#10 Pete Findlay: Leading Bega, Lifting Productivity & Competing Globally

If you want to make food more affordable, get to the root cause, which is productivity. Yeah. Help people be more productive, help them be more competitive. We're also going to change. No one owes you anything. So how does farmers, processors and retailers and whoever else is involved in the valued chain get better? I'm Matt Cooper and this is Bite Sides. Welcome to the latest edition of the OSFINE Bite Sides podcast. This is a bit of a continuation of the theme. The edition that's just come out, we very luckily had the chairman of Begah Foods in here, Barry Irvin and we're continuing that theme today and extremely pleased to have Mr. Peter Finlay, the CEO of Begah Foods in with us today. Pete, welcome and thanks again for taking the time to come and have a chat. Thank you very much for having me, Matt. It's great to be in here and looking forward to the chat with you. Absolutely, as am I. It was a really great chat with Barry recently. He's a heart attack to follow. Well, I must admit, I felt a little inadequate when he gave me his backstory and he's extremely humble, humble background and kind of where he started and where he managed to get to. Compared to my own, I felt a little, I haven't got nearly as interesting stories out, but let's put that aside and we will start kind of in that vein with you, Pete. Do you want to just give us a background on where you've come from and where you've grown up and you're doing? Probably not as embarrassing as Barry's, but I grew up in between Melbourne and Sydney. Most of my time in Melbourne, but dad worked in Sydney for several years. So my primary school day is one city. And then went to school here in Melbourne, started life like a lot of people with financial backgrounds at KPMG. Yeah. So I was the proving ground. The world's worst auditor for a couple of years and become a charity account and then moved into management consulting. So I did a lot of supply chain and strategic consulting with KPMG, management consulting, working with large corporates on post acquisition work. So a lot of integration, synergy, 100 day planning, type work, and was really lucky to work with some great partners there. And then from there to Mars Inc, which is one of the largest private companies in the world, Ruttstool Family Run, which was fantastic. And from there into private equity owned businesses back and then transition into around logistics and retail and sort of still fitting with my supply chain and strategy band. And then from there into a listed company, Melbourne IT, which is a technology company, which was right. They were sort of on the cusp of a whole of digital and cloud work that they were doing. And that's my first listed entity and they're an international business. And then from there back into private land, so I went and worked for civil heaven, which was also one of the largest privately owned Australian businesses owned by family, the Withers family, and then from there into Beger. So back into listed land. So I guess a lot of work across both private equity, family owned and public listed companies. Yeah, which is really interesting, such a breadth of experience and you would have kind of seen it all in that regards of privately held businesses, family businesses, all the way through to a listed company and a sizable listed company that you're steering right now. And I actually do have a couple of questions around that. But just before we get to that, you mentioned in your previous guys there that you helped companies essentially in their integration period where companies had bored another company and the first 100 days I think you mentioned. I've always been interested in that of I guess number one, the mechanics of one company absorbing another, which I would imagine would be incredibly difficult, not only from processes and IT but people and culture as well. What was kind of the biggest challenge that you saw in that integration when you're running through that? Was it processes and IT or was it people and culture? I think ultimately people and culture. Yeah, yeah. That's what I said. That's a long term view. And I can talk about that in a little bit of depth because I've been fortunate enough to be involved in 15 or 20 transactions in my corporate life outside of that. So just in the companies I've worked for. But it definitely, so I think the two traps corporate's fall and do is not moving fast enough, quickly enough. And that's around what I call the sugar hit or the quick wins. Yeah. And that's actually just, you can't procrastinate. You've just got to get on and you can't have a perfection mentality. You've got to get things moving. Interesting. And then after that initial piece, because it's hard to sort of start to work on the cultural piece until you've got the physical, I think, up and running. So you need to make your decisions around your systems, how you're going to do things, what you're going to keep, what you're not going to keep. You should have made a lot of those decisions and you pre-do diligence. But you've almost got to take a smash and grab approach with that and get momentum. And then once you get through that, then you can start to build the culture and merge the culture around that. But it's really hard to start with culture first. And I think a lot of companies procrastinate around making those moves. So my hearing is correctly that it's kind of a little too speed. The first is the IT and process and everything that's the focus and the people in culture. Integration is a little on a slower speed. You can never forget it. Not in our course. Never forget it. But you really start to accelerate that as you've got the mechanics. The mechanics. The mechanics will get it. Yeah, it would be my view. Interesting. And have you seen it done exceptionally well and through, I think you mentioned 20 different guys as of our experiences of these mergers and acquisitions. I'm assuming you've seen it at its best and at its worst. Yeah, I think it's a muscle memory that you have to have within an organisation. If you're going to do it, we give it its best chance to success. So, big as sort of a company that's made up of multiple acquisitions over a 15 year period. And I think that our last acquisition we did two or three years ago, two years ago now we bought a business in Tasmania but it was only a small business but we effectively integrated that within three months. And so, you know, and I think we learned the lesson, move quickly, give people clarity and bid that down and then you, what's left over you then sort of start to really merge into your culture. So, you're always treat people properly and you make sure you take your values and behaviours into any acquisition that you do. But go with pace because I think that one of the, where I've seen acquisitions for livers when they're not transitional integrated at pace. Yeah. Interesting. So, what you mentioned muscle memory, muscle memory, no doubt, as you've done it once, you've done it twice and then into the double digits, you kind of know what to do. Well, you're involved with Playbook, sure. And a team. And a team. So, if we were to do another acquisition now, we've got our strategy team, we've got our synergies team, we've got our engineering team, we've got our people culture team, who can go and just make that, make those large things happen quite quickly. Yeah, sure. So, you've just getting back to your backstory, you've gone through many different company structures and sizes, as we've mentioned. And you come to the big dog, the bigger four big in, certainly in our world of dairy. And obviously, they're now not just dairy, they're across multiple food categories. What was your initial, so your initial role was operations or CFO? CFO. So, my quiz progressed through the finance. Yep. Filled always with an operational bent. Yep. So, I've got my first CFO role when I was at Mars, Finance Director Roles, I call it then, and then sort of followed the CFO path into Beagus, the CFO. And your initial take, when you first entered the world of Beag of Foods, but still very heavily on the dairy side of the world, what was your take on from your experience of we've come from and coming into the world of dairy? Is there anything that kind of stood out for you as I think this is a bit of an odd industry? Oh no, I'd always loved dairy, so I forgot a chance for a side story. We've always got time for a side story. My great grandfather, left Melbourne in the late 1800s and went to become a dairy farmer in North Victoria and he settled on the banks of the Gumbau. Creek, which is still run by my family members today, that original farm. It's called Leven Bray because the family migrated a generation early from Scotland and they lived on the banks of the Leven Bray. So that's sort of been the family and my grandfather was one of four sons that didn't stay. He was the only one who did the Stagdairy Farm. He kind of, kind of, kind of, kind of, came down to Melbourne. Now there is a, I don't know if you've listened to the Barry, the Barry podcast, but there is a, there is a carol of any way into banking. As far as successfuls, a real part. So dairy farming into banking. Yeah, and it's a thing. Yeah, and then one of his sons went back and dairy farmed on the morning financiala. He was actually the last farmer on the morning financiala. He supplied the Chelsea plant, which we now Yes, you're orange, which we now own. And my father used to spend all these university holidays working at the Leachful Cheafs factory and sometimes into Strathman, which we also now own. So there's sort of a strong lead to dairy. So I grew up sort of at my uncles or cousins places wandering around their dairy, wandering around their dairy. And my dad would often fill in a milk for my uncle. And so, someone in the blood. So someone in the blood. So, dad had always had this affiliation with dairy. And then, I was the CFO Melbourne IT at the time. And I was having lunch with some guys, and they said, "Oh, you have family members for dairy farmers." I said, "Yes, I do." They said, "Would you be interested in helping us look at a business case? We want to sort of build a, this is back in 2015." They said, "Would you be interested in helping us just build a business case? We want to put together a proposal to build an American barn style dairy in Australia. We want to raise $100 million and pull together this dairy." And I said, "Yeah, why not?" So, and I got quite attached to it to the point where I was driving around in all the Victoria looking at sides. So I reached out to people in America, and I was just, you know, barn experts in America, and I was down at Cobden speaking to guys who built dearies. And in the end, I was just rich. You had to people in the industry just to try and find stuff. I was amazed that how many people wanted to, you know, were happy to chat to me. And I rang and got called. Someone said, "Go and speak to Ian, helladay at dairy Australia." So I went and chat to him, and I was booked in for an hour, and I was talking to him about who I could talk to, and he was giving me all this information and ended up spending two hours with him. And he said, "I should speak to Beger." And so I looked at, worked out who I could speak to at Beger, and I realized I had a connection with a director at Beger, so I went along and spoke to him about this project. Anyway, we got a long way down the track with the project. We built the whole feasibility study and everything, and then Mary Goldman imploded and sort of the project ended up getting benched. But about three years later, I got a call from a head hunter, and they said, "Look, we're looking for a CFL at Beger." But one of the directors said they met you three or four years ago when you were chatting about doing a barn-style dairy, and they said that you were passionate, quite passionate, or quite interested in the dairy industry, and they said, "We should put you on the list for the CFO role, for the candidate's list, for the CFO role at Beger." So I ended up, that's how I ended up meeting Barry and ended up sort of getting involved in Beger. So I'd always had a bit of a feel for a couple of links to dairy. So when the job came up, I was so quite excited to be sort of going to the industry. Probably not as excited as some of my family members. Cheese lovers, I assume? Well, yeah, they used to ring me up and talk to me about my football team and how they're going. Now they ring me up and talk about dairy price. Absolutely. It's the hot topic. Again, probably going down a little rabbit hole, and just from what you said earlier, just around that investigation of the American style farming system, which fair to say is more geared towards corporate investment and huge scale. So thousands of cows on a fairly small footprint, bring feed in as opposed to our model of three to 200, 300, 400 cows in a family farm out on pasture. So very, very different. One is super scale and one is probably not to that scale. Very much for a line on the family legacy and the kids coming on and taking over the family farm. From your experience back in 2015 when you're going through that project, did you see that there was a place for that daring system in the Australian industry or was it just too far out there in the way we price milk and it was hard to attract investment, etc. So, short answer is yes, I do. But I think it's like anything a business you need balance. You need to expose to lots of different breadth of supply because that's what builds a resilient industry. So whilst I think it's great to have, I think I'd love more corporate investment, I'd love bigger corporate farmers, but you also need a smaller family farm as well because I think anything, you know, they all work on different constructions. They give you the best chance of having a resilient industry. So I just park that. I think our big issue is, I look, I'm really passionate about Southeast Asia. And I think North Asia is always going to have great opportunities with China and Japan, but I look at Southeast Asia, I think of countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines. You could throw Vietnam in there as well, but you know, there's been some really good work done. If you think about the addressable market, they're a competitor Australia. So we talk about at the moment, there's about 9.4 million families in Australia that have more than 15,000 US dollars, supposedly income. And they're the sorts of families that buy bigger product. By 2040, that's estimated to grow to 11.4 million. So that's not bad. That's good organic growth. There's Southeast Asian countries I was talking about. They've got about their addressable market. There's about 25 million. Let's call it families families with 15,000 US dollars, supposedly income. So equivalent of what we've got Australia. So already then more than two times the size of the Australian market. By 2040, that would be about 250 million. So we've, and they get a lot of protein. It's B for dairy or whatever it might be or different forms of protein. And so we in Australia have an outstanding opportunity to provide them with that. You look at some of the production pressures happening in Europe. And very I'm sure we've talked about this with what's happening with them closing down their production capability for sustainability issues and all the rest of them just running out of sheer space. In Australia, if we're smart, we should be able to supply a huge amount of that protein requirement. We're just up the road. They just up the road to Southeast Asia. So I believe nothing would excite me more than to see pool growth back to where it wasn't beyond at the turn of the century. And so I think that corporate probably has to play a role on that. But as I said, you still want to balance to create a resilient industry. So I think there's still room for the family farm. But we do need to provide corporate incentive there to really keep that moving. Yeah, that is probably my view as well that if we're going to be, if we are truly going to grow milk pool and whilst we didn't necessarily speak about Europe with Barry, the one thing we did talk about was the dairy industry as a large and probably lamenting the fact that we have gone backwards on milk growth. And perhaps there isn't a coherent one voice for the industry as a whole across processes, dairy farmers, and all the participants in there of a vision that you're kind of laying out there, which is we've got the ability and the opportunity to feed however many families you mentioned, 220, 250 million families on our doorstep. So I think that yes, I agree with you that the opportunity is there. It's a matter of whether we can get our act together, agree as an industry. And with a coherent messaging that goes across every part of the industry, instead of what we currently have, which is a whole bunch of different aspects of the industry pulling in different directions. And just and just, you know, it is frustrating that we very, very get balanced views on the industry. So look, I every industry has its difficulties. And you know, even out, you know, talking to farmers in Western Victoria, it's really tough out there. And we get that and we're trying to help and provide a way forward through that. I think the milk prices, she ended up, you know, hopefully going putting the most farmers back into a sustainable, profitable position that would be my view to just looking at the data. But the general discussion in the public arena is all negative. And when I go down to Western Victoria and into parts of Gippsland, you've got some terrific stories. I spoke to five farmers in Gippsland at one meeting who are all increasing their heardseys, a significant leadership and opinion there is back. I spoke to a number of farmers in Western Victoria despite tough years are all investing. I don't know if it's an online acquisition or increased capability on dairy or heardseys or they're doing some amazing stuff. And yet there are some farmers who tend to be at the small end who are doing it a bit tough. But I think we need to have a common voice that's at least positive about the industry. And it's probably, it is. It's just so negative. Do you know what? You're being a leader across all those companies we mentioned before and now in Beg a Foods and you would be acutely aware of the need for the impact of culture. Yep. You know, the whole saying that culture eats strategy for breakfast and in our experience, that is 100% true. And getting back to the industry as a whole, I think it's the culture of negativity and talking everything down and everything so hard and everything so tough out there and retailers aren't paying the price and everything's doom and gloom. And even in the good years, it's still this pile of negativity that's over our industry. But there is so many great stories. As you mentioned, again, getting back to, I was speaking to someone else in the industry and they're talking about the town hall kind of dairy farm and I'm not this story specifically about dairy farmers, but I actually don't think it's just them on the cultural view, but having a town hall in a town hall or in a local town. And there was people at the front agitating, you know, about, you know, it's not enough money, et cetera, et cetera. But on the back row, there was a whole bunch of farmers down there who were doing really, really well, but didn't say anything. And they are super successful, extremely well-run organizations or individual companies. But it was like you needed to reverse the order and bring them to the front to tell their great story that could help the farmers that weren't doing so well. Yeah. And just get positively back into the industry. So the number of people I speak to who have built significant asset bases and many of them started this, share farmers. Now on their own properties that were placed next door and there's some really good stories of a generational world to accumulation. Yeah. But we never hear any of those. We just don't, not enough, not enough. And I think that again, getting back to the culture, I think it might be also an Australian cultural thing of the taught poppy syndrome as well. You don't want to, to your own horn too much. But I think that if you had more examples, really highlighted in the industry, both from a dairy farmer perspective, process are other people involved in the industry of God, this is what can be achieved. Yeah, then there will be more aspiration, will be more hope, more involved, and it will attract more investment. Yeah, so I saw my first positive that was in the stock on the ant last week, I think was a positive article. I actually meant to reach out to the person who wrote it, I've got her name, but she's a, she and her husband have done the amazing job in Western Victoria. And how do you, how do you, how do you bring those stories to life? And, you know, we just need to do more of that. But, but I think, and our debate, even on the recent calls on worse debates, you know, I think the debate was so shallow in this country around, you know, affordability and the food industry and what's happening. If you want to make, if you want to make food more affordable, get to the root cause, which is productivity. Yeah. Not just at, at, at, you know, help people be more productive, help them be more competitive. We're also going to change, no one owes you anything. So how does farmers, processes and retailers and whoever else is involved in the value chain get better? And so, once again, I hear people screaming about calls and will leaks, you know, just get on and get better. And so, and what we don't realize is we're actually going to start to compete against, you know, international, you know, the world, globalisation is taking a little bit of a hit, but fundamentally, we're still competing against, you know, the countries around us. And so, I was in Thailand six weeks ago. I went to the best beverage plant I've seen. So better than anything in Australia, I would have thought. Some tour of just built a new canning plant, I think in Queensland, I haven't seen that, but this, this was a 500 million litre plant, Schmick, really Schmick, top gear, fully automated. We're not talking about cheap labor, cheap labor plate, fully automated. I reckon that plant would have taken us three to four years to build here in Australia by the time you went through the planning and everything. They built it in 11 months. Yeah. And I reckon it would have been a significantly reduced cost. On a two unit basis, it will smash anything we've got in this country. Now, we're lucky we've got all the product up the road, the raw ingredients, but we've got to get better, we've got to get more productive and so I see, but we need to be positive about our industry and we need to stop, stop saying everything's bad and just work on how we improve. So, you know, we're not talking about the raw material. 100% agree with you. And that point that you made that no one knows you anything is spot on in my humble opinion. No one knows you anything. And to be honest, when things don't work out so well for you, no one's really shedding too much of a tear, right? No. Like they're not, they're getting along in their own life. So you kind of, you know, you'd build up that resilience and you go, okay, what can we do better? And again, getting back to that positivity and just to kind of put a bond, this conversation around that I'm still a firm believer that we need a united voice for our industry. But not to necessarily big, big for government assistance or going back to those days or going back to the retailer saying we demand more money. It is around those stories of how can we be more productive? How can we attract, how can we be an industry that attracts investment to our industry as opposed to it being to be for other ag sectors? How do we make it a really compelling story that we want investment in our world? Because we number one, we think it's a great world to be in, but number two, it's got a huge future of feeding not only Australia, but also the great region that we live in. And how do you attract bright people? Yep, bright passionate people. And so that's the other thing that annoys me because Deary sort of has a stigma to it that it doesn't deserve. So, I think we want to be attracting bright, ambitious people and the capital that they generate with them because they're pushing and bringing bright new ideas and how can we do things? And that's why the box here do things. Yes, I'd like to have a bit more positive. I'd like to have a bit more positive. Yeah, exactly. And a good news story would be nice. And also one where there's a winner and a loser like the conversation around milk price. So it's either farmers are losing in process as a winning or vice versa, farmers are winning in process. So it's always someone's losing, which is again, but anyway, we could go on. We could go on and on that point endlessly as we probably have overdone a little bit just there. But getting back to your experience in Beger and one thing I did want to ask around your experience 'cause you're coming from a really unique view of being both in, as we mentioned earlier, private businesses, small businesses, medium businesses are now a large listed business. Are they fundamentally the same at the end of the day? No, they're not. So more around, I think they've, so for me and my role, I've probably, I've been really fortunate to work in different models with different owners and different boards and different drivers. And so that's helped me develop a playbook that I now use at Beger. So, and I think that you know, you pluck stuff from your experience and then you take that into your playbook that you develop for your strategy for your organisation. So I would say that from there, there are tenets to the similar. So Mars, for instance, the Mars family has a hundred-year view. Yeah, they are like out there. Yeah, and there's some great sustain to become some fairly good literature and reveal how that business has grown over the last hundred years and they are. They are amazing. We do deal with Mars just very quickly. We do with Mars and you know, they're now currently still about sustainability and they've, as you mentioned, they've used ten to thirty, fifty years. Generational. And maybe they're financial models around how they want to sweat their asset base and their financial principles that they've really been in the business since they died. Yeah. And so, fascinating why they look at their eternal life. total assets, they look at their profitability, not from a profitability this year, but actually from a long-term profitability that they find sustainable to maintain reinvestment and give back to the consumer. So really interesting piece, it's very difficult and a listed company to be ever 100 year outlook because you've got to sell that to shareholders and buy you out of your business all the time. In fact, we get mission on six monthly installments. Yeah. So you sort of go from a family owned business to a public listed company and then even having worked in private equity which tends to work on a three-year time frame and you look at incremental change in months, not even halves because the quickie you change the profile of the business, the quicker it can be. So the better return on investments. So there's a really different set of numbers. So you've got to sort of find the mix that's right for you and your shareholders and your strategy. So we so at Beger we have you know our strategy is a five-year strategy bit is based on our purpose and vision. So our purpose is to be is great food for a better future and a vision around that is to be a great Australian food company. So when I go to the purpose, the purpose looks at the business over the long term, great food for a better future and so our job is to produce the highest quality product that meets or exceeds our customer and consumers expectations every time they buy and they'll make us relevant. And if we do that and do that really well, the vision is to be here in another hundred and twenty-six years time. So my job within a five-year strategy is to manage a capital profile which will be about four or five hundred million dollars with a spend, free acquisitions. That would go to probably a billion dollars if you don't include the acquisition. We made it line dear end drinks. My role is to manage that over a five-year period so I pass the business on to my success in a better place than what I found it. But also if over that period we've invested close to a billion dollars, that hopefully sets the business up to be in a good position for the next fifteen to twenty years. If I've done a good job of my team and I've done a good job, we hopefully will have the business in a place where it can have the right options available to it over the next fifteen to twenty years. And so that's how I tend to look at so a five-year strategy that's developing a profile for today that meets shareholder expectations but also sets up the right the right profile, capital profile for the business of the next fifteen to twenty years. And so that's then a matter of packaging that up into a five-year strategy. Communicating that to share holders and then giving them milestones or or or or street signs that show that you're going in the right direction every six months. Yeah and that was actually it was somewhat of a loaded question because that's what I see from the outside looking in obviously coming from being in I was fine for a rather small family related business and you know we will we our vision is three to five years out there and we will do things that don't necessarily result in a great outcome in the current six months but with the vision that we're investing for that that that timeframe. Whereas what I see from a from a from a listing company is you get very much that that daily scoreboard of the share price you get the shareholders agitating some agitating for what have you done for me lately scenario which can distract you for that if not run well I would assume can distract you from that longer vision of what you know is right. Yes so you always seduced by the share price. Yep and it's really important because yeah shareholders invest in money so really so you keep an eye on the share price but I tend to what I tend to do is say this is what I said I was going to do is what we said we're going to do over five years this is how I sort of see it playing out in six month increments mark me on my journey as opposed to as opposed to what I've achieved one of it yeah and so and you know like sometimes like two years ago when I sort of first took over we were working really hard and a share price dropped to $2.39 we were doing everything back then that would eventually set us up from this year where our share price has been at around $5.50 so so you just got to keep stay the course keep doing what you said you're going to do stay connected to shareholders but stay true to your strategy and achieving achieving the outcomes that you want to achieve so it's just getting that balance right and having a really supportive board working closely with your board so it's just communication you know team nothing's ever linear this is what we said we're going to do this is how it's playing out this is what we're thinking about it you know this is that which hasn't quite come yet or it's come a little bit early but this is we're still on track and and keep aligning your operational performance with your strategy your strategy is aligned with your shareholder's expectations shareholder's expectations are aligned with your share price as I said it's never linear no but but staying the course on those which is can be super difficult right to stay the course when you're being somewhat questioned and somewhat attached to that period which is kind of gets to get to the period around around leadership because you're talking about that that experience of $2.39 price now it's doubled and you've got a perfect concept there that it was definitely definitely worthwhile to withstand that pressure and and kind of those that scrutiny of no doubt from from shareholders and and people in that industry of investment industry getting back to your own leadership yeah views and qualities etc obviously you've got your internal pressures of things that can go wrong on a daily basis and sometimes small and sometimes they're very big and no doubt you've had both of someone coming through your door and and close the door and say 'P' I've got some bad news for you and no doubt you can feel yourself go 'what' and then also the proof the outside noise which is something that I personally don't have to deal with but you do around that so your leadership journey and how do you feel you cope with those scenarios of that that ebb and flow of good news and bad news oh and being able to withstand that pressure yeah so I live by the motto and it's not mine but in fact I think it's a carry pack of motto nothing's ever as good or as bad it's one of the first seams and so you know we'll if you would believe our guidance this year which you should because we haven't come off it you know we'll have a really good year this year so you used to go out of bad year nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems there's always challenges and everything you do and so you know I think the challenge is to try and be level through the bad times and the good times because the sort of things are really good there's always be something there's always something that falls coming the wax coming and when things are really bad they you're not going to you know you can turn them and and and and there'll always be a way through it so try and stay away from the extremes that's easier said than done it is and I think it's something that I've got a lot better with as I've got older so the 33 year old me would have reacted very different differently to the 53 year old me yeah and I think that as a leader that's just something you try and develop and you take feedback and how you turn up and how you react and your your respond to different things is is yeah evolves over time but I think you've always got to work on that yeah and so I do all sorts of stuff to try and improve that so I do a lot of reflection before the day starts so I walk for an hour and a half before the day starts and I actually go through my day yep I go through the meetings I'm going to have I go through the personal I'm going to deal with and I start to prepare myself for how I will react in those moments because I know that'd be really important that I've sharpened the best way possible and what people don't need for me as a leader is a reaction that that seems things the wrong way so that's that people are watching aren't they a lot of people watch people watch and take you yeah take you so so I need to understand my weaknesses and and and how I sometimes come across and just make sure that I'm still turning up in an authentic way but but turning up in the right way to get the best out of the people around me and so I think you get that's a journey for all of us for yet is and and little things help that so mentors help that feedback from the team helps that having kids has helped me a lot to leave with full take down your kids That's going to build resilience. But they challenge you the best way. Oh, yeah. Because I know you. I know you. And you're best. I know you at your worst. And they know which buttons to push. And then you realize when you've turned up at your best or your worst fault. And so that's the best way to start to get you to reflect. I think Peridings are fantastic for management. So which I try and sit in that space as evenly as I can. And then just because what makes a business great is everyone turning up and being the best they can be. And if they're the best they can be, they'll give you discretionary effort. It ends the discretionary effort across an organization that really makes a motor. That's a great saying. I haven't heard of that discretionary effort. Yeah. We're talking about a lot of that. That's a really good term. I like that. How do you cope from away from work and your, you mentioned mentors, et cetera. But what's you going to to de-stress and decompress? Or family time with my four sons. Yeah. Yeah, family time with four sons. That's what fills your bucket. It fills my back and friends. Close friends. Yeah. Yeah. So, but just spending time with the kids. I love to get off. I love to break. So, I love the outdoors for me. Being outside is a really good break and doing stuff. Yep. I'm not a really good sister person. But then I love work. I think you've got to be engaged with your work. I genuinely love. Arriving at work each day and getting involved with a team of people. And I say works no different from a game of sport. Yeah. You're just trying to win. And competing or being out there, competing with a bunch of people who you who energize you is a great, white and spend a day. It is. I do think you need to enjoy it. I think even at it's worst, you know, it's challenging. And then, but then you get up the next day and you kind of energised again and go, OK, let's go. Let's deal with it. Deal with the problem. But I do think you add it's heart. You need to enjoy what you do. And the directions with people. And the interaction and getting that energy from people. We're actually coming very close to the end. Sorry, I'm just joking. Hopefully we've covered enough. No, no, no, no, this is definitely, definitely the direction we want to take these chats is just that somewhat meandering. But it's been fantastic to hear your take on it, particularly someone coming from, as we mentioned, many times. But that different approach before you finally arrived at the dairy industry, although it was that family connection, but just that breadth of view and probably more from, as you mentioned, more the finance side of the business as opposed to operations or the product category. So it's been fantastic to listen to you insights. Just one couple of final questions. Where to, I guess, getting back to that industry question first, where to from here for the Australian dairy industry? And then there's a second question, where to from here for Beger? Yes, I think the Australian dairy industry amazing opportunities, a bit of it to be a protein provider for the region. And therefore, we're good at it and we should continue to grow it. So I would like to think that the dairy industry now starts to grow. For Beger, both Barry and I are extremely passionate about this. It is, we think we need more great Australian food companies because most of our food is run by large multinationals. Nothing against that. But if you're going to really drive the food in this country, you need Australian businesses investing in Australia. And so this is our home and therefore we want to invest in our home and this is it for us. We don't have a head office in Chicago or Virginia or China. This is it. And so I'm really passionate about leading the way in creating a greater Australian food company that invests back in the industry in Australia and hopefully brings a lot of other companies with it. Absolutely. Of course, fine. And how do we just create a really strong vibrant food industry? And I think we've sort of sold our soul a bit. Anyone that gets to any size and even loss is usually it's picked up by a large multinational. And as I said, that's not the end of the world. And I'm not throwing mud. But how could it lead to have some more greater Australian food businesses? So that's my vision for bigger. And I think the team are driven by that. It's a wonderful vision. And I think it's definitely valid. But as you mentioned earlier in the chat, the opportunity is there for us. Yeah. It's just whether we seize it. Yeah. It's built. It's right there. It's right there. And we can go one or two ways. We can kind of shrink or we can go and go and grab it. And completely agree. Yeah. Pete, thank you very much. Once again, I know you're a very busy man. So I'm sure in your hour and a half walk this morning, you weren't necessarily thinking too much about this. But I do appreciate your investment and your stories and your insights today are very much appreciated. Thank you for joining us at the Osfone Bite Sides Podcast. (upbeat music)