Episode 31, Gina McNamara, Regional CFO, SAP Asia Pacific & Japan

Gina McNamara is the Regional CFO for SAP Asia Pacific and Japan. She has been working in the technology industry for 17 years and in the firms before that.  

Gina is the Executive Sponsor of the SAP Business Women’s Network, Unconscious Bias, Sustainability, and the Business Continuity team, which managed the process and policy changes for SAP ANZ as part of COVID-19.  

She is an executive who is extremely passionate about people and technology.  When all are aligned to a vision and strategy that is underpinned by trust and equity, the results will follow!

To contact Richard Holmes please call 0403 513 720 or reach out on richardh@hprconsulting.com. https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardholmesfinancerecruiter/

Transcript

Please note that this has been transcribed by AI/Bots so there may be typos and the occasional strange things happening.

Richard Holmes

0:01

Welcome to The Numbers People Podcast, where each week we're going to be speaking with some highly regarded senior finance professionals and create experts looking into the ins and outs of what makes finance people and their teams great. The podcast is proudly sponsored by HPR consulting, a leading executive finance recruitment firm. I'm your host Richard Holmes. On today's episode, I'm talking with Gina McNamara. Gina is the Regional CFO of SAP, Asia Pacific and Japan. She has been working in the technology industry for 17 years and in the firm's before that, Gina is the executive sponsor of the SAP Business Women's Network unconscious bias, sustainability, and the business continuity team which manage the process and policy changes but SAP Enzo is part of COVID-19. She's an executive who was extremely passionate about people in technology. When following align to a vision and strategy that is underpinned by trusting equity results will follow. Gina, how are you? 

Gina McNamara

1:04

Good thanks, Richard. How are you? Yeah, I'm really well, I can't complain, feeling very grateful. 

Richard Holmes 

1:12

Gina’s reputation in the market is fantastic. I have heard about Gina for a number of years and she is known to be a true people leader. Pleasure to have you on the show. I think a lot of people will be jealous about where you've got to in your career, and it's great. It'd be great to hear your story. Would you like to tell us more?

Gina McNamara

1:25

No worries. Look, it's been quite the journey as I can imagine it has been for everybody. Probably the most recent part of my career journey would be SAP started with SAP back in 2008. When SAP acquired BusinessObjects, I was in my late 20s. Prior to that, I was with Lexmark. Prior to that I was with accounting firms with PKF being the most well known one probably don't want to go back too far in all of that. But I guess if I start at the very beginning in the firm's, I learned a lot and I grew up in country, Queensland, and gatton. I went from there to university briefly into one bar at us Q and then to Griffith on the goalpost. That's when I started working for firms. And started my learning, largely in advisory services, did a little bit of auditing and a little bit of tax a bit of everything really. And then I moved down to Sydney with PKF started to work on bigger customers. That was when I decided that I really wanted to make that move into corporate and went over to Lexmark and spent about four years there. But I'll switch forward to business objects. So somebody that had been a very inspiring mentor of mine, Rebecca Norton, now Rebecca Lauder was the CFO at Lexmark, she went over to business objects, effectively, I followed her there and did a lot of learning in my career journey whereby I got to do projects all around the world, Canada, Japan, obviously a lot in Australia and New Zealand. Through those learnings, I got to see what a tech company was like operating, I would say much faster than what I'd ever seen before at Lexmark and also previously in the firms of customers that I'd worked on. And that's when I started to think about my career. And you know, where could it go? SAP acquired business objects, right at that time. At the start of that, I was thinking, do I really want to work for a really big company, because Business Objects was one of those sort of more smaller, nimble, agile in terms of reputation in the market was business intelligence software. I thought about it went, well, you know what, I'll give it a shot. I'll try this big company out. Here I am now 2021. Still with them. cut a long story short, spent my first years in SAP doing financial planning and analysis, which we call controlling, moved into deal support, which is revenue recognition and deal structuring. And then spent the past roughly seven years as CFO for Australia and New Zealand progressed up trying different things into different roles with always partnering with business.

Richard Holmes

3:57

And, obviously, love the business. You've been there for quite some time. And how many roles have you had with SAP?

Gina McNamara

4:04

Oh, just try to count them up. So I did two different controlling roles. So I looked after, when I first joined, I was obviously Business Objects specific I did the integration of business objects into SAP, then I worked on the cells and maintenance business. Then I was promoted to lead part of that team in financial planning and analysis. Then I started to work shadow revenue recognition. Then we created this new organization called commercial deal support. So I was a commercial finance director, and then CFO 

Richard Holmes

4:39

Second, you've worked in all different facets, from sales to deals. I

Gina McNamara

4:43

think that's important really to understand the full, you know, business and how it works. I've also had a lot of experience around us services business where we implement software. Most recently, obviously, we've been acquiring cloud companies, so learning about cloud services, and then in the last couple of years, we've been doing a lot with government around critical infrastructure and security. So that's also been really interesting.

Richard Holmes

5:05

Given the nature of SAP, I can imagine how much it's evolved. In those years you've been working there. And that's what keeps you engaged, right?

Gina McNamara

5:13

evolution from when I started, you know, working it is the subjects, we had this really funky business intelligence reporting software, and then went to SAP where they are known as a big eirp provider, I still remember my first day working on the system. And it was before we were really drinking our own champagne, saying it was a, you know, blue screens and having to remember cards, to watching SAP moving to cloud services, and buying more companies with more sexy software and cloud services and getting to work. You know, successfactors, which is really cool. HR cloud service been really cool to watch it go from clunky RP to fast moving cloud services, and, you know, ranging from building its own to acquiring

Richard Holmes

5:58

and you touched on before Gina, that you'd worked on different projects in different countries, do you work in those countries, or

Gina McNamara

6:04

probably the most fascinating project that I got to work on was in Kenya, SAP does this development program for what we call catalysts, which is some of our, I would say, top employees in the company. And it's called a social sabbatical. Obviously, we're not doing too many of these right now, physically, but we are still doing some virtually. But you physically go to another country, and you work with a social enterprise. I was working with a company called Africa management initiative. They're still around today, I was just reading LinkedIn this morning, that they're still rolling out their training. But what they do is roll out Harvard style management training to African leaders, so much more effective, they've got online tools they've got in person classroom, and I had to work on franchising that across Africa. So it was a very fast project, we didn't have a lot of time, ASAP, brought together a group of 12 employees from all over the world, and then split us up into projects, there was three of us working with ami, and we came up with effectively a handbook with how to franchise that business, including things like systems that they could use, and teaching the employees about some of the systems to do things we do with SAP, like managing their pipeline of their courses. And, you know, making sure that they know what they're looking to sell that border. So really turning it into a business and making sure that it was, you know, funding itself and that the leaders there were getting the assistance from us, as SAP was paying us and we were effectively working for them for free. That was really, really cool.

Richard Holmes

7:39

I can imagine really rewarding as well,

Gina McNamara

7:41

it was and it was probably taking experience that I didn't realize I had, you know, showing up to a company where they've got big expectations, they've got less staff less resources that IT systems were not the same yet. What was really surprising is because of that they had more innovation, and more entrepreneurship is what you can see compared to some other countries that I've worked in, leaning on those things that I've learned in my career that I didn't even realize I had along with. We had a software developer in our team. And we had a lady that also had operations and HR experience. And then I had the finance experience. So we were quite a complimentary team. And we didn't realize that until we started working together.

Richard Holmes

8:23

That's fantastic, isn't it? It's great that they afforded you that opportunity as well.

Gina McNamara

8:26

It is it was before the CFO role, but I do say that it really did prepare me for the CFO role due to the diversity of the different things that we were doing with ami. And obviously the CFO role is also very broad,

Richard Holmes

8:39

actually much in character building as well. Definitely. And when you reflect Gina, when you reflect on your career as a whole, what advice would you give to people wanting to follow a career like yourself?

Gina McNamara

8:50

Anyone that's talked to me probably heard me say this before, but it's it's really just trying things that you wouldn't expect, you'd be able to do just try new things. So an example I'll give is when I joined sa P and I was working in financial planning and analysis. So you know, very much looking at historical numbers, and then forward planning numbers as well. But not really, truly understanding how did they get there? So yes, I was partnering with the sales leaders and I was sitting in on the forecast calls and listening to them talk about deals wasn't until I was pushed by a mentor in our business, to work shadow deal construction, you know, salespeople sitting in a room whiteboarding, what the customer problem was, and how we solve it, what we could potentially sell them, that it really all started to come together in my mind as to what does SAP really do and how can we do better deals, you know, how can we, as finance professionals help the sales people and the customer achieve what they want, but then, at the same time, protect shareholders and grow margins.

Richard Holmes

9:57

You mentioned Rebecca's name le Ron, who's influenced you the most 3d Korea,

Gina McNamara

10:01

it's a number of people, the big ones that stand out in my mind, most recently would be Rosemary Lieber. So she was at business objects. And she came over to SAP and she only left a couple of years ago. So we're still in touch. She was an ex CFO at PeopleSoft before business objects. And when I met her at business objects, she was a part of our services, operations business leading that what Rosemary really did for me was someone that really wants to give back to everybody, really, whether you're the finance professional, or whether in a business, she's very passionate about people. And she took me under her wing and gave me the mentoring that I would say you get but someone that created a safe space that you could ask the questions that you might not ask somebody else. And Rosemary still that for me today. Most recently, I was coming through with what do I do next in my career, and rosemary is one of the people that pray this lockdown. I met for a coffee and had a discussion about it. So she's been a big one. Another one, Richard McLean. So my boss today, he's been my boss, for the majority of the time that I've been at SAP, the Asia Pacific CFO, and he's just moved into a new role, heading up our global commercial deal support as a direct boss, somebody that's really influenced me that there's been a lot of others. And a lot of business leaders, Kevin Nicholas is somebody that I've worked with in our business who has been at SAP originally, he's the person that I work shadowed on deal construction that I mentioned earlier, he's also gone and worked away from SAP and then come back to SAP again now, and he's now coaching our emerging talent in our sales Academy and across our business, that's just a few. And I'm sure I'm missing someone, there's been lots, I always ensure that I surround myself each year with somebody, finance and somebody's business. So yeah,

Richard Holmes

11:55

that's good advice there as well, through the podcast gene with a few guests where it's not just about having someone in finance, it's finding someone who's more operational.

Gina McNamara

12:03

I think finance is important, of course, but it's really in your DNA and how you've been trained. So you got to trust your finance instincts. And I think it's that business acumen and building that and learning new things in business that really stretches you. So surrounding yourself with those business professionals who will push you into areas that you don't want to go, like the managing director that I worked with today, Damien, for I know, he pushes me into parts of our strategy that I probably wouldn't have gone into before. And I'm really enjoying it and thriving, it's been a great journey to look at things that I wouldn't have looked at before and look at things a little bit differently. So he's had me working with partners on innovation. So with some of the big firms that work with us, he's had me executive sponsor on some of those and obviously got to be customer facing in my role. I wouldn't say that he specifically pushed me to that. But previous managing directors that I work with, really pushed me into ensuring that I was in touch with our customers. CFOs, which brings another lens, of course, to understanding our business is definitely critical.

Richard Holmes

13:08

And it sounds like a very people centric business.

Gina McNamara

13:10

Absolutely. And I wouldn't be there if it wasn't definitely a people centric business, we were known in the past to be not people centric enough. And just being honest about we were very obviously sales driven and very focused on the quarterly numbers. And of course, we still keep our eye on that now. But we've definitely moved in the right direction of people at the center, customers at the center, and then the numbers flow from that.

Richard Holmes

13:36

And again, reflecting on your career. I mean, you've you've had that kind of steady progression. It's really nice hearing your story, is it one thing you'd wish you'd known.

Gina McNamara

13:44

What I would have liked to have known is to have more self belief earlier. So I probably didn't challenge myself until I went to business objects. Although at Lexmark, I mentioned that I you know, I was there for four years, I played it very safe. I worked more in the financial accounting, I did get some great experience with shared services. But it was very historical the financial numbers, and I wouldn't say that it was real business partnering at the time, I probably thought it was Rebecca really pushed me. But she pushed me harder when I got to Business Objects when I was working on projects. And I think it's a combination of things. Lexmark was a way different type of business. It was a much slower business at the time. I think it's changed now from looking at they've gone more into technology than what they were then they were very much relying on the annuity stream of toner printers back then. But then moving into a true tech company, big business objects and working on fast moving projects where you know, you need you need a system to consolidate something by three months time and moving on much faster pace. things really pushed me outside of my comfort zone to working on a project in Japan, where they were using a legacy Japanese software. So To move them to a mainstream system that the rest of the company was using, you know, sitting in a room with people that English was not their first language, asking them to do things as Australian female was very, very hard, you know, partnering with an amazing Japanese CFO who embraced me and then told his team they had to do what I asked to see America, I'm still in touch with him today. He's another person that, you know, doing that project really helped me to grow and learn

Richard Holmes

15:30

in that self belief. I think we'd all like that early on our careers.

Gina McNamara

15:33

It definitely comes with age and experience. But I think to young people, when we're telling them this now, if they really listened to it, I did have people tell me that parents were big influences in that and really helped. But yeah, keeping an open mind, truly being confident, and it'll come,

Richard Holmes

15:49

eventually, a few names during the podcast here, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received, not necessarily from for most people, but just in general,

Gina McNamara

15:57

best piece of advice would be from Richard McLean, which was just try it. So with the revenue recognition, working on compliant deals, everybody in finance was scared of this area, it was us gap, moving to IFRS, if you can imagine back in the days of when companies would spend hundreds of millions of dollars on premise software to you know, install on their systems. So companies like sa P and others were working with accounting guidelines, that meant if you didn't get that contract, right, or you structured in a way, you could have a deferral of your revenue, it was quite a scary place for finance professionals, we had to be front facing with the customer and with a salesperson to work on a contract that was particularly non standard, he got it wrong, then you're sitting it at the quarter and potentially not hitting the numbers. So being told by the CFO that I was working for at the time, just try it out, you know, what's the worst that can happen? And in my head going, well, oh, we have a big deferral of revenue, and you're not happy with me at the quarter? Because we don't hit our numbers, you know, the managing director, CEO, not happy, but it was best piece of advice, because it brought the greatest learning.

Richard Holmes

17:10

Hmm, it sounds so simple as well, isn't it? Just

Gina McNamara

17:12

Yeah, just try it. And he said to me at the time, try it. And if you find that in a few months time or six months time that it's not working, you can move back into controlling and, you know, work on what you've been doing before. And we can say that that's not your forte and go in there. So yeah, really trying things out is good.

Richard Holmes

17:32

Bunch of shows what the culture of your business is, like, yeah,

Gina McNamara

17:35

we definitely have a pioneering business around trying things out. So it was good to push me to that as well. And now obviously, it's something that I, I try and do in all things that we do, whether it's working with my MD and CIO, or whether it's working with my team,

Richard Holmes

17:48

it's great to hear as well change the way your business encourages that as well. I know a lot of companies that they are, if you're in the controlling side, there's no way you get a role on the on the commercial

Gina McNamara

17:57

side, look at global CFO look at nature, which is very focused on people and you know, pushing development and making sure that people have opportunities to learn. Like I mentioned, Kenya, that doesn't happen at all companies. I also got to go and work in San Francisco, in our success factors, which is our HR solution deals this back when it was newly acquired. That doesn't happen in all businesses. So you know, it's really those experiences that shaped your career,

Richard Holmes

18:25

and keeps you engaged. Absolutely. I got listening to your story. I mean, you've been really successful, from what I've heard in all your roles. Looking back, was there a particular failure you've had of you had many hurdles you faced? And if you have what happened in how did you overcome it?

Gina McNamara

18:41

Yeah, look, I had a failure at Lexmark, whereby I was running the financial accounting area, and I made a mistake, I'm not gonna go into detail of what it was, but it wasn't great. And at the time, I was also going through a marriage breakup. So you know, two very big things in one's life happening and colliding at the same time, you can go about two ways I chose at the time to go, you know what, I need to take a time out of my career and have a break and do a bit of sort of soul searching about what do I want to do next. So I resigned, probably didn't have to, I probably could have stayed there. Obviously, my first marriage broke up. I am married again, since then, it's one of those times where you need to take the learning and work out like what do you do next, and something that people don't talk about? And I think it's because it's deeply personal, like making a mistake on something, whether it be in business, whether it be at home, it's one of those things, it's a difficult thing. I don't mind talking about it. And I have told a lot of my people that I've mentored and coached over the years about that. So this is not a big secret that I've had failures. And I think that it needs to be encouraged more. We've been talking about that with our global finance leadership team, most recently in terms of building a culture that although you're as good at sada saying that you get to try things and you've had a cool career, we're thinking that we're not probably allowing people to fail enough to learn and that we want to work out. How do we do that more?

Richard Holmes

20:09

It's a tricky one though, isn't it? Gina? Because working in finance, we don't want to make mistakes. That's right. So we don't want to encourage people to fail kind of thing. But yeah, it's one of life's landings, isn't it, but it is how you improve, but to be in that environment where it's okay. It does happen. I know one guy, Gina in the way he looks at working in finances, it's not life or death, what we do, as long as we manage expectations, it's all going to be alright.

Gina McNamara

20:32

It's funny you say that, because that is something that I've reflected on a lot, particularly during the pandemic, when people have been really stressed out. And I've been trying to calm them down. I have been saying things like, Well, you know, it's not life and death. We're a tech company, nobody's going to die if you don't stay up till two in the morning, tonight to do this thing. And obviously, there are times where we do do that. I think sometimes people do that too much and take such a personal poll on their balance.

Richard Holmes

21:01

Fortunately, we do that quite a lot. And it's, we're in 2021, that some companies still operate like that. I think people are more savvy than ever before they realize that it's companies like yours that treat people really well. And I think the companies that don't treat people, well, we're going to kind of suffer from it.

Gina McNamara

21:15

ASAP. You know, it's not perfect world, but we try our best. And there are a lot of really passionate leaders and just had a inclusive leadership steering committee meeting this morning, where we were talking about, you know, the content that we're rolling out to our leaders on all of this. So it is a very passionate company about people and people are definitely at the core. And we have a way to go like everybody does. I don't think anyone's got the perfect world.

Richard Holmes

21:39

What a technology company gene, what's the biggest area related to your role you're most curious about?

Gina McNamara

21:44

Right now it's unconscious bias. I'm sponsoring a program that we're working on with an ally around conquering that what led us to this is last year, we had some very prominent female leaders leave our business globally. At the time, our Managing Director sort of asked me and a lot of other ladies, how do we feel about it, I was absolutely gutted. Some of these ladies had been people that inspired me that I knew personally. So our Managing Director went and ran some focus groups with the ladies in our business to really get under the covers of is everybody feeling like Gina and heater and others that he had spoken to, and found that Yeah, there's a big problem. So we then went more into the data. So we looked at our employee engagement results, and saw that there was a very big difference between the engagement of a female to a male and to emerging younger talent to say a seasoned professional is what we call them. And so we decided to look at what can we do to really tackle this, through some very passionate people, volunteers out of our Australia, New Zealand SAP Business, we formed a working group looked at a lot of topics, but unconscious bias was one of them. And now we're working with an expert, bender Li, who really look at the neuroscience behind this, to tackle it. So that's something that I'm really, really passionate about. I want to make sure that I leave a legacy in Australia and New Zealand and anywhere else that I work within SAP to tackle that problem, because I think it's a big one, not just for us, I think for all companies,

Richard Holmes

23:19

we're certainly getting that chipping away.

Gina McNamara

23:21

We're chipping away, I'm still not thinking that were there fast enough. Yeah.

Richard Holmes

23:26

It's definitely a generational thing. I'm in my early 40s, in thinking my lifetime will see a big change. Compared to that that kind of old school leadership we've seen.

Gina McNamara

23:34

I hope so. And I think that there's definitely more awareness about it just worry that sometimes there's too much chat and not enough real action. So we're trying to drive real action around it in Australia and New Zealand and SAP,

Richard Holmes

23:47

which is great to hear. Talking about the future of finance, again, being a technology company, you're kind of driving that future. What do you think the future finances from your point of view,

Gina McNamara

23:55

future finance means that we rely more on systems and we take our business acumen to focus on partnering new markets, what can we do differently? So it's a scary place for a lot of finance professionals. I think we've been talking about this for years and years and years, lots of companies have obviously been doing training development. I mentioned some of the things already that I've done personally, SAP global finance has been really great. It's got a an academy of learning that you can pretty much learn anything that you want to learn, whether it be soft skills, whether it be a technical thing or be something business centric around our products. So I see the role is moving to more forward facing sitting at the table with the business not saying that we haven't been it varies in different companies. And the great thing about this pandemic is I have seen so many more CFOs you know leading change leading disruption than I've ever seen before. In my seven years of this role. I've visited a lot of customers We've talked about transformation, we've compared our stories about how we do things at sa p to how they're doing in their business, I've acted as a bit of a sounding board at times someone that's, you know, not on a commission, although, obviously, I care about sa P's performance. But I will say that as a finance professional with finance in my DNA, I'm never going to mislead a customer. So if they ask for an opinion, you know, I will tell them exactly what I think. And it won't necessarily be the sap position on something, I do see things as moving finance to leading the change in the digital transformation, rather than in the past, it might have been it leading that change, or the business leading that change, certainly starting to see that at SAP, we've been in continuous transformation in our finance team. For years and years, from when I very first started every year, we've always had a new wave of transformation. It's not something that's new to business, and it's not something that's new to finance, I do think that it is moving faster than what it ever has before.

Richard Holmes

26:01

I'd agree with that, not just with your company. But overall, it's an exciting time to be in finance, right?

Gina McNamara

26:07

It is, I mean, finance is a cool place to work.

Richard Holmes

26:10

I still mean, I've worked in finance for a number of years now. And it frustrates me I'm not a finance person, I'm gonna the days of the pens in the pocket and the calculator in the pocket kind of thing. It's not like that. And it's very much an integral cog of many businesses now, which is great to see. And you've touched on it a couple of times, Gina, what does culture mean to you, you're obviously very people focused yourself on the business. But what does culture mean to you?

Gina McNamara

26:33

culture, to me is everybody being their authentic self, nobody walking past poor behavior, role model leadership in terms of, you know, everybody respecting each other, making sure that everybody has heard that it's a very inclusive, diverse culture, I very much follow a servant leadership style. So if you look at leadership styles, that's what I subscribe to, and follow. So everybody being their authentic self, and not being afraid to express an opinion, making sure that everybody is heard. That's great, and that word authentic as well. And that's what makes great leaders great, being authentic. And being a does, the people that I've looked up to have been, the people that I feel are authentic, I think that people can easily see through when you're not, it's best to be your authentic self, that can come with ugly bits as well. And I think people will respect you more if you're upfront about that. And, you know, we've been doing a lot of self awareness exploration with our strength deployment inventory tool, we can do comparisons of ourselves to others, and we're trying to roll that out very widely through the business. And I think that's been a great awareness tool for looking at, you know, where do you sit when you're in your zone, and you're happy? And where do you sit? When you get to say, a stress complex situation? How do you best you know, use that knowledge that you have to communicate better with people?

Richard Holmes

27:57

And do you come across is cool, calm and collected? When you do feel pressured? or overwhelmed? What do you do?

Gina McNamara

28:03

I'm a natural introvert, what I do is go into myself, you probably won't ever see me sort of raging into a, I'm angry about something or more disappear. So I'm conscious of that now. And I've been trying really hard, particularly through the pandemic, when I'm in that state that I'm honest about it with my team. So I have shared with my team in the past, that I'm having a hard time, I think that helps because they also then will say, Yeah, like having my children at home or whatever is going on for them at the moment, they'll share. And then you get to a special place that I don't think we've gotten to before in business where you have that sort of shared empathy for each other about what you're going through, that leads to, you know, being grateful, because then we go, Well, these four people in India, you know, delta strain, yes, we're having that in Sydney and Melbourne at the moment, but it's nothing in comparison. So that's how I deal with things is a natural introvert, but I'm starting to be more aware that I let people know and that, you know, don't stress out about me, this is just my mode that I go into.

Richard Holmes

29:09

Look, everyone deals with it differently, don't they? No one's assignment, knowing what you know. Now, Jane, you've got all this experience. What would you tell your younger self, both in life and in Korea?

Gina McNamara

29:19

I touched on it earlier. It's really about self belief, not limiting your options. I've always been, you know, a very clear mind that my journey is finance and I'm still on that I haven't tackled all the things that I want to tackle in finance areas outside of finance, I no longer something that I go, Oh, no, I'd never do that. Whereas my younger self would have been the natural introverts or that's just not possible.

Richard Holmes

29:46

And of course, our gene if you had one message to tell the world what would it be?

Gina McNamara

29:50

My one message would be everybody needs stopping con to each other. watching the Olympics since Friday has been a great thing. I think for COVID pandemic and particularly Australia with what's happening at the moment, you know, celebrating successes of each other big pine to each other, lifting each other up rather than tearing each other down. That would be my message. It's been it's been quite frustrating watching the politics lately. I'd like to see a kind of place in business and in politics

Richard Holmes

30:20

sounds so simple. There's an agenda just just because he and I think you've been a brilliant guest. It's been really fascinating to hear your story and all the best Be yourself in the in the future, and hopefully we'll have you on the podcast in years to come. Thank you love to it's been great.