're talking about is you really like sport mhm we've have a lot of is you know sport as a family ourselves in different ways and if you chase the trophies you get disappointed even when you win there if it's always about the process as you described driving that efficiency improving yourself the challenge of the dayto day of what that is yeah that always keeps you motivated to be the best at something in my view and then the other bit is well there isn't any pot at the end of the rainbow I had a small exit I'm in a comforta blish position and after six mons of it I really didn't like it mhm I can hear that in you that I think you're about something more about trying to do something so can I see you maybe and I'm guessing here trying to sell the business and do something good with that money down the road cuz that's the only conclusion we will do some good with with the money absolutely there'll be a Halo Foundation I don't think we'll ever sell the business honestly I don't I think uh like Richard Branson has his virgin group and virgin companies and virgin unit and you'll ever sell virgin Warren Buffett he does what he does he's all done his whole life it's it's his passion these guys love doing what they do they don't do it because they want an exit and they want to get a big check and it's uh yeah then so if you get the big check what do you do with the big check where do you invest it there's no investment in the world in my mind right now better than Halo like genuinely I genuinely mean that so I um and the other thing as well we we're literally just scratching the surface with with what we're doing where we're going um we've got .1% of the market share uh in the esm market so service now 12 billion we're at 100 million revenue and and that's just and you then got BMC or text and it's we're we're scratching the surface for what we can do but not just from a financial performance point of view our slogan ofm it's it's changed the way the world works but in terms of what we're doing with creating a sem cool type organization where You' got different satellites within the business where hugely motivated teams of people where you're you're sharing the owners everyone's everyone acts like owners there's many CEOs all over the business um and people are rewarded like owners as well and that's something that we're we're we're we're looking to do more and more and to I just think the whole corporate model or I know like it's you might think this 2024 it's a much more equal environment where employee and employees do have a lot more power due to mobility of Labor and well the internet's created all sorts of reasons why employees now have have way more power than they used to go back the ' 80s but it's still like nowhere near what it should be in my mind for functional system with equilibrium and let me tell you the organizations the like Halo has been so much more successful as an organization by operating in a democratic way where everyone throughout the whole business is making decisions about anything we have people come in they'll be here one month and they'll suggest a complete revamp of like the whole induction program for the the intake and we'll listen to them and we're like yeah that makes perfect sense can you go ahead and implement it yeah brilliant and then so it's that kind of environment where people just can make things happen I think Ricardo would be uh would be a fan so what one thing on Ricardo so I read the book in 2002 I I didn't touch the book again for 20 years reread it in 2022 and I'm not kidding you it was like reading a book that had been written about Halo you come in there's there's no receptionists uh there's no HR department there's no one ratifying jobs anywhere in the business no one has Pas there's no like administrators there's no everyone just chips in and there's no Reserve parking spaces families are welcome in and part yeah if so yeah I might be CEO at the moment that's my current rule that there's almost like a sense of there's no job titles it's just or your job title is whatever it makes sense for the person you're interacting with to most understand what it is you're doing time but because we all wear different hats then in terms of the yeah there's there's we don't really segregate duties unless there's a real good reason to I think economies of scale is massively over uh or or misunderstood like it doesn't take long before you get to dis economies of scale uh and then all of a sudden just go back to having like even even if it means that your small teams are buying completely different bits of it equipment or the and talking to C Co optivus energy recently and they're a great example of an organization 8,000 staff they're still they don't have an HR department they don't have an IT department it's just a completely Democrat they got CEOs all over the place and they're absolutely tearing up that industry like no other organization has done in history and it's incredible what those guys are doing and I think if Halo can even do half of what they've done um that will be incredible incredibly but yeah reading the book 20 years later is it was such a weird thing cuz none of this is this is the other point none of it's by Design it's not like at any point in time over last 20 years I've sat down and thought and made some Nots right next few months I'm going to work on this day by day our business is run an instinct if it feels right we'll do it the form long partnership which is few of us in a PB having a beer think mention it and then arrange the meetings with pretty much every 401 team on the grid again we we run an instinct so and character judgment we don't really care about numbers and business plans and whatever they say 63 million people are going to see your uh your logo or whatever it is we we don't really care it's just what Instinct of what feels right um and is it is it a fluke that we we've managed to partner with so the biggest turnaround in for1 history was a week after we we we partnered with McLaren uh June 23 uh we partnered with xtown who have done on presidented backto back promotions Premier League I don't think it's a coincidence I think it's a case of understanding so these organizations are led by people who Zack Brown McLaren is a racer he's a passionate racer at he's got brilliant people underneath him who take care of like I don't know the business site any your points don't get me wrong your points Andrea Stella and Rob Marshall whoever it is that's absolutely in instrumental in from the business point of view but to have someone who is passionate about what they do and almost like my practitioner Point like they you can relate your so you can relate to everyone because you are a racer and going back to Samar cash it Swit tone he was a footballer so it's not like other Premier League football clubs but they've got do you think it's like Minds then you get this like minds and maybe that then you know what w successful you feel that you're familiar with it it pulls you in and I think it pulls to us a point where we say just to like round out that you've got this journey you're on you have a you you've had a destination you had an eforce of the culture the product Feit building the people giving them the freedom to express and build that there's loads of good lessons in there about that business bit and you've got a future where you know you don't want to sell but you want to build and you can see more so if there was one word you're going to tell yourself in another 10 years of advice I almost doing it backwards what do you think it would be po whereas in what to keep do 203 you know it's 2034 I I have a feeling you'll still be going so what would you think you'll be telling yourself as you today in keep delegating keep on trusting keep empowering keep believing like every single person we hire is capable of world beating things like genuinely and so just keep on let them have the space by the front the nearest to the office door because they'll be way more capable than I will ever be in 10 years time well I think I think if you may I think that's really good advice it sounds like you've used lots of different people uh and the resources and made them part of it and what help I've understood it's not you and given them the freedom to grow the business you've done brilliantly well and I don't I've interviewed a few people in this common Frets but I really love what you've done I genuinely do and I admire it because I've done in different ways some similar maybe not successful as you mind but I know what it takes and I know how hard it is so respect you so I appreciate that Steve thank yeah so good chat today I'd probably like you on in another year and just see how that's going yeah absolutely any time yeah well anyway all the best um thanks for watching today and um thanks to Paul and thanks for the viewers for watching and all the best