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Intro: Hi, welcome to Season 5 of Change Happens. I’m Jenelle McMaster, and I have the great privilege of speaking with influential and interesting leaders on their experiences of leading change and the lessons that they’ve learnt along the way. Not many people would be able to say that they’ve built something out of nothing and stayed true to their vision and purpose the entire way through, but I think that’s very much something that is true of today’s guest, Simon Crowe, Founder and Managing Director of Grill’d. Grill’d is known for its quality burgers and sustainable food practices. Simon had to overcome many obstacles to get to where he is now, most noticeably a public court battle with a former co-owner and business partner. Simon says, “It was the most horrendous thing that’s ever happened. It was really challenging and certainly unfortunately, it made me distrustful of people which is just not my normal stance”. This was a really surprising conversation for me. Simon is so hard on himself. You’ll hear in the first half of the conversation that he keeps going to the things he hasn’t done well and this is all despite him building an unbelievable successful business and having mastered the formula for successful burgers and franchises with almost 175 stores. He’s on a mission to liberate burgers from badness. Hear, hear, I say - and thankfully, for all of us wannabe an actual burger eaters, he’s absolutely achieving this. Yet his humility, his self-judgement and his vulnerability is palpable throughout the discussion. I took a lot away from this interview. I hope you enjoy this chat with Simon as much as I did.

Jenelle: Hi Simon, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Change Happens.

Simon: Pleasure Jenelle.

Jenelle: Let’s start with where it all began for you. I know that your father owned his own business. Tell me, do you think it was always destined to be that you would own your own business.

Simon: Yeah, I do, actually. Undoubtedly, travelling to dad’s pharmacy after school, walking there with my sister, waiting for my mum to finish serving customers and then doing the delivery rounds and dropping off the prescriptions to the old people’s houses and saying hello and them telling me how much I had grown since they’d last seen me. They always ran their own business. I watched dad in the local community. I saw him serving that community with pride and probably didn’t know what a lot of friends dads did in the workplace. So yes, in short, I thought one day I’ll have my own business, that was inevitable. The question was “what was the business to be and how long did it take to find!”

Jenelle: Well that’s a great segue to the next question. So I understand that you’re a person who’s had lots and lots of ideas, created many many business plans and I know you had other ventures before Grill’d but given food wasn’t necessarily where you had your expertise, what was it about that idea that made you want to have a crack at that.

Simon: I often think it’s time and place. I have written business ideas. I looked at pet insurance when I was living in the States. I looked a myriad, of silly ideas, including one where it was a hand car wash before car washers were popular. The business idea took a long time to find. Knowing or determining what to do. If you had of said “food” to me some years before, I would have said “no way, that’s not my piece.” I would certainly focus on a consumer or direct-to-consumer business but the food piece was quite scary upfront and really it was a time and place. I was almost 30, I’d been looking for business ideas. I knew that I had sacrificed personal relationships and I hadn’t bought a home simply because I wanted to be eligible or able to take risks without consideration for others. So again, eventually I think I got to the point of contemplating ideas and never executing or jumping into the deep end and, at some point, with a bit of daring from my friends, I did.

Jenelle: Okay! So, the friends dared you. What was the aspiration at that time? Was it to be the little burger shop that was quite good and successful or was there an aspiration to be Australia’s largest burger chain or the world’s largest burger chain? What was the plan?

Simon: No, I think I’m driven less by outcome and more by intent and that’s both a strength and a weakness I might add but I was at a company called Procter & Gamble. I left there in a hurry to have my own business and went to work directly for a business founder and entrepreneur called Clyde Davenport who owned Davenport Boxer Shorts and it was a wonderful learning experience and then I went to Fosters International and worked out of Melbourne, almost with the best job in the world, I was selling my country in a bottle. I thought when I was with Davenport, that success would be having enough money to travel overseas once a year. It would be about creating a lifestyle where I could be proud of what was created but I always saw it in the parlance of a small business, never a big business. Success for me wasn’t properly defined except that of determining and driving my own train. At Fosters, I’d seen a round of redundancies, not once but twice. It was interesting to see some of the guys who I respected almost duck their heads trying to hide from the redundancy bullet, if you will, and I thought I don’t want to be that, I want to create my own destiny and actually control my future. So it wasn’t about a big business, it was about a business and pleasingly then, Grill’d gave the opportunity for scale but that wasn’t part of the proper consideration up front. It was to have a million dollars. I didn’t know if that was pre-tax, post-tax, cash-free. It was just a million dollars.

Jenelle: [laugh], one million dollars!

Simon: [laugh], yeah yeah exactly [laugh]. It sounds so silly, doesn’t it!

Jenelle: No, it sounds awesome. You’ve got to start somewhere. Tell me about that sentence that you just said “you would drive through intent over outcome”. Can you explain more about what you mean by that.

Simon: I think, you know, I have a fear of failure. That’s because there’s two things. One is I think at heart, I’m a perfectionist. Two, if setting a goal and that goal is not achieved, then it feels like failure and interestingly, I probably live in that perpetual state of glass half empty because when I set a goal, I generally set it to be pretty big and therefore the chances of getting there and achieving it are often slim but for me that’s not the issue. My view is if the goal is big enough, then achieving one third/one half or two thirds is generally better than not actually starting or reaching for something that’s more challenging.

Jenelle: So that doesn’t sound like a fear of failure to me! That sounds like you leaning into some big hairy audacious goals.

Simon: Look, I think there’s a truth to that in that I can see opportunity or I see opportunities sometimes as big. When I get to committing to that, there’s a cliff that you need to stand on before you jump and I need to be pushed off that cliff.

Jenelle: So that push for you was some mates daring you. Is that what the push looked like for you?

Simon: Yeah absolutely. A lot of my friends have known for a long time that I wanted to have my own business. It’s why I went to Davenport. It’s why I went to Fosters International. The intent was to bring back ideas or concepts from overseas. My friends have been with me all the way through, daring me to do it because at some point they just said “you just have to commit” and a wonderful friend of mine, Andrew Barlow”. I had my 50th just over a year ago and I read the letter that he wrote me from that time because I’ve kept it and it was very much around “we believe in you, you haven’t got anything to lose but ego, you’ve got all the skills, you’ve got the capability. Just do it”. But it really goes back to having people that care about you, who believe in you and I was very fortunate that I had that situation.

Jenelle: That’s an incredible friend and friends around you that did that and I think that’s a fantastic story. The story starts to take a little bit more of a sour turn now unfortunately. You did start Grill’d with two partners but not long after you started the business, one of your partner exited and a few years after that, your other partner took you to court and ultimately ended up leaving the business too and that was quite a public court battle and given what you’ve just said then, all of that background about fear of failure, about trust, about being pushed over the cliff, about people believing in you, what was that time like with those two partners. It feels particularly poignant now when I understand a bit more of your background there, what was that time like for you?

Simon: Look, those two gents are called Simon McNarama and Geoff Bainbridge. Simon left on June 30 2010. I had to sign contracts at about 11.50pm that night. My wife had been hit by a car during that day and I still remember the hospital saying to me “I want to let you know that Sophie is still alive” and they were first words they said before then explaining that she was in a pretty banged up state after being hit by a car when she was out running. Signing the deal for Simon at that point was put into context of this thing called business is not that important because I had nearly lost my … or she wasn’t my wife then, my fiancée and we had a little kid who was nine months old, but Simon and I had some real challenges. He was fundamental to the business early because he is such a great operator. He’s an accountant. He was based in Melbourne and he had done it before, that is, he had built a small business and had made that business very successful, I might add. So we had a challenging time for a while there and, no surprise, my fiancée, his wife, who was also a friend of mine, those two got together and said “what’s going on here, this is ridiculous” and Simon is still one of my best best friends. For Geoff, that was actually 2015. We had an enterprise agreement issue at one of our franchise partners, understandably that has a halo affect across our brand and Geoff wanted to exit the shareholders agreement because he said “I don’t want to be involved in the business anymore”. We’d been challenged and/or frictional for a couple of years. It probably wasn’t a surprise and then he chose a course of action and took me to the federal court. It was the most horrendous thing that’s ever happened. It was really challenging and certainly unfortunately, it made me distrustful of people which is just not my normal stance.

Jenelle: I’ve got to believe that you have built back trust with people over time. How did you do that, it would have been an incredibly confronting period of time for you.

Simon: Yeah.

Jenelle: How did you run the business during that time, how did you build that.

Simon: Look, there’s a couple of moments in our journey and every business has significant challenges. Nothing is an easy or linear path and certainly over time, you learn to ride those bumps differently and better but that was the first significant episode for me and for Grill’d because we’d had a wonderful ride in terms of publicity, in terms of consumer appeal, in terms of momentum and when you’re small and you’re on a growth pathway, you almost feel invincible and a wonderful mate of mine who’s the CEO of AESOP, Michael O’Keeffe. He also wrote me a wonderful letter at a point in time, you know, and this wasn’t entirely linked to the Geoff scenario but it was about businesses hitting a plateau when once upon a time you were defined by energy and excitement, potential and momentum and then you actually have to realise “who are you and what do you stand for”. Well interestingly, that plays true to me through the Geoff scenario because I felt compelled to protect my people from all that was going on. I therefore tried to wear the stress and the challenges of a significant and ongoing legal dispute on my shoulders and I asked the guys to keep running the business. If I had my time again, I would have changed that dramatically. I would have brought them into the fold. I would have asked them to support me. It would have been a collaborative thing together, albeit I still didn’t want to or wouldn’t want to burden them too much. I thought it was my fight to have, not theirs but upon reflection, when I alienated myself and/or withdrew, that wasn’t good for my relationship with them either, in terms of trust, in terms of working together. So all of that played through and Michael’s email to me about “well, you better know yourself”, that came to pass through and out the other side of the Geoff scenario and that was for me to say “well who am I, what do I stand for as a person, let alone that of a professional” and if you believe in being vulnerable, if you believe in being trusting, if you believe that people need to have a voice and if you believe that genuinely, there are wonderful ideas across the group, you just need to listen. I started to find myself again, but it wasn’t easy. It took a long time. I can talk about it now without there being emotion associated with it but it certainly and another future event, but those two events certainly shaped me meaningfully. It made me stronger, it made me more resilient but I think that they did take a chip out of the … the duco of the car and that chip was one of trust.

Jenelle: Thank you for sharing that Simon. I think that’s incredibly … you continue to be vulnerable in sharing that. I can still hear the emotion in your voice and I think they’re always really powerful questions to ask anyone to ask themselves at different points in their life, who am I, what do I stand for, what do I believe in. How would you articulate the answers to those questions. What did you learn about who you are?

Simon: I know Jenelle, it sounds silly. I used to be, I think, very evolved for a 27 or 30 year old on an emotional level in terms of engagement with others and clear in my own self identification. I think as time has passed, I’ve become less about Simon the person and more about Simon the businessman which isn’t, I think, balanced or something I should be celebrating. I’ve got an opportunity and that’s what Grill’d has given me, optionality. I’ve just got to learn to take it but the optionality is there for me to actually make sure I’m not just a decent or reasonable businessman, but a great person and I sometimes think that I’ve let one lead and one lag and who am I. Well I know in a business sense who I am. I’m resilient, I’m perseverance, I have a drive and I have a desire to actually be proud of what we create but that’s not who I am as a person. I hope I’m considerate. I hope I’m loyal. I hope I’m there for people when they need me and I hope I’ve actually got patience but no doubt, my patience and my time, my connection to my friends isn’t what it should or could be and I’ve let Grill’d either be the excuse or the reason for not being engaged enough with that friendship group. You can’t keep taking cookies out of the jar and not put them back in. So I’ve got a finite amount of time to make change to the way that I lead and operate so I can be a better person, not just a reasonable businessman.

Jenelle: It sounds like those are the things that you are going to get to but I know that you have been doing them. So what are the things that you are proud of that you have been doing, in light of all of those hard lessons and hard battles that you’ve had in there. What have you been doing to get the balance of Simon of the businessman/Simon the human to where you feel really comfortable.

Simon: I don’t think I’ve been doing enough. I know that going to the gym makes me better physically and mentally and yet I’m not doing it properly. I know that I get energy when I actually engage with friends, particularly one on one. So I’m not doing enough of what I should do in that regard but in terms of being a servant to Grill’d I feel proud of that. I feel like I’ve got to make sure that ego doesn’t get in my way relative to having founded the business. You know, do I know everything! I know Grill’d really well but I don’t know everything and in fact I think our business could be far more successful. How do I put a CEO into the business so I can play to my strengths and again, I was very very fortunate that I went to a business moons ago called Procter & Gamble and I hope that Grill’d can become a place a little bit like that, changed my life for good and I’d like to do that for lots of people that are in our business.

Jenelle: In what way did it change your life for good?

Simon: Look, I was young when I joined Procter & Gamble. I’d been rejected by numerous companies including P&G, coming out of university and I had called them to ask why I didn’t do so well in the interview and then six months later, I called them after I got some better results at university because I didn’t engage with university the way that I should of and then the gentleman that answered the phone, the guy that interviewed me, his name is Simon Fraser, he’ll always be important to me. When I said “look, I’d like to be reconsidered because I’ve now got some better marks, is there a possibility of doing so”. He said “that’s great initiative”. Simon, about … I’m going to say 2010, six years after Grill’d had started rang me up and said “Crowie, did I ever tell you what happened that morning”. I said “no mate, what happened” but he said to me “sometimes things happen for a reason. You rang and only half an hour before that, a graduate who was supposed to start on that day said she had pulled out and therefore there was a space available which hadn’t been available had you called the day before. So you know, I’m not being fatalistic, as my wife says trusting in the process of life. Procter & Gamble then taught me the benefit of brand, how brands stand for something meaningful, how they pass the test of time and how they cross borders internationally and they also taught me how values are inherent in the business that wants to be something that’s beyond only selling a product and those learnings have been with me ever since.

Jenelle: That’s amazing and I have to tell you that is exactly how I got my break into my working career …

Simon: [laugh] … really!

Jenelle: … I also got rejected from a job and like you, I called back to get some feedback and as it turned out the person had declined the offer, maybe an hour before I called and that’s honestly set me up in life but I would say, I know you say you got lucky, but you know, the definition of luck is where preparation meets opportunity. So your preparation, you went back and did your studies and then the opportunity came. So let’s not deny both of ourselves some kind of hand in that [laugh]. I’m really glad Simon, that you talked about the things that you’re feeling proud of. This year is Grill’d 20 year anniversary. You have almost 175 locations, I think, across Australia. Your first international restaurant in Bali in Indonesia. You’ve given away millions of dollars to charity, you’ve invested in sustainable businesses and anyone who’s listening to this who doesn’t know about your background could be forgiven for now realising the extent of that success but despite all that growth and all that success, you’ve managed to stay true to a motto that you’ve shared many times “get big and stay small”. I can hear that as an undercurrent in what you’ve been sharing with me today but what does that mantra mean to you and why is it important to you?

Simon: There’s a rational reason and an emotional reason but I’ll try to deal with you the rational first. We’re in the burger landscape and the burger landscape is arguably the most popular food category in the world.

Jenelle: Oh!

Simon: Yeah! The category has historically been dominated by multinational fast food players who are at the bottom of the rung relative to food quality, food integrity and service in terms of engagement. So we have a brand that tries to play to a local environment because we believe that we can make a difference in local environments, to communities, we can actually engage with them and that’s what my dad did and my dad did that exceptionally. I still remember every Christmas, he would close the doors the day before. All of his customers would come in and they’d come in throughout the day and have a glass of champagne and have a chat with dad. So the first time I had sort of seen him in mere type role and it was lovely to watch because I could see how he was positively impacting them and their lives. So there’s a vocal piece that is fundamental to our business. That’s about staying small. There’s a rational piece that says we’re never going to have the money that McDonalds does and McDonalds defines the burger landscape because they spend so much money. So don’t try and compete with goliath head on, make sure you’ve got your own style, you know who and what you stand for and make sure that therefore you play to your niche. Now I don’t want our niche to be small. I want our niche to be big. You need to be able to engage people’s hearts in business. I think playing local does that to our people internally and if we engage our people internally, you know, respectfully I don’t need to worry about our guests because they’ll always get looked after. So if we’re going to be different and therefore rebels with a cause, we had better know what actually we anchor ourselves in and for me that’s local, that’s sustainability, that’s high quality product, that’s being proudly Australian and that’s making sure that our front line teams are the hero of this business and the real hero is the restaurant manager because the restaurant manager in our business is the person that leads the charge across those 175 restaurants which therefore means 175 communities and that means a truckload of people per week.

Jenelle: That’s fantastic and I have been long trying to herald the … the goodness of burgers way before there actually was any ability to have good burger, usually after a big night out I would herald such a thing and I’m very grateful for you doing that genuinely. So you’ve talked quite a bit there about the heroes of the business and really trying to engage hearts. You’ve talked about the importance for you growing up in your career of having access to development opportunities. How do you create the environment at Grill’d for your staff to develop their experiences and learn leadership skills?

Simon: Look, I’d say for us our people are always going to be our greatest asset but have we nailed this – no, but we’ve got a turnover post-covid that is greater than it used to be, even at a restaurant manager level. At a restaurant manager level, we got to a turnover less than 25% which means that our guys were in the position for four years and given that most of them have actually grown within the business, that meant they were often were with us for 6/7 or even 10+ years. So our business turnover is greater than I’d like it to be and that’s the challenge and the opportunity. How do we become a brand that gives people a career. How do we give them the development and the learning that they need and want and we’ll always try to get talent from the outside but growing and developing talent from the inside is really the hallmark of a business that has a strong culture and therefore by default, often and generally a strong brand. So we do have training programmes internally which are getting more and more robust all the time. We engage them to say “be part of your community and the local matters”. Each restaurant each month gives away $500 across three different groups in their local community. Our people and our teams then go and often work with and side by side with those community groups. We encourage them to do that. We’re now trying to set up an ownership structure which is in existence. It’s called “Our Grill’d Partner Programme” where notionally the RM or the restaurant manager owns 5% of the business. We’ve got 12 of those in 170 restaurants. We’re about to put down another five and then we’ve got a pipeline for another 15 to 20 and we’ve migrated the GP programme, which is Grill’d Partner to a JV – a joint venture programme to an ownership programme and eventually to then franchises or franchise partners and what’s the intent of that. Well, there’s nothing more significant in our business than (a) our purpose and that’s to positively impact the lives of our peoples and communities through engagement, energy and education and that plays into our values and our values are passion, leadership, ownership and trust. They’ve been with us from the start and in 2021, we added sustainability and if our guys believe in our purpose, if they understand our values, then the thing that I want to do is double-down and triple-down on one of those values being ownership and we can positively change their lives if they can take an ownership pathway and grow significantly their earning capacity and also their management and leadership skillset and that’s what we’re trying to do, feel that we’re going to be an employer that is best in class and that because if we want to be the brand that presents itself or the opportunity that presents itself, then our desire and need is to have brand in business inextricably linked. That means people on a journey for a long time and believing in what we do because we are more than just a “burger joint”.

Jenelle: So clearly there’s been an increased focus on sustainability and ethical consumerism across the convenience food industry in recent years but Grill’d was the leader in sustainable food practices well before it was fashionable. I know last year you introduced the “game changer burger”, understood to be the world’s most sustainable beef burger, produces 67% less methane and now you’re investing millions into companies that make sustainable products that you can use across your business. Tell me about that strategy, where that passion comes from and how you came up with that so much earlier than perhaps others have.

Simon: Look, I am fortunate that I’ve got permission to make Grill’d the brand I want it to be and I had this argument with my chiropractor just the other day. He was saying businesses should have no say in societal movements. Their intent should be just to make money for their shareholders and I disagreed with him vehemently. I know I could make a whole lot more money at Grill’d if it was only about dollars but that’s easy. I could squeeze this lemon so tight and make a whole lot more money and drop that to the bottom line and the beneficiary of that is potentially me but it’s just not of any interest. It doesn’t mean that a successful business with a scorecard with increased profits isn’t what I’m driving to but not at any expense and my view is if we’re playing a long game and we’re playing a holistic game then Grill’d is my vehicle for making a difference to society and that means I want to be proud of it and that means that when I talk to my kids, they’re always interested in what’s going on from an environmental perspective and from a sustainability perspective, but it’s not my kids only. It’s actually the people that work at Grill’d. They are the ones that actually made us take action. The front line of our business is the front line of Australia’s future and they’ve got views that they speak openly about and eloquently about and passionately about and my view, again, is if we’re running this business to make them proud, we’ve got to be conscious of what’s happening in their consumer landscape and the political landscape and the socio-economic landscape and look, I am a fan of all things sustainability but we talk about sustainability in a broad sense. Animal welfare, number one. Natural resources, number two. Our people, number three and our communities, number four. So all of those play into how we think about sustainability at Grill’d and we try and make that a focus across all parts of the business and if we can take little steps, I believe often the little steps actually create momentum and I think we’re being good at taking lots of little steps because we believe in that.

Jenelle: So really uplifting to hear you talk about that. As you say, maybe there’s more dollars made other ways but to create more ethical, more sustainable practices is a road that is a little tougher. What have you learnt from choosing to go down that road – upside and downside?

Simon: Yeah look, there’s … there’s both. I see myself and it’s not true but it’s just how you … it’s just self talk – right. I see myself as an outsider. I see myself as a challenger of the status quo and I see myself as an opportunist that says “if someone says no, I’m going to find a way” and I read about asparagopsis which is a native red seaweed out of Australia. I read about it in the paper and it was the CSIRO about to do something, raise money to actually then try and commercialise by feeding asparagopsis to cattle. It reduces their methane expulsion and I just dive into these things because I get curious and if I get curious and I can see that it might intersect with Grill’d, I get passionate. If I get passionate, I try and understand it and dive deeper and deeper. We’ve got an investment in a business called Great Wrap. It’s a gladwrap made from potato peelings …

Jenelle: Oh wow!

Simon: … and it has therefore no plastics associated with it at all but that’s the space that I enjoy playing in, putting our money where our mouth is and trying to help sometimes small businesses grow. I’ve had that benefit from people believing in me. I want to try and believe in others.

Jenelle: Fantastic. So final question for you. Extraordinary amount of knowledge and lessons and experience and pain and joy in all of that, but looking back and knowing what you know now, thinking about your younger self, the person that was waiting to be pushed off that cliff by his mates … what would be the advice that you would give to that person now?

Simon: I think I have an intensity and sometimes a lightness but I’d play more to the lightness. I expect to be proud of Grill’d always but for me, it’s about remaining playful. I sometimes forget that everything we’re doing is about a journey and I’m trying to get to the outcome too quickly. I’ve got to remember that I operate with an intent to jump fast and quickly and businesses as they get bigger can’t move at that same pace and if I try and do that, well then I create upheaval rather than positive change but if I go back a step, you know, one is I’ve had pretty good people in my business always but occasionally when you get it wrong, make changes quicker. Put a structure in place ahead of your growth curve. We did that really well in the early years and I would say probably that’s one of the things that I haven’t been challenged on enough by not having other shareholders in the business. I haven’t put the structure ahead of the growth in some parts of our business. At 170 restaurants, we’re playing catchup from pre-100 and once you get behind, it’s really hard to get in front and the other one is which I probably keep doing time and time again “hey Simon, if you’re doing this again, don’t get sucked into the detail all the time – learn to be the master, not the slave”. Having said that, I enjoy being the slave and I enjoy being in the detail. So that’s a hard one but if I was to say again, you know, starting a business today, talking to my younger self, I don’t think I would have done it if I knew what was ahead but what I do know is that my super powers, if I’ve got any, are passion, drive, resilience and perseverance. So it would be knowing that you are going to need those super powers and you’re going to need to rely on them often and meaningfully.

Jenelle: Very well said and in fact if I was going … I’m just going to go to a wrap-up now and you’ve called out all the words that I would have said exactly about your passion, drive, perseverance, resilience. I’d add vulnerability. I’d add courage to those words and it’s funny, as I’ve listened to you and I know we started out with you talking about your fear of failure but I have to say I don’t even know if I’m buying it. I think your curiosity and your purpose and your passion has trumped any fear of failure every day of the week and thank god it has because you’ve done remarkable work and even when it’s been tough, you’ve been able to forge through that and come out with some really powerful lessons. I’ve really reflected on your comments about, you know, surround yourself with people who care about you, who believe in you and who are prepared to safely push you off that cliff when you need it. I loved the counsel from your friend about, you know, you haven’t got anything to lose but ego and I think, you know, where there has taken a chip along the way, you’ve done that in a way that it’s kept your confidence in yourself but perhaps made it more about others along that way. I’m grateful to the role modelling of your dad and what that has meant for you to stay close to community. I am really impressed with how you’ve managed to stay true to the mantra of “get big and stay small”. I think the intent behind that is really powerful, that you can mobilise a contingent of passionate rebels with a cause and engage hearts and clearly connect purpose to values and, as I said, I think that your fear of failure, the fact that you said if someone says no, I’ll find another way, it means that you’re prepared to face into it. You said you were an outsider, you said you’re an opportunist, you’re a challenger of the status quo and so if you add to that a bit of the lightness that’s going to trump the intensity, my god, you have nothing but amazing feats ahead of you as well. So Simon, thank you so much for your time today. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation.

Simon: Thank you Jenelle, me too.

The Change Happens podcast from EY – a conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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