Yeah, we're back. Let's do this. Welcome to the Incredible Machines podcast, where we interview incredible machines, find out what makes them incredible and learn from them. Today is a very special episode. I'm joined with my business partner, Luke Holden, and producer and video editor and extraordinaire, creative extraordinaire, my best friend, Shawn. Tikna. Sean. Yeah, Shawn and I were legally brothers at one stage. We've considered him to be a brother and we'll get into it. But his profession, he's in prosthetics and orthotics, clinician. Some of what makes him incredible is that the journey we've been on and then what he's embarked on, going over to New Zealand. So he's an expat and I think there's some definite learnings and I hope to have many expats. I think we hope to have many expats on this. Sho. Luke, I don't know if your feelings on that. Absolutely, yeah, I can learn from these. Once a safer, always a safer bro. Yeah. And yes, that journey into the unknown. And I mean, Shawn and I have been to Hawaii twice together. We're going to talk about a campaign later on, marketing campaign specifically. Because again, the incredible machine, all this is marketing. It's Tim that we were both involved in and our opinions and what went wrong behind the scenes. Sean can remember it vividly and what went right there and that sort of thing. And, yeah, I'm excited, I think. Yeah, I think that's a. About an introduction that I can give. I mean, Shawn, we went to school together. Sean was a couple years older than me at school, but we. Shawn is a south african champion body border x south african champion body border. A world champion whiskey taster. As am I. Cause we won that and we'll get into that campaign and that's how we get that title. Yeah, sure. There's so much. But let's do a bit of an introduction. Sean, from your side, I think. Yeah. Tell us about you. Sure. Obviously, Sean Tickner. Hugely honoured to be here and great to have a good conversation and a chat with you. So, yeah, born and bred, Durban Boyden just over 40 years ago. Single mom, she was a nurse, worked hard all her life. I've moved to New Zealand now five years ago. So literally three or four months before the global pandemic hit. I love reminding all of the Kiwis when they ask me, how long have I been in New Zealand? That's great, because I get to turn around and tell them that it's when South Africa won the Rugby World cup that weekend. Not the last one, the time before we won. So it's always a good dig. You know how to make friends, huh? Exactly. Welcome to your country. Yeah, except I'm still world champ, so it's all good. No. So I've been in orthotics and prosthetics for just over 20 years now. Sorry, stop you there. Because the orthotics and projects. Sean, when people ask, used to ask what he did, he said, I'm in scaffolding, because it's probably easier. Okay, cool, I got that. It's probably not that interesting. Or maybe it is. Maybe we'll have someone in scaffolding this one day. But prosthetics and aesthetic. Yeah, take us through what that bit is. Yeah, sure. So the stock standard answer when somebody says, what is orthotics? It's the measure, manufacture and fitting of external orthopaedic appliances. So normally we get asked, oh, is that like podiatry? Not really. We see the entire body. We're not completely immersed within everything to do with the foot. We do knee bracing, back bracing, we do a lot of custom manufacturing and obviously fitting post operative or post injury etcetera. And then the prosthetic side is artificial limbs. The part that just interject again, but that's one of the parts. So, like, again, the shows the incredible machines and human beings being the incredible machines in vogue here, but Sean makes them whole again, as I understand it as a shorthand. It's quite interesting to have that in place. And then Shaun is definitely an incredible machine to many people, but definitely including me. And I explained this to him, what that the shorthand on that one is when Shaun walks into the room, he makes the experience better. And definitely, for me, I've got so many good memories and, yeah, that's amazing. So, yeah, back to orthotics and prosthetics. So I think I'm just. I'm incredibly fortunate. And you've got to look at it from that perspective of being a healthcare clinician, that, you know, it's my job. It's my day job. It's what I do every single day. And I see patients, you know, every single day. It's really important to change that perspective and look at it. For a lot of the people that I'm seeing, it's the first time they've seen someone like me or what I do, or it's the first time they've had any type of bracing or any type of any of these appliances, and it's really important in the healthcare system in New Zealand at the moment. Unfortunately, it is fairly overwhelmed and it's incredibly important to allow those patients to feel heard and not let them feel like they're just another number. So seeing a patient, I try and constantly commit to them as an individual, regardless of what it is that I'm doing for them. And it's really great to get positive feedback. I think in today's day and age, it's far easier to complain than compliment. And I'm fortunate enough to have a decent number of patients that really make the job worthwhile. I've got one patient that's happy to travel about 2 hours to come and see me for something that in my mind, from a clinical perspective, is fairly mundane and even to the point of his wife's knitted my daughter a little jersey when they found out that we were expecting almost a year ago now. And yeah, it's just. It's really cool. And he has service providers closer to where they live, but he refuses to go and see them. He's happy to. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt again, but it's so interesting to me to hear you articulate it, because like, this is something that I know to be true of you forever. Like since I've known you people that, and you just seem like, you seem like it's new thing potentially, or something maybe you're more aware of. Now the difference, was there a massive shift or anything in the differences between South Africa and New Zealand in that? What talk you through that? There's a really big difference in the funding streams. So when I say funding streams, it's essentially who pays for the service. Here in South Africa, you follow a private health insurance policy or process. So inevitably, being in private practice, you're seeing patients that are all covered by health insurance, be it discovery or gems or any of the multitude of options available. You weren't so much limited on what you could do for the patient. It was very much down to what their medical insurance could cover. So I would see a patient and the decision about what I would do is based on what they can afford, or what the insurance can afford, or what they're happy to, you know, paying as a copayment, etcetera. Whereas New Zealand, it's very much government subsidised or government contracted. So we provide the service in New Zealand from a perspective of what's the best, what's the best possible outcome that I can provide for a patient. And I won't say that there's no, you know, money's no, no, there's no concerns around the money and there always is because we have to follow within budget, but it just allows us as clinicians to be the best possible clinicians we can be and provide the best possible service and not have this financial burden hanging over us as a business or the patients as our patients. So it does have its pros and cons because you're now not limited by what something costs and only being able to provide that. You actually have to step up as a clinician and figure out what's available, what's going to. And it's very tempting to say what's the best brace or what's the best orthosis or prosthetic component out there. It's actually down to what's best for that patient. That's the most important thing because I can sit there and tell a patient, oh, this is the throwing some New Zealand slang here, but this is the flashest brace that we've got available. Slitveregh. But if it's like somebody's 80 or you know, 90 year old gran, they don't care. It has to work for them, it has to be the most beneficial to them in their lived experience, which is also an important part and you're not. Incentivized to do that by some. Yeah, okay, that's very interesting. And then. So you basically get to help as many people as you possibly can. Yeah, yeah which is amazing. And then it's down to your time, energy and attention and how to work. So how do you do that? So I mean, I'm incredibly fortunate. So New Zealand as a country, you cannot study my profession in the country. They last provided it through tertiary education probably about 25 to 30 years ago because it's a very niche field so you can study it in Australia and us as an organisation, we've started the process of supporting students to go and study and then they come back and work for us. So there's a lot of expats that work for the organization. So my office, I'm based in a small coastal like port city on the east coast of the north island called Tauranga. There's four of us that are south african clinicians that work in my office. So it's great because there's that commonality between us as you know, South Africans, a lot of good conversations and you, you know, it's, it's daunting because it's just, it's quite different to be able to, you know, really step up and constantly make sure that you're staying not ahead of the curve, but you're just keeping up with the curve. In a global profession, in a country that, you know, is often. It's not teased, but it's just that you sometimes feel that you are on the, you know, the far end of the world kind of thing where they're. Making all the bunkers. So, yeah, Lucas actually reminds me of a marketing principle. So again, this is marketing the six. So think differently or crazy, crazy be strong. Crazy be strong. So, yeah, crazy be strong. It's that get different people from different backgrounds in to solve problems. And although you train in the same category and that would be the same thing, but getting, like, your experience in Cape Town and Durban and South Africa would be an added. Yeah. A bonus to any. Just different, like, no. Will we do it this way? And quite a. We spoke about it before offline and we'll get into it later on in the case studies. But there's a medical practitioner example, I think it's a Malcolm Gladwell case study that I'm familiar with that talks about weak links and strong links and a private hospital experience that was set up. Best doctors and literally came together. These surgeons and absolutely best in class set up their own practice in their hospital and it was a sure thing. You got the a team playing like, they are amazing. And they did a review after a couple of months with patients that had experienced it and dismal, just absolutely horrific. No one was coming back. They just. Their ROI was terrible because the financial was in disarray. And so they tried to figure this out and it actually was a strong link, weak link problem. And we can get into that later on or in other episodes, I'll definitely reference it, but what they did to overcome that problem, it's very similar to what you spoke about earlier, but they actually did. They sent their staff on hospitality training and it was. Yeah, so the receptionist, the janitor, like, the nurses, everyone went to hospitality. Like, how do hotels work? How do you engage? How do you speak to human beings? And they tried that out and they did it. And the net promoter scores way of measuring stuff just went skyrocketed because these people knew how to greet everyone. And it makes sense because 95% of your experience at the hospital is not with the doctor. He's 5% of you lucky. He or she will come in the morning and brief you and tell you what a good job they did and all that sort of stuff. And as well, you're allowed, you make allowances for them. You want them to be high iq, their bedside manner is dismal. And that's fine because it doesn't matter. You want them to be high iq. EQ, it's okay. He's very little. Whatever. And that's not all of them. And get me wrong, please. But we make allowances for them. And also they, but the most important bit being that they're a short, it's a short part of the experience. Whereas the receptionist and how they checked you in, if they're like grumpy and grunted, you and that, that's a big portion. The nurse checking on you, the janitor that left the slippery thing. That's a slippery floor. That's a huge part of your experience. And just getting that right turned the whole business around. So it seems like you're doing that to yourself, like with yourself on an individual level. And then have you got a way to where you extrapolate, that would be the word to other practitioners, your team. I mean, it's, again, another Malcolm Gladwell book in blink. So if you read blink, he mentions it in there and it's, it's around medical malpractice. So looking at all the ratios of, you know, like how, how different doctors or whatever it is, what their rates of malpractice cases and stuff like that were, and he managed to basically look at it to a point of spending an extra 45 seconds to 60 seconds talking to a patient. And that chance of that doctor or whoever it was being sued for malpractice just dropped incredibly. And part of that reason was it didn't necessarily have to be communication around what was exactly wrong with the patient, but it was more just to create that relationship. So it could have been talking about the weather, but it was just spending a bit more time talking to the patient created a much better environment in the long term. Even to the point of there was a case that he mentions where a doctor clearly got the, the diagnosis incorrect. And, you know, you have a legal team that's like, you can definitely go ahead and sue the doctor. And this patient was so adamant that she didn't want to sue the doctor. She would rather sue, you know, the nurse that was assisting because she liked the doctor. And it was purely based on just having, you know, that extra 45 to 60 seconds of communication. And for me, time, energy and attention. Yeah. So for me, it's also, there's a cultural aspect in New Zealand to dealing with certain demographics. You know, there's a, you can, you can look it up online. It's incredible. The poor health outcomes for Mori and Pacific islanders in New Zealand it's well documented. And a lot of that comes down to creating a safe environment, not just for the patient, but for the extended family group as well. Very close ties and families and so forth. And there's always a, you know, there's always space to improve your service. And the best way to do that is exactly that. Literally have a conversation, ask where the patient's from. Don't just go straight in with, like, you know, what's wrong with you? What am I doing for you today? Kind of thing. You know, you speak to the patient, speak to their support person or their family that they've got in there with you. I've tried to create an environment within my office space to move away from that kind of staged clinical setup. And, you know, to help with kids as well. I've got a great little poster, animated poster that I've got up in my office with the English and Tadeo Mori or, you know, the Mori language definitions. And, you know, it's. I haven't used it that much with many of the kids, but it just creates an environment. And I've had somebody actually mention it to me that just seeing walking into the room and just seeing that poster already puts them at ease and allows almost a bit more trust between patient and clinician perspective. So it's just using visuals specifically in that instance to create that trust, because you can do the time, any attention, but we visual animals that instant is helpful. I feel like you've got the time aspect to it, which is why we tend to book extended timeframes for our patients. It's easy to try and squeeze as many patients as we want, and maybe you'd see more patients in a day. But what is your service delivery like? What service are you providing to each of those patients? It's hard to understand the complexity of each patient until they come in. You might think, oh, this is just a simple brace, or this is just something that's quick and easy, but you don't have any understanding of the background. So part of it is that discussion with the patient, getting all of that out, all that information. So that's like the more direct communication with the patient, and you're improving on that communication, but then having those subtle, like, background reminders or background prompts that poster, we try and settle the kids as much as possible. Like, that's the big. That's probably one of the more difficult things, is just, you know how they say in movies, dealing with kids and animals are the hardest thing. Same thing kids generally tend to have. And you've mentioned it to me as well before. Kids tend to have quite a hesitance or reluctance. Anything medically related, especially during COVID you're dealing with kids and they're walking into a stranger's office space and everybody's wearing masks. So that was something else, like learning how to animate with my eyes far more than, like, verbally or speaking or using my mouth. So you're losing a bit of that. So it was pretty tough during COVID times, dealing with kids and you trying to, like, you use your r contact a lot more. So it's like all these different ways of essentially getting to the same thing, like communicating better with your patient, be it direct or indirect. Time, energy. Time, energy and attention. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating. I think we'll transition to the case study, but just before we do, Luke, I don't know if you've got any questions or. Yeah, like, as I introduced in this, Sean's moved over to New Zealand. We spoke about this again. I think this episode could be quite interesting for people thinking about that transition to another country, a faraway land. And it is New Zealand, it is far away again, where they're building the bunkers, it appears, and coming back into this country and that sort of stuff and having that. But always we chatted about this off set, but having a very positive outlook for South Africa and coming back and seeing that. But you've immersed yourself in where you are, you learning the language. Yeah, so I'm currently busy with my. I've done one certificate in te reo mori. And the great thing is it's not so much learning the language. There's also a massive cultural aspect behind it, too. So there's a massive amount of learning that comes with learning the language. It's not just as simple as this is this and this is that. And the benefit for us is our daughter was born in New Zealand. She's going to be going to school and it's a really important thing for us to be able to. If she goes to school and she's learning the language, that we can actually assist her with that. So we're going. Going pretty big on that and playing a couple of nursery rhymes for her and stuff like that. So that's the one side of it. And then the other side is actually, I'm a volunteer firefighter within Tauranga. So I was a volunteer wildfire service firefighter in Cape Town. So I volunteered there and then made the move over initially to Hamilton and looked for the opportunity to kind of service the community and they've got what's called op support or operational support. So you're essentially helping out the career or fully paid firefighters. And then in Tauranga they have what are called composite brigades. So you made up of a combination. You're fully trained to wear breathing apparatus and fire suppression, et cetera. And you backing up those career trucks. So we have our own appliance or fire truck. Yeah, I had so many questions on this. So it's a way to immerse yourself in the community is go there. Some people do it with religion, they'll go, and what made you. And it's great. There's nothing wrong with any of this, but like, it's quite an interesting way to build a network and to assimilate to the experience where you are right there and that proximity, I guess what made you think of. You have no background, you have no firefighting experience. What makes you think to go there? So, like I said, like Durban, I'm not even aware of any opportunity to volunteer for firefighting. I think we were in lifeguards. We would have been. Yeah, like lifeguards or what did. There's also like community policing forum, like that kind of stuff, that side of things. So when I first moved to Cape Town, I'll never forget waking up one morning and just, you know, this thundering noise of helicopters flying, overdose, where I stayed, you know, like sticking my head out and literally watching these massive choppers collecting water from one of the dams quite close to where I lived, flying over and just basically bombing this fire on the mountain. And I was just like. And it's also that kids side of you where you're like, ooh, helicopters. So it was really cool. And then I think everybody has a slighter passion for fire and what it's capable of and really fell in love with that aspect and the camaraderie in Cape Town. So when I moved over to New Zealand, I saw that as an opportunity to carry on. New Zealand has a massive volunteering kind of background. So just some insights on the fire and emergency in New Zealand, the fire service within the country. You have close to 15,000 people that fall under fire and emergency in New Zealand. Of that 15,000 you've got obviously administrative staff. You have around 2000 fully paid firefighters in the entire country. And the rest of that is just over 12,000 volunteers. So it's very much volunteer driven within the communities, within the country itself because you've got smaller, rural, outlying kind of cities or towns and they get a couple of calls a year. It just doesn't make financial sense to have a crew sitting there. So it's a great opportunity to really give back to your community because it's very much community driven. You've got a lot of support for employers of volunteer firefighters. I'm fortunate enough that the company that I work for is happy for me to take off time to go and do training and courses, etcetera. I'd love to respond a bit more during the day, but obviously I respond overnight and that when I can and when I'm available. But it's just a really cool opportunity to give back to the community. And at the same time, as a migrant, you're immersing yourself in a community that I would not have had before. So it's very different to the people that I work with because, like I said, most of them are South Africana, and that's kind of the work group. And then I've got a few friends that obviously live in the area. But also, this is the easiest way to meet new people that I would never have met before. Okay, well, I'm gonna tend to disagree with the easiest way. I think it's like, yeah, there are probably other ways, but it's just interesting because, again, we're discovering what makes you incredible. So there's a fire on a mountain next to you. Like, most people are like, cool, close the windows, close the curtains, go hard in the next room. Like, no, let's run towards it. And that's how I make friends. And you're already doing enough work as it is. Like, you're doing the time, energy, attention you're putting into you every day with patients. Sounds like you're playing a long game there so you don't burn out, and you're giving them the time that they deserve. And you feel, obviously that's you making that call. Quick question on that. I did at the. Are there different timeframes per patients and age group? Like, the kids get more time when they come and see you? Or is it all just 2 hours? Yeah, we tend to have a blanket policy at the moment. When I say policy, it's just an agreed upon instruction within our office. But we'll look at booking patients for an hour. Okay, everyone gets an hour. And then you decide if you need a bit more time or if you need a little bit less, then you'll still cover it using, you know, you'll always need to do patient notes, if you need to order anything, if you need to do any adjustments and you've got sufficient time to do that. It starts getting very difficult when you shorten those timeframes, because if you have someone that turns up a bit late or if you have exactly that, like somebody that's a little bit more difficult or a little bit trickier, it will take up more of your time. And it's incredibly difficult when I. You've got a patient in for that period of time and you're busy with them and, you know, oh, time's up. Sorry, can you leave? Like, we would never do that. So it's a balancing act, because also, at the same time, you've got to allow each clinician sufficient time to do what they need to do and still do the administrative side of things, which is obviously all the concise note taking and making sure you're putting down notes, because you've got to make sure that everything's documented. And, you know, at the minimum, if somebody else had to come in and deal with that patient, if you were all sick or on leave, they'd at least be aware of what needs to be done. So there's all that side of things. And if we need to order product or if we need to do casting or custom make something, we need to allow sufficient time, you start cutting into that. And I think that the quickest thing that you lose is that service delivery. You know, you might be seeing more patients, but what's that service like? Yeah. Are you staying late hours most days? If you get it wrong or you're not allowed to in New Zealand? I don't know what it's like. No, don't get it wrong. You don't get it wrong. Look at you incredible sheep. No, no, no. I'm very conscious of my time work life balance. Like I said, daughter's just turned a year old. Big shout out to Ava and her mom, Helen, and my promises to them. So it's not. It's workers work as work, and until 430, that's it. Sometimes it'll be a bit late. I'd love to say that it works like that all the time. She's understanding of what I do and why I do it. She allows me time also to volunteer. Like, she's very understanding and supportive of all those decisions, even though some of them do have an impact on the family dynamic. It's a bit tricky when you've battled for a couple of hours to get your daughter down to sleep and then you get notified of a fire alarm or whatever it is, and you have to jump up and she wakes up, had some interesting messages after incidences like that. But it's probably, you know, I can't expect my team to leave, you know, to stick to work hours if I'm not. So it seems a bit. It seems a bit silly if I'm telling the rest of my team, like, work's done, it's time to go home to your family if I'm still doing it. Yeah. So one of your things would be to lead by example. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's difficult. It is always going to be a juggling act. I do have other roles aside from the clinical aspect, so I'm team lead for practice in Tauranga, and then I'm also national orthotics lead in our clinical governance group. So I have time frames set aside specifically to deal with the administration. So I have a day for each of those roles of where I'm managing my team locally and then also ensuring that nationally we're setting a certain standard and we're trying to follow that. Okay, so let's transition maybe to the case study that we agreed on, both of us. And it was a marketing campaign that we were involved in on the other side, the user component, although I've always thought. But working with. So a little bit more background when I say I'm a serial entrepreneur, I've launched and failed and succeeded and failed and carried on with a few businesses. At least two of them were with Sean and the clothing and textile arena and a group of other mates and stuff like that. But I've always thought of Shawn as being. Would have been an amazing marketeer. And I can hear it now as he's speaking, because I. Again, the view is that a lot of this is marketing, and that's not a good or a bad thing, it's just a thing. So we were involved in make it to Bushmill's campaign, am I correct? Sean can remember it way more vividly. Maybe I indulged a little bit too much at the time, but yeah. Luka, you whiskey drinker, I forget, are you brandy? A whiskey? I love whiskey. Whiskey's my thing. Irish or scotch? All of it, dude. Okay. Yeah, you passed. If you ever said scotch, I was gonna. Well, he is scotch. Scottish descent. John's castle. That. Those experience was a causal. There you go. Amazing stories and heritage there. Yeah. So we were involved in this marketing campaign, make it to bushmills, and we went and looked at the. We were actually. Yeah. It's such an interesting thing to go back. And we were world. We became world champions. It was on the newspaper. I had family phoning me while I was still in Ireland going, I just seen the newspaper, apparently a world champion whiskey drinker. So, yeah, it was the World games. That's what they labeled it. World whiskey games. World whiskey games, yeah. And it was some barrel rolling and whiskey tasting. And I think we had interpretive dance. But no, we had a few different things to do first. The campaign started in social media, and this element is a principle that we talk about in our six principles is user generated content we had to supply. And when I say we, I think Shawn did the work on this. A lot of the network of this, we had to write a written proposal of why we. We should be contenders and why we should be up in the application to solicit votes from our friends. So initially, it was like, I always think back at it, because I think we're bombarded constantly by enter this, do this, this competition, that competition, and you get a bit ignorant of it. And it was literally, it was a Facebook competition. It was based on the premise of, I think, a previous marketing that they had done called Bushmell's brothers. So this was Bushmill's brothers. Make it to Bushmills. So the idea was that you had to write a little blurb about you and your best mate or your brother, and why you deserved to make it to Bushmills. And the idea was, within several countries, there was several groups, and you had to generate votes, and whoever had the most votes would go to the distillery and in Ireland and represent your country against other countries in this so called world whiskey games. And exactly that. It's like, you know, it was very organic. We were lucky at the time to have a fairly decent sized group of friends and acquaintances that we really tapped into. Obviously, the blurb was very well written. I think I did actually put in the comment to the guys when I sent it through. You know, I apologized for it, to be apologized for it being cheesy, but I think that's half the time. You know, you often look at marketing and you look at some of the. Copy and it's like, that's incredibly cheesy or cheesy. And sometimes it works. It's just the thing. But, yeah, we got the entries, and South Africa actually had the most responses on social media, apparently. I remember hearing that. And I was working in digital marketing. I was at a big agency here at the time. I just started, it was 150 strong global agency, and I had to then take leave to go do these couple days in the. In Ireland. And we came, we rocked up with a. We had Kiers like we had our rugby jersey on, we had the flag arms, and then we got there and the other eleven countries, like, they were trying, but they just went, South Africans. So it was just such an amazing experience. And remember, they met us at the airport. We were coming off the back of a World cup win in the last World cup. Yeah, I'm trying to remember 2009. This is 2011. So two years later. So rugby's a big thing for the Irish. And actually, I love that irish team. I do love to beat them when you do get that opportunity. No, it was the year of the World Cup. 2011. Was it? Yeah, in 2007 we had won. We went in 2011, but. Yeah, I know, but. Oh, you mean the previous World cup. We won in 2007 and. Correct. Not. No, we didn't win 2011. No, but. So it was a year coming up to that World cup. We hadn't played yet, but anyway, that's. Why we had everything. It was a combination of. We had the Springbok jerseys because of the World cup. And then there was a few other things that we'd had left over from the 2010 soccer World cup. So the vuvuzelas that we took over the south african arms sleeves that we took over the. Remember we were having a conversation with Colm, the master distiller around giants core zone. We were talking about the rugby. Yes. We had him walk around. And again, you remember this way more vividly than me. So we've showed up and that's one of the things it seems like you do often enough is to show up and bring here. So it was authentically us, we proudly South Africans, even though we were in another place, out of our depth. Like we, like. Yeah. Acting as if we belong. I heard from someone recently that so not fake it till you make it. It's act as if you belong. And then. Yeah, and those are like, we literally, I think we got off the plane wearing our Springbok jersey. So we got picked up from the airport. We got taken to the press woman. Or whoever was there. Yeah, we got photos done. Yeah, because south african flag and the south African, like the Springbok jerseys. Yeah. So anyway, we won the competition and we were the only guys running around in rugby jerseys, rolling barrels and tapes. So that's like, to go back to that. We were all given uniforms. Do you remember? Like, we all had the same shirts. Yeah. We all, like. It had South Africa embroidered on the back and, you know, so we all looked the same. We all had the same jackets, we all had the same t shirts, those little black Bushmills polo necks and stuff like that with embroidery on the back. But that first morning when we turned up at the bus, we had our south african arm sleeves on. So that was that automatic differentiation between everybody else. And the one line that I'll never forget, when we had that kind of introduction and the discussion about what the events were gonna be and what they were looking for was, they're not looking for the team that wins everything, they're looking for the team that loses the best. And I was like, perfect. We can do that. We're really good at that. Amazing. And do you remember on the beach, so a lot of those events, the barrel rolling and the beach golf, do you remember the. And we were, I mean, we were blasting those vilvezelas, so we were definitely making a lot of noise. And like I said, coming off the back of the south african soccer World Cup, a lot of people either loved or hated vivozelis. And do you remember on the beach, some random person up in the flat that was kind of overlooking the beach pulled down the window and started like shouting, like, go South Africa. And they were obviously south african expats and like, waved their little south african flag out the window. And I was just like, yeah, yeah. Like a precursor to the stronger together movements. Like, no, it was a, it's a. It was just such an amazing experience. I, a skeptic that I am, and I try not to deviate into cynicism, but the skeptic that I am is always looking for like wa and waime and that sort of stuff. So we won that campaign completely, like dashing good looks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that could be it. A face for radio and a voice for, I don't know what is what I've got going on, but. And why don't you start a podcast, John? But, yeah, so it was interesting when we went, spent our two weeks, so we won the campaign. We were eleven other countries that participated, or we were one of eleven countries that participated. And it was like Germany was there. America, the US was there was a whole bunch. But we went back for two weeks and we spent two weeks in the distillery. So now I'm at an corporate and I have to take two weeks leave. I've just started. And yeah, my boss was not happy. Yeah, and, but I'm a whiskey world champ, but come on, give it to me. And anyway, so we, so we go there and we, they put us to work like that. It wasn't like they put us in a really great penthouse and we got great spending money, pounds and stuff. Like that, so. But they put us to work in the distillery, doing every single job there. It was like manual labor going through. The full process, safety boots and everything like that. And Sean, we have manual labor experience in Australia and Hawaii specifically, so we're not scared of that type of work. But like, no, I'm like, in this. Yeah, I've taken leave to come do this now. And there's no waves, although we did go get some waves one day. We got some surf under our belt there, too, which was awesome in Ireland to experience that. But we've sort of differed in this opinion. Again, it's probably my skepticism of marketing. So where this campaign was hugely successful and where it failed were the parts that we may be different in opinion. I noticed the data points that were presented post the campaign somehow surfaced to me that the distillery that we went to visit and work at, they also bottled all of the Jamison's whiskey coming into South Africa. They bottled Jamison's, and we found out that all of the whiskey that they bottled in that distillery went to South Africa, the Jameson specifically. So they sit on that number, those numbers, they can see. They don't know any more demographics, information or anything like that, but they had that insight of going, like, South Africans drink a lot of whiskey. Where they failed, I think, and where the campaign maybe was, could have been better is user generated content's amazing, and I definitely an advocate for it, but too much of anything can be a bad thing. We can agree and even moderation in the same breath, but you can't. We said this before, like Henry Ford quotes, is if I asked my customers what they want, they just told me they want to fast sell horses. So, yeah, like, the south african population that we rallied our network behind, presented us as the faces of the south african team, and potentially South Africa were always going to win. In my mind, that's what I'm telling myself. The skepticism, although hearing your stories and hearing, like, how much effort we did put in, we do go all in. Not to say that other South Africans wouldn't have, but the face of South Africa, I don't think we are necessarily. I think we, the white male, most privileged people in the room, to say it bluntly, not to say that we don't deserve things and all that, but yeah, it was a privilege to go there. And I think that the marketing team got their demographics wrong and how they handled that transition from leaving it to the public to vote and then which publics were voting and that sort of thing, and then launching a whiskey in a country where our demographic, like the white male privilege is less a very small percentage. So my skepticism and like the negativity that I felt like I'll always be in debt to, to Bushmills. Like if I go buy whiskey, I'll buy Bushmills. And I had an amazing experience, but understanding that they maybe got that a bit wrong and it's not the. John and Sean were probably not the greatest representation back in South Africa. In Ireland we were great. But I think maybe they got. I don't know what your thoughts, because we might disagree on this. Yeah, no, it's like, it's interesting because obviously your lens is always going to be aim towards the full marketing side of what is the goal, what's the end result? How are they going to improve those discussions that we've had recently around the demographic and from a business perspective, did they suddenly see a massive boost in Bushmill sales in South Africa? I don't know. And I agree with the demographic that we fit. Yeah. Like great irish ambassadors, but I don't necessarily, don't necessarily know if we were fantastic ambassadors as South Africa. Yeah, like I said to you that we're not the SEO Khaleesi's of the. Billboard and what was like, that was the thing, like what are they looking for? Like how were they looking just for the marketing aspect or were they looking specifically at increasing the number of sales or the number of unit sales that they were hoping to do? I mean, at the bare minimum, they've got two lifelong supporters of their brand. Agreed and we had the experience and yeah, but we play long games and that's what I do love. At some stage we're going to talk about the stronger together campaign and the South Africans transition in Springboks. And like I mentioned, Sia Khaleesi is just aspirational, an incredible machine. So we can mention him on this podcast, but the fact that more South Africans can identify with the people on those billboards now than ever before is a net positive and almost unmeasurable. Because you're in New Zealand, your population versus our population. We might never lose a World cup based on that. But yeah, it's obviously in Russia we trust as well. And hopefully you can. But I'm segwaying a little bit too much. I think back to that. So the Bushmills experience was great. User generated content, always on optimization. I think they did because they, and they got the ads out in the right places, right time. The detachment distributes are like taking one piece of content and create ones populate everywhere. They got that. They nailed that. Because still to this day, you can go Google South African whisk or whiskey, world champions, South Africans. And we're on biz community, we're on wherever. So those pieces of content are still out there. They got that. It's also like. It's interesting because again, now that I'm thinking it, thinking of it in that way. I mean, I had a radio interview, I don't know if you remember that, which was incredibly difficult, being, like I said, born and bred, Durban boy, English speaking. I mean, I did study in Pretoria, but moving to Cape Town, and then after that Bushmills win, I had to do an interview by myself on RS here. So full Afrikaans interview. You know, I was preempted with some of the questions that they were going to ask. And I had my old school Afrikaans English dictionary there to translate a few things. But again, just highlights where. I wonder where that marketing direction was going, you know. Yeah, they ran. I mean, there's limited time and budget and it's a thing. Yeah, you've got. And for us as a success. But Bushmill. The reason why I'm skeptic, predominant reason I'm a skeptic is because the long game. But like that, it doesn't feature anymore. And I don't know if that's that because we failed them, but it's. Or they failed themselves with doing that research upfront, doing the hard work upfront, playing long games and figuring out and, like, what's. What could have been better. Yeah, so what. Yeah. Again, the principles, I think we nailed that bit down. Just to go transition into our next piece would be a quote that you're thinking about was being plaguing you or you want to discuss. Yeah, yeah, that's. It's. I think it's. It's something that I've been thinking of late, quite a bit of, because, you know, this trip across, back to South Africa at the moment wasn't necessarily planned. My uncle, unfortunately passed away suddenly. So it was a quick shift to come and see family and be a part of that memorial. And it just highlighted the frailty of life that we, you know, that we all experience. And obviously, as I'm getting older, I. As I've got a daughter, and it's a quote by, I think her name is Joyce Sonata. And it's. You either choose to make time for wellness or be forced to make time for illness. And it's that concept of, you've got to kind of commit now to look after yourself. So that later on down the line you are hopefully a little bit healthier. And I think what I'm battling with is just how to fit that. Very simple and very easy to understand quote in, you know, in life, you know, at where I'm sitting now, early forties, heading towards mid forties. Volunteer firefighter, one year old daughter. Good, good position at work, leadership position at work. How do I still make time for all of that and still look after my health? And it's just understanding where I can squeeze that in and not in. It makes no sense to put it in an unhealthy way. Like, if I stay up later and I do something or if I wake up earlier and I try and do something, is that benefit outweighed by lack of sleep? You know, doesn't make sense. It's just that juggling act. And I'd love to say, like, oh, no, I can do this and I can do that, but it's just I think making that decision to commit, starting with small steps. And probably the most important thing is that not repetition, but getting into that routine. Yeah. Of taking adherence. Yeah. And I mean, that's a, that's. That could be a very easy segue into, like, there's a lot of things within what we do in business or what we do in marketing. You either have one big bang or playing the long game. How do you play that long game? How do you plant those seeds to ensure that when the decision to buy your product or not, is it something that somebody's already made up their mind about? Small steps. So it does sound like you epitomize one of the. It's a strategic objective that I have and work when I work with people is be authentically helpful. So it's. You lead by example. And just on that, like the. It does seem like there's one thing that I maybe want you to consider, but the we can talk about, but does seem like you, you doing it. Doing. You do enough. Which is the. The firefighting. There'd be fitness involved in that. And then. Yeah. Running downstairs. Yeah, but, but, so one of the things that I've done in terms of that longevity and I can just experience share this, but is that I start. And we do this in marketing. So again, this is marketing. Yeah, the. We start with an audit. Start with where you can start and you can start with an audit. So have you ever done a DNA. We don't have to discuss the results. I'm not going to discuss my results with Genpop, but have you ever done a DNA test? Or do you know, like bad back, bad things coming my way, that sort of stuff. And then you work towards cool. Then if I'm going to see that or genetically predispose to that, I need to start like, having that tsp cement like every day. I mean, like, I've got family history of high blood pressure, cholesterol, etcetera. And it's something that I'm consciously aware of when I say I'm consciously aware of it, it's just, you know, if I do. So I have to do annual health checks with work and with fire and emergency. And, you know, it's always, what's your blood pressure? Like, what's this? What's that? How's everything else? And it's something that I'm always conscious of. It's normally pretty good, which I'm always kind of holding out for. I think I've relied on youth a bit too much in certain instances where you should be doing annual checkups for certain things, and I've just been very lax and that kind of came back to bite me. This year I should have had annual checkups for my eyesight. I didn't necessarily. And I actually had cataract surgery earlier this year. And that's part of, you know, since it was an incident in Hawaii 20 years ago where I had a traumatic injury to my eye. And at the time it was, you know, you're at a higher risk of glaucoma and cataract. And at the time I was told you should have a check up every year. And thinking back now, I can probably count on one hand how many times I had a, a checkup specifically looking at that. Would it have made a difference? Probably not, but maybe would have picked it up a bit sooner. But there's nothing I can do about it now. But it's just, it's, it's, yeah, I've got to. I've got to find ways of looking after myself better, I think, especially getting older. So the word I heard you say a couple times there should. Yeah. I don't know if we've discussed this before, but that's a directional word and some people don't like that word. Some people are open to it and we could probably be more open, I don't know. But that, that should, and it sounds like you could have been a bit more open to the shoulds and done the test, and now you can berate yourself post. But the thing is, it does make me think of another rule that I've an author that I follow and the rule is take care of yourself as if you are looking after someone else you cared for. So look after yourself as if you, someone you care for is the rule there. And it's actually incredibly difficult to do, and it sounds like you didn't do it. And one of the reasons is actually he cites in his book, one of the reasons why we don't do it is because we know everything about ourselves and we know all our ins and outs and all the dark things we've done and all the things we thought and everything. Interesting anecdote, like during COVID I tried to implement this system for the Christmas party. So a little game that we would have, like whoever gets caught with the microphone off speaking gets a shot or a push up for the, at the, at the next Christmas party. And I implemented and I was tracking it and then I was in doing it in every meeting and I got caught like, you know, that thing during COVID where it was like your marks off, like that standard meme. And what I realized is that I'm in every meeting that I'm in. I'm with myself all the time and I'm doing the tracking. It's not going to work out well for me. I mean, a lot of push ups, a lot of shot tequilas at the end of the day. So you have to be allowing, like forgiving of yourself in a way, like, and allow and distribute it somehow. And that principle, that rule about taking care of yourself as if you were someone you cared for, it actually is cited as one of the reasons people don't do it enough. And it cited as one of the reasons why, one of the biggest reasons why western medicine fails. And it's because like, we take our dog to the vet and we go and we get the medication and we put the medication in a sausage and we shove it down the dog's throat like it's horrible, like shame. And it's not a great experience for the dog or your pets, your cats or whatever you're inclined, your inclination. We go and do it. Okay, but we don't. But there's a huge percentage drop off of people that just don't go to the doctor. First of all, they win there. They do go. They get the script that the lines too long. The chemist, they don't go, they get the script. They get the actual meds. They don't take the meds. They take the full set of antibiotics. Don'T finish it, and your pet, your dog is looking at you and go, please take your meds. Because if they were just selfish enough to go because you feed me. Like, you're the one that actually put pellets in or gives me and, like. But they don't. They actually love you and they wish you would love yourself as if you were someone you cared for. And that's the rule. So I think that's a. That's a great thing just to be aware of, too. That's it. To. It's been such an awesome privilege having you. I'm extremely grateful to have you in the building with us and to be part of this launch of this experience. That's the incredible machine. And, yeah, like, thanks for the learnings. I think it's been lead by example and you just keep pushing and you seem to be very aware of your time, energy, attention and. Yeah, it's like always a privilege and you always be a brother to me. So thanks. Yeah, no, it's been awesome. It's incredible to see, to think back of all those years ago, hanging out on North Pier and surfing all day, every day and coming home sunburnt, and then here we are, like, you know, three decades later, nearly. Yeah, that's life. It's been awesome. Yeah. I love you, brother. Same here. So can we just end off quickly with, can you give us your best New Zealand accent and say, hey, I'm Sean and you're with Tim podcast. Thanks for listening, but you got to do it like authentic New Zealand. I'm terrible at accents. Horrific would be a better description. That just makes it better. Yeah. Sean, thanks for listening to the Tim podcast. Chur bro. Amazing. Yeah, thanks for listening. Yeah.