#343 Richard Felice – Transcript

Jess Brady
Hi, Richard, I’m excited to have you as today’s podcast guest. We’re gonna talk about your business today. And we’re going to talk about quite a big pivot that you’ve made in your business. And I’m genuinely fascinated about the changes that you’ve made. And I’m gonna say up front, I don’t know a lot about what your new world looks like. And so I’m hoping that today is for myself, because I’m nosy, but also for the XY community, you can help us learn a bit more about the changes that you’ve made, why you’ve made them. And I guess the benefits are impacts to both you, your business, and your clients. But before we get into all of that, for the people that don’t know, you, and your business, would you mind by sharing a bit about your story?

Richard Felice
Yeah, absolutely. I’m happy to do it. And thanks for having me. Look, my career started at a place that many people know count financial way back when Barry landed, the founder of that business was the Chairman and I joined that business as an undergrad, I was still at uni and studying and decided what I wanted to do. So joint account and spent spent the rest of my uni days there, which was, which was a couple of years worth. From couch. I joined one of council member firms, which was a business called MBT at that time, it was a privately owned business. And I joined there really, once I finished union to really kickstart my career. As I said, that was a privately owned business at a time and I think I think I’ve kind of always knew that I wanted to be a business owner and, and take my career in that direction. What happened a few years into my role there is that is this was sold and ultimately became part of the listed entity. So So I found myself working for a beauty listed accounting firm, which was which was fine. We had some great mentors in that business who stuck around for a while, but ultimately what happened, they was my now business partner see, and I were really starting to work on a certain type of client, that we felt that that client we were working on and the brain we were building that that client really was getting lost in that in a big thesis. So 10 years there in total, we decided that it was time for us to move on and, and really become business owners what we what we both sort of set out to do so we left there, and that was the establishment of belay in 2018. And really more about the brand. We wanted to work we found those executives family offices, and we’re really excited about that. And and that’s what we do we stay true to that. And we’ve kind of got that business now where where we are business owners and have an element of control and all the headache that comes with that, of course, but But equally, have built in Kendall brand with with the clients that we really enjoyed working with.

Jess Brady
We’re going to talk a bit more about the clients specifically as we go through today’s chat. But from what I remember, you moved from count to not only your own business, but did you not set up your own license. Yeah, so.

Richard Felice
So the timing of departure from from that business that was in VT, essentially, we resigned and two weeks later, the Royal Commission kicked off. So what you have is in some sense that kind of made us really realize what was important to us in our clients and self license was it was a big pain to take on that we felt while we left that business that started delayed to being controlled and just with everything going on, we felt like being self license was really, really critical for us and certainly important for our clients as well. And we’ve got to say that’s that’s probably the best thing that we’ve we’ve ever done. In that context. I think it was it was really transformational for us. Again, it was tough, and it was a lot of time and we’ve learned a lot is it really steep learning curve, but really, really important to us and our clients as I said, so yeah, we sort of I mean, the timing wasn’t great by any means as occasion it was Royal Commission. We’ve done self license, I’m just had my second child. This is fun to see just how this person is getting married. So this kind of just stuff all over the place are really super stressful and a lot to work through at the time that really really happy wouldn’t change a thing where we stand today

Jess Brady
and then to my own heart to just take on way more than you can probably cope with and then just figure it out on the fly. What advice do you have for some over someone who’s perhaps it’s sitting in your shoes now? They’re part of a bigger business and feeling like okay, we we were thinking about self licensing, we’re thinking about, you know, having the level of control and autonomy and rigor that you need to move into that world. Do you have any tips or tricks or thoughts for someone who’s currently contemplating self license land?

Richard Felice
Yeah, look, I think you really need to identify what’s important to the client with a change like that. I think self Licensing can sometimes be looked at as a way of getting around some of the the strict requirements of other licensees. But it really needs to be about a client and that was driving behind our decision that okay, well, can we actually do better work better quality work for the clients as a result of this? And what does that look like with a client lens, because at the end of the day, they’re the people that you’re going to have to take on that journey. And you need to have a pretty good reason as to why you’re doing it. And a lot of the time you moving away from the backing of a big institution, to your own backing of sorts, and you want to have a really high conviction in that. And so we’re sitting in front of a client, you’re able to demonstrate and talk through why it’s good for them. So I think that’s how you need to approach it. Is it good for the client? And why and how do you get them on board? And then it certainly does bring other business benefits that they’re, they’re really secondary to the law.

Jess Brady
You raise an interesting point around, you know, sometimes, and maybe it’s not as strong as it once was. But sometimes clients would come. And there would be some comfort in the idea that it is backed by a big grant. Again, I’m not sure if that is as important as it once was. But what was your experience? Did you find that most people were quite happy with the idea of independence and autonomy from a client perspective, as you say, given the Royal Commission? Or did you find that people really needed to learn more before they felt comfortable with it?

Richard Felice
Yeah, we in full transparency have almost gone. The best of both worlds. So our licensing was Lonsdale automotive, and we moved to the self licensed version of OnStar, which they called Dear associates. So when we sat in front of the client, I think we also recognize that the backing of the institution can be really important, not only from the client relationship perspective, but whether it be technical support, or whatever else. It’s really important. So where we found comfort and where we found that the clients were really happy to be a part of it was it was the best of both worlds, we’ve still got that backing of the big institution, but we were in control. And we can have any path with this on. And so again, really, for a number of reasons, you haven’t gone before way, but I think that was that was the sort of middle ground that we found to be to the best for our clients.

Jess Brady
And excuse my ignorance, is that sort of a deal of services model where you pay and they provide you with back end compliance, or they provide you with a tech staff. What does that look like?

Richard Felice
Correct? Yeah, so So you know, the two big things for us out of that is, is certainly the item of institutional brand. And, you know, rightly or wrongly, I think there’s, there’s a lot of value not from a client comfort, security perspective. But also the results in template templates around explained or software. And Technical support is really what we leverage most from them. That as it relates to other things like APLs, and AI insurances and grand strategy and asset allocation, risk protocols, all that we can choose to use, there’s or develop our own. And again, from our for our clients that they want to know a bit of control over your own affairs. And so having that flexibility and autonomy is really important.

Jess Brady
It does, as you say, seemed like the best of both worlds. I’m keen on your thoughts. I haven’t asked you if I can ask this. So here I go. What are your thoughts on the industry and the future? Do you think businesses are going to move to more of sort of what you’ve done almost that hybrid approach of having their own license but using the large installs for the dealer services? Do you see that as a growing area or do you think more people are going to go back to licensee large licensee land?

Richard Felice
Yeah. I think it’s going to be a mix. I think there’s there are certainly some firms that may have legacy books or practices that We’ll always be with the big institution. But I think we’ve seen more recently the emergence of businesses that provide solely self license for licenses support. So you don’t have to subscribe to a lot, you can kind of cherry pick different services or parts of their package to support yourself license business. So generally, I think there has been continued to be a move away from the licensees. I think there’ll be the emergence of these purpose built businesses to support self license. And I’ve no doubt that, that the E firms that have the scale or or first and foremost declined desire to become self licensed. And I think that’s that’s shown in the numbers and very, very few advisors who speak to that have got self license regretted it. So I think that’s that’s absolutely a common trend that we’ll continue to see.

Jess Brady
Interesting. Thank you for that. You mentioned earlier on about mentors, when your account, I’m really fascinated by, I guess, your mentor journey. Can you talk a bit about how mentors have impacted your business, but also your clients? Because your story is quite unique here? I think,

Richard Felice
yeah, hugely, hugely important. I think they were. And in no uncertain terms, feel that we are working with a type of client that really successful have really high standards of what we need to deliver on and a genuinely older and more experienced than we are. And as, as young guys and girls that are providing service to these we we need an element of experiencing, quote unquote, integrated factor within our business or network. And so I found my old employers and NBT account, first join, really, really pivotal in in testing our thinking and not believing our own Bs, and really just being people that we can rely on to make sure that we’re keeping client focused and heading in the right direction. So I think it’s such an important business business decision to have mentors that equally for personal or professional growth, to have people that inspire you and that you get excited by their careers to give you their time and energy. And as I’ve said, I think it’s really really important.

Jess Brady
Agree. And as you say, to have someone challenge your own thinking and your your BS can be extremely beneficial and so effective in terms of cutting out wastage of time and money and of trialing things. How did mentorship look for you? Was it something that had a rigor or a cadence of regularity? Or was it just sort of ad hoc? What did you do to make the mentor ship work for you?

Richard Felice
Yeah. And I haven’t thought about it until now. But when I first started MBT it was always forced upon us to save as part of your personal and professional growth, you will have many people and you will meet with them, X number of times per year. Now, the Asterix there is that those mentors were within our business, if you didn’t have an outside mentor, you could X access someone within the business almost like a buddy within the business. He was forces into an environment where we were learning and we were having open and honest conversations with people that that hadn’t believed in saying more than we had. And I think that structure really set us off on the right foot that you don’t really want any other way. So once you become used to having a mentor, I think it’s really hard to go back the other way. And so the question that regularity was there initially, and I think that you fall, really struggle relationships. And in fact, the person that was my mentor at Abt, so we’re talking 14 years ago, is actually a client and still a mentor today. So the show I think when you find the right one, you generally stick with them and they can make a mark and show you the way in

Jess Brady
how does having a mentor or your mentor specifically impacted the type of clients you work with?

Richard Felice
Yeah, good question. If I had to put really bluntly, that mentor is exactly the type of client that we look to attract. So some people will place those people as chairman in the business or or other types of relationships that they that they seek. They are almost picture perfect the type of client that we that we all know the type of client that we work with. So, again, not having thought about too much until now I think their views of the world have very much shaped what we do and how we do it. Yeah, undoubtedly have contributed to an element of success in attracting and retaining those types of clients.

Jess Brady
And let’s just sort of help people understand you’re working with people that are really at that high net wealth, ultra high net wealth, family office style level, correct?

Richard Felice
Correct? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. So all our clients are founders, executives, or family offices. And so family offices is a word that’s sort of thrown around a lot these days. But the product or the product theories, is another another way of determinism to determine it. So they are CEOs or CFOs of private and public companies, they’ve sold businesses and done with well out of that transaction. Or they are sometimes first, second third generation of wealth. And so with. Yeah, we’ve we’ve sort of shaped what we do and how we do it.

Jess Brady
Cheeky question. They sound look, this is me putting my stereotypical lens on things. They sound like an older demographic, you’re a young guy, do you get any pushback about your age,

Richard Felice
not only your funnily enough, I think, I think part of that is there is that there’s a track record of working with these types of clients. And I think a lot of the new clients that come to see us referrals from existing clients. And so I think the way that we attract them, definitely has a really, really important part of, you know, whether it’s overlooking or just reducing in importance, the age factor. But I think critically, as I said, before, we’ve made it at that point to surround ourselves with people that are more experienced in life than we are. So a couple of those people on the mentor I spoke about, who is a client, and we look after, you know, some of his close friends and family, all the way through to our Investment Committee, you set it up that yourself who has spent her career as a scholar and JBU as the CIO. And again, I think clients more comfortable if you’re in good company of people, they may respect or have the right level of experience. So I think we’ve we’ve been really deliberate about who we bring into the business and what role they play. And I think that helps with the older clients, who may be first generation. I think, I think just the other part of that is, a lot of these guys are planning for future generations. So so the scenario is often that there’s enough welfare to last a generation and they’re thinking about generations 234 And five, more often than not, we are the age of that second generation. And so when you look at it from mom and dad’s perspective, is longevity in that relationship. So we look after mom and dad, Amy’s their son or daughter is similar age who have similar interests to she laughs and, you know, all the lay looking feel similar to me in terms of age and demographic and interests, and that’s deliberate. And I see that, you know, that it wanted to deal with with somebody that might be your more typical investment advisor or accountability deal with someone I enjoy working with, but equally it has the experience and, and chair, to take them and their future generations forward. And so, I think you’re right, I think, earlier in the piece, the age piece was important, and we had to, we had to navigate that, but I think, as of today, second generation, we really feel like we’re much more aligned in, in in wearable value.

Jess Brady
I think it’s actually really rare. You know, like I think the majority of people that look after the similar demographic to what you look after, probably have people your age, almost for successes within the business, but it’s fascinating to hear that it’s not an issue and maybe it’s just because now you’ve had kids, you’ve got more gray hair, so maybe you’re older as well

Richard Felice
by To say that it is great. And I can tell you that because we’re trying to find people that that, again, culturally aligned to the rest of the team of Belay that have experience of working with a similar type of client. And they are very, very difficult to find. So that’s not by design. But we feel that’s a really key point. For us, and even if you find them, again, something that we really, really value in the court and really values, it’s the integration of the tax and business advisory services. And so some of that was raised in a similar environment to us, we don’t make an investment decision without knowing the tax and business consequence. And it’s really, really hard to find. So when we talk to a client about our value proposition more often than not, demographic or longevity relationship, as well as the integration of the tax and wealth piece is discussed.

Jess Brady
interesting, I want to talk about some changes that you’ve made or evolution, I guess, you’ve you’ve had within the business to look at, I guess, I guess my question is, is it from an efficiency standpoint? And how did you get here, but let’s talk about moving away from solely the traditional, I guess, retail model to having wholesale clients? How much of your business is done through sort of a wholesale lens now? And what has that transition been like for you?

Richard Felice
Yeah. So by the day, more and more about business and our clients transitioning to a wholesale relationship, when I spoke about the early days of our career, again, just just the way it sort of worked out is all those clients by accountant significant definition to the sophisticated investor box.

Jess Brady
Yeah, I mean, it does bring about I would imagine an element of, I guess, risk for you to consider through a different lens, because you aren’t providing that statement of advice. So navigating a couple, have you found sort of a sweet spot on how to do that? Or is that something that you like you both people have to do that suitability? Yeah, please, practically, what does that look like?

Richard Felice
Yeah, so we will always approach it with both members of the couple. I think I think one of the the interesting things about that is that one of the trends I’ve seen over the last few years is, as these clients age, it starts to become a couple engagement anyway. So because I was thinking about succession, and what if something happens to me, and you noticed, it’s my partner across all of this. In the last few years, we used to meet with maybe it was just the the, the male, or maybe it was just a female, but now, both male and female are coming to the meeting. So good. So probably haven’t had much of an issue of working through it and acknowledging that both of them have made investment decisions together, jointly signed off, and then both actively part of the conversation. And given this also transitions only really happened in the last four months, then we haven’t really run into that as an issue.

Jess Brady
That’s amazing. And I think that’s a sign of the strength of the relationship you obviously have with both so well done. Yeah.

Richard Felice
Yeah. Well, yeah. Either that or Yeah. Start to work out what their priorities are. And we, we, somebody that can sort of help them along with that. Yes.

Jess Brady
Yeah. So given this is quite a new evolution within the business, what have been the benefits,

Richard Felice
the core of our business is investment advice. And so you saw that two types of businesses in this space, you’ve got your more traditional financial planning business where it is about cash flow and saving for houses or property or building buyers in accumulation mode. And there’s a lot of strategy that comes with that. Our our advice is mostly investment advice and investment strategy. So again, when we’re looking to deliver the outcomes for these clients, I think some of the learnings over the few years that most public market investments certainly share market investments moving the same way, pretty much all the time. So what it says allow us to do for the benefit of the client spend more time on private or alternative assets. Going through our process and again, the support of our investment committee and invest client money with sometimes more more predictable, that certainly are more stable. Returning line. And I think as you run through that, and and identify the proof points along the way, we’ve been really, really happy with that as a decision. There’s a lot to that, of course, I’m sort of skimming, skimming over it a little bit. But there’s a lot that goes into that. But quietly, you’re making it sound easy. It’s not, it’s not sorry. I could bore you the details behind it, but people like to sell in our business. And more recently, Alex, who’s kicked off our Melbourne is Sue, who’s come out of PwC in Melbourne as one of the first employees of the private wealth team over there. These are the sorts of people that that will really test the thinking and help us deliver on this. We’ve made an important point within and externally to our business, to partner with the right people, again, to make sure that we aren’t believing our BS, but also that we’re not getting decided by returns or whatever else. It’s very, very methodical. It’s very deliberate. It’s it’s mostly with risk lens and what can go wrong, and you make decisions on that basis.

Jess Brady
How big is your team now?

Richard Felice
So we’re now team of 20? Ish. I think it’s about 20. So that doesn’t include the external setback, we call partners in the business, our partnerships. So yeah, it’s been a few years of, of really steady growth. And when we started when he said we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t kind of get to being a business. So the size that we are, but I think one of the key differences, again, that’s being more deliberate is each person we hire is with a specialist skill in mind. And so it comes back to what are we delivering to the client? And do we actually have somebody on board that can do this, and if not need to go to the market and find that person to help us do this properly. So gone are the days where we used to wear multiple hats and kind of learn things on the fly. I think each of us know what we’re good at, and the space that we’re playing with keeping our lane and we bring other people that are excited about what we’re doing and who we’re working with to help us expand that service.

Jess Brady
So just from a practical standpoint, is someone own? Like how does it look from a client lens? Someone owns the relationship with the client from like a lead perspective, and then you bring in the specialists as needed? Or how does that practically work for someone who’s a client of yours?

Richard Felice
Yeah, so given we’ve got the the accounting, tax and business advisory side and the wealth side, a lot of our clients will take up both of those services. So each, so we’ve got a reasonably high penetration rate across both of those services. So it’s sort of the entry point is, is someone from the accounting team and someone from the wealth team, clients naturally gravitate to they’re comfortable with the amount of times that for example, CDs, asked a question about wealth and onomastic question about tax? I mean, you find it comical that we still are like that, because clients aren’t really sure what it does, why don’t we work it out internally. So it’s not about me being getting the tax advice, but it’s, it’s, it’s me being in control of that relationship and preceding or see, you know, doing the opposite. So I think the answer to your question is nobody owns the client, the client will go away, they’re most comfortable. And from a from a business commercial perspective, that makes a lot of sense. And then as we require something that might be out of scope with that person, we bring them in into the meeting. So we will often have two, three or four sitting in the meeting with a client and we really just work through it as a team. And that’s the way we position our engagements team approach and will have different skills, complementary skills in the same room and we work through it, whether that’s investment advice, whether that’s philanthropic advice, or whether we bring somebody around succession. It looks and feels depending on what the client needs.

Jess Brady
And have you already met to discuss the client situation before you go into that meeting, or is that meeting more like a workshop where the client sits in there, and everyone sort of says their case in terms of considerations, objections to each other’s ideas like what does that look like when you’re in that meeting?

Richard Felice
One of the one of the challenges over the years is the right people being across the client situation of so we’ve done work on the transparency confirmation. So if so many times, I’ll have a conversation with the client. And, you know, kind of take that away. And you might get that nobody else knows I’ll have the conversation. And then, for example, suit comes into the meeting. And really, he should know that and that’s, that’s my responsibility to let him know that. So he’s not blindsided. And the client expects us to all know that we’re under the same roof. It’s often why they engaged us because there’s an expectation that you’ll share the information, and then all across it. So through systems and processes within the business, we can’t tell you all our secrets, of course, that there are ways

Jess Brady
that we don’t tell me all of them.

Richard Felice
Some of them, there are ways that we share client information and conversations in a way that it’s sort of like a notification, so you can’t you can’t miss it. The other side of that is we’re always talking about accountability, with sharing and being across the client situation. So it’s up to me if I’m going to meet with the client to get across what’s been going on through the systems and processes, but also talking with the key people to make sure I’m really well prepared. And again, you only have to learn that the hard way wants to make sure that before that meeting.

Jess Brady
Absolutely. And I know from my old BDM days, one of the big challenges for businesses that were similar to yours in that they had that accounting piece and that financial planning piece was often they were working off different types of technology that didn’t integrate or talk to each other. And it was hugely challenging. It sounds like you’ve perhaps solved that from a tech perspective.

Richard Felice
It’s it’s not perfect. This is kind of a bugbear I think of a lot of businesses in a situation. We’ve we’ve built a solution that that because we we are a lot more confident in that it’s also highly customizable, that as we leverage other technologies, we can integrate that. So as you expect being you know, reasonably young firm, technology is a big part of what we do. And so part of that information sharing is also okay, well, how do we get our software stack onto the one spot and get the rest of the team transparency around early conversations that other client information or tax lodgements or during the ship changes or, or everything else that’s really important. In a business like ours being information is that data is out. And really, really key and it’s not lost on us for sure.

Jess Brady
It’s like well done you it sounds like what you’ve built, possibly was expensive and labor so and ever changing. Don’t you find it baffling that we live in this world? And this is really common. And yet this is still a huge problem for us to tackle blows my mind

Richard Felice
is just crazy. I mean, you’re unsure like I sit there and think how has nobody really thought this through and invested in it. I think I think that’s, that’s changing. And we have had more than a few false starts in trying to get the solution. Right. And as I said, it’s not perfect plan. It’s a long way from where we were. But I I think by the day we’re seeing investment into the CRM space and the integration and the API’s and everything else. Because x y advisor eagle on that, as well, that blows my mind. I feel that they really, really behind where we should be with this sort of stuff. But I think the big players are either purely well fully in mostly accounting and so perhaps a smaller boutiques don’t have a big enough voice to motivate somebody to make that change.

Jess Brady
We’ll do technology providers, if you could please hurry up because it’s so frustrating. And it’s so tiresome and confusing and ultimately it’s unprofitable and costing client relationships because we spend so much time Because please hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.

Richard Felice
Hopefully that is the catalyst for change of confidence. I

Jess Brady
mean, obviously I asked for something, Richard and it just happened. Things work in my life. Finally, a practical question on the size of your business. So 20 is big 20 is big. And you need to be congratulated. Because that’s a whole, you know, to think of all the big life stuff you’ve done, and business stuff you’ve done in such a short space of time well done. You want to know practically, given that you’re doing client stuff, who’s managing the team? How are you making sure that you’re across all the team stuff when you’ve got a size? That big? How’s that working? Yeah.

Richard Felice
And it gets increasingly harder as the team grows, I think one of our eyes has been our ops manager, claudia, who’s just taken that whole piece to the next level. She’s great. And I think I think the right person that has it care, firstly, but also the skill and energy to get the team excited by what we’re doing, and help us invest in their careers and everything else, those people are really hard to find. So, you know, be, it would be wrong for me to take really much credit at all for that. So I think having the right person, and it looks like different things in each business people. And the people in our culture, person or operations, personal, you know, everything else that is somewhat similar, but I think those people are really, really critical. We spend a lot of time on our employee value proposition, talking to the team, about what, why they here and what’s important for them from a career perspective and actually holding them and ourselves accountable across their personal development plays. somebody really needs to drive that. I mean, there’s lots of good ideas that, as you know, unless you’re having regular conversations with the team, and they feel they’re in an environment where they can share their thoughts and feelings. And more often than not, that’s not with the partners in the business, it’s with somebody they feel more connected to, unfortunately, but that’s the reality of somebody that can drive that is really, really critical. So I want you to happen.

Jess Brady
Hi, you’ve built such a cool business. I mean, I could talk to you all day. And just like the more the more I ask you, the more I want to ask you. So I think we have to leave it there for for the interest of time. But before we do, can I ask you a couple of rapid fire questions to round out today’s chat? I’d love to know something that you do my dear to look after your mental health

Richard Felice
feedback? For sure. Number one thing. So in our office, including myself is the best town around lunchtime is go out for a run with keeping the soccer ball around or at the gym. So mental health is so so critical. And I think having an active lifestyle really helps with that. And that’s something I’ve always done. And hopefully we can continue to in the future.

Jess Brady
Brilliant. Do you have a piece of advice that you would give to your younger self?

Richard Felice
I’ve got lots of advice on how to self. Look, I think I think one of the key pieces of advice is keep an open mind about where your career and where things will go. I think recognize, recognize what you feel you’re good at but also be open to learning and living your career go into a different direction. I think that certain decisions in my career have been transformational to where we are today. Okay. I think that’s because I was either forced into that or just felt it was right at the time and that that pivot was was life changing. So I think know what you’re good at, but also be open to the career go to a different direction.

Jess Brady
Great. What is something that’s on your bucket list?

Richard Felice
I I call myself any last year, so don’t laugh, go to a major sporting event every year. I probably have lots of things on my bucket list. But if I can, if I can tick that off. Then I’ll then all feature heavy,

Jess Brady
so you don’t mean just like go to the football once you know enough for me.

Richard Felice
Yeah, something that not require some trouble. So for example, the Super Bowl or you know last year we went to the fit of watch the race of Formula One that moves the formula to Melbourne, Sydney Australian Open finals, finals, Champions League far more all that sort of stuff, but it is it is a major part of a sort of weekend, Darby.

Jess Brady
Yeah, okay, that sounds fascinating. I know, in Aussie as the eye is ago thought, I’m gonna go to a baseball game in New York, I used to play softball. And so I thought this will be brilliant. Oh my gosh, after about two and a half hours, I was like, when will it end?

Richard Felice
For baseball, so I might leave that one off the list. And

Jess Brady
just, obviously, this is your bucket list. I can’t tell you what to put on there. But just be prepared for it to go for much, much, much longer than you would think. And then last question for you is I have a fake book club, which just means I like to read a lot. Do you have a book recommendation as part of my fake book club?

Richard Felice
I do. There’s a book called Legacy, which was recommended to me by a client. And I think it’s just one of those fascinating books. You’ve probably picked up my meter sports and it’s actually about the All Blacks and the rugby team and, and how they became such a successful team. And all things they did, from a business perspective, around mindset and behaviors and attitudes on the team to get to where they got to last as a successful rugby team. So I really recommend that it’s a great combination of sport and business and, and yeah.

Jess Brady
Do you know what? What’s really annoying about that? What? You’re the second person that’s told me I need to read that and so I typically don’t like to read sporting based business books, but given to people have now told me it’s a must read. Now I feel like it is a must must read. Thank you can I just say for those playing at home, some people have been telling me that they’ve been reading from my fake book club list. So thank you for partaking in my fake book club, you too may need to read legacy given that this is now the second time it’s come up. So it’s clearly bloody good. Richard, I’ve known you for a little while now. It’s been amazing to I didn’t realize just the level of growth you’ve had. And so I want to say a massive, massive congrats to you. I know it probably hasn’t always been easy. But clearly you’re doing a really remarkable job. Thank you so much for being part of today’s X my podcast and I wish you all the very best in the future.

Richard Felice
Thank you. Thanks for having me. And yeah, hasn’t hasn’t been easy by means that we’re really, really happy to be where we are and I appreciate you having me on