E87 Con Frantzeskos: The Unashamed Capitalist: Building AI Ventures and Billions in Revenue

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In this episode of The Company Road Podcast, Chris Hudson speaks with Con Frantzeskos, a visionary marketing and technology leader who has generated billions in revenue for giants like Emirates, Coca-Cola, and ANZ. Con is the former founder of digital strategy consultancy Penso and is currently building AI-native ventures like SalesChef.ai and Ansett.Travel.

Buckle up friends, this is a hard-hitting conversation that contrasts the short-termism often seen in Australia with the ambitious, long-term vision of the Middle East and the US. 

Con shares why 70% of ASX 200 companies fail to outperform a lump of gold, and what leaders must do to stop managing decline and start designing the future.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• "Strategy Karaoke": Why most companies are just reading lyrics off a screen rather than building genuine strategy.
• The Gold Standard Test: Con’s analysis revealing that 70% of ASX 200 companies have underperformed against gold over the last 20 years.
• Legacy vs. Blank Canvas: A fascinating comparison between Delta Airlines (incumbent) and Riyadh Air (startup) on what they envy about each other.
• Ruthless Prioritisation: How Matt Comyn at CBA destroyed physical touchpoints during COVID to lead the mortgage market.
• The "Rattle" Test: A brilliant story from Emirates about service design—"If you shake an A380, anything that rattles is service."
• Why "The Lucky Country" is not a compliment, and how it breeds complacency in Australian business.
• The five determinants of companies that actually grow: R&D, long-term strategy, export bias, and governance.

Key Links

SalesChef.ai: www.saleschef.ai 

Ansett.Travel: www.ansett.travel 

Con Frantzeskos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/confrantzeskos/ 

About our guest

Constantine (Con) Frantzeskos is one of the world’s most visionary marketing and technology leaders. He is currently building AI-native ventures such as SalesChef.ai and Ansett.Travel, while providing AI and digital strategy consulting to enterprises across Australia, Asia, and the Middle East. Previously, Con founded and exited the international digital strategy consultancy PENSO. 

He has held leadership positions at Edelman, DDB, and Ogilvy, designing campaigns and products that delivered billions in new revenue for brands like Emirates, Coca-Cola, ANZ, and Total Tools. Con is a regular columnist in the Australian Financial Review and a former Director of Victoria’s startup agency, LaunchVic.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneurship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.

Support the show

For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/

Episode Transcript

Chris Hudson (00:07):
Hey everyone.
Welcome back to the Company RoadPodcast which is dedicated to
exploring how internalinnovators or innovators and
intrapreneurs can drivefundamental change and create
value within theirorganizations.
And today we're speaking with atrue visionary.
He sits at the heart of cuttingedge digital strategy,
marketing, artificialintelligence, and yeah, someone
I've had the pleasure of knowingand working with since 2017.

(00:30):
And yeah he's not just advisedon major transformations, but he
is really designed and executeddigital businesses, campaigns,
experiences, lots of differentthings that have generated
billions in revenue for some ofthe world's biggest brands.
So Con really happy to have youon the show.
Thanks so much for coming on.

Con Frantzeskos (00:46):
Thanks for having me on.
Chris, it's really lovely tochat to you as we have for many
years together.

Chris Hudson (00:51):
That's it.
That's it.
Yeah.
It'd be good to share some ofthe types of conversations that
we usually have when we meetsomewhere in Melbourne.
But yeah, I just wanna introduceyou a little bit more.
So you are, you're a recognizedglobal leader.
You've successfully built andexited the International digital
strategy consultancy, Penso.
And before that you had seniorleadership roles across Asia,
Australia are major global firmslike Ogilvy, DDB Edelman, and

(01:12):
you've worked with huge giantslike Emirates, Coca-Cola, ANZ
and many more, I'm sure.
And yeah, you're not resting onyour laurels at the minute.
It seems like you are.
You are currently deeplyinvolved in building the future
and launching AI native venturessuch as Saleschef.ai and
Ansett.travel and advising majorenterprises in their AI and
digital strategies at the momentas well.

(01:33):
So yeah, a lot's going on foryou.
And you're a columnist in theAustralian Financial Review.
You previously served asdirector for Launch Vic.
So yeah you always have aninteresting story to tell.
I can't wait to get into theconversation

Con Frantzeskos (01:44):
yeah, likewise, Chris.

Chris Hudson (01:45):
Yeah AI might be a starting point.
You've obviously you're deep init at the minute, having worked
in it very closely for yearsnow, but it just feels you've
done so much in your career it'shard to know where to start, but
why don't we, maybe we juststart, before we go into ai,
maybe we just start with a bitabout you and, the younger Con,
if we can imagine that.
What were the early signs of anacutely applied curiosity and
creativity and where did thatall come from, do you think?

Con Frantzeskos (02:07):
Yeah I was very fortunate growing up.
My parents were in, my wholefamily was in the hospitality
business.
So very.
Well-known, very famous venuessuch as the Melbourne Metro
Nightclub, inflation, GrainStore, a whole range of venues.
And they were playgrounds to acertain degree for adults, but
also for me as a kid.

(02:27):
I remember I was about 13 and mydad said, Hey, I wanna do an
underage nightclub on a Saturdayduring the day, or a tea party
as they're known in many partsof the world.
How might we go around buildingit?
And that was my first kind ofexperience in, in marketing, so
to speak.
And then doing that day in, dayout and getting a sense as a
teenager and then into a youngadult as to, what were the
numbers, how are we doing it?

(02:48):
Filling a, an empty box fournights a week, working with some
really.
Entrepreneurial kids and smartadult minds as well.
And also the, I'll call it theexperimentation, but also the
ability to say, Hey, by the way,we've got 30 or 40 kids there
that we are paying money to lickstamps and send out envelopes.
There's this thing called email.

(03:09):
Why don't we, why don't we tryusing that?
And by the time I was 18, I hadan email database of about
38,000 kids on FileMaker Pro.
And then the web was invented,this was all pre-web.
This is in the, late eighties,early nineties.
And then, so it was that sort ofexperimentation and creative
environment that really helped.
And what was really interestingout of that environment, there
were a lot of really.

(03:31):
Really brilliant marketers werebuilt a lot of people that have
gone on to run their ownagencies.
A lot of people that areactually working in marketing in
senior enterprise rolesglobally.
It was a real factory for kindof creative, innovative and
forward thinking, but also verycommercially driven, extremely
commercially driven.
You live or die by the amount ofpeople that walk in the door.

(03:51):
And so that's, that was really awonderful foundation for me.
And then went and studiedeconomics, went and studied grad
dip and applied finance.
'cause I always felt that, thebusiness of the business is the
most important part of it.
How does it drive revenue?
How does it drive margin?
How does it drive uniteconomics?
And then worked in.
I guess from entertainment andmusic that was an easy kind of

(04:12):
career move.
So the first probably eight to10 years of my career were in
music and entertainment, whichwas wonderful.
And that very acutely helped meunderstand when running music
business understand the role ofcontent and distribution and
really distribution, especiallyconsidering the tremendous,
revolution, you might say, inthe way in which we went from,

(04:34):
vinyl and CDs to MP3s,streaming, et cetera.
That whole business model hascompletely changed.
So I was there for the earlypart of that and then thought
the lessons that I've learned inthe music business around
distribution, around go tomarket will I think be relevant
to every other company in theworld given the changes that are

(04:54):
happening with the internet.
And again, this is all in thekind of.
20 odd years ago early, earlytwo thousands.
So then I moved over intoconsultancy, and I've been in
consultancy pretty much eversince.

Chris Hudson (05:06):
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, wow.
What a journey.
And yeah, I could see where someof the influences would've
followed you through some ofthose times and into the present
as well.
And, some of the ventures thatyou're looking at the moment.
But before we get into that, Ijust think that it feels like at
the heart from what I'm hearing,you are able to creatively,
think about what's in front ofyou, from a business landscape
point of view, but you're alsoapplying commercial acumen to

(05:27):
really drive that through andfocus on the things that really
matter.
That, does that feel like at theheartland of how you approach
your consultancy and what youdo,

Con Frantzeskos (05:35):
It's all about, as I say, I'm an unashamed arch
capitalist.
The core values are that, we arehere to drive business success
and growth.
And when I say we, we inbusiness are here to drive
business success and growth,because it's almost a truism or
a tautology, if you can't drivegreater margin and greater
revenues and drive future demandand ensure that your unit

(05:59):
economics are healthier.
That's the only reason why we'rehere.
How we manifest that and how wedeliver that.
Some people do it at a costcutting perspective, and that's
the vast majority of people.
It's very easy to find places tocut costs.
I prefer the other way.
I prefer to say, Hey, how do webuild the top line?
How do we increase revenues?
How do we actually build somesort of robust elasticity demand

(06:21):
so that we can actually demandmore money on a per unit basis
and have that go to the bottomline.
And the way in which I'vespecifically brought that to
life is through a combinationof, as you said, marketing and
technology.
The marketing is how do we makehumans interested in doing it?
And then the technology is howdo we do it at some sort of
scale?
How do we do it at some sort oflevel of efficiency and

(06:42):
effectiveness?

Chris Hudson (06:43):
Yeah, I really like that.
And it's yeah, it brings a lotof focus to what otherwise feels
like a very, a very kind ofoverwhelmed, saturated landscape
that we all work in and we allhear about.
What are some of the majordistractions that you're seeing
business leaders or businessesmaybe as a whole, just focusing
on at the minute to get in theway of that, would you say?

Con Frantzeskos (07:03):
I think it depends on where you are in the
world.
Because I do a lot of work inthe Middle East and and the US
and I tend to find in the MiddleEast and the US right now, in
particular, in the Middle East,there is a relentless focus on
growth.
And long-term growth, how do webuild the businesses of the
future?
How do we build, world beatingbusinesses of the future?

(07:25):
And I'm finding that reallyinspiring and really
interesting.
What is it that we need to do toset up a business, not just to
be okay if we've got theexisting incumbents here and
we're here not to say, Hey,let's be, 3% better.
But how do we actually say,look, there are lessons in what
incumbency has, but what weactually think if we're gonna be
building the business of thefuture, let's actually forget

(07:46):
legacy.
And a good example of thatRiyadh Air, which is pretty much
the newest airline in the worldout of Saudi Arabia, obviously.
There was a really interestingconversation at the Future
Investment Initiative in Riyadha few weeks ago, which was with
Tony Douglas, who is the CEO ofRiyadh Air and the CEO of Delta.
The two of them were in a panelacross from each other, and the

(08:08):
host asked the question.
Looking at each other, what isit that you envy about each
other's?
The other person's position?
In other words, Delta is theincumbent, Riyadh Air is the,
the startup and.
I thought that was a reallyinteresting question.
It was a fantastic questionbecause the guy from Delta's oh,
I wish I didn't have legacy.
I wish I didn't have this.
I wish I didn't have, I wish Ihad the blank canvas to do

(08:30):
whatever I wanted and build itin the way that, that we could
without any sort of,transformation, tension or
inertia.
And Tony Douglas is there going,I wish I had the scale, I wish I
had the brand.
I wish I had all those things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're the sort of, I guesswhat I'd say is the really
interesting conversations thatare happening around the
boardrooms in the Middle Eastthat I'm finding that I'm, lucky
to be part of some of thoseconversations.

(08:52):
So I'm finding that reallyinspiring.
I think in Australia there is areal, let's say.
A lack of longer term view, andI don't mean longer term in the
10 or 20 years, even though thatwould be wonderful.
But even in the next three tofive years, very few
organizations have three to fiveyear strategies that are
anything more than a kind ofwhat you'd call a, strategy

(09:13):
karaoke, where they've put a fewwords up there and they sing
along.
I think the distractions inAustralia are with
short-termism.
With just, I guess what youmight call catchphrases.
Oh, we're using ai, or we'reusing this, or we're putting
these initiatives in place,rather than actually saying,
where will this organization be?
Where will this company be infive to 10 years, and what do we
need to do to get there?
I know it sounds obvious, butnot many organizations are

(09:36):
thinking that way in Australia,so I see that distraction as
being short-termism andtokenism.
In the US I think there'sprobably a little bit of
distraction around, what Trump'sdoing.
And my sense is it's a bit likewhat Warren Buffett used to say.
Don't worry about what themarket's doing, just worry about
what your business is doing andbuild your business
appropriately.
That's probably as good a reviewas I could give you over

(09:57):
distractions.

Chris Hudson (09:58):
That's all right.
No, that's good.
I love what you were sayingabout the, the Saudi example.
It's kinda like darkness hasbeing the absence of light, in
that you know what you have iswhat you don't have.
It sounds very obvious, you are,you're obviously yearning for
something else, but in thismarket, what, if it's
short-termism, that's holding usback then, where does the unlock
exist and what can we do there,do you think?

Con Frantzeskos (10:17):
One of the things is, how competitive is
Australia?
Yeah.
And my sense is that, Australiais the lucky country.
And for those who have read thebook, the quote, lucky Country
is not a compliment.
Lucky Country is about basicallythe comfort of basically having,
incredible mineral resourcewealth that's paid for
everything.
And therefore the business modelfor Australia largely is that,

(10:41):
it's good quality of life paidfor by minerals that then funds
immigration that then makesproperty prices go up, which
makes everyone feel wealthierand more comfortable.
Therefore, they don't have towork that hard at work to
compete because, we don't wannacompete too hard in Australia.
That's the sense that.

(11:04):
One of the things there that Ithink is really acute and really
necessary is to say what doesthat growths look like?
Are we actually wanting to grow?
What is our frame of reference?
Or are we happy to just track, Iguess the benchmark?
Now a couple of months ago, or abit close to a year ago, I put

(11:24):
together a paper, a submissionfor the R&D inquiry that was
happening for the federalgovernment.
And that was a, it's a reallyinteresting inquiry of which
there is a kind of a preliminarypaper that's been released, but
there's more to be released.
And that board, it had peoplelike Robyn Denham, who's
obviously the chair of tesla Dr.
Kate Cornick, CEO of Launch Vic.

(11:45):
Others, some really great peopleon that board.
Yeah.
And they asked me to submit justsome thoughts and one of the
things that I did is I did ashort analysis of the top ASX
200 listed companies over thelast 20 years.
Yeah.
Against the benchmark of gold.
In other words, gold an inertmetal, yes.

(12:07):
It's a store of value.
Yes, it's a benchmark.
But how have Australianorganizations or listed
companies compared in theirtotal shareholder returns over
20 years versus just holdinggold now?
The results were not very good.
So what it showed was inAustralia that 70% of listed

(12:27):
companies of the ASX 200underperformed versus gold.
Yeah.
So only 30% of companies werebetter than a lump of metal
versus the US.
Any guesses as to what thenumber was in the US?
So in Australia it was 70%underperformed.
Yeah.
In US it was 70% overperformedover or 30% underperformed.

(12:51):
Yeah.
And Europe.
That everyone talks about.
Europe.
Oh, Europe's.
Europe's a basket case.
It's basically an open airmuseum.
Oh.
There's no good companies there.
What was the number in Europe?
Take a guess.
Australia's 70% underperformedin the US only 30% under formed
what was Europe.
Fifteen?
No, in Europe.
40% underperformed.
So in other words europe wasjust behind America and

(13:13):
Australia was way behind therest of the pack.
Yeah.
Yep.
Interesting.
And so what drove those?
So I looked at the determinantsof that growth.
What makes for a company thatactually exceeds gold?
In other words, the vastminority of companies in
Australia.
Now that doesn't include thingslike great startups like Canva,

(13:35):
et cetera, et cetera.
It is just listed companies, soI know there's only a limited
sample set there.
The analysis showed basicallythere were five determinants to
what makes you better than alump of metal.
In other words, we turn up towork or I could just simply just
buy some gold and keep it in thebank.
So the first thing was aresearch and innovation budget.

(13:56):
So one of the great examples wasCSL close to 10% of their
revenues on research andinnovation.
Yeah, most companies inAustralia, it's less than 1%,
but when I say most companies ofthe ASX 200 cohort, and that was
the difference between the onesthat were in the top 30 versus
the ones that weren't a muchbigger focus on r and d,

(14:17):
innovation, et cetera.
The second one was, did theyhave a long-term strategy?
Not, was it good or bad?
Did they simply have one?
Yeah.
Most don't.
The third one, and again, in noparticular order was export
bias, and the other two werelargely around governance.
In other words, what was the mixof people on their boards?

(14:38):
Were they all just risk peopleor did they actually have people
who were subject matter experts,blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
But the point I'm making is, yousee what I'm saying?
A genuine bias for forwardthinking.
A genuine bias for growth.
A genuine bias for how do we getthere, a genuine bias for
innovation and these things thatthat you and I loved so much.
And that was the differencebetween, the successes and what
we might call the people thatwere just floating along.

(15:00):
Now, the other damning pointabout this was that I hadn't
factored in population growthinto those, into that.
Yeah.
And as population growth inAustralia has been quite
radical.
I think 1.5% is the number Ican't recall exactly off the top
of my head.
So if you're actually thenfactor in the fact that, most of
the organizations in Australiaare selling just to Australians
and the fact that Australia hasgrown, plus we've had, inflation

(15:23):
that number would actually beeven more damning if I'd
factored in population growthwhich I didn't.
So again, the point I'm makingis, these organizations have a
role of their shareholders togrow.
There are some pretty clearthings they need to do.
And I guess that's what you andI are here to do is to help
these organizations, bring thosetangible things to life.
Yeah.
But I think part of the issue inAustralia is the need or the
want.

(15:44):
'cause do we really wanna, at acorporate level, at an
enterprise level, do that?
And I'm not convinced that themajority, or at least the data
suggests that the majority arenot interested.

Chris Hudson (15:54):
Yeah.
It's hard not to agree with someof those facts.
And obviously if you are, likeus, we have a lot of
conversations with leaders,around the market and, we come
up against the things that areprioritized.
You know what is your read onthat?
Because, there, there must besome platitudes happening out
there where, the money and thetime and the resources being
invested in areas that maybewouldn't, lead to that extent of

(16:16):
productivity.
So yeah.
What, what's getting in the way,because there's a lot of
obviously like a customer firstmindset.
There's a lot of things there.
There's investments intechnology.
There's investments in people.
Investments in, probablyprograms of work that have been
running for a long time andmaybe the legacy systems that
are running, licenses, where doyou think the money's going and
where, where do you see some ofthe main tensions happening in

(16:39):
that area?

Con Frantzeskos (16:39):
I think it's about leadership and aspiration
for those organizations.
I is it about saying, do we wantto be as good as anyone else in
our specific cohort or category?
Or do we actually aspire to begreat in ways that might be
let's say new or out of theordinary for our category?

(17:00):
Yeah.
And I'll give you a veryspecific example of a client
I've worked with for 12 years.
Emirates constantly aspires tobe known for things that you
would never expect in thatcategory.
Yeah I'll give you a veryspecific brief.
One of my former clients atEmirates who was leading a
service delivery, which islargely, as he described it, if
you take an A 380 and you shakeit, anything that rattles is

(17:23):
called service.
Now he wants said, I want us tobe known for things that are
again you wouldn't expect froman airline.
One of the examples was, I wantus to have the best coffee in
the world.
So when you're on a plane, anEmirates plane and you have a
coffee, you think.
I dunno whether I've had abetter coffee now.
What needs to work?
What needs to work in theorganization for that?

(17:44):
Firstly, to have that aspirationis the first thing.
Then to work backwards fromthere through that moment of
truth through the entireorganization shows the priority
there.
A another one, and I'll give youan example from Australia, and I
really admire Commonwealth Bankand Matt Comyn, I think is one

(18:06):
of the best executives inAustralia.
Matt Comyn, during COVID had avery aggressive approach towards
the non-physical nature of themortgage process.
And largely that if no one wasable to touch each other or be
near each other during COVID,and there was still, I think.

(18:26):
The team there had countedsomething like 27 physical
signatures that needed to occur,or the movement of documents
between person A and person B,physical, literally, okay, I'm
about to hand you something andpotentially give you COVID.
He said, let's completelydestroy that and let's do it
within weeks, and took theapproach that I want every
single physical touchpointdestroyed.
And if anyone causes any orcomes up with any objection to

(18:49):
that or any reason why thisshouldn't aggressively be
pursued.
They have to report to mepersonally as to why they are
the blocker.
Yeah.
And it got done within about sixweeks.
And CBAs mortgage leadership.
Is a result of that type of whatI'd say ruthless and reckless or
reckless I don't mean recklessin a bad sense.

(19:11):
I mean he just went, Hey guys,we are destroying any barrier.
And I think that sort ofvisionary thought is quite rare
in Australia.
I think it's very rare, but it'sto be applauded.
The reality is that the.
If you look at the share ofmortgages of CBA, it is way
above any other bank inAustralia.
And I think it's the result ofthat type of thinking and that

(19:34):
type of leadership that has ledto that.
Yeah, and Emirates, going backto the Emirates example, it's
why Emirates is just such anastonishingly great product
because you have that visionthat then drives the outcome and
those visions, again, aren'tbuilt on some sort of, fancy
theoretical rubbish.
It's like, how do we makeawesome coffee?
How do we make it really easy toget a mortgage?
There's a not, they're nottricky observations.

(19:58):
They're not crazy, theoreticalthings.
But it's about saying, where dowe wanna be in three to five
years?
I want us to have the best A, B,or C.
It might sound mad, it mightsound wonderful, but, let's make
it happen.
I just don't see a lot of that.
In the vast majority oforganizations, I just see
incrementalism.

Chris Hudson (20:15):
Yeah.
True.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Once you put it that way whereyou say it's actually a small
thing to have good coffee.
You package it up and all of asudden it's this visionary, it's
this visionary piece.
And actually if you think aboutactually it does had to be
prioritized and teams have hadto work on that.
And, it's taken business awayfrom this.
And it's, how many programs ofwork we put on the back shelf,
because it was.

(20:35):
Because it was deemed moreimportant.
You're having to make thatdecision.
So how does that kind of comeabout in a way?
And, is it one leader?
And I feel that leadership isquite democratized, with, with
boards and execs and, there's alot of discussion still.
How does one person make thatdifference?
Do you feel like what's the keyto unlocking that?

Con Frantzeskos (20:52):
Again, ag, again, I think, what are the
motives, as a culture?
Again, this is where I go backto the Middle East in particular
Saudi Arabia.
What's happening in Saudi Arabiaat the moment?
There is a sense, irrespectiveof who you talk to, whether it
be, government ministers, orwhether it be people at a junior
level working within anorganization, that they are

(21:13):
there to build a country.
They are there to build and showthe world and recapture.
I guess some of that the goldenAge of Arabism and how they
might say, Hey, we wanna showthe world what's possible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And having that culture builttruly it's saturated and

(21:34):
embedded in every part of SaudiArabia under NBS.
It's really impressive the workthat he's doing there in, in
modernizing and improving the Iguess the entire country.
Through Visions 2030, everyonehas bought in and therefore
every single part of what theydo in their day to day is like,
is this the best it could be?

(21:54):
Is this something that will beable to almost be the benchmark
going forward for this categoryor this sector or this thing, or
even this tiny little executionwe're doing.
If we're building a, webpagethat shows A, B, C, is this the
best webpage of its type in theworld?
Yeah.
Yeah, and it's not aboutspending more money.
Actually, most of the time it'snot any more expensive or less

(22:16):
expensive.
As a matter of fact, sometimes Ifind it much cheaper because if
you have a very clear vision ofwhat you want.
You can just get it done ratherthan as you said, the
democratization of, I don't knowwhat should we do?
Should we be similar to ourcompetitors, et cetera, et
cetera.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I tend to find that having thatvery clear cultural and
values-based view of what greatlooks like is probably the
biggest driver.

Chris Hudson (22:37):
That ties to personal values to one level.
But it also ties to nationalpride.
If you scale it up, it'sanchored to the whole success
of, the nation, its economy.
You know that there's a biggerplay and that puts them on the
map.
Precisely.
It has been the case.
If you think about, all of the,all of the construction, like
all the aspirationalarchitecture, building islands
whatever it is, formula one'sprobably the same.

(22:59):
It's kinda like it has to be thebest of the best to get to the
next level.
And that's aspirational.
But yeah it's not alwayshappening.
It's not always happening.
Yeah.

Con Frantzeskos (23:07):
And when people do it you, you see it so
clearly.
Look at Canva.
What a wonderful success story.
Melanie Perkins wanted tobasically, start off with,
pretty humble but, prettyinteresting, first pitch deck.
I can't remember what Canva wascalled before.
It was the canvas.
I think it was something likethat.
But the point I'm making is thattheir vision of what they wanna
achieve to democratize theworld's design is just

(23:28):
brilliant.
And that's, they're gonna be thebiggest company in Australia by
far.
If and when they ever list, it'sa very simple vision, and I'm
not even saying it's gotta besomething complex.
It's just about saying, do wehave that permission to be able
to be bold and interesting inour thinking?
And that's something that I've,I really admire that and I, I

(23:51):
just see it as being the key tosuccess because executions,
execution's obviously tricky.
Enterprise shifting.
Enterprise is hard.
Let's, I'm not being naive andsaying, oh, you just get a guy
in there with a bit of a,generic slide deck and the rest
looks after itself.
But what I'm saying is to giveeveryone that true sense that
when they walk into a meeting,the values, because values drive

(24:12):
behaviors.
What are the behaviors that willbe rewarded in this organization
and what are the moves andshifts that we have to make at a
tangible, critical level everyday to actually make sure that
happens and make sure that we'remaking progress.
I think that's really the key.

Chris Hudson (24:27):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost easier to workoutside of the system than
within it.
And you know the point, thepoints that you make around
within the system, it's not justyour own, what and what value
you think that could bringbecause that, that can feel very
hypothetical and a little bitvague until you do it obviously
and you have, but it feels likewithin the system, the systemic.
Situation of being, in highlycomplex hierarchy, thousands of

(24:52):
you're feeling the weight ofthat, and as an intrapreneur you
are, you're not sure how tonavigate that a lot of the
times.
So yeah.
Any kind of any tips around thatfor, personal sanity and, how do
you feel your own drive andstick to your, stick to your
vision if you can see it, butwant to make it and want to see
it through, despite all of thatadversity being right in your

(25:12):
face.
Yeah.

Con Frantzeskos (25:14):
Great.
Great question.
I think one of the ways in whichI've had some success in this
context is, there's only one CEOfor everyone else in the
organization.
How do they set the vision forwhat's great in their area?
Yeah, and what I've alwaysinculcated in my teams and
within enterprise and within myclients is how do you make your

(25:36):
bit or your part of that puzzle,the most visionary outcome it
could be.
So sometimes, and I'll give youa very specific example.
I was working with the head ofdigital at a major retailer.
And I've gone in there as theirinterim head of marketing.
The guy felt that he was almostplaying an incremental role and

(25:57):
actually the whole team.
And there was a team of 70people.
It was a really quite a largee-commerce function.
And what I'd said was, okay,what might great look like from
a, from a.
From a moments of truth level,how might search be the absolute
best it could be?
How might the ability tomonetize and work with the
merchandise teams to build outmore or less a marketplace so

(26:22):
that every single product thatwas sitting on the top left of
the website was clearlymonetized, almost as if you had
a media agency mentality towardsthat.
I see.
Yeah.
What I started doing was lookingat the incremental part.
Sometimes it's as literally aseasy as just pointing at a
specific product and going, howmight you make that as magical
as it can be?

(26:42):
So what I started to do wasbuild out a series of what we
called these basically coreaspirations.
We work with a group on thesecore aspirations.
One of them was a approach akind of an approach that I call
magic handoff.
And what's magic handoff?
We're all incredibly sick ofevery time we have an issue and
we call a business, we callthem.

(27:02):
Then when we put onto someoneelse, it's almost like you have
to start again, and then we goonline and then we have to start
again.
Magic handoff was this conceptthat the user or the customer
had this almost anticipatorydesign where irrespective of the
touch the touch point or theframework it was as if, they
never had to reintroducethemselves again.
So that was one of our coreaspirations, and we built about

(27:25):
eight or nine aspirations acrossthe team.
Okay, great.
What does great look like?
And we ranked it 0, 1, 3, 4.
Yeah.
Zero means we're either notdoing it at all, or if we're
doing it, it's utterly terribleand we need to kill it.
One means, yeah, we're doing it.

(27:46):
It's not great.
There was no two.
Why was there no two?
Because otherwise everyonewould've grouped their stuff in
two.
Oh, that initiative I'm workingon is two.
This thing in my project Slateis two.
Yeah, it's in the middle.
Three was best in category andfour was Best in the world.
So I asked the team to gothrough every single initiative
that they were doing, everysingle project they were working

(28:08):
on, every single task they wereworking on.
And I said, rank it 0, 1, 3, orfour.
And at the beginning, everyonehad their stuff largely at one
and three.
A few even had them at four.
I said, best in the world, andwe're like, yep.
Then what we started doing waswe started looking at those

(28:29):
things and saying, okay, let'sgo and research and understand
what the best in the world lookslike.
I said, I'll let you do that.
I'm not the expert.
You guys go and work out whatbest looks like.
And it could have been the mostminor thing.
You know what an email subjectline is all the way through to,
returns policy, whatever itmight have been.
Yeah.
A number of payment gateways,you name it.
Again, we're talking about asubstantial legacy e-commerce

(28:51):
business and bit by bit, and wehave this on the wall in the
boardroom and bit by bit peoplewere moving their notes from
three and four to zero and one,and what they then did is said,
now that I know what fall lookslike, I know what best in the
world looks like.
It was like great, thatintellectual humility and that
understanding what brilliancelooked like.

(29:11):
They then said, okay, what willit take for you to get to four?
And they mapped out very clearjourneys of what it took to get
to four.
Yeah.
And then I said, great.
How much money and how muchtime?
And then we'd go off there andwe built a backlog of about 591
initiatives.
We grouped them under thosethings.
And then obviously I went to theCEO and the CFO and said, Hey,

(29:34):
by the way, here's our 591initiatives under our eight or
nine kind of project pillars.
Here's how much money we'll needand here's how we're gonna do
it.
But of course, if you want thisslower or quicker, the only
lever you need to pull isinvestment.
We've got the rest planned out.
We've got the risk frameworkplanned out.

(29:56):
PS of each of those defined.
Yeah.
Now that wasn't coming to themand going, I want to change
everything.
I wanna change the world.
I wanna go in there and we'regonna be the best in the world.
'cause they would've justlaughed me out of the room
probably.
Yeah.
But I did say, Hey, by the way,here's just a very boring, very
simple investment framework thatyou've got transparency over
what the next was at probablyabout two and a half to three

(30:17):
year framework looks like.
Now, to them that was.
BAU to a certain degree, but tomy team, that was highly
innovative approach thatactually was gonna lead to this
business potentially being thebest in the world in a certain
way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I've done that a number oftimes and it tends to build,

(30:39):
what you might call a bestpractice innovation or best
practice aspiration.
Without it looking like a best,without it looking consultant
speak or, rubbish or fantasystuff.

Chris Hudson (30:51):
Yeah.
No, that's powerful.
I think I think what you realizeis that, it's the very human
nature of not feeling like youwould be, focused on the wrong
things.
That's the human, the humanaspects of say I feel like I'm
doing the best in my capabilityand in my role in service of
what the organization needs andwhat the leadership's expecting
of me.
And you'd like to think thatgoodwill exists.

(31:11):
But at the same time, there'sdistortion, right?
It feels there are legacyprograms of work.
There's a backlog that's threeyears already.
What should take priorityagainst the other thing.
Like how do we prioritize that?
Why is that more important?
And which stakeholder's voice islouder than this?
Stakeholders.
Yeah.
And those things come into play.

Con Frantzeskos (31:29):
And also what motivates the stakeholders?
'Cause sadly both innovation,these things that, I get out of
bed for are not necessarilyeveryone's cup of tea.
And that can sometimes makepeople like me look very,
unpopular in an organization.
Oh, guys.
This guy's too passionate.
He's making it too hard for us.
We're gonna have to do heapsmore.

Chris Hudson (31:51):
Can we talk about that point around unpopularity?
Because I had a similarconversation just yesterday on
recording the previous episodewith Jet Swain.
And she was talking about howshe's made a career of being
unpopular and acting as a rebeluh, only to realize that it's
got her nowhere.
It some and and she should havejust, played the more positive
role, throughout.

(32:12):
But what are your reflections onthat in the way that you've
played that role?

Con Frantzeskos (32:15):
I have nothing further to add.
I agree.
Yeah.
Again, I think I think itdepends on the nature of the
organization.
It depends on the nature of theculture, of the leadership.

Chris Hudson (32:25):
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah,

Con Frantzeskos (32:26):
there are a lot of people that talk up the fact,
of course we want growth, ofcourse, we want innovation when
in fact it's all too hard andthey're not interested.
Yeah.
And there are others that do,and I think it's just a natural
process of findingself-selection to a certain
degree.
But yeah, to be honest, I havenothing further to add.
I almost take it as a mark ofpride when my clients or
colleagues say, oh God, youreally, you're really passionate

(32:47):
about this, aren't you?
But they don't say it as acompliment.
Yeah, you re God, you reallywant want the customers to be
like, blown away by this, don'tyou?
Yep.
Yep.
Yeah, I do.
Yeah.

Chris Hudson (33:00):
Unrelenting.

Con Frantzeskos (33:02):
Yeah.
And it's and it is a source oftension.
Some people are not there fortheir careers.
They're not interested in thejobs.
Just wanna turn up some, mostdon't.
Now in their days of work fromhome.
And so that, that's a challengein itself, especially when I am
particularly passionate, veryenergetic ideas factory.
Now, these descriptions that Iuse of myself have been used by

(33:24):
others of me, not as acompliment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You are an ideas factory con,you are very passionate.
God, you're energetic, These arethings that have been in, and I
use them as a badge of pride,but yeah, that can make me
unpopular.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
But it depends in the rightorganization.
Awesome.
In the wrong organization, fine.
That's fine.

(33:44):
Not everyone's gonna want, wantsto change the world.
That's fine.

Chris Hudson (33:47):
What are your what are your mechanics or mechanisms
for resilience in light of that?
And when you come up against itwhat do you do to cope?

Con Frantzeskos (33:55):
I am a, an obsessive curious and voracious
reader.
So I always tend to find that,no one ever went wrong listening
to the customer.
And people may disagree, but, Itend to find that evidence.
Is a pretty powerful let's sayresilience builder.
You can be kind of gasoline inorganizations to think that you

(34:15):
are the crazy one and then seeover time that no, the market's
right.
And so I've always.
Taken a very obsessive approachto understanding what what the
consumer wants, what thecustomer wants, what the, what
are the analytics saying, what'sthe data, what's the market data
saying what's the ABS datasaying what's the sales data
saying?

(34:36):
Where's it happening?
Why is it happening?
And then getting to theunderstanding of why and what
those barriers and drivers are.
I feel that even thoughsometimes it can be very tough,
but sometimes I'll look aroundat an SLT meeting or an ELT
meeting and say, there's onlynine people in this room.
Yeah.
But there's another, 8 billionpeople out there that would
disagree.

(34:57):
And I try as hard as I can to.
Present that data of what the 8billion people in the world are
doing and behaving and whatthey're, how they're going about
their lives in as objective andsimple a way as possible, and
try and inform and guide mycolleagues to actually
understanding that.
If they disagree, that'sabsolutely fine.

(35:19):
That's their prerogative.
We don't have to agree, but mysense is agree on the reality.
You don't have to agree on thesolution.
Matter of fact, it's wonderfulif you don't agree on the
solution because that's whereideas come from disagreements.
But at least let's agree on thereality, on where we are as an
organization, the reality of theorganization or the reality of
the market more accurately.

Chris Hudson (35:39):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean there are definitely theparallels there to the world of
politics, which is another areaI know you are interested in and
have read a lot about.
Yeah.
So do you see any other kind ofyeah.
Do you see anything else in thepoliticians tool set that could
be applied to intrapreneursthat, that springs to mind?

Con Frantzeskos (35:55):
Very much so.
I think what's reallyinteresting about politics and
my involvement in politics overthe years is that in some ways
politics is highly sophisticatedin terms of data and
understanding at a local.
Street by street level yeah, oreven house by house level in
some instances.
But the biggest problem withpolitics is that unlike the

(36:16):
sovereign individual, where weas consumers choose every day,
whether or not we are gonna votefor a particular business,
product, or service politicsonly has, the purchase
consumption occasion onlyhappens once every three or four
years.
We only get to vote once everythree or four years.
And I think that's a very bluntinstrument that sometimes

(36:37):
politicians can infer the wrongthings from that purchase
occasion.
So in a way I think they'reparticularly good at reading the
play day to day, probably betterthan most organizations.
But I guess the purchaseconsumption occasion is so rare
that it skews the, motivationnot motivations.

(36:58):
It skews the actions somewhat tooptimizing for that single
purchase occasion and thenbundling the products up in such
a way in the form of a varietyof policies and personalities
that if they can mask some ofthe bad products with some of
the good products they'll getthere.
But yeah, look, I think it's areally interesting question.
Again I think the reality isthat no one ever went wrong

(37:18):
listening to the the consumer orthe voter.
And I think where mostpoliticians get it very wrong is
when they don't.

Chris Hudson (37:25):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

Con Frantzeskos (37:28):
Spend a lot of time communicating too, but.
But really, and I thinkespecially now with some of
these particularly interestingand modern data gathering tools
and AI tools the ability to readthe play is actually greater
than ever.
And I think that, the vastmajority of political parties
desperately getting on thattrain.

(37:48):
And that's, and I think that's areally interesting evolution of
how political parties areactually understanding more
about the voters.

Chris Hudson (37:55):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost the, theresponsiveness curve in relation
to data that you might beseeing.
It feels like an election and aresult from the election might
be, like it's a less frequentoccurrence but if you can get
down to the conversational leveland the interaction points and
really understand, what peoplewanting, what they're saying and
how that's theming up and youknow what to do about it, then
that, that feels like it's muchmore interesting.

(38:17):
Yeah.
Yeah.
The potential political model aswell.
Yeah, precisely businesses thatdo that.
But yeah, businesses can not allof them are doing that as we
know.
But hey, I remember our lastconversation which yeah,
somewhere on Spring Street, wewere having a bit of a chat and
you asked me a question, what,what problems do you see in the
world?
And you know what?
What should we try and fix,yeah.

(38:37):
And I think you are working onsomething, so maybe if you could
tell the story of, one of yourAI ventures that's coming up,
just so that people get a senseof, what's possible in the way
of, understanding the market,reading the signals, turning
into something that's real andtangible.
And you've made a couple ofreally amazing products.
I'd love to hear about those ifyou've got the time.
Yeah.

Con Frantzeskos (38:55):
Great.
Of course.
One of them that has received alot of coverage is Ansett, so
Ansett.travel book your flightsholidays, hotels, adventures,
activities, destinations withAnsett travel.
Ansett travel's a reallyinteresting one.
Online travel agencies, OTAsit's a very competitive market,
but my sense is that thesuppliers of assets such as

(39:21):
airlines hotels, et cetera theyare really pushing hard to DTC,
but what they don't have is theydon't have the ability to work
across the entire traveljourney.
As much as flights,accommodation and rentals is a
key part of that.
It is only a very small part ofwhat I call, not just travel,
but traveling.
And what I mean by that is theentire travel experience, some

(39:42):
bits are good, some bits are notgood.
And so therefore is there aconcierge service and AI
concierge service that canactually weave the entire thing
together from, Hey, you're gonnaneed this power adapter, or
here's a battery pack, or by theway, you might need, that type
of luggage all the way throughto, Hey I've, I can see by your

(40:02):
biometrics and your meetingschedule that you've had a
stressful week.
Why don't you go and have amassage and a dinner on Friday
night to relax?
That to me is the future of.
I guess what we might calltravel concierge, and that's
what I'm building out withAnsett.
So early days very little ofthat functionality is there now
building that out.
But that's largely where I seetravel going.

(40:24):
And then the providers as muchas they might disagree will find
their own natural balance as tohow they, that they interact as
at A DTC, in a DTC context.
The other priority of mineactually is is Saleschef.ai.
Saleschef is an a largely builton the premise that people that

(40:45):
make product are no good atselling it.
And by that what I mean is ifyou are looking to buy a
television.
And let's say an LG G5, which isone of the best TVs in the world
at the moment, sold all over theworld.
If you go to the Best Buywebsite, the Curry's website,
jumbo, JB Hi-Fi, and I'm talkingabout the major consumer
electronics retailers all overthe world it will be an almost

(41:08):
identical experience.
And when I say almost identical,largely same photos, same spec,
same key five dot points, samebland, you know, copied and
pasted from lg.
So therefore the only way inwhich these retailers are
getting people to look at theirpages by spending literally tens
of billions of dollars on Googleads.

(41:28):
And then when they get there,there might be a bit of a price
comparison or a price lever.
Now, what sales chef does issolves that problem.
Sales Chef takes the raw productspecification, and hence the
name Sales Chef turns it into afeast of sales and marketing
material.
So it's a seven step AI processthat takes, it, cleans it,

(41:49):
harmonizes it enriches it withabout 500 different sources of
content from all over the world.
Anything from reviews to usecases and everything else, it
then use a number of strategicframeworks to enhance and work
out what the best selling pointsmight be, and in a competitive
context also, then it creates arange of content that could be

(42:09):
everything from product detailpages to sales training
documents, to standard operatingprocedures as to the house
shops.
Put it on display to ticketing,to retail media networks, and
interestingly also to trainingAI models such as chat bots or
AI call centers, or any of thesethings that are now happening,
making it machine readable anddiscoverable so that the content

(42:33):
isn't just bland content, butit's actually content in the
voice of the retailer, in thevoice of that particular seller
of things, and it's the same usecase, interestingly, whether it
be retail or travel, becauseagain, with travel, it's the
same thing.
If you are buying a tour to seea particular thing, the people
that have written the tour orcreated the tour aren't
necessarily great at selling it.

(42:53):
So it goes through the samething for whether it be retail
product, whether it be physicalproduct or whatever.
Where it gets really amazing,where sales shift gets really
amazing is the optimizationphase, which is the last phase
where it takes a whole lot ofdata from the world.
Could be anything from weatherto consumer sentiment to holiday
schedules, to anything happeningat a local or global level and

(43:15):
says, Hey, by the way, I don'tknow.
It was Black Friday, or we areheading up to Mother's Day in a
couple of months.
You should optimize your contentbecause we believe that these
products would be ideal forMother's Day gift, or by the
way, it's really gonna be hotin, that particular part of the
world.
You have 10 stores there.
Maybe you should sell more ofthese umbrellas and call them,
keep the sun off your head withthese umbrellas.

(43:36):
So it acts almost as a, I callit the hustle phase.
It looks for all the data, notonly within the organization.
External to the organization andsays, Hey, how can we sell
better?
How can we get some of that slowmoving stock off the shelf?
How can we actuallycontextualize the promotion of
the product?
And that's.
That's what Sales Chef is.
And it adds tremendous valuebecause it means people don't
have to spend as much money oncontent operations on, on

(43:59):
performance media, et cetera,but also helps them.
Largely the bottom line is thatit increases conversion across
omnichannel conversion.
Average.
Conversion across omnichanneland in store is about 1.5%
globally.
And my sense is that sales Chefshould hopefully up it buy
anything from half a percent to2% because we're gonna have a
much better selling experience.

Chris Hudson (44:21):
Yeah.
Amazing.
Thanks so much for articulatelypitching that you've got a very
rounded and compelling, coupleof products there.
I, I particularly like thatthey're playing in the white
space, where the industry is akind of not, they're not
thinking in those areas.
It feels you'll remember whenomnichannel was banded around,
right?
Yeah.
It feels like you're actuallydelivering it for once.

(44:43):
Yeah.

Con Frantzeskos (44:44):
Yeah, omnichannel ended up being
multi-channel.
Yeah.
We a website, we've got an app,we've got some social media
stuff.

Chris Hudson (44:50):
A shopping list.
Yeah.

Con Frantzeskos (44:52):
Genuine omnichannel.
It still hasn't been brought tolife and my view has always been
content has always been one ofthe key barriers to that being
effectively done because it isjust not scalable or at least
until now, hasn't been scalable.
Content is hard.
It's manual, boring.
Building SOPs is not fun.
And that's where sales shifttakes it and automates that

(45:13):
entire process.
And genuinely unlocksomnichannel sales.

Chris Hudson (45:18):
What you've been able to achieve is put a thread
through the experience off, offa single interface effectively,
which hadn't been possiblebefore, because you are usually
designing in silos for each ofthose different touch points.
Yeah.
Even if you have blueprint foryour service or your customer
experience, you've done yourjourney mapping.
This actually brings all thattogether.
So I'm interested in that.

(45:38):
And also AI and in how you.
How you went about it.
You don't have to go through allthe details, but it feels like
there's a big shift now from orneeded shift, probably I should
say, from moving AI, it's not atool set.
It's not just a piece ofsoftware that you learn and you
press the buttons and you putthe prompts in, and then it
gives you the answer to, toactually something that, that

(45:59):
partners with you.
And it's moving from tool set tonative and just becoming.
Part of an organization'smindset and a person's mindset,
rather than it being this sortof side companion.
So what, through yourexperiences of putting those two
ventures together, what's beenyour experience of using it in a
more native way, would you say?

Con Frantzeskos (46:18):
Yeah I've always taken the approach that
AI should be seen more of as ateammate than a tool.
Yeah.
And I think that if weanthropomorphise ai.
In other words, if we see AI as,and I've been guilty of this a,
a really smart 22-year-oldintern that knows everything
that we can just say, Hey, bythe way, can you help me arrange

(46:40):
the meeting with Chris?
Or, Hey, that thing over there,I need you to summarize my
emails.
Or, Hey, I've got all this data.
Can you turn it into aPowerPoint presentation?
Now that's actually great.
Don't get me wrong, they'regreat use cases, and most people
do those well, but where I seethe true unlocking of AI is
using these tools in the sensethat we might never have

(47:00):
imagined that humans were ableto execute these certain things.
And more more interestingly,even if we were to say, okay
let's treat them like humans.
Let's assume that you havethousands of people doing very
small things in a completelyunec economical sense.
In other words let's again lookat a retail environment.

(47:23):
What if you had a thousandpeople there looking after that
one customer?
Buying a hammer at a hardwarestore, it's a nonsensical
thought, nonsensical.
But I would then ask okay, it'sonly nonsensical because you are
thinking in terms of humanscosting lots of money.
But what if that was not abarrier?

(47:44):
What if it would completelydoable?
What would you optimize for andwhat would be the sort of things
that you would like to buildout, and what would be the sort
of vision for that customer thatyou could then deliver?
As unrealistic and crazy as itsounds, what would those
thousand people be working on?
Now if you unlock it that way,then what it does, it opens up

(48:06):
an entire, entirely new way oflooking at service and looking
at the way in which businessesmight be operating.
And by, by the way, when I saycustomer, that could be internal
customers, external customers.
Clients, colleagues workflows,you name it, right?
Yeah.
What if you were to have athousand people solving the, I
don't know, Chris and Conneeding to arrange a meeting?
What ha and not just byoptimizing existing broken

(48:28):
process.
But by saying if we were to juststart again and we would have
those thousand peopleredesigning something from
scratch and looking at itcompletely in a completely new
way, how and what might beachievable, that is where I see
AI already playing an amazingrole, and that's the way that
I'm deploying it.
That's the way I know manyothers are deploying it in that

(48:48):
way and using it as a way tosay, let's not be deterministic.
Let's not take legacy.
Let's optimize for somethingthat may be completely fantasy
and see how that might bebrought to life.
With AI already I'm doing thatsort of stuff and I know many

(49:10):
others are, and the results areastonishing.
So amazing.
Like just breath.
At times, breathtakingly scary.
And that's really where I seethe great promise of AI is not
in making services for, the CEOto have a better life or a

(49:31):
better way of building abusiness, but for anyone working
in an organization to actuallybe able to achieve anything they
wanted to because they'veproperly built a team of
thousands of people around themin the form of amazing ai.
And even if you transcend theidea of humans and say let's
just build some sort of fantasy.

(49:53):
Way of bringing things to life.
What's achievable isastonishing, and I know
everything I've just said theresounds highly theoretical and
all the rest of it, what it doesis it comes down to just the
idea of what do I want toachieve?
And then the way that AI canbring that to life is actually
incredibly easy.
Very tangible.
And also the cost ofimplementation now is, or free

(50:14):
or nearly free.

Chris Hudson (50:15):
Yeah.
Yeah, because I guess therewould be a, maybe an assumption
that if the AI wasn't pointed ata specific thing in relation to
a company's productivity, forexample, or a particular task,
that as soon as you elevate it,that the pitch becomes so
intangible and so blue sky islike what?
You're gonna reinvent the wholecompany that we've got 3000

(50:36):
people working in by plugging itall through your machine, and
we're gonna have all theanswers.
We're gonna rip it up and starttomorrow.
I don't think so.
Yeah,

Con Frantzeskos (50:44):
so you are right.
You're right.
And but also the other way is.
If I said to you that, mostpeople in organizations move
information and curateinformation, right?
Yeah.
What I'm not suggesting is, Hey,Chris, what if you had a
thousand people working on youremail to me?
Why?
The point is this, why and howdoes that information go from

(51:04):
there to there?
Why does it even know?
Go from there to there?
Why can't it just be solved atsource?
How do we make decisions in thisorganization?
Why would you send me an email?
Maybe it's a total waste oftime.
Yeah, maybe may.
Maybe there should bedecisioning agents within
organization that understandrisk, that understand the
elements, and actuallydecisioning at source,

(51:26):
decisioning at the edge.
I.
Therefore, all I need to do as asenior executive in an
organization is actually definethe values, the risk profile,
and the aspiration, and then letAI do the rest of it.
Yes, I need to know what'shappening.
Yes, I need to have some sort ofdashboard, but largely, instead
of actually spending most of ourtime in organizations, moving

(51:46):
information between ourselves sothat we can be either more
informed, make better decisions,be more creative, I'm going,
yep.
Let's just get rid of all thatstuff and be more creative, be
more visionary, understand thelevers and the metrics that
matter, and actually say let'sactually do what we can to
improve those key metrics.
Now again, that is a deeplytheoretical, but very doable

(52:08):
today.

Chris Hudson (52:09):
For sure.
Yeah.
I mean if even if you took your0 1 3 4 model and you use that
as a framework, then it wouldonly be recommending things that
would be capable of, being bestin the world, for example.
Yeah.
And.
Gear up your business planningaround that.
So yeah, as a decisioning tool,obviously the decisioning
itself, there has to be, every,everyone needs to feel their own

(52:30):
influence with, within theseorganizational structures.
So there'll be a, robustdiscussion about it.
But yeah, particularly if it'sevidence-based, then yeah, why
not?

Con Frantzeskos (52:38):
Well, precisely.
And that's the key.
Have you got the plumbing rightfor data?
Yeah.
And I think that in the futurethat the only real moats in any
organization will be data, brandand subject matter expertise or
domain expertise?
I'm not sure that I'm not surethat there are too many other

(53:00):
really tangible and very deepmoats or wide moats.
Yeah.

Chris Hudson (53:05):
In the long term,

Con Frantzeskos (53:06):
I don't mean in the short term, I mean in the
long term.

Chris Hudson (53:08):
We'll all be reading books somewhere trying
to think of other things.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
Yeah, on and on a personal note,those are obviously some very
specific and well thoughts forexamples, but where are you
drawing inspiration from moregenerally?
And what's your approach tothat?
You're saying you read a lot,but Yeah.
Are there any other kind ofpersonal motivators that come

(53:29):
into play as well?

Con Frantzeskos (53:31):
Yeah, I'm I've always I've always been, as I
said, unashamed, un unashamed,capitalist.
But, my, my view is that,companies, business and markets
are great.
Great opportunities to to buildgreat things.
And I think companies in thesense of, groups of people IP
and systems coming together tosolve the problems of the world

(53:53):
and to build great products andto, delight people with stuff
and have people hand over theirmoney as a result, I think is a
really noble cause.
I don't see any shame in saying,I like building stuff that other
people like buying, and I makemoney out of it.
I think it's actually beautifuland, again, going back to that
whole political thing, everydollar is a vote.
Yeah.
We work really hard.

(54:13):
We get taxed particularly badlyin Australia.
And for us at the end of that tochoose organizations to hand
over their money to them shouldbe seen by those organizations
as a true honor that, thatthey've been chosen and that we
in our day-to-day have handedour money over to these people
in return for goods andservices.
And I think that's been mymotivation is that every single

(54:36):
time that I walk out in theworld and I, go to the
supermarket, go to the shops, doanything.
I always look at it through thelens of, how might this
experience be better?
How might I be better served?
And I take that every singleday, every single data point
that I have in my own life as aninspiration to say how might I

(54:56):
build better experiences,products, and businesses for
others?
It's a bit like, and it sounds abit odd, but it's a bit like
being a doctor and there's thisconstant illness out there in
the world.
How can I fix that illness?
And I see that, every singletime there is any sort of
customer or businessopportunity, it's an opportunity
to improve it.
And those opportunities aren'tjust, just a token, let's just

(55:18):
make the website slightlybetter.
Yeah.
But about truly buildingbusinesses that that generate
value for people and make everysingle moment like that a
genuine delight.
And that's what really motivatesme.
I really love building thosebeautiful experiences and
building those beautifulbusinesses that make money.

Chris Hudson (55:34):
Yeah.
Wonderful.
That's really inspiring and Ithink a great note to finish on
and something that I think weshould all take away and do more
of.
So thanks you so much, Con andyeah, really appreciate the
candid, highly articulate,expansive conversation that
we've had.
We've jumped around a bit.
Yeah.
Always.

Con Frantzeskos (55:47):
Chris,

Chris Hudson (55:48):
you I love chatting

Con Frantzeskos (55:49):
to you, mate.
I love our conversations.
I love yeah.
I always love catching up and,for the first time we've had
microphones and camerascapturing it.

Chris Hudson (55:56):
I know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maybe it'll turn into anotherone.
Like I was hoping for the firstlike, Joe Rogan three hour
episode, but we'll do that nexttime, eh?

Con Frantzeskos (56:04):
Yeah, that's alright.

Chris Hudson (56:06):
Maybe I'll book in more time.
Book.
But yeah, thanks so much again,and if people wanna reach out to
you Con or hear more about,Sales Chef or Ansett, how would
they find you?

Con Frantzeskos (56:14):
Yep.
So Ansett.travel orSaleschef.ai, the two websites
there that that you can go andaccess and and my contact
details are there.

Chris Hudson (56:23):
Perfect.
All right.
Thanks so much.
Con we'll leave it there.

Con Frantzeskos (56:26):
Good on you Chris.
Great to chat.