00:55:51 · David Booth
[00:55:51] S0: That's fantastic. When you think about leveling up as a person, as an individual, what what if you had to unlearn? I've had to unlearn a lot of my, you know, desire to do everything myself and learn a lot of sort of bit better delegation, bit of management, bit of sort of collaboration as I've sort of gone to the world. How about yourself?
00:56:10 · Jamie Beaton
[00:56:10] S1: I had through a lot of unlearning, and I would say leadership did not come very naturally to me. I don't think I was much of a leader in high school, and it was definitely a work in progress and still very much is. I think a couple of things. One is not I'm going to just get out of the room and let let your folks create and build and be entrepreneurial without you necessarily there. I think sometimes in building a company, you know, you wanna lead from the front and you wanna do everything and lead the charge. But when you've got talented people with the entrepreneurial spark and that that are local operators and they know the market well, getting behind them, cheering them on and showing you trust them is very powerful. So that's one thing that I think I learned early. I think the second thing would be just time and time again, bidding on someone with a steep learning curve is better than someone with tenured experience. As a young founder, it was always so attractive to find the guy from, I don't know, Microsoft or some company, and, you know, they seem so tenured and experienced, the magic guy that will solve But, all of our you know, they usually always struggle. And then it's typically the folks with the fast learning curve who wanna, you know, roll up their sleeves that have built immense value with us at Crimson. And so I think betting on that sharp learning curve again and again is important. And then finally, I would just say the importance of working with great high integrity people. Often this comes from when we're doing business in places like China or, you know, Russia or India or something like this. There are a lot of times where we've been looking at a company to acquire, and we just get an uncomfortable feeling about, you know, maybe who we're getting into business with and Mhmm. You know, what the vibes are and we avoid that. And in the small instances where I've gone forward with a deal where I didn't quite feel comfortable, it's, you know, usually always a dumpster fire. And, you know, ultimately, building a business is a people driven phenomena, and you wanna build a people that you trust, that you can build and compound with, and it's great for your culture.
00:57:48 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
And so I guess I've really become, you know, almost like a culture fanatic, I would say, in the last five years of Crimson, whether in the first five years, I was probably a bit more, you know, robotic in my approach. Mhmm. [00:57:58] S0: Yeah. And build build your instinct, train your your gut, and trust it when you do. [00:58:02] S1: Yep. [00:58:02] S0: Tell me... I mean, final question perhaps, and and a great place to to wind up. Well, it's twofold. Usually, I ask people, I love to ask people, like, how can the diaspora support you? Like, what what are the the upcoming asks for talent for, you know, anything that we could be bending the world to... In... Into your your benefit?
00:58:02 · David Booth, Jamie Beaton
[00:58:02] S0: Tell me... I mean, final question perhaps, and and a great place to to wind up. Well, it's twofold. Usually, I ask people, I love to ask people, like, how can the diaspora support you? Like, what what are the the upcoming asks for talent for, you know, anything that we could be bending the world to... In... Into your your benefit? [00:58:20] S1: Oh, wow. That's an amazing question. We're going in an interest... We just closed a series d round. We're pretty excited about this because it gives us a lot of opportunity to go super fast behind Crimson Global Academy, roll out our charter schools, do some more acquisitions, scale our Revision Village. And we're in this phase now. We've got significant revenue. We've just hired a CFO. And so I think folks that have gone on this, like, CFO through a listing or CFO through this next phase of scale adventure and have seen this path we're about to walk on, those operators are amazing. So the more reps we can have... You know, there are amazing Kiwis that have been senior execs at Pandora or, you know, Equinox or, you know, Google and stuff, and those war stories are always really helpful. Maybe they're not always exactly relevant to Crimson, but there's always something we can learn from them. So... And and then I I think that also just camaraderie and excitement of the Kiwi community around the world as you go through the different challenges is huge as well. So, yeah, I'd say that's probably what's on my mind right now.
00:58:20 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
[00:58:20] S1: Oh, wow. That's an amazing question. We're going in an interest... We just closed a series d round. We're pretty excited about this because it gives us a lot of opportunity to go super fast behind Crimson Global Academy, roll out our charter schools, do some more acquisitions, scale our Revision Village. And we're in this phase now. We've got significant revenue. We've just hired a CFO. And so I think folks that have gone on this, like, CFO through a listing or CFO through this next phase of scale adventure and have seen this path we're about to walk on, those operators are amazing. So the more reps we can have... You know, there are amazing Kiwis that have been senior execs at Pandora or, you know, Equinox or, you know, Google and stuff, and those war stories are always really helpful. Maybe they're not always exactly relevant to Crimson, but there's always something we can learn from them. So... And and then I I think that also just camaraderie and excitement of the Kiwi community around the world as you go through the different challenges is huge as well. So, yeah, I'd say that's probably what's on my mind right now. [00:59:16] S0: So more conversations with more leaders, people who've been in that journey before, particularly the financial, you know, components journey, the CFO components journey. [00:59:24] S1: That's right. Yeah. Public company reporting, things like that.
00:59:24 · Jamie Beaton, David Booth
[00:59:24] S1: That's right. Yeah. Public company reporting, things like that. [00:59:26] S0: We can get some ideas from that for sure. And then final, this is not one I get to ask everybody, in your case, I do. What's your advice or or or for the ambitious youngsters out there? Aside from just, like, applying to be in Crimson, that's the the gimme answer, but, like, what should they be thinking about right now if they wanna be really making a dent in the world five, ten years into the future?