Jussi Karjalainen - Series 3 Episode 3 Reclaiming the Joy of Business

Reclaiming Joy in Business: Jussi Karjalainen's Journey of Resilience and Innovation

In this episode of the 'Reclaiming the Joy of Business' podcast, host Steve speaks with Jussi Karjalainen of Valta Technology Group about the core challenges and triumphs he has experienced in his entrepreneurial journey. 

Jussi shares his personal struggles during the initial phases of his business, emphasising the importance of resilience and maintaining a positive mindset. He discusses critical business decisions, such as switching a major technology partner, that shaped the future of his company. 

Jussi also highlights how he has fostered a supportive and innovative business culture that transcends traditional power dynamics and integrates diverse cultural backgrounds. 

The conversation provides valuable insights into scaling a business while maintaining core values and morale.

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Transcript

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Steve Sandor 0:03

In this conversation with Jussi Karjalainen and we talk about how he struggled to get his business off the ground and this shook at the core of his self belief and how he used a process of consistently affirming something positive or being grateful for a recent positive outcome. And this consistent approach set up his day. Jussi, also spoke about going into nature for quiet time and reflection. And this is something that I speak about on a fortnightly basis with Marti Spiegelman and Aveline Clark In the six star business community on LinkedIn. Um, and it's the collective consciousness. I'll put a link in the show notes. So if you're interested in looking at that, either on LinkedIn or YouTube, you'll have that connection. There were a few standouts for me in this conversation. Jussi mentioned the importance of being culturally aware and fostering an inclusive work environment. He's got over 50 employees and they are scattered across the world working virtually and obviously that's important, dealing with different cultures and really understanding how they best communicate with each other. And so that. set up a significant alignment with the mission and the values with everyday practices and to maintain a strong and unified culture within the organisation. My favorite point was when Jussi mentioned he goes through a process every six months or so, um, where he effectively applies for his own job. And this is to make sure that. He's the right person to lead the organisation and Jussi pointed out that as the business grows, the skills needed by the CEO may change and he may not be the right person to lead the organisation beyond this point. I think that's a really clever approach to selecting leaderships, even though you're the owner of the business that you consider, you know, who might be better suited to lead the organisation based on the position that it's in at the moment. But I think the real point for me was how it was such a high level of humility in. I'm in that whole consciousness about being the right person and how the ego was just left outside. It didn't really come into the conversation. It was really about what was best for the organisation. And so this is a real example of how a human centric approach is able to support deliberate growth within an organisation and combine with an innovative outlook, filters into every aspect of the business. And it is possible to reclaim the joy of business. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jussi as much as I did.

Introdution

Steve Sandor 3:30

So welcome to reclaiming the joy of business where we have real conversations with real people about real situations and hopefully come up with some sort of solution, um, or information that you can use in your business life. Jussi Karjalainen and I had to I hope I got that right the fourth time. Jussi,

Jussi Karjalainen 3:52

that was excellent, man.

Steve Sandor 3:54

Thank you. welcome to this conversation.

Jussi Karjalainen 3:57

Yeah. Thank you very much, Steve. Pleasure to be here.

Steve Sandor 4:01

The context that we're at least on the message that I'm trying to get out to the listener is that, reclaiming the joy of business. We're all in business and we all know that inside the business world, it's quite challenging. There are its choices that we've made to be in this space. and as I've said to you previously, and to other guests is that it's great that we have successes in our business world, but those successes have typically come from some form of challenge that has been presented to us. And because we've either overcome that challenge or we've gone that's forced us to go down a particular pathway that the success has come from it. So I'd love to focus in on either a mistake that you made that ended up in a, uh, an opportunity that was presented to you or a particular decision that you made, which was quite challenging at the time. And we'll get to that.

Introducing Jussi Karjalainen

Steve Sandor 5:05

But before we get to that question, maybe you could just give the listener a little bit of a background of who you are, where you're based the, service that you provide and how you actually got into business.

Jussi Karjalainen 5:20

Thanks, Steve. Yeah, sure. Sure.

Jussi's Business Journey

Jussi Karjalainen 5:23

Look, I I grew up in, uh, in Finland, hence the, uh, the complicated last name that you, uh, had to practice a few times, Steve. So I moved out of Finland into Australia 2007 joined a startup here in Sydney actually to, to help them scale their business. They were a partner to a technology company that I work for in Europe. And and so that sort of got me down to Australia. Yep. And and. Yeah, they they operated the same spaces where, my business runs now. So we transform procurement and finance or accounts payable processes and kind of everything basically a business has to do with spending money. We streamline and automate typical customers are sort of midsize to large size clients. We use a combination of technology process, reengineering a very much of a transformative approach to, to really getting the best value out of technology. And in, addition to that procurement and finance automation space, we are also an electronic invoicing operator. Um, which is recognized by the ATO here in Australia and driven and initially driven by ATO here in Australia. So we're part of the panel of suppliers and do that also for Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and, uh, of course, New Zealand. I'd

Steve Sandor 6:45

love to just drill down a little bit more into the solution that you provide. Obviously, this is not a, this is not about that, but. But just a little bit more of what the problems that you see that business owners or businesses face in your particular area.

Jussi Karjalainen 7:03

Yeah, look, I mean, I, I think in, in, in general, what we do is we streamline everything that, uh, makes a business to, To make a buying decision and so how those decisions are being made. So race of a purchase order approvals. Everything that integrates them with their supply chain and generally speaking this, process is often quite labor intensive. It can be very paper based in a lot of the organisations. We transform that and put that into technology. So everything is trackable. Everything is auditable. What buying decisions have been made? What suppliers have been brought in? What, um, what vetting of those suppliers have been conducted before they've been awarded for a contract and then so forth. So basically everything within the contracting purchasing and invoicing space is what we sort of bring together. And it's, very typical this is in Australia as well as global. It's very typical for organisations to silo the overall process to go purchasing is done by procurement, invoicing is done by finance. These guys don't talk to each other. What we do is, and our approach is quite different. We start everything from sourcing the supplier and streamline the overall or platform, the overall approach all the way to payment. So everything that happens within that supplier relationships going to go through our platform and from a technology perspective, we've got a number of number of partners that we bring on to enable the technology, but we're the guys who actually make it work. So, generally what we address. So typical customers for us are the CPO so the CFOs that are looking at the kind of the efficiencies of the organisation of their organisations and going, how do I transform and bring this up to, you know, the 20th century.

Steve Sandor 8:54

Um, so I imagine that you're in great demand at the minute with everything that's going on in the technological space.

Jussi Karjalainen 9:05

Yeah absolutely. I mean, everything we do results into savings, a lot of people say that 1 save is 10 earned um, so, you know, from our perspective, it is a lot easier to streamline your spent in today's climate than it is to try to make that extra 1 or 10. Right. Whilst a lot of organisations prioritize the projects that are related to generating revenue Our approach to that is well, why don't you just make sure that your house is in order first? And so so that's where we Initially start with building business cases and get them to understand that hey how do you, re engineer your business processes so that it it's streamlined and saves you money, both through labor savings, as well as the same things you, uh, can realize by streamlining supply relationships and, and putting together better contracts for your business. Right. So, so that's where we kind of come from is we start all the way from business casing into integration of the transformation initiative, and then coming to implement. Uh, the actual solution which looks it has, it has different variations for different types of businesses, right? Obviously manufacturing organisation versus financial services, the solutions are slightly different. End to end process is the same but, it's, it gets established differently. So we're sort of experts on doing that on a company by company basis. These are very bespoke projects that we do. All right.

Steve Sandor 10:33

Thanks for that. Um, I part of this and the listener hasn't heard this before. But, what I'm going to do is bring in subject matter experts to talk about specific problems that business owners have. So the invitation is there for you. choose to accept it to come back and we'd actually talk specifically about that one particular problem. But, so if you're happy, if you're happy to do that, I'd love to, I'd love to have you back in as a subject matter expert, as opposed to your experience as a business owner. So getting on to that subject, uh, we've had a, uh, in a fairly long initial conversation when I approached you and asked you to come on as a guest to this, uh, to this podcast.

Emotional Challenges and Overcoming Them

Steve Sandor 11:23

And you, you gave me some really interesting insights into your psyche, um, and when you first started the business and the challenges that you faced at that time. You know, that emotional attachment that you had to the business and the outcomes and, I I don't want to tell you a story, but I want to set it up so that there's, it wasn't as easy as you had initially thought it was going to be, or there was certain challenges there. So, I'd love you to just recap that if you could and then through that what was the one or a major decision that you made or a major mistake that you made that enabled you to have the successful business that you have today?

Jussi Karjalainen 12:13

Yeah, Steve, thank you. Well, that's a, that's a big question. Look, if we sort of recap down to the time, so we were established, um, 2014, 2015, when we started operating. And, and I, I didn't set up Valta Tech with a huge sort of vision on my mind on, we want to create this cross border multinational procurement and financial transformation powerhouse. That wasn't really the the vision was I want to get out of the day job. I feel like I can build business cases within the area of procure to pay and procurement and finance automation better than what I see the big four consultants do so and, and truthfully, I wanted to do a lot more with the business, but I didn't have the funds to do everything I wanted. So I needed to pick something that, can get me started and then, From there, I can start establishing the vision once I figure out how do I make that work. So, I started, um, purely as a consultant, um, effectively a sole trader business at the time, really by myself, reaching out to my network, understanding who can I, who can I first assist, uh, what type of organisations, what CFOs. Who needs help that is more personalized and not templated to the defeat of many of the big consultants, right? So, started that process, but look, it wasn't as easy as, um, as I had, uh, obviously imagined me looking at this always glass half full. Probably about sort of nine to 12 months into the, the reach out process and building up some great materials and how do I market myself and so forth. Um, I realized that the two customers that I started the business for, um, neither of them were actually ready to start the, start the project. After that 12 month period, um, I sort of thinking, okay, well, I still got a little bit of laneway into being able to find myself for a little while, but, you know, I have a, I have a family to support and a mortgage to pay and and and I was. reasonably demoralized, given that I had no business at that point, in time at all. Um, up to a degree where I had to have a conversation with my wife, where she says, you've got an amazing CV. Um, if you started sharing your CV to, uh, to prospective Australian businesses, you'd be snapped up in a second. Um, I'm like, yes, that's that's, that's, very true, but I'm not willing to throw away the last 12 months of grit and effort and materials and ideas and thoughts that I've put together and yeah, that was, that was quite a, that's quite a hard moment, you know, uh, coming, coming back to the office desk with, uh, with tears in my eyes saying wife is suggesting very kindly she's a wonderful person, very kindly that, uh, maybe you should consider getting a job. Like everybody else does and I am like, Oh, I am not, I'm not going to give up this thing. I know it's going to become something. So that's, where it really sort of, um, uh, kicked in and look, I, maybe I needed that reset. Maybe I needed that little, you know, kick on the backside, um, to, uh, to really. Really be able to, reach out and become a, uh, perhaps a bit more direct with my, with my sales and marketing approach at the time. So, you know, as you know when you're setting up your own business, you're you're having to be a bit of a generalist. Um, even if I was selling specialization, I needed to be generalist because I needed to learn sales, marketing, those sorts of things that I wasn't necessarily that familiar with, I'd always been an expert on the, in the subject matter. That took a while, but in about one and a half. years. So in about 18 months into the business, uh, we've got our couple of first projects and you know, it's, it's, it's, it's funny when you, when the way it sort of then turned out is that when it starts to rain, it starts to pour sort of thing. So then, then, in, in 18 months into the business, I had a few more projects than I could even handle myself which was a great problem to have. I was able to, uh, pay back on some of the borrowings I'd borrowed from my wife and And, um, Um, yeah, ended up, uh, cancelling all my leaves and just working through the Christmas and New Year periods on some of the consulting projects to um, get back into it. So it was yeah, it was a, it was a tough, tough 18, first 18 months, I'd say.

Steve Sandor 16:56

I don't like to use the word vulnerable. Um, I know that that's a common description for business owners, you know, to feel vulnerable. I think it's been used. incorrectly because vulnerability actually refers to a danger. So if you're vulnerable, you're in a place of danger. You know, domestic violence, people who are in that sort of domestic violence situation are vulnerable to being attacked. I, I prefer to use the, um, More transparent in, in the way that you're communicating with people. So people can actually see through the, glass. So it's not a mirror, it's actually now a glass and, and they're actually seeing into the soul of the business owner or into the business. So thank you very much for doing that. When you were at that point, you know, you've gone back to your desk and that's that realization that. Hmm. Maybe, there is this self doubt, uh, but I'm tenacious enough I want to get through this. Uh, I believe in what I'm doing. how did you deal with that emotionally? What were the things that got you through each day that inspired you to be able to, you know, wake up every day and, and. Continue with the process.

Jussi Karjalainen 18:27

I would say that it's it's, I set up a little bit of a process for myself because at the end of the day, I think it's, it's very easy to just be surrounded by self doubt in, in that sort of situation. And you're you, kind of lose the level of confidence you've generally had, uh, about what you do right. And, uh, so what I decided to do is I'm going to give myself that three month period. Um, and I, set a very clear deadline saying if nothing happened, if no signed contracts by this date, I'm going to go and get a job to make sure that I get back on the track and whilst I'm on the job, I'll continue to build the business. I never, I never saw an option of actually stopping to do business. I just saw a way to maybe go and subsidize my income whilst I'm still at it here. Uh, that was, that was the one thing but, more importantly, I think I set up myself a process that for every morning as I sit back on the desk I need to start my day with something really positive because otherwise I'd be sitting there reading why I still haven't got a signed contract, why I still haven't got a committed commitment to a project. So I, set myself up by either reading something positive recapping some of the, you know, positive experiences or achievements I've had in the past and going, I can do these things again. Um, or, or then. If, uh, if there was anything positive in the emails, I would have covered those, but my sort of mental, I guess my, my, way of tackling that challenge was to make sure that I start my every morning on a positive note, because it gave me the, resulting energy for the rest of the day, much better and I was actually better at then facing challenges throughout the day, because I've, started with a positive note. Like to me, that was just a way for, me, I think, to get wired into the right direction level of courage in a way for the day set myself up.

Steve Sandor 20:27

Yeah. Great, great piece of advice. And do you still, is that, is that something, a habit that has just continued on and enabled you to, um, be more. Positive in your approach.

Jussi Karjalainen 20:44

Yeah, look, I mean I've probably changed that to a, um, making sure that I do something in the mornings that reset me to a degree. So, uh, you know I, think we all have our own ways of, um, Finding that and hopefully if we don't hopefully we can find it, but but for me, it's going into the nature in the mornings and and then just making sure that I'm completely undistracted, maybe 45 minutes to an hour every morning. And, um, do some sort of exercise. I like to ride mountain bikes. I like to ride motorbikes, uh, have, have, even have a bushwalk if I need some, something lower impact but the idea is to pretty much be by yourself. That's, that, that's, that's something that works for me. I don't necessarily want to do that with other people. I actually enjoy doing that by myself with my own thoughts and and, make sure that I get get wired correctly for the day.

Steve Sandor 21:44

Um, very serendipitous. The I'm actually doing, some work and recording on LinkedIn live with Marti Spiegelman, who's a, uh, a world leader in ancient technologies. She's been, um, for the last 20 years, she's been working with the Peruvian shamans in ancient technologies. And one of the philosophy is actually going to nature and through that conscious awareness you and you open up your mind to what is available and you what they call downloads. So you actually get information from the universe or from, just simply by opening up your mind by going into nature. So it's, it's something that I've been, I've been doing now for the last three or four months, and it's made a significant difference in my business and me personally. So I can, I can absolutely understand that how that has that has changed or influences the way that, you think about that business. Um, so as I said, you know, serendipitous, it's funny how things sort of cross over and you go, okay, fair enough. Um, so what were the, what was the, I don't want to say the one big this cathartic moment that you had in, in your life, but what, what was something that was significant that at the time when it happened that you just went, Hmm, that's not very, you know, that's not very good. That's not very positive. Yeah. But, and on reflection, when you look back at that particular moment, that it actually had a significant impact on your business,

Key Decisions and Their Impact

Jussi Karjalainen 23:32

Um, yeah, look, I mean, I think in, in, in the business that I was building, um, and I'm still building, um, I would say that, you know in the early stages of the business, we, or, or I myself, and at the time I had brought in a co founder into the business this was maybe and probably 2017 or 18 um, we had to make a really hard call on changing our technology partner, which put some of the products that we had Position at risk and, um, and we had had to make a, make a really quick switch, learn a new technology, uh, within our team and, and change our bits to, uh, to a different partner. And it was a really hard decision because the, first projects you take on whenever you're building any business, it kind of makes you feel like, and I think to, to large degrees, it is, that when we work on large projects and we're on a small, You know, building a small business, but bidding for large, projects. Um, every project is like your, your bet in the business. And, that's what it really made it, made it feel like. So, so when we then had to switch the tech partner, which then gave us a bunch of variables that we weren't familiar with yet. We had to learn it really quickly and get up to speed with it, hire a few people that were experts in that, uh, in that technology and so forth, uh, and then commercially risk, uh, the projects because we were changing the approach altogether, but, uh, you know, at the time it felt like, um, I'm dealing with two different risks. I'm dealing with the, risk of known but but the problems that that exist versus risk of unknown, but an opportunity that exists. And I was kind of waiting these many, many days with with the co founder to to, make that call. It was a hard decision to, to, to make. Um, but it's, it's paid off today. I mean, with this new tech partner that we brought in, we have more than 25 projects across the Asia Pacific. We've covered 22 different countries on their rollouts. Um, on transforming all this, procurement and finance processes. So it's paid off, but it was, we thought we were making a decision for one or two projects. Ultimately it was a business changing, um, activity, you know, one, one culmination point of, uh, of a decision took us into, that part. Um, so, um, yeah, it was, it was fearful. I would say at the time scary. Jumping into the unknown, but it's it's paid off. It did not make it. It felt like a risk based decision at the time. But but now we've largely, seeing the opportunity that came out. So

Building a Strong Company Culture

Steve Sandor 26:34

how did that impact the culture or the values or the morality of your, business so that you'd built up a, some expertise internally relationships externally. Now you're going down a particular pathway, but in your decision making process, there's obviously the commercial aspect of it, but at any point in time You know, that this decision may impact on the values of the business.

Jussi Karjalainen 27:09

That's an interesting segue actually, Steve, because, um, at the back of this decision, when we then ultimately were awarded for the project and myself and the co founder sit on a Qantas plane heading to, Asia together, we had a good eight hours thinking about what sort of values, mission and values that we ride up for the business. Uh, we had a team of five people in Asia at the time that we started building up. Uh, today it's, it's, about 50 people. Um, but Interestingly enough, one of the first things at the back of that, that we wrote down was just the ability to continuously innovate and reestablish yourself. It's almost like firing yourself, uh, you know, once in six months so that you need to go on, you know, me, I need to apply a job as the CEO again at Valtatech and see whether I'm still relevant to the business. Right. So we sort of talked a lot about that and going, okay. In the, in the, in the world where we are today, where technology changes and advances so quickly we need to make sure that we don't get too comfortable with the, with the past. And this was a great example of flipping the technology from one to another on a quick decision and, taking the perhaps more risky, risky option. Uh, with, uh, With an opportunity and I mean, obviously, it's, it's far more calculated that I can, I can share here the actual process on betting it right. Um, it's not like we'll just take, take anything. We are very, very particular about that, but it just reminded us of this, the, of this, of this reality that we need to continuously reinvent ourselves and we can't stay, you know, resting on our laurels and, just continuously just rinse and repeat what we've done. We got to, we got to go on and advance, you know, Uh, quickly forward. So we've done that. This is now really, really well, actually, since and that really impacted the values. We actually call it the DNA, VALTEC DNA, uh, in our business. So everybody, everybody gets across that, first thing they joined the organisation and, and part of that certainly is to make sure we continue to reinvent ourselves and, uh, and also build this sort of culture where. Openness on being able to do things better, uh, more streamlined, more advanced is, part of the culture and it's not a, separate process. We don't have a separate innovation team that is purely just asked on okay. Go off and explore new leading technologies within the space and come with the recommendations on what, what should we look at? It's something we built into the culture. Uh, through that, you know, my uncle, the gold founder once, uh, once established that in, in a couple of occasions, we had to jump off the cliff and learn to build an airplane before we hit the ground, uh, when he was sort of laughing over this, but it's, it's not as, as, aggressive as that but. But at the end of the day, it kind of just wired us into thinking we need to make sure we continuously refresh ourselves at what we do. I

Steve Sandor 30:14

love that concept of you applying for your job every six months. I, talk about when I'm, when I talk to business owners and, and, you know, they're running a 5 million business. And I give them the scenario where I say, let's assume that you are a small division within a massive organisation and I happen to be the managing director of this 100 million business, and you're running a 5 million division, which is 5 percent of my total portfolio and we're having a performance review on your performance within your organisation. And you're telling me that you're designing the website and you're involved in the, The minutia of the business. Well, why am I paying you this enormous salary that I'm paying you? But then when you flip it and then the business owner is the decision maker, there is no accountability other than potentially their life partner or their business partner and the bank. I, so I love the concept of, business owners having to apply for their business not, necessarily because they're not they shouldn't be the business owner, but are their skills the, the, what their genius is, it actually being utilized to maximum effect in the organisation or has the organisation shifted maybe in size, maybe in direction. So I just, let's thank you so much for sharing that. That is, that is gold. Um, uh, and I'm going to, if I may, I'm going to R and D that, you know, that they call that rip and rip off and duplicate.

Jussi Karjalainen 31:53

Yeah. Go for it. Go for it. Yeah. Yeah. To me, it was a concept of like, um, you know, as the business started scaling, um, every six months, I felt like my job description changed. It's like, uh, it's like, uh, a parent growing a child you, you first have a problem because they're so vulnerable and they need you for everything, then when they learn to walk, uh, your problem is that they'll grab everything within their, uh, within their reach and put it in their mouth. You know, and, and then, then, you know, wait until you get to your teens and, and all this the, the type of problem changes all the time and so that's two degree, the parents job description, right? The different tasks are required to support that that new life, right. That's a little bit different in, this business, especially as we've scaled so quickly is that in the beginning I was the supplementary experts and everybody looked up to me, I run all the projects and people were kind of following, right. Then one of the hurdles and the challenges from there was, well, okay, how do I make sure that the knowledge that I've got and also the bar of quality, the level of quality that I would expect can now be delivered by different people, right? That was the next. I mean, they were already highly qualified we always hire senior people, especially in the early stages of the business. But it didn't necessarily mean that day are aiming for the same level of quality that I would expect, right? So this alignment process was a, was a big piece of being able to scale the business and that job description on being the specialist to being the guy who scales the business and now being the guy who builds the right culture, retains the right talent, uh, hires the right people, that job description has kept on changing all the time and, and I wanted to make sure that I think of myself as, um, easy to replace. And what I mean with that is that I might be the business owner, but I may not be the best CEO in the business as the business evolves. You know, there might be a day when somebody else would do a much better job than I would and I would want to make sure that I've seen that, uh, that scene that myself. And, and at the same time, I've, running a business and being a CEO it's also one of the loneliest jobs out there. And so I've, wanted to make sure that I've built a really good management team that questions me and doesn't just take my opinion as the single throat, I want them to challenge me. I want them to speak their mind. Um, and make sure that as much as I try to keep them honest, they keep me honest.

Steve Sandor 34:38

Again, another piece of gold in, that, it's not that you don't care, but it's that your ego is set aside in this, and this is this collective consciousness that, um, Marti and I have been talking about so it's not about the individual. It's about the collective and the fact that you again, you know, this openness, this transparency that you're really looking for the greater good and if the greater good means that that someone has is can do the job that theoretically the owner should do, but doesn't have to do again. That's such a, a 21st century thinking as opposed to businesses that were generated or created in that 21st century mindset of Of having control. So again, thank you. I'm sure the listeners getting, I am right. I've got this beautiful position where I'm in the front seat of the audience, listening to this gold. So thank you again very much for that.

Future Plans and Joy in Business

Steve Sandor 35:44

The, final question I have is podcast is called reclaiming the joy of business. So over the next 12 months, what where's the joy going to come for you?

Jussi Karjalainen 35:56

Look, I mean, I think, you know, we're, we're going through a, a Um, a period period in the business where we are scaling across cross border borders a lot. So we've just established operations in in Malaysia. So I'm having to be the student figuring out how business is made business is done in Malaysia and so forth. I've, done a little bit of business there in the past, but I've never built a, build a company in Malaysia. So we're going through that. We're doing the same in Singapore. We're looking, at some, uh, some new countries as well, because the invoicing space is, is rapidly changing and we're in a, in a front seat of that change. So we're in a really good position to, set up. So I would say that. The joy is joy is definitely going to be connected to some of those successful gold markets that we're we're, uh, going to conduct. Uh, we're building new teams, bringing new talent, bringing new smart people with differing opinions, different backgrounds, and, you know, really figuring out this, recipe of this cocktail. And how that, um, how that's going to work moving forward. So, um, I really love bringing different people with different culture, backgrounds and skillsets together and figuring out how do they, how do we all complement each other whilst keeping some level of control over that, right? So, um that's, where I think the joy is going to come. I mean, scaling the business, uh, growing it, seeing new people being employed, um, Providing employment, um, building a little bit of that, continue to build a little bit of that purpose that we were established Originally for uh, you know, it's, it's interesting to look back and think that if I had, I had, I given up after the first 12 months, we would not have created 50 jobs across the region. Right. So, um, Yeah, that, that was, that was a big, um, big one for me. And sometimes when I get tired that those, are the things that I look back into, or sometimes I organize all hands meet and just look at every individual that's there seeing how smart, how, much potential they have to move forward. And that we've created this platform of them. Bringing their potential out. So that gives me energy. If I get tired, I don't get tired too often, but if I get tired,

Team Building and Cultural Outcomes

Jussi Karjalainen 38:31

I

Steve Sandor 38:31

know I said that was my last question, but I actually wanted to because in our previous conversation, you talked about we we were talking about culture and everything, and you shared with me the global come together that you'd organized for your team. So could you just Talk about that and your view of that as a return on investment because it was quite expensive. Well, relatively expensive in terms of what normally businesses do and spend on their staff. So if you wouldn't mind just, give us an insight into how that came about and why you did it. And now what, has been the benefit of, that?

Jussi Karjalainen 39:16

Yeah, look, I mean, I think. Um, at the, at the time of this, really got got its legs at the time of COVID when, we had to relocate all of our stuff and let them to go back and work from their homes. And and after, more than 12 months paying for real estate, where no one's literally had even had not even visited, uh, the office, we thought let's just close the offices for now and, um as, as, we'd also already worked through. Quite a few hoops on how do we actually performance manage our people whilst they're working from home and, and, you know, establish a structure where we can rely on them being disciplined enough to perform working from home. You know, we're talking about not just Australia, but people in Asia living surrounded by their families, their cousins, their mothers, their sisters, brothers, that sort of thing. So we all need to have that individual way of, conducting that we can't. We can't give you rules. Um, we just need to agree that here are the outcomes we're looking for you to achieve. Right? So we got into this very output driven output measuring way of managing performance and not worrying about whether it's 8 to 4 or 9 to 5 or whatever that might be. Right? Um, so that was probably one thing. And at the same time, we thought, okay, well, cool. Now that we've all relocated to homes, that means we're 100 percent of the time physically separated. Um we, did a few things every quarter we tend to get everybody to, to travel together and at least um, have a day of meetings and innovation and ideas and brainstorming and whiteboarding sessions together. Uh, but once a year we, Do you put a significant budget aside to do a very big week, um, where everybody from India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, all travel together. Um, and we, Last, last year we were in the, um, in the Boracay Island, uh, in the Philippines. Uh, it was, it's a very nice, nice island, even a little bit hard to get to because you need to take both twice and quite a few airplanes to get there. But once you, once you get there, it's an awesome place. And, and, and the whole idea of that week is to, um, to make sure that we, we kick it off reminding everyone why we are doing it. So we kind of review the, like what we achieved last year, review what our plans are going to be for the next year. But that's pretty much all the work we do the rest three or four days. Uh, we go kayaking together. We go hiking, we go sailing, Island hopping, all sorts of things that you do, depending on where we are, of course. Um, the whole idea is to make sure that these are proper team building activities and people really get to know each other so that for the rest of the year as we work from home, uh, we know a few personal details of, each other and it really takes takes a whole week to get to that. So that's the, that's the idea behind this. Um, this one week of, um, team building, if you will.

Steve Sandor 42:29

And, and the outcome, so not, not the productivity outcome, but what has been the cultural outcome through this activity?

Jussi Karjalainen 42:41

Look, it's people have really stepped up and and, being able to open up their minds in terms of, sharing, I would say sharing if they've got any challenges to me, that was like one of the biggest things that I felt I can be problematic, especially in Asia, where they view boss as the boss and and there's always this sort of power gap or power distance between the employee and the management I wanted to make sure that we close that gap and realize that we're all. On the same level, I actually not a big fan of organisation hierarchies in general, because it puts some people at the top and some people at the bottom that to me doesn't just doesn't resonate the right way. Um, I'm much more in favor of looking at organisation as a flat set of capabilities with different, uh, Different job descriptions driving different outputs off people. And, you know, CEO has a job description. The person running a technical support has a job description. If neither of us do our job, it will impact the business, right? The overall, uh, collective outcome, right? So, so, um, that's why I wanted to make sure that we, we, minimize this power distance, if you will. And and then we, see, Each others who we are as, as human beings, um and, understand what drives us and, through that create a level of openness that whenever people have challenges, suggestions, suggestions on how to do things better and so forth, they can speak up. So that's the biggest outcome.

Steve Sandor 44:22

Fantastic. Jussi, thank you so much again for being my guest on, reclaiming the joy of business podcast. It's been a great pleasure today to have this in depth conversation. So thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure.