Podcast Transcript:  

[00:01:51] Sean Steele: G’day everybody, and welcome back to the ScaleHQ Podcast. Welcome back to our regular listeners, we love having you here every week and welcome to anybody joining us for the first time, thrilled to have you. I'm sure you all enjoy today's show. My guest this week is Ben Marsonet, group CEO of Altus Traffic Australia, the 22-year-old largest provider of traffic management services in the country, over two and a half million hours of services, and you lead over 1300 organisations. And Ben, you and your team have been super busy. I'd been looking at LinkedIn over the last few weeks. I had seen that you guys had acquired Shield Traffic only a month ago, and then you acquired Traffic Management, New Zealand, only days ago. I believe. Days, is it? 

[00:02:33] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. Yesterday I think it was. So yeah, we've had a little bit going on in the last couple of months. So yeah, it's just the way we like it. Having a bit of fun.

[00:02:43] Sean Steele: Well, one of the things that I love about that is that you've obviously got a sufficiently quality team that you're able to still get on a podcast with me the day after you've just done an acquisition in New Zealand. So, thank you very much and credit to your team. And thanks to Esha Oberoi, who was two-time guest on ScaleHQ Podcast, who connected you and I. Ben, your background really interested me because most of the CEOs on the show are Founders, but you grew up through the ranks to become CEO, which I certainly resonate with as I did the same thing in my own path. And so, I'm really keen to unpack a little bit of that, but you have gone through a lot of changes in your business, particularly in the last 12 months, having taken a majority stake, I believe from Pacific Equity Partners or PEP, mid-22. And you've done four acquisitions since then, and looks like you've divested your engineering business modus. So, clearly a lot going on and I'd love to understand a bit more of your role on the chain. The challenge is also in running a large geographically diverse blue-collar workforce, as well as some of the journey of taking on a bit of private equity investment. How does that sound as a bit of set up for us today? 

[00:03:50] Ben Marsonet: I've got a long list of stories I can tell you covering those subjects… I can tell you. 

[00:03:55] Sean Steele: Fabulous. Well, look, I don't know if you share numbers publicly at the moment, but can you just give us a sense of the size of the organisation just to start with, so we can kind of get our heads around what  does Altus look like? 

[00:04:06] Ben Marsonet: Yeah, sure. So, as you mentioned, it is the largest traffic management business across Australia and New Zealand now. So, our revenue is north of 350 million, and we've got a workforce of about 4,500 staff now, which still feels a bit crazy to me to say, given where we were probably 18 months ago, but yeah, so we cover about 48 Branches, I think we've got now. So, I kind of lose track of how many we've got, but yeah, lots of operating locations, big geographic diversity. And so probably one of the best collections of human beings you'll find anywhere in any business. So, yeah, we're loving it.

[00:04:47] Sean Steele: Well, I expect it probably looked pretty different 10 years ago when you were an Operations Manager in New South Wales. What was the size of the company then? What does it look like compared to today? 

[00:04:57] Ben Marsonet: I think when I joined out, it was turning over about 70 million, but yeah. I mean, we could go a fair bit further back if you like Sean, and we can go right back to the day when I started standing on the side of the road, holding up Stop Slow backs. That's where it actually all began. 

[00:05:11] Sean Steele: Oh, I didn't realise, you actually start on the right detail.

[00:05:14] Ben Marsonet: I did. Yeah. So, when I was like 18, I just got out of school, don't really know what you want to do with your life and you're kind of bumming around from job to job. I lost my driver's license, which meant that my illustrious career as a pizza delivery driver came to a pretty abrupt halt. 

[00:05:31] Sean Steele: I had one of those too. Great 

[00:05:32] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. I think the old man was quite insistent that I get a job. So, I walked into a control depot and kind of started that day, and I think, pretty early on, I think it was probably 18 or something, and I was making about a $1000 a week in the hand as a traffic controller. And I honestly thought I was Kerry Packer. Like, all my mates were sort of at uni and doing sort of odd jobs. So yeah, I kind of got into it and then just sort of moved my way through it over the journey. And I think one of the most formative roles I had was when I was about 21, I worked as a, I got put into the office and I was working as a scheduler in a sort of dispatch. Did taking all the orders from the customers, so you learned how to speak to a customer, but most importantly, you had to allocate all the shifts to all of the traffic workers. And this is before text messages and push notifications. I had to ring them all one by one. So, you know, for a couple of years, I did that. And yeah, I got to learn how to speak with and deal with those guys and influence people to get the right outcome, and that was pretty formative. And then, yeah, I've just been very fortunate. I'm happy to tell you the story of kind of the rise up throughout this, if you like.

[00:06:47] Sean Steele: Well, let me ask you, because I know we've got a slightly shorter…because we had a few technical issues in our sort of version one versus this is version two, we've got less time. When did you know that you wanted to be CEO or did you know? Like, was there a point where you were like, I know that's actually a gig that I really want to work towards, or were you just sort of taking the next thing that you could see in front of you?

[00:07:09] Ben Marsonet: Just taking the next thing. I probably somewhere in the back of my mind thought one day, maybe I might do it. But even in, I was probably thinking 10 years from where I am today, certainly when I got the tap on the shoulder from the Founder, David, I was a bit shocked and probably wasn't quite ready for it, but I've never applied for a job in my life. I've never asked for promotion or asked for a pay rise. So, just kind of along the way people see your potential and give you a crack/ 

[00:07:38] Sean Steele: I always love the fact that, you know, once you kind of know about 70 or 80 percent of what you're going to learn in that job, that's the perfect time to be getting to the next one, right? Because you know, you're sort of where that learning curve starts to slow down a little bit if you don't go back into the deep end and learn. And, you know, people have asked, I remember people asking me, you know, when did you know you were ready to be a CEO? And I probably like you, I was like, ‘I don't think I really knew that. It just all of a sudden became a thing and it was there. And I thought, geez, I don't even know if I'm going to be any good at that, but I'll give it a crack.’ And all of a sudden, you learn fast, don't you?

[00:08:10] Ben Marsonet: Yeah, no absolutely. Learn fast. You don't have a lot of time to get your feet under the desk. 

[00:08:16] Sean Steele: Well, Ben, speaking of that, what did you do in terms of support around you? Because when you step into the CEO's shoes, I mean, that is a very different job to any executive level job prior to being the CEO. There's a lot of new things that come with it. Lots of new stakeholders, significant amounts of pressure, et cetera, et cetera. How did you resource your support and the wisdom and the advice around you to ensure that you can actually succeed in the role? 

[00:08:41] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. Look, firstly, I totally underestimated what being a CEO was, like hugely underestimated. And, you know, in the first couple of months it started to sort of dawn on me. So, a few really good guys inside of the business sort of elevated up a level. We kind of did some structural changes to get some better people, high level people around me internally. But a lot of it, I went to kind of external counsel. So, I've got a linked up with a couple of guys that had been on a journey and went to sort of hunt down a few different perspectives that guys I still work with now, that have been really formative for me is moving into the role, that I totally underestimated.

[00:09:25] Sean Steele: Yeah, I love that. And, you know, pivotal to get the right people around you to keep you honest as you're going through and to also be able to bounce things off and to paint the picture of the box that you can't see cause you're inside it and everybody else is outside it, and say stuff you don’t say. 

[00:09:40] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. And I think David – David, the Founder of the business has been really good through that too. I'm kind of the third CEO that he's had working for him and he's got an incredible perspective on the organisation. So, he's always been a very good sounding board, someone who definitely keeps me in line when others won't. So, yeah, I've got a very close relationship with him. He's been fantastic too.

[00:10:00] Sean Steele: You need that. Well, could you give me, I mean, from where it was 10 years ago at 70 and now, you're north of 300, can you give me just a sense of some of the high-level sort of milestones, the things that will maybe inflection points or key strategies that really started to change the nature of the business and accelerate your growth?

[00:10:17] Ben Marsonet: Yeah, I think we got stuck in a number of ceilings along the way. One of them was around sort of 70 million. I've sort of learned over the sort of organic growth journey that businesses do hit these ceilings. And getting to kind of 70 or 150 was another really hard one for us as well, where you just sort of learned that you need to really shift the way that you run your business. I mean, the opportunities that were coming in and the customer relationships and stuff that we have, have always been really, really strong, but just in terms of the way we actually run and operate our business from a systems point of view, and I think we made some big investments in that. We built our own software. I can write a book on why that's not the greatest idea in the world. But the output of that and that solution was just huge for us. It really allows us to scale and really punch through that 140 - 150 mark was probably a really key one, where you just moved from, you could no longer run your business sort of line of sight anymore. You needed a lot more systems and insights sort of around you. That was a really sort of key milestone for us because we kind of already had the geographic footprint and all of that, that was pretty big. It fundamentally shifted the way we ran our backend, which liberated a lot of labour and talent to be able to focus on getting more people… 

[00:11:35] Sean Steele: Did the team, you know, sometimes, certainly it's been my experience and watching a lot of other Founders go through some of those, to your point, like kind of big inflection points or the ceilings, quite often there's a team change at those points, as well, because not everybody who got you to where you are today, are the people that get you to the next stage, may not have been there or may not be able to sort of carve that path. Were they're sort of major team shifts that happened at the same time as those systems? 

[00:11:59] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. I think, and generally it was, you know, even right at the top, I think it, we shed… Yeah, I think Steve O'Dwyer, our CEO, finished probably around that hundred million mark. I think Jeff Doyle, my predecessor, was around that 150 mark. And along the way, there'd always been changes in the executive ranks as the business matured. But yeah, kind of different ways of thinking about it, I suppose, came in. But the year I took over, we'd just done 140. So that was about two and a half years ago.

[00:12:29] Sean Steele: Yeah. Wow. So, what have you learned personally about leadership in that doubling of the business in those several years, like what have, or maybe what have you had to unlearn about how you thought things needed to happen and what have you had to sort of instil as new principles or beliefs or strategies in your own leadership, given the changing, I mean, that's a significant change in the employee base and the complexity and a whole bunch of things. What have you learned? 

[00:12:55] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is around this idea of communication. I think the biggest thing from moving from kind of being a manager to being a leader is really starting to understand the way you need to interact with your workforce and the messages you give them and all the rest of it. And I think there's a great quote out there somewhere that says, "Communication is sort of never finished. Just when you think you're finished, you've got to go around and start again.” So, I'm sort of endlessly trying to refresh the message and the way in which we interact with the workforce. That's been sort of the biggest learning and evolution, I think, for me in the last two years is just kind of getting that kind of strategy to a way that you can communicate it to the traffic control that you're having a sandwich with a donger in Townsville. But then also, as you're swanning around the ivory tower of PEP, it kind of can make a bit of sense as well, you know. But definitely just this idea of the, how consistent and constant your message needs to be, and I'm kind of always learning and trying to evolve that, that way of thinking, you know.

[00:13:59] Sean Steele: And you think that, you're like; surely I've said this enough times and everybody's got it by now, but as you know, sometimes you need to hear the same thing in 14 different styles with different layers, different metaphors. 

[00:14:12] Ben Marsonet: So, when you're sick of saying that they're just starting to hear it, right?

[00:14:15] Sean Steele: Just starting to get it. That's it. I would love to unpack some of the implications of, you know, there's a lot of Founders listening. So, yeah, the majority of the Founders in this podcast, who listen to it are seven-figure Founders. They're 1 to 10 mil. They're doing well. The businesses are growing well. They're already in the top 10% of entrepreneurs. They're not 350 million, but they've grown a great business, but they haven't been to eight-figures. They don't know what's coming. Lots of them, imagine that perhaps somewhere between 10 and 30, they might take on an investor because they're going to kind of run out of, or they're going to slow their growth rate if they don't take on any capital. So, let them think about maybe they'll start looking at private equity if they've got two or three million in EBITDA and private equity starting to get interested. Can you talk to me about the timing of the private equity investment, what motivated it? How did you end up with PEP? Did you sort of go to market or was it just existing relationships? Like talk to me a bit about the culmination of them as a provider. And at the time, what was going on there? 

[00:15:10] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. I think a lot of it was sort of David - the Founder of Altus, who's kind of run and grown this thing, you know, sort of funded himself for the whole journey, was just at a point where the business was getting kind of too big and too complicated for him just to sort of be the single Founder. So, yeah, this was actually our third attempt at getting private equity in. We'd had two guys around before. And by those two unsuccessful ones was more to do, we just couldn't find the right partner to sort of back the business. We're very disciplined around who the equity partner needed to be. So yeah, we're just at a point where it needed more capital. That was just the organic, we talk a lot about the M&A and that sort of growth we've had, but the biggest chunk of what we've had has been organic. I mean, we've added a hundred million of revenue in 18 months through organic growth. And every time you do that, it's more trucks. It's just capital coming out everywhere. And I think, David was just at a point where, with all of that going on, plus this new technology we're bringing to the industry, it was just very difficult for him to sort of fund it where he was at. So, yeah, we ran a process. We had an advisor Novo Capital working for us and we went and ran a process. And this time around, the third time around, we had a very clear strategy around what we wanted to achieve. Whereas I think the first two times we maybe didn't, we had a strategy around continued organic growth, deploying a sort of market leading digital solution that will fundamentally reshape the way this industry operates and change the safety of road workers in this country and then also some targeted M&A. So, once we had all of that very clear around where we were going, we took it to the market and literally were inundated, right? We had multiple offers coming in very, very quickly. We were doing a whole bunch of management presentations, but PEP. It just absolutely stood out, like from all of the others. They got it. They understood. There was almost like a very quick alignment between us and the firm. I remember sitting on the first management presentation. We're taking them through these three pillars and Matt Robinson, the MD from PEP just said, ‘Ben, look, mate, we get it. We understand exactly what you're doing and we are huge believers in it, and we reckon we can do something special here.’ And it kind of evolved very, very quickly from there. They were absolutely stand out, head and shoulders above in terms of alignment and that was probably the most important thing we were looking for in the deal. And I probably didn't say as nice things about them for the next five months while they went through me like a dose of salts doing due diligence, but we're in a good spot now. 

[00:17:51] Sean Steele: I'm thrilled to hear you say that because a lot of Founders think they just need some investment, but there's a big difference between just receiving capital and capital cover lots of different kinds of sources. And the capability that you actually might be looking to add or to give you strength so that you can execute whatever that plan is, was a specific capability that you're really looking for from PEP over and above the capital that they were able to bring that perhaps others weren't?

[00:18:16] Ben Marsonet: Look, I think what impressed us about those guys was just the breadth of experience. I mean, the kind of industry agnostics, they've been in all sorts of stuff, sheep farming and food and pharmaceuticals and now traffic management, which they're very excited about, I can tell you. But kind of that breadth of experience was really important to us. And I think the operating style was also very important. You know, you get funds that will put in operating partners, be very involved in your business. Now, you know, you approach it all with a fair degree of scepticism, to be honest, when everyone is courting each other. But, you know, I think the real secret source for PEP as a fund is not necessarily they buy the best assets. It's actually the way they operate them. They do genuinely support a management team. Once they know they've got the right management team, they will back you like all the way. You know, and that came across a lot early days, but I couldn't stress to you enough how important I think alignment with your investor is. Don't just run and take the biggest cheque, which we didn't do, right? We went for the best aligned fund for what it is that we were looking to do. 

[00:19:21] Sean Steele: Couldn't agree more. I mean, that alignment piece is so critical. You imagine being in a situation where you just take on a new, you know, you take it on an investor and all of a sudden all the hairs on the things that you didn't actually bother to really figure out in terms of alignment start to rear their heads and all of a sudden you just have the worst, worst, worst experience you can imagine because you got someone who's got a real say and they're a real shareholder and they got a lot of views and you ended up spending all of your time in arguments rather than actually just being able to get on and execute. 

[00:19:52] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. And I think the private equity industry doesn't have the best reputation. Let's be fair. And I think a lot of that comes back to the original line between the Founder or the management team or whatever. I think if you get that right, you can do something pretty special.

[00:20:06] Sean Steele: And is there anything you can share about the way you aligned key management, you know, sort of beyond yourself and your leadership, you know, your leadership team, perhaps, for example, with the private equity owners to make sure that everybody's sort of gunning for the same goals? 

[00:20:20] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. Look, where I think people often get it wrong is they kind of get reward and recognition and they use it the same sentence. I think, you know, we've kind of split that apart. There's a lot of recognition stuff that we do with our workforce that brings a lot of alignment. But because we're executing our own strategy, I mean, it's not PEP coming to us and saying, "This year is what we want you to do.” This is our strategy. We came up with it, right? So, the alignment just right from the top goes all the way down through the organisation. And with a bit of recognition that you're doing things right and you are going in right direction, you know, I'm sure that the rewards will come as we get into it. But I think because it's our strategy, we don't really have that sort of issue of alignment between the parties. There's been no sort of big blow ups or anything like that just yet.

[00:22:12] Sean Steele: That makes a lot of sense. And actually, I think that's probably one of the things that sees Founders fail in taking on private equities. Actually, they haven't fully agreed the strategy before the deal gets done. And then they almost end up in this, okay, it's great. Now we're invested. Let's talk about the strategy. And all of a sudden, the alignment goes in different directions. What's been the biggest challenge for you? I mean, it changes your stakeholder base. That sounds like, you know, you've got a strong private equity partner who really wants to back the leadership team, which frees you up a lot to be able to focus on the business. What's the biggest challenge being for you in the last 12 months, having taken on a private equity owner?

[00:22:50] Ben Marsonet: The biggest challenge that we've had is actually the pace of movement we've been able to achieve, right? It's not so much the interactions with the shareholders or anything like that. What we've achieved in the last 12 or 18 months would have taken us 20 years to do by ourselves. The pace of movement that's come, and this is a vastly different organisation today to what it was when I took it over as the CEO. And I think trying to adapt the team and get the structures and the systems and all that stuff right. And the new levels of governance that you need over an organisation of our size now, you know, we're approaching, we'll probably do 400 million or something this year, right? Like it's a vastly different organisation. And I think trying to mature your business at that rate, has been a bit of a challenge, but we're starting to kind of get ourselves on top of it now. You look at risk differently and all this type of stuff. That there has been the thing that occupies a lot of that time and energy. I can assure you, besides the odd integration or two.

[00:23:55] Sean Steele: Well, I think we sort of chatted about that in version one before we had technical difficulties. We just started to actually talk about M&A. The businesses that you've purchased, you know, lots of people build, you know, there's lots of different strategies when you're doing a buy and build. And I'm keen to come back to actually the 100 million that you did in organic, so let me come back to that in a second. But with the acquisitions that you've done, some people choose to just build a house of brands and actually just focus on sort of, you know, maybe top line revenue, cross selling, you know, perhaps as a sort of synergy opportunity, some people want to integrate it fully, culture, systems, absolutely everything into the mothership for want of a better word. Sounds like you've gone for a full integration model, but you've still done four acquisitions in 12 months, which is a heavy amount of integration work. How is that going? How are you approaching that to make sure that it succeeds? Because of course you can destroy value very quickly, if the integration is poor.

[00:24:45] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. Look, I mean, we've probably looked at 40 businesses in the last 12 or 18 months and bought four. And when we look at a business, there's kind of three things that we look for pretty early on, and you can kind of write those down if you like. Number one is chemistry. It's kind of the feel between us and the management team. Are these guys up for what it is that we bring to them, because, you know, a lot of these businesses are approaching ceilings that we've been near before. And part of what we're trying to do is, you know, bring them systems to help them get through those ceilings, right. And give processes and bring our learnings in 20 years and fast forward everything for them. So, we look a lot for chemistry. That's sort of number one. The number two thing we look for is chemistry and feel for the acquisition. So, once you've got that, it's all this kind of alignment thing, right? So, if we can get that with a management team that we can see that they are up for what it is that we bring, it just makes that whole systems integration a whole lot easier. Like you could write a thesis called - Chemistry in M&A and Chemistry in Integration on the Traffic Logistics Business that we bought in New South Wales, you know. Their management team right from the moment they met us, so just like, give us everything that you've got. We love it. We want your rostering systems, your safety systems, your finance systems. And if you can get that chemistry in that alignment between the Founders and the management team, all that integration stuff just becomes a heck of a lot easier. So, we looked for that in the 40 businesses, we look for the ones where we've got that kind of the chemistry and up for what we do. Of course, they need all the sustainable earnings and all that gear as well. But for me and my management team that have to go and do the integration, yeah, that's super important to us. So, you kind of get this theme from me about alignment and people and all of that really early on in the piece. And if you can get all that right, I think you're on a winning ticket. And I think we've got that in spades in a business in New Zealand that we've just bought as well there. They're wanting to move faster than us.

[00:26:51] Sean Steele: Good problem to have. Well, I'm thrilled to hear that. In a business, your size and with private equity owners who are, you know, really significant private equity players in this country, that they also obviously get that and they're like … ‘Yeah, we agree. Chemistry is important.’ And I actually, I'm looking forward to seeing your book, Ben, when you finished this gig and you do write your first book and it's called "Chemistry”, I'm looking forward to reading some of the detail. Now, can you tell me, can I step back about the 100 mil that you did in organic growth, because that's staggering how much of that was sales and marketing excellence, new product, better product. Like talk to me about the ingredients that got you that massive growth. 

[00:27:33] Ben Marsonet: It was a mix of sales and marketing excellence for sure. My Chief Commercial Officer is a rockstar. He's been along with me through the journey up through the organisation that sort of gave him a fair amount of ownership and we built a really strong sales force in and around him, so that helped open a lot of opportunities. But what actually drives growth in our business is our service, our safety and our efficiency. So, it's kind of this idea of operational excellence and the ability to supply. And you've got to remember that supply chains are tight, right? We're a time and materials business, right? Our biggest expense is labour. It's all of that. So, we invested a lot of money in being able to get our recruitment pipelines. Like we manage recruitment in our business. Like we do a sales pipeline. So, if there's a dashboard you pull up and you can see the recruitment pipelines all around the country. So, we've got our recruitment honed in, bang on. So, we could go in and win these things and then service when our competitors couldn't, so that sort of operate. And look, it's still a battle. We're still not all the way there, but I like to think that we've got systems and structures that allow us to do that better than anyone else. I've got a kind of cracking sales force that open the doors, but the real secret source is the people in our operations. And like I say, some of the most incredible people right down to our guys and girls on the frontline, just bloody amazing. These guys make the difference. And look at sign behind me that says, "Get shit done.” That's one of the values of that business is, is GSD. But I've just got it in spades and that there is really what helped is kind of the culture of the organisation really fuel a lot of that at a very difficult time for labour sort of recruitment in this country. We got it right.

[00:29:20] Sean Steele: I love that. And you know, it's such a great, because it's not easy to scale services, because your biggest risk is quality, right? You know, if you're, and I remember chatting to, I don't know if you've met Marc Meili, he's another YPO from who built Protech. And for similar deal, four and a half thousand people, all services. And he's like, you know, how do you engineer those recruitment processes that you just talked about to ensure that the person who rocks up every single time is bang on, knows exactly what they're doing, has all the right capabilities, delivers a great experience for that client so that you actually get invited back. Because when you do it at scale and you're putting people out there in the field and they are the brand and they are the service, it gets harder. 

[00:30:06] Ben Marsonet: 100 percent, and the culture amongst the frontline workers is super important, I think, and I'm kind of fortunate that I've come from all the way up through it and all the rest of it and kind of stood in their shoes and done all of that. But, you know, people talk a lot about, you know, I think one of the things that people don't do well with large blue-collar workforces is they don't trust them. They don't kind of empower them and trust them. All we try and do is set this sort of framework with a couple of processes and things, and then sort of cut them loose to do it the best way. And the amount of pride that my people have in what they do, it's just incredible. It's a beautiful thing to see. And I think if you can get the right leadership sort of message and empowerment for these guys, they can just deal with so much, right? Yes, I can make or break it. But my goodness, when you get it right, most of the work we win is because of their traffic controllers on the road. It's the guys on the front line and the job that they do and the relationships they've got with the clients, it just makes it pretty easy for us sometimes, you know?

[00:31:07] Sean Steele: That is a really interesting challenge. And I'm so impressed that that's the culture that your people are experiencing because, you know, there are a lot of large corporates that have blue collar workforces where, I don't know, I've always found there's a level of, you know, I used to have trades training colleges and so brickies and painters and builders and so on. And there's a healthy level of scepticism about kind of corporate ivory towers and people in suits and all the rest. And so, when you're in a business that's north of 300 million, and therefore you have layers of management and enterprise systems and all sorts of stuff, retaining that authenticity and that connection, I think probably, does it get more challenging? Are you finding that's getting more challenging as you get larger?

[00:31:59] Ben Marsonet: There's no doubt that it's more challenging. But I mean myself, my entire management team is super committed to it, though. And when we go out, I will go out and sit in the donger on a work site and have a sandwich with traffic controllers. I'll try and do that every month. It's definitely much more challenging. And that's probably where I was saying at the start, the idea of how you communicate. You've got to just continually evolve that you've got to continually try and get better and change that because there's no doubt with 4,500 of them. I mean, when I took the gig, we had 1600, right? It's a vastly different organisation, but the culture of the organisation is to be super committed to it. And it's a real visible frontline leadership is something we really push amongst our management teams, and that's got to be led by me as the dude at the top. You got to take the time to get out there amongst it with the real people who, and they're the best days I have in the gig, absolute best days I have in the gig.

[00:32:52] Sean Steele: And I bet you've got, I mean, you must have a significant amount of personal brand equity, given you've come from the front line in that organisation, in that industry, your entire career, and you're clearly a very personable guy. So probably very approachable for the team. If you think about the next five years, it might even be quite daunting, but you're already at 350 million. You're acquiring a whole bunch of other businesses and, you know, you may have looked at 40 and you've got four, but as you would have been experiencing, no doubt. It's not like there's just an infinite number of businesses that make sense for you to acquire. So, it's not like, you know, it's necessarily a gigantic cottage industry where you want to get all these tiny little players. How are you thinking about the growth strategy for the next five years? How are you going to keep up those rates of growth, but in sensible acquisitions and sensible organic growth that makes sense for your strategy? 

[00:33:43] Ben Marsonet: Yeah, look, it actually is a quite a cottage industry with a lot of small players and there's more than a thousand traffic management companies in Australia or something like that. But that's not really our pathway to growth. That's not really what we're focused on. What we're trying to do now is, is build scale in key markets because what we're all about is kind of trying to redefine the way this industry operates. We search the world to try and find the right sort of IOT Digital twinning technology to bring to this industry and really kind of charge it into the new sort of century. And we've got that now and this PEP have been very good. I mean, that's part of the reason why we went out is to get the funding and make all that happen. But, you know, we're kind of at the point where that product is ready to be released out to the market. And this year is really what we're getting after over the next couple of years. We've kind of got scale in our key markets and this year is going to be the sort of key driver for us over the next couple of years. And really the legacy that we want to leave behind when we're all said and done here, we want to leave behind a real change to the safety of road workers in our region, you know. 

[00:34:50] Sean Steele: And is that technology that you sort of research and then develop yourselves or have you sort of licensed things in, or have you acquired other companies that have got the capability, like how are you bringing together such a rapid technology change in the business in terms of what you can offer? 

[00:35:04] Ben Marsonet: We learned our lesson about building it ourselves. We won't be doing that again. So, no, this product exists in our industry across Europe and Canada. So, we were able to work with the guys who built and developed it to adapt it to the Australian market and then do an exclusive sort of licensing deal with those guys for a long period. So, we searched for the technology, it was hard. Despite urgings of a couple of my management teams, I was never going to build it. So yeah, we've licensed in professionals. We just buy the product off them and roll it out and pay them their fee. 

[00:35:42] Sean Steele: I like it. Wow. It's really interesting times ahead for you. Can I ask you, Ben, I know we started looking at the future, but actually just to think back in the past, if you kind of reflect on the principles that you have applied as a leader, like, you know, sometimes there's pieces of advice that you don't realise how influential they are until you are on the other side of having implemented those and you kind of look back and go, actually, that was really critical in our ability to get to where we are today, whether it's on the people's side or whether it's on the sort of commercial side of the business and how you've generated the revenue. When you sort of think back, what are some of the principles, some of the lessons or some of the pieces of advice that have really stuck with you that you think have made a huge difference in your ability to scale the way you have?

[00:36:27] Ben Marsonet: Yeah, I think, one of the things that's really helped us is just trying to simplify a lot of stuff that goes on in the joint. But I think probably the main bit that I didn't quite realise that I did for almost my entire career until just recently is, you know, this focus on people and growing people, and trying to get that driven down into the organisation. You know, I mean, people. You know, again, you mentioned it before. I resonate a lot with our workforce because of where I come from. But our entire organisation is almost built in-house. They're people that we've have found themselves in this industry for one reason or another. And this real focus on growing and improving people and helping them achieve their full potential that I didn't quite realise at the time I was pushing into the business, but now realise it's absolutely all through it. This year is the thing that's changed. This is what has created this culture of sort of winning and always doing better and never being satisfied and all of this type of stuff. We've been able to build that and we've been able to build that through authenticity. Like the way that I speak to you now is the way that we speak inside of the organisation all day, every day. It's very open, lots of banter, there's no egos, all of that type of stuff. We've just been able to build this really beautiful thing just by focusing on the success of trying to liberate sort of human ability inside of the joint. And it's bloody amazing. And I think if we can keep doing that, the earnings growth and all the rest of it, that's almost a byproduct of some of the most incredible people you'll ever clamp eyes on. I'm telling you. It's amazing. 

[00:38:07] Sean Steele: I love it. I love it. What has been the most, you know, as a CEO, you go through some hard stuff, as you said, when you stepped up into that role, well, you'd kind of underestimated how difficult it was going to be and what would actually include it. What has been personally for you, the hardest thing about the leadership journey for you? 

[00:38:27] Ben Marsonet: It's been more on the personal front. It's been the toll of how much energy. I totally underestimated the energy and effort that is involved in doing this at this scale and the, the hours and the travel and the time that you're away and all the rest of it. I mean, you have some pretty people listening to you now would know you have some pretty lonely nights sitting in hotel rooms and on, you know, when I get to the end of doing this, if I never see the inside of an aircraft ever again, I'll be a happy man. But I think for me, that's probably been the biggest challenge is just trying to really get that balance right between home. I've got three young children. What are they? Five, six and nine, you know, three young children, beautiful wife, and just trying to get that balance right and be a present dad, because that there is actually the most important job that I've got with everything else that's going on in the world. That's been the challenge, just trying to get that right with all the activity over the last year or so. 

[00:39:21] Sean Steele: Can you talk about any, you know, what's a good example of something that you've actually implemented that is helping you get that balance, right? Because, you know, having spent 60% of my career over the course of six or seven years on a plane, I know only too well with similar age kids during that period, the impact that it can have on the family. What are some of the things that you are doing that are actually making a difference in helping you find the balance? I'm not sure that there's a like balance. There's no necessarily like equilibrium you ever get to, but what are you putting in place that's helping you?

[00:39:50] Ben Marsonet: Yeah. Generally, I never travel on a weekend. So never a Friday night, never a Sunday. I try and always Mondays and Tuesdays. I try to avoid travel as much as possible. I want to drop the kids off at school and I want to pick them up in the afternoon. So, I try and do that sort of every Monday and Tuesday. And then, yeah, we've got a pretty good routine of getting away as a family on weekends, we’ve got a place that we can go to and sort of connect up there, which is probably the worst financial investment I ever made because it's been most, it's flooded three times and all the rest of it. But on a personal front, what it means for us as a family, that that's been huge and just being disciplined around getting there and being present, is so pretty important to us, you know.

[00:40:32] Sean Steele: Ben, I've massively enjoyed this conversation and I wish I could extend it even further. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you really wish that I would have asked you so far in this conversation that you'd like to share with the audience?

[00:40:45] Ben Marsonet: Look, I don't think so. I think it's been a good story time. What I would just impress upon your audience, if you're ever in a position where you've got a large frontline workforce, services-based business, if you're ever there, all I would impress upon them is just to really understand how amazing these people can be and to trust them and be authentic with them, be open. I mean, that there has really been what has gotten me to where I am and is what is driving our business through to the next level. You know,  that there would be probably the main message I would leave with anyone, just trust them. Trust them, give them an opportunity to achieve their full potential and you'll just be astounded at what they can do, you know.

[00:41:30] Sean Steele: I love that. It's a beautiful principle. Thank you so much, Ben Marsonet. I'd really appreciate your wisdom today, and thank you so much on behalf of our audience. If people want to get in touch with you or with your team or follow along with the Altus journey, where would you direct them to? 

[00:41:45] Ben Marsonet: Just hit us up on LinkedIn, stick to us. There is plenty of activity there. There's stuff on social media all over the place. So, feel free to connect up there and happy to catch up and have a chat with anyone who wants to hear me yabber on a bit and tell a story or two, so.

[00:41:59] Sean Steele: Beautiful. Ben Marsonet. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and thank you very much to our beautiful audience. If there's one thing that you could do for us today is actually get Ben's wisdom out to the world is actually just click the share link on whatever podcast player you're using. Send this to somebody who you know is going to love and get some good inspiration and some great tips from Ben on how to grow their business, we really appreciate it and we will see you again next week. Thanks again, Ben so much. 

[00:42:24] Ben Marsonet: Thank you, Sean. Pleasure.