He Got FIRED… Then Built 12+ Companies (And Sold Them) With Troy Hazard

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Unemployable with Jeff Dudan

Episode: He Got FIRED… Then Built 12+ Companies (And Sold Them) With Troy Hazard

Original Air Date: February 24, 2026
Host: Jeff Dudan (Homefront Brands)
Guest: Troy Hazard – Serial entrepreneur, author, speaker, global president (Entrepreneurs’ Organization), franchising expert

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode spotlights the extraordinary journey of Troy Hazard, who pivoted from getting fired as a young radio announcer in Australia to founding, scaling, fixing, and selling a dozen-plus companies across multiple industries—including media, franchising, property development, and technology. Jeff and Troy dive into the realities of entrepreneurship, the power of networks like EO and YPO, buying and exiting businesses, people-focused leadership, and the enduring importance of human connection in a world moving fast towards AI. This episode is packed with advice for aspiring business builders, seasoned operators, and anyone interested in creating value through entrepreneurship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Troy’s Origin Story: From Fired to Founder

• Early Days in Media
  • Troy’s entry into radio was serendipitous—helping his father’s fishing tackle business, he fell into weekend “bay reports.”
  • First proper radio shift came unexpectedly: “Mate, I talk for two seconds on the radio in a boat and you want me to talk for six hours?... it was just the most fun I’ve ever had.” (02:48)
• Transition to Entrepreneurship
  • Fired after a dispute with his program director—“He said, ‘how about a holiday?’ I said, ‘that’d be great.’ He said, ‘good, you’re fired.’” (04:13)
  • Early ventures: Apartment flipping with his mother, opening a recording studio, morphing into an ad agency, then investing in client franchises (pizza, real estate).

2. Iterative Learning: The Power of Failure and Partnership

• “I had an equal healthy amount of failures as we did successes along the way…” (07:28)
• Moved between launching companies and investing in distressed assets (e.g., tech company bought out of receivership in 2001).
• Concept of “we”: Business is often a team sport—Troy alternated between solo projects and strategic partnerships for shared expertise and support.

3. Entrepreneurial Peer Groups—EO, YPO, Others

• Troy’s entire trajectory was profoundly shaped by joining entrepreneur networks (Entrepreneurs’ Organization, YPO, Vistage, etc.).
• Memorable Quote:
  “After the first bottle of wine they had my attention. After the second bottle of wine they had my credit card. After the third bottle of wine I was chapter president.” (10:43)
• Troy highlights the career-altering impact of global exposure, vulnerability, and “learning from people who have no skin in your game.”
• Vital lessons in diversity of thought, cross-industry learning, and the concept of a confidential space for founder challenges.

4. Exiting, Not Just Building Businesses – The ‘Leave Meat on the Bone’ Philosophy

• Troy intentionally leaves strategic opportunities for buyers, “so they're buying into that journey, that dream... not about just selling the business, it's about selling the sexiness of the next person's dream.” (22:10)
• Exit Planning Starts on Day One:
  • “From the day we buy it or the day we move in, the exit starts on day one...” (27:13)
  • “If you don’t know what you want it [the business] to do for you, you end up working for it... it’s a job.” (27:45)
• The importance of aligning business outcomes to personal goals.

5. How Troy Evaluates Businesses

• Framework for Assessing Opportunities:
  • Look for “unsexy” businesses with untapped potential.
  • Initial diligence on distressed assets is conversations-driven—culture and people before P&Ls.
  • “You have to triangulate the reality in front of you and the piece of paper...” (25:12)

6. Leadership & People-First Management

• Troy espouses a gentle, encouraging leadership style—focusing on alignment between team members’ personal goals and business objectives.
• “I am, I suppose, a softer leader than most. I tend to encourage rather than instruct...” (33:52)
• The importance of unscripted, genuine “flybys” over strict KPI-driven reviews.

7. Human Connection Beats AI

• Advice for Young Entrepreneurs: Focus on what can’t be automated. Insert yourself at the “human handoff” in processes—where relationship and trust matter most.
• “Remind yourself that you're human. ...there needs to be that human contact... that will never go away.” (38:42)
• “If you’re not part of that human handoff...technology will take over and you'll make yourself redundant.” (39:25)

8. Insider’s View: Franchising Trends and Philosophy

• Troy’s long arc in franchising: Franchisee, consultant, franchisor, investor.
• Sees the sector as having lost focus on relationship in favor of hyping product or trend—reminds listeners that franchisees buy support and community, not just a widget.
  • “We’ve kind of forgotten the importance of that...franchising is about the relationship.” (47:54)
• “Go and find the leader you want to work with that has the vision... forget the widget.” (55:17)

9. Family, Freedom, and the “Unemployable” Life

• Troy now travels globally with his young family—homeschooling, working wherever, and reaffirming the value of flexibility that entrepreneurship brings.
• “We’ve been homeless for the last two years. So we do homeless quite well, Jeff.” (64:52)
• His global business partners simply don’t care where he is as long as value and results are delivered.

10. Quick Hits: Media, Humor, and Accessibility

• Regular commentator on the Big Biz Show (US), self-deprecating and accessible to anyone wishing to connect.
• “Business with barroom flair—we don’t take ourselves too seriously.” (68:22)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the value of peer groups:
  “That hour a day you spend talking to different people or even 30 minutes... those things were certainly pivotal for me and my journey. And it gave me the education I didn’t get from going to college.” — Troy (11:40)

• On business exits:
  “If I’m the smartest person in the room, I’m in the wrong room.” — Troy (22:10)
  “Know what you look like when you grow up...” — Troy (00:00, 73:54)

• On “leaving meat on the bone”:
  “You don’t have to make it sexy yourself. You just have to make it look good in their eyes so they fall in love with it... that’s where we’ve found the most powerful exits.” — Troy (22:10)

• On futureproofing against AI:
  “There will always be trades and things that technology can never take over... Keep an eye on where you want to insert yourself into that human handoff.” — Troy (38:42)

• On leadership:
  “I try to find what people really want out of life, and if I'm helping them achieve their goals, then it makes my job easier to achieve mine.” — Troy (33:52)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 — Opening practical philosophy: “Start with the end in mind. Know what you look like when you grow up.”
• 02:20–03:54 — Falling into media, first break, transition to entrepreneurship.
• 04:13–05:12 — Getting fired; first move into property investing with his mom.
• 10:43 — The irresistible pull (and liquored push) into EO.
• 13:12–16:00 — Peer groups, confidentiality, the power of forum.
• 22:10–27:45 — Troy’s approach to buying, improving, and exiting businesses.
• 33:52–36:31 — Leadership and people: soft skills, aligning personal goals.
• 38:42–41:00 — Advice for younger entrepreneurs: Human element in the era of AI.
• 47:54–52:36 — Franchising: The lost art of relationship-first recruitment and support.
• 64:52 — On going “homeless”: Travel, family, a new model of business and life.
• 73:54 — Troy’s single best piece of advice: “Start with the end in mind. Know what you look like when you grow up.”

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Highlights & Memorable Moments

• The “three bottles of wine” anecdote that led Troy to his first EO presidency. (10:43)
• Troy admitting to being a “terrible franchisee,” but turning that into a consulting superpower. (42:19)
• Jeff’s heartfelt story about his own father’s entrepreneurial struggles, and how those experiences set the foundation for his own entrepreneurial career. (56:46)
• The "flybys"—an organic approach to team check-ins, aided by a disciplined assistant. (37:06)
• Troy’s openness on post-exit life and embracing family, travel, and new forms of impact. (62:43)

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Closing Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Troy’s Fastball (73:54):

“Start with the end in mind. Know what you look like when you grow up. … If you want to build, create, or own your own future, you need to know what it looks like when it’s done. … If you can answer those two questions, then at least we’ve got something to aim for.”

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Contact & Resources:

• Website: troyhazard.com
• Vimeo Channel (speaking/media clips): vimeo.com/troyhazard
• Regular on the “Big Biz Show” (US cable networks)

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This episode provides a blueprint for entrepreneurial resilience, the lifetime value of networks, human leadership in a technological world, and the deep satisfaction (and freedom) that comes from building your own path.

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Transcript

[A]

After the first bottle of wine, they had my attention. After the second bottle of wine, they had my credit card. And after the third bottle of wine, I was chapter president. Just remind yourself that you're human. Remind yourself that there needs to be that human contact with the people we're serving, the people that we're working with, the people that we're looking to attract into the business that will never go away. Start with the end in mind. Know what you look like when you grow up? It's a question that I ask a lot of people when I'm on stage, when I'm having conversations like this. What do you want to be when you grow up? If you don't know the answer to that, then as you said earlier, all roads are going to lead to the right destination.

[B]

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you started your career as an Australian radio announcer and program manager, got sacked one day which launched your entrepreneurial journey that included construction, television hosting, building and selling over a dozen companies in media, franchising, property development and technology, eventually serving as the global president of the entrepreneurs organization eo. If you are an author and internationally sought after speaker, your name can only be the Incredible Troy Hazard. Welcome, Troy.

[A]

Hey, mate, how are you?

[B]

Good. Doing great, doing great. So excited to have you on here today. And I know we've met a few times in person and you're very good friends with a mutual friend of ours, Michael o'. Driscoll. He asked me, I have an opener for you, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with what he told me to ask you. Which, how curly was your hair

[A]

look? I come from a Fijian heritage, so I, I had very, very curly hair when I had it and then started to lose it at a very, very young age. So I've had this hole in my haircut for she. We've not 45 years now. So it's, it was just easy just to shave it all off.

[B]

Yeah, well, you had an incredible story early on. You were, you started in the media industry. Yeah. And, and that served you later well because you, you, you've done a lot of television. I watched some of your presentations and preparing for this. Just an incredibly powerful presenter. Tell us a little bit about how it all started for you.

[A]

Back in the day I fell into media. My father owned a fishing tackle business where I am right now. I'm actually in Townsville in North Queensland in Australia, here with the family for a month. And so he had a fishing tackle business here in this city. And one of the radio stations came in one day and said, look, we want you to do some bay reports on weekends. Do you mind taking the boat out and just do a little radio in that? The weather's this and waves are this and sun is shining, whatever. And my father said, no, I'm not gonna, but Troy can do that.

[B]

And.

[A]

And I'm standing there going, I don't know how to talk on the radio. But anyway, I ended up doing these bay reports every weekend. Worked a lot of fun and lot of great times out there, and just it was a bit of a hype brain on the radio every weekend when you're talking to your mates. And then everyone got sick one weekend at the radio station and the program director rang me and said, I'm running out of announcers. Would you like to do a midnight to dawn shift? And I said, mate, I talk for two seconds on the radio in a boat and you want me to talk for six hours? And it was just the most fun I've ever had and. And decided that that was my destiny. I was gonna get into media. And a few months later I was on the air and having a great time with a bunch of mates and still see them here every other day, as we did yesterday for lunch.

[B]

And so your father was in the business before you?

[A]

Yeah, so he was in fishing tackle and had been in and out of sporting goods for most of his life. I went to work for him for about maybe 12 months or so before the media got my attention, and I decided to have a bit of a change, which was a bit disappointing for him, I'm sure, but at the time it was just a young gu. You know, a lot, a lot of great ambition and looking for a different direction.

[B]

So you didn't go to university per se, but you, you got an opportunity. I remember listening to you talking about, I think you called your mom and said, hey, I think I'm going to build some houses or do some construction. What, what, what happened there? And how did that set you up for. To be an entrepreneur?

[A]

Yeah, I had a few years in media about five or six, and then a new program director joined the radio station I was working for, and we didn't get along very well. So, you know, I said, look, I need a pay rise or a holiday. And he said, well, how about a holiday? I said, that'd be great. He said, good, you're fired. So that was the end of that relationship quite quickly. And I rang my mother that night and said, I got an idea. The property market looks like it's moving. I reckon I should sell my apartment and we should go maybe into business together and we'll renovate houses. And at the time, she was an interior decorator, so it sounded like a good idea, except the first thing she said to me was, troy, you don't know one end of a hammer from another.

[B]

Which is true.

[A]

And so we worked out how to build crews around us to do the work that I couldn't. And I just managed the sale of these properties over the course of the next 18 months, and we did quite well. We sold about, I think it was 12 or 13 properties over the course of 18 months and just renovated them, flipped them, and decided that this business thing wasn't a bad idea after all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What.

[B]

And then was the pizza business next, or where did you go from there?

[A]

Well, having made a little bit of money in property, my roots back in media were calling again. So we. We opened a recording studio with a friend of mine. And it was tough. It was a really, really hard business. It was an expensive business to get into. It was a cutthroat business once you were in there. And as my first real business out of my own, it was really challenging to learn on the fly. I had no degree, I had no previous education in business. It was make it up as we went. And we made it up the wrong way a lot of times and made a lot of poor decisions. But one of the best decisions we made in the early days was to morph ourselves from just doing a recording studio and turn it into an advertising agency. And then from then we got more clients that came on board and we started doing a range of things, not just doing jingles for ads, but doing television, television commercials and press ads and brochures and all sorts of things. And we got a little bit of a run on then. And that gave us an introduction to different companies and also different opportunities to invest. The pizza business being one of them. They were a client of mine and I ended up buying one of their franchise outlets. It wasn't a planned journey and I was only on the air a minute ago talking to another television group in the US and my comment to them was, I don't know. I would not wish a street fighter's journey on anybody in business because it's a long and hard road, but you certainly become far more intuitive. And I think you become a little bit a healthy dose of skepticism and intuition gives you a better platform, I think.

[B]

Was a recording studio your only startup? Because I've known you as an investor, as a board member, somebody who's run big businesses, done some turnarounds, and is an expert at exiting businesses when the time is right. So where did you. Was. Was the recording studio your only startup or have you started other things or is that where you learned? Like I can be an investor, look for opportunities and make an impact.

[A]

That was a journey too. I think in the early days I felt better or more comfortable, I suppose, as an entrepreneur starting things because I could find my own pace, find my own space, and also manage that from a cash position as well, where we weren't over investing, we weren't overshooting the mark a little bit. And so I was more comfortable with starting things. We started recording studio, we started the advertising agency on the back of that, got into other businesses that we invested in or felt was a good idea, and then had that trap of were we leading edge or bleeding edge in those industries or sectors. And on a few occasions we were bleeding edge and didn't work. I mean, I had an equal healthy amount of failures. As we did successes along the way, and as I suppose as I got older and a little bit more confident in the way I was managing teams or building businesses, that's when we started to look for things that were broken and a way to try and fix them. So as an example, we bought a technology company in 2001 with two other friends of mine, and it was in receivership. It was, as we call America chapter 11. So we grabbed it right before it collapsed for a reasonable sum of money and then set about fixing it and getting it back on track. And that was right in the back of the tech wreck of 2001. So it was a good time for us to experiment with some things. And after that experience, I had a lot more confidence in looking for investments, looking for things that were broken that we could maybe add value to and then finding a way to move them on and exit them as quickly as we could.

[B]

You've said we a lot. Did you do business with partners or were you a lone wolf?

[A]

Bit of both. My mother was my first business partner. When we were renovating houses, I had partners in the technology business. The advertising agency, not so much. And other things I've been a part of over the years have been sometimes with friends and others and sometimes just on my own as a bit of a. Sometimes even an experiment. But as I've kind of moved into bigger projects over the last maybe five or six years, I've found it easier to bring others into those investments or those ideas so we can share the load a bit. Not just from a financial perspective, but also from sharing intelligence. I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at. And so I look for friends or partners or associates that A I trust and like working with but B, I know have a skill set that, that I don't have.

[B]

I think it'd be helpful for the listeners to talk a little bit about groups. These are questions that I get a lot. You rose to the Global President of EO. I've been a YPOer. I'm in strategic coach. I'm in a group called CEO. I'm in a group called the Genius Network. I spent nine years in Vistage and I was not a great student. I didn't go to business. I barely got out of school and then I, then I didn't go to business school. But somehow I've built a lot of businesses in my life and I really attribute that to getting in some of these groups and getting around other entrepreneurs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What was that journey like for you? When did you discover like hey, there's places I can go to get around people that are up to something and going somewhere.

[A]

And what did you do as you've experienced yourself? It was incredibly instrumental to, to my journey and to giving me direction in that journey. And I stumbled into those associations back, you know, 30 odd years ago now in the Entrepreneurs Organization in particular, I was invited to a function in Brisbane in Australia where they said look, we're starting this new chapter of this group called back in the day it was called the Young Entrepreneurs Organization. And I said, oh look, you know, I haven't got time for that. You know, I'm trying to grow a business. I'm already working 15, 16, 18 hours a day. You know, that's not for me. And they said look, just come to lunch, come to lunch and we'll tell you about this organization and what it can do for you. So you know, the lunch was at a very nice restaurant in Brisbane. So I took that offer up. That's a good start. After the first bottle of wine they had my attention. After the second bottle of wine they had my credit card and after the third bottle of wine I was chapter president. It was an all in start to those sort of organization. An incredible experience for me over the next 15 years. I was so excited about what it was giving me at a local level. I became a regional director as a volunteer for the organ, joined the global board and ended up my tenure in 2006, 2007 as global president. And every step of that journey was another eye opener for me. Meeting helpful people in your local community, in your city, then in your region, and then different places around the world. Friends I have today from all over the planet that I can still call on for help or advice or guidance or even just some basic feedback on different things I'm dealing with. And these guys and girls have got no interest in my businesses, no interest or really understanding of the sectors I work with even. But they're just a great sounding board of experience that I've been drawing on for 25 something odd years now. And I would encourage everybody to investigate that path. Whether you think you've got time or not. Find it. Because that an hour a day that you can spend talking to different people around the world or even 30 minutes, and the time you get together as part of a group once a month with a closer network. Those things were certainly pivotal for us or for me and my journey. And it gave me the education I didn't get from going to college.

[B]

One of the hallmarks of YPO and EO, which are very similar in structure and execution, is confidentiality. And we have a lot of trade. We're both in franchising. You've been in franchising with pool works and maybe you've done some other things as well. We have an incredible trade association called the IFA and there's all kinds of groups and there's all that stuff. But you also kind of get in an echo chamber when you get into your own associate, into your own industry. And every industry has their trade association. The thing about EO and YPO is that it is people that are from all types of different businesses.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you rare, you don't find a lot of competitors in there. And then there's this confidentiality aspect to it. And what it, what, what I saw really first when I got into ypo, I'll say VISTAGE really shaped me and educated me and gave me tools over that nine years. VISTAGE is really good at giving you tools. You have a meeting every month, you've got a mentor, you meet with them every month, they have a speaker every month. And it's one day a month of like, you know, MBA type stuff. And, and it's stuff you can take back and put in your business the very next day. Very well delivered, highly recommended. But it was all local to me. And then when I got into ypo, what I realized is there's not anybody in here who hasn't sold a Business everybody in there had. And I didn't even think what life after selling my business would be like. I didn't. It was like the abyss, you know, up against the. What do they call it? I was up against the firmament at the top of the world. I was. My hands were on the glass, not knowing what it would be like on the other side, that there could be freedom and choice and. And.

[A]

And these things.

[B]

So. But then you get into ypo and all of a sudden it's like, yeah, I've sold three businesses and. Well. And so now you're like, oh, okay. Well, it gave me that exposure. And then I got into a small group. EO has forums, correct?

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

And you get in a small group with six to eight people, and you kind of. These are. It's in the lockbox. You can talk about anything that's going on personally. Business, in your marriage, with your health, in, you know, in your business, and. And these people are there to kind of help you. So I. When I saw that you were the global president of eo, I. I had to believe that it was a big part of the ultimate success that you had.

[A]

Oh, huge. And you make two great points. The two things that. That I think I found most significant in the journey I've had with EO over the last 25 years or so is the diversity of businesses that you come across that are not in your sector have never had anything to do with what you've been working on for a decade, and yet those individuals can give you an equal amount of information to help you on your journey. Regardless of that, that was my first big lesson was, you know, understanding that I was in a bubble. And. And I figured that unless, you know, my industry or what I'm trying to achieve here, you can't really help. And the answer was, yeah, they can. And it was funny. My first experience with that was back in 97, I think it was where I went to my first EO University in Tokyo in Japan. And I wasn't going to go because I figured, I don't speak Japanese, I don't like Japanese food, I'm never going to do business in Japan. Why would I go to Japan? And it was my grandmother at the time who said, troy, I have this feeling you should, you know, you should expand your horizons. And I think you should go to this university, this event in Tokyo. She said, I will pay for it. And if you don't get anything out of it, then you don't owe me a dime. But if you do, then of course you can write me a check. I got on the plane, I went to the university with all these thoughts in my head that, what am I going to learn here? These guys have got nothing to do with my business. It's a different country. I'm never going to work here. This is probably a waste of money. On the first Evening, after about 30 minutes in a room of 300 entrepreneurs from all over the planet, I raced back upstairs to my hotel room and rang my grandmother and said, checks in the mail. This is extraordinary. I had this whole world open up in front of me that I knew was there, but I didn't believe was going to be helpful to me. And then that set me on this journey of, well, if they're not in my sector or they're not in my industry or know nothing about my business or my life, maybe I should just ask a bunch of questions and see what feedback I can get from these guys and girls that might in some part give me a different view or an alternate perspective to what I'm looking at at the moment. And that's exactly what happened. And it sent me on this journey to find more of these individuals in more places around the world with more information that I could distill into what I was trying to achieve in my backyard. And, you know, just pick and choose elements of information that was going to be helpful and EO and ypo develop that comfort, that opportunity to be vulnerable and to ask those questions and not feel silly about it, and also knowing that you're going to get an answer to the question and can have a conversation in confidence that it's just between you and that individual. And I think those two things were an incredible aha for me, that I needed to be vulnerable. I needed to be a leader that was okay to be wrong, okay to ask questions and, you know, happy to pick up a phone and talk to anybody that I felt might be able to help me out.

[B]

I. I remember specifically sitting in a forum meeting with my forum mates and talking about my business, and then just realizing as the words were coming out of my mouth, like, these guys are going to slap these words right back in the.

[A]

Right.

[B]

These. I was. I was like, why? And I even caught myself saying, that is a stupid thought. You're stuck in your own thinking why these people are going to. You know, and sure enough, with some grace, they were like, you know, why? Why would you. Why wouldn't you do this? Why wouldn't you do that? And I just realized that I had surrounded myself with a very Comfortable group of people, some of which we pay, by the way. I mean when you're, you know, when your name's on the. The what, the front of the check or the back. Yeah. When your name's on the front of the check and their name's on the back of the check, they're likely to tell you how smart you are sometimes.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Because they want another check from you.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Where your forum group and groups like EL and Ypo, they get the win. They've absolutely got no benefit other than to the reward of helping and the reward of sharing. And that experiential way of learning from each other, I think is key to those conversations where it's not about giving you advice or being paid to give you advice. It's about just wanting to help out and share some ideas that I may have had or experiences that I may have been through that may be helpful to you. And it comes from a place of service that before it self service, it's, it's about, well, if I can help you enough or others enough, then maybe that will be, you know, helpful to me down the road and, and karma will sort itself out. And lots of times over the last bunch of years, that's exactly what's happened to me. Exactly.

[B]

One thing that's clear to me is that you've developed a set of fundamentals because you've been successful in so many different industries. And every business has a purpose. Every business has people. Every business has hopefully a competitive advantage that's either being exploited or it's not. Every business has challenges. Every business has budgets, forecasts and cash flow concerns and the kind of, the economic cycle of it. So, you know, I started looking through your book future proofing your business and then I realized that, you know, you're, you are one of those entrepreneurs that could really go into any business and make an assessment of it and provide some value. And then what's incredible about it, and I listened to you speak on another podcast, the humility with it saying, I'm not the smartest person in the room. I'm going to take a business, I don't have to take it all the way to the moon. I can take it to the next level and then get it to get it to the next people that can take it and I want to. And one thing you said is you like to leave some meat on the bone. Some people, when they get into a business, they grow it and then they try to get, they try to get every single cent out of that business when they sell it and now the business is over leveraged and the people have a hard time with it. Where you're like, I like to show the people when they buy this business, here's three things that they can do right, you know, that are strategies that they can, they can implement. And so I, I had a lot of respect when I, when I heard you say that. So my, my opening question into this buying businesses and I'd like to unpack a little bit about like if you went into a business today, like what would be your process? What would you go through? What are some of the first things that you would do before that? What do you look for in a business? What makes a good business that makes you interested in it?

[A]

Yeah, I spent a lot of time watching videos, scouting around the Internet, looking for angles or sectors or things that look like they're under serviced or maybe not experiencing the same opportunities as technology does or AI and that sort of stuff where there'd be less left behind or disregarded along the way by entrepreneurs thinking it's not the next sexy thing. So looking for the unsexy businesses has been part of our strategy over the years to look for things that don't have to make a headline, but we can make an impact in that business. And then that thought process goes straight to that, what impact can we make in that business? How can we add value? And I'm always looking to surround myself with people that can help me with that value. I know what I can do, but I also know there's plenty of gaps that I can't really contribute to because it's just not, I'm just not good at it. And if I can bring others in to bolt into that business to make that impact, then we've got a half a start. And the journey for me is always, as you said, you know, if I'm the smartest person in the room, I'm in the wrong room. So if I can assemble individuals to what I believe to be deliver the greatest value or the greatest impact on that business quickly, then the next school of thought we have is well, how quickly can I make myself redundant? Because I don't want to actually work in these businesses as much as I want to impact them and have them, you know, go to somebody else who can make their mark on it in the next generation or the next iteration of that business. I'm not that proud that I have to take it to its death. I'm good enough to say I can get you to here with my skill set and those that I'm bringing into the, into the business. But you know what? I got a few good ideas that you might be able to implement once you've taken the keys off me. And here's what that looks like. I think you guys are the smarter suitor to do that. So we're almost, we're not chewing their food for them, but we're giving them the roadmap that says, well, we put this business on the market, we've made as much impact as we can, but we really believe you guys can do better. And so they're buying into that journey, that dream. And that's where the premium comes from. My experience over the years, it's not about just selling the business, it's about selling the sexiness of the next person's dream. You haven't got to make it sexy yourself. You just got to make it look good in their eyes so they fall in love with it. And that's the worst thing you can ever do, is fall in love with an asset. But if you can create that sort of connection, then that's where we've found the most powerful exits.

[B]

Can you share a few simple tools or things that you do when you go and you walk around a business for the first time? Or how do you, how do you sort it? I mean, I, I, I can imagine that, you know, you start putting things into buckets and you're like, I need to evaluate this, I need to evaluate that. You know, can you just give us a simple framework that maybe you do in the first few weeks or months?

[A]

So I have a slightly different approach to many. In a diligence process, everyone thinks it's about numbers, it's about the P and L, it's about the governance, it's about, you know, the way that they manage their, the cadence of their meetings and reportings and et cetera, et cetera. And they're right. That should be part of the diligence process. But when you're buying a distressed asset, none of that exists. That's why it's distressed. So you've got to have a lot of conversations with individuals to find out what's really going on, because it's not being shown in the P and ls, it's not on the balance sheet. You can't see any reports or any meetings or things that have evidence of what's going on in the business. So you guess you've got to talk to a bunch of people. So we'll go into a business and I'll just have conversations with people and not in a controlled or staged environment. It's just, all right, well, let's go and have a beer. Well, let's go and have a coffee. And tell me about what goes on in your role in this business. Tell me about the things that you're excited about, the things that you're frustrated with, and try and understand the culture of the business, the fabric of the business, and then start looking for the data, because lots of times the data doesn't exist. And so you've still got to triangulate the reality of what's sitting in right in front of you and the individual you're talking to and the piece of paper that tells you what they believe is really going on in the business. Lots of times they don't match. So mine's a little bit more of a, I don't know, organic approach to diligence in an opportunity. And then we move to a more technical approach where we're looking through whatever resource we can get our hands on financially or from a governance perspective, to try and work out where the real skeletons are.

[B]

When you engage with an asset and you take a position in it, do you already set that destination for some time in the future when you're going to move it on to the next buyer or, you know, how do you know when you're engaged with an asset that it's time to start moving it

[A]

on from the day we buy it or the day we move into starts on day one? And in fact, if I use the technology company as an example, the lunch we decided we were going to make an offer on the business was the same lunch we decided when we wanted to get out of it.

[B]

How many bottles of wine until you sign the loi?

[A]

Too many, Jeff. That's why we ended up with a technology company.

[B]

That's right, yeah. In 2001.

[A]

So there's a lot of don't go and buy.

[B]

Bounce right back. What's the worst thing that could happen? Exactly.

[A]

That is the worst thing that can happen. Yeah, exactly. So I think where business leaders come unstuck is that they head off on these journeys not knowing what the end destination is or when that happens. And so they end up working for the business, the business is not working for them. And that was a significant shift for me 20 something years ago, where I realized that the business wasn't working for me, it wasn't working for my family, it wasn't working for my life, wasn't delivering the things that I wanted. So I'm working for it. It's a job. And why is it a job? It's a job because I don't know what I want it to do for me. I hadn't actually sat down and written a personal plan to match a business plan. That said, I'm working in this business, I have this business, I'm developing this business. For me to achieve these personal goals and these outcomes, when do I want that to happen? How far down the road should that happen? Where I've added the most value. And then when does it stop? What's the end date? I don't want to be married to this business forever. So I'm going to enjoy the time that we're dating and going out together for a while. And then when that relationship is probably run its course, then I'll move on to the next one. When I worked that stuff out, everything became a heck of a lot easier. I realized that it was a tool. It wasn't doing it for the prestige of growing a business or selling a business or the maybe the financial stuff that it was delivering. It was the journey. That was the fun bit. It was knowing that I'm in today with a view that I want to be out by this date and pretty much with every project since then. That's where we've made the most impact on the business, is knowing when and where that impact is going to happen and when we've made enough impact and we need to move it on. But we do that from day one and most people don't. And that's where you made a point earlier. They go as hard as they can to build it as big as they can, and it's already in decline. They just don't know it. Cause they're already tired. They've already outstretched their resources, they're already working above their pay grade or their ability. And so the business is in decline. And that's the worst time you can be telling it, but for guys like you and I, it's the best time for us to walk in the front door.

[B]

That's right. Have you worked for private equity much?

[A]

I have worked with them as, you know, suitors for businesses. And I have great relationships with private equity firms pretty much around the world now. And I have learned how to manage those relationships and try and get to a place and space where there is no bravado and there's no, you know, big dog, little dog. We're all in the same room for the same outcome. And if I can bring them a good product that they believe they can make even better, then that's the best relationship we can have. And even to your point earlier, the projects we're working on right now, some of which we haven't even started, I'm already having conversations with those private equity firms saying, look, I'm about to do this project in Australia. Here's what it looks like. We're out raising money for that now. We're going to do this over the next three years. I'll keep you in the loop. Is it a project you might be interested in in 2028? Yep, that'd be great, Troy. Keep us in that loop. And I've worked out that that's the most important part when you're dealing with private equity. It's, you know, treat them, bring them in early and treat them as a partner before they even look like they might, might be one.

[B]

So you're an entrepreneur that gets involved in turnarounds, early stage businesses or bigger family run businesses and then you prepare them and you move them on oftentimes to private equity. Yeah, because there's some executives that, you know, they're very good at working with private equity in. Inside of the brands that private equity buys, there's certain, you know, when I, when I look for executives for my businesses, it's like, okay, are they, are they somebody that's gonna, that the private equity company is going to look at and say, yes, we would be very happy if this person was in the CEO seat when private equity bought it and. Or are they somebody that the private equity is going to say, no, that's not going to work. We're going to have to replace person, which is a problem for them. Right. Because they want continuity and they don't. No sudden change when you're in deal mode. No sudden changes. Right. Just everything. Just, you know, run it like it's not going to sell. But don't, you know, don't throw the Hail Mary right before the closing table because it will disrupt it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, I think it's a bit of a balance in that I don't. On any of the transactions I'm working on now. Pardon me. I don't expect to have a job post transaction.

[B]

Yeah, you see the name of this podcast on the wall here?

[A]

There you go. That might be the next job.

[B]

Unemployable. We are unemployable, sir.

[A]

Well, and it's not because I don't believe I can add value. I just want to get out of the way. I've done my piece if you need a hand. I'm happy to stay on for a little while and help you with that. But what I'm more focused on is that the leadership team has the ability for me to be redundant or the founder or the CEO that I'm working with to be redundant. And if we've demonstrated that then we've probably done our job because it gives them the confidence that we don't need to be there and hands on the confidence they can bring new people in at a suitable point in time down the road to instill some of their culture or the things that they'd like to achieve or. But we are not precious about it. I don't need to think that I've got to be part of the next journey. I've done my bit, I've told you what you could do with it when I'm gone and I'm happy to go. And so if you need a hand, great, but don't include me in the org chart. It's not necessary.

[B]

You have a reputation for being very good with people. Can you share a few of your strategies or philosophies around getting the most out of people and making it good for them when you get into these companies?

[A]

I am, I suppose I'd be considered a softer leader than most. I intend to encourage rather than instruct. I tend to offer feedback rather than advice. I tend to look for how I can add some sort of a, some sort of a journey to the individual's life that is working with us. So give them some purpose. And so similarly, as I do a personal plan every year and match it to a business plan over the years we've got our leadership to do the same thing. They don't necessarily like doing that as a task because they feel a bit vulnerable. I feel that they shouldn't need to be sharing with the boss. But I've found over the years that by doing that I can understand how I can help them achieve their goals. And if I'm helping them achieve their goals, then it comes back and makes my job easier to achieve mine because they are benefiting from the same journey and we can get alignment out of that through those sort of vulnerable conversations. So I try and find what people really want out of life, what's important to them, their families and then how I can help them achieve some of those things by having them help me achieve the things I need to do in the business to help us all. So help me help you is the approach. And a lot of that from my point, my perspective over the years has been just having conversations I get a lot more out of taking a staff member for a coffee or a beer or walking down the street having a chat than I do from a quarterly review or a KPI or something other metric that we're measuring. You have to measure people using those tools, but if you judge them solely on those tools, then you're likely not going to get the best out of them. And I think over the years, we've found a healthy balance of trying to be friendly but firm, trying to be approachable but not easy, and trying to be a little bit vulnerable but not a pushover at the same time. And, I don't know, 30 years down the road, I think I'm better at it. I think I still learn every day from talking to other leaders around the world and pick up new tips and tricks and things that might make me have a look at myself in the mirror a bit harder. But it's a journey, Jeff. As you know, over the years, you kind of wake up, and every now and then you've got to give yourself a slap in the face because you realize that you've slipped back into some bad habits as a leader or a bad approach with people. And the good leaders have the ability to slap themselves in the face and go, you know what? I'm going to try harder. And that's the piece that I've found to be most important in getting the best out of people in our teams.

[B]

Yeah, I. I look back and I. I look at what I would consider to be a failure because I let my attention get away from the things that mattered the most. Or. Or there was just so much competition for my attention. And then I realized, you know, I haven't given feedback to this person in 30 days that I realized they needed feedback on, and I just got busy and I didn't see them. And now it's 30 days later and the situation has deteriorated. But is it their fault or is it my fault? Because I saw it and I didn't act on it because I got distracted with all of these other things, what time. And it's pretty easy.

[A]

It's really easy. I fortunately, had an assistant for many years who was really helpful in that respect. She would put four or five names in my calendar and say, you need to do a flyby with these guys or these girls. A flyby in our business was me flying past their desk going, hey, let's go for a coffee. Unannounced, unscripted, unstaged, not for any purpose of measuring anything. It was just a chance to spend 10 or 15 minutes. So those flybys became part of our culture. And her discipline for me to do them was certainly key.

[B]

You do business globally. I'm not sure what percentage you're doing in the States versus in Australia these days, but people are people, and people are everywhere. And there's a lot going on right now in the workforce, especially with AI. The things that you just talked about are harder and harder for young people to do. They spend 93% of their waking hours looking at a screen. They're in their car, they're going for a walk, everybody, they go to the gym, everybody's got their earphones in, nobody's talking now. Things that people went to school for, for years, like coding, don't need them anymore. Like what? What kind of trends right now? If, what, you know, if you were going to give people hope or a warning in terms of, you know, if you're a young person, you're in your 30s right now, you're an entrepreneur, you want to make a great career, you want to be the next Troy Hazard. Like what. What would you be telling people to pay attention to? What advice would you have or experience could you share with people these days?

[A]

The message we're sending a lot of younger people in the organizations I'm working with is to just remind yourself that you're human. Remind yourself that there needs to be that human contact with the people we're serving, the people that we're working with, the people that we're looking to attract into the business, that will never go away. And even with AI taking over most people's attention and technology being still the forefront of everyone's mind, my conversations with the guys and girls in the businesses I'm working in is, well, where do you position yourself to be part of the human handoff, where technology brings a customer in, introduces a person to the business, or serves a function in the business. But at what juncture do you want to put yourself in the middle of that as the human handoff, where they've still got to come to you, they still need to have a conversation with you, they still need your skills, your ability, your connection, your history that you may bring to the table? Because if you're not part of that human handoff and you don't insert yourself into that process between using and leveraging technology and getting the job done, then technology will take over and you'll make yourself redundant. You know, there will always be trades and things that technology can never take over. But in that, you know, business relationship, at some juncture, we've got to keep an eye on where we want to insert ourselves into that human handoff. Because the AI, the artificial intelligence, still needs to have some actual intelligence that happens in that, in that transactional process. And so I'm continuing to remind our guys and girls to, to be focused on where they put themselves into the equation. And if you're not in there, how do you insert yourself in there? Because if you don't, that's when you become redundant. That's when you become irrelevant to the conversation or to that transaction. And that's going to be a problem for your future.

[B]

Troy, when did you first get involved on the franchisor side of franchising?

[A]

Yeah, right. So I have had a history in franchising for 35 something odd years now that we fell into as part of our advertising agency back in the 90s. Someone said, hey, look, I'm looking to do some marketing. I'm about to franchise my business. Do you know about franchising? And of course I've gone, yeah, yeah, absolutely, I know about franchising. And hung the phone up and yelled out to the rest of the people in the office, go buy some books on franchising. So we had no clue. And that was fort that that particular client introduced me to another person in the sector and another and another. And all of a sudden we became the franchise guys in, you know, in the sector here in Australia. And that was helpful to me because it gave us focus and it gave us a little bit of a head start because it was still an emerging sector in Australia back in the 90s as it was pretty much everywhere in the world outside of McDonald's and some of the food chains. And so we kind of got a chance to learn with others. We were learning with franchisors as much as we were assisting them with their journey. And so our ignorance or our lack of experience wasn't uncovered, which was kind of helpful. And so I found an investment opportunity in some of those franchises in real estate and in pizza, where I bought into some franchises as a franchisee while we were still consulting to the franchisor. So that was helpful to be able to see both sides of the food chain as well, where we're acting for the franchisor. But I'm also getting the messages as a franchisee and I can see the disconnect happening between those two things. And so, once again, I bet you

[B]

were a horrible franchisee, Troy.

[A]

I was terrible. I was terrible,

[B]

But we don't want you.

[A]

I was happy to admit it,

[B]

but

[A]

it was really good for me as a consultant because I had this chance to realize how I was a terrible franchisee and what to do with them and how you could make them happy from a franchisor perspective. So that was an interesting period of maybe another 10 years or so where I could see both sides of the relationship and work out how to once again, to insert ourselves in the middle of that. And then Fast forward to 2012, I think it was. And John O', Brien, founder of Pool Works, a pool company here in Australia, rang me in America because we'd already moved there years earlier. And he said, I'm thinking about bringing the business to America. Are you interested in consulting? And I said, well, no, not really, but I'm happy to be a shareholder and I'm happy to work with you on that journey. So I became a shareholder of the American business, joined the board, ended up becoming chairman, and then over the course of building the American business, started to build the relationships with private equity and suitors to eventually transact the business in 22.

[B]

So that massive business.

[A]

Yeah. And so the last piece of the puzzle was as a franchisor, you know, shareholder and board member that was far more entrenched in the franchisor side of the business than we ever were as consultants. So a good experience for me and a fabulous experience in bringing a new business to a new country, which we're now doing. I'm now doing a lot of around the world and also doing it for a purpose to a transaction. So we go in on these dates. We're looking to be out by this date. We're looking at this sort of a multiple, this sort of enterprise value on the way out, and everybody knows what that journey looks like, and we're all working towards that same end result. So long answer your question. But I think that my days as a early adopter in the franchise sector in the 90s and as a franchisee and as a franchisor have all been pretty helpful. Now, as I start to package these businesses up for others to take them to market.

[B]

When you had the advertising agency and you started working with franchisors, is that when you morph that into a consultancy? Because you worked with over 300 franchisors and franchise brands during the course of your career. And was that global or was that in Australia?

[A]

In the early days, it was mainly Australia, and then we kind of had a few projects that we worked on throughout Asia Pacific that were spinoffs of the Australian relationships we had. Essentially, it was. I heard you did this for Such and such. Can you do this for me? And with some of these franchise businesses we were really embedded into that business. We were all in big projects, big contracts, big changes in the business that we were managing and others. It was maybe a few days we'd go and do a strategy session, help them with some ideas that we think might be helpful to them in their sector and we'd be out. So when we worked with quite a number of brands around the world, some of those journeys were long, some were short, some of them were very involved, some of them were just a flyby passing hand on a project or something that they were working on at the time. But it did give me, I suppose, a broader understanding of how universal the sector is. The franchise sector is in the way that you build operating systems. No matter what you're selling, you know, cars, cakes, you know, real estate, pizzas, whatever, it didn't matter. The formula that we were starting to put together as consultants was universal across all these sectors and it still is today. Jeff. I mean we still, I can still walk into a business and pretty much see what's wrong with it from a franchise perspective within a matter of hours and know that these are the six or seven things we need to focus on first and then we need to move on to this and then we need to move on to that and then I can give them the roadmap and the journey. It doesn't matter what sector they're in because I pretty much can tell them what's going to happen when they've got 50 outlets, 100 outlets, 200 outlets or 500 outlets. Because the same pressure point happens at each and every juncture in every single franchise.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Same story.

[B]

Yeah. What trends do you see in franchising, particularly in the United States, if any?

[A]

Yeah, that's a really broad question.

[B]

It is and I can, I can narrow it. I mean I'm, you know, obviously there's, you know, property services like pool works, like home front brands. It's always going to be here. I mean these services are generally non discretionary. There's a shortage of houses, there's, there's home building that's going to go on. We're going to have an increasing population for the next 25 years. There's a 10.3% compound annual growth rate in home and property services. So you know, if somebody wants to get into a low cost franchise into a growing market that's relatively safe, home and property services, and then you see things like fitness and it gets really big and really crowded. But I don't know if there's pets. There's more. There's, I think, 95 million pets and 87 million kids in this country now. So pet franchising is, is huge. But do you see anything in terms of franchise franchising slowing down, franchising speeding up or anything else that, that from your perspective, that that is interesting?

[A]

I think that we've. It's. How I say this politely. I think the franchise sector over the last five, six years, particularly post pandemic, has got a little bit lazy in its positioning in that the. You know, if you look 20 years ago, the term was be in business for yourself, but not by yourself. That's why you would get into a franchise business in any sector within the franchise sector.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Or any industry within the franchise sector. We've kind of forgotten the importance of that and how to position that in the minds of potential franchisees where we are not so much focusing on what our services or our product offer is or the business that we're in, that we are focusing on the relationship we're trying to create. And I think that emerging franchisors that are maybe just Getting started with 5, 10, 15, 25 or whatever franchisees at the moment, their positioning needs to be back to basics and back to grassroots, where it's about the relationship. And by the way we sell this product or by the way we have this service, we've forgotten that we were good at it back in the late 90s, early 2000s, where franchising was needing to be explained to people as much as it needed to be positioned. But now we've forgotten that the real reason that people want to get into this sector, into franchising is the support. It's the relationship that they can build with their franchisor, the franchisor team, and those that are going to help them on their journey to deliver the things they want for them and their families. We've stopped that conversation. We'll never have to stop the conversation. We've stopped leaning on that conversation as much as we probably should do in favor of saying, I've got this new pet business and it's really cool. No one else has got it. You're going to make a heap of money. It's going to be fabulous. Or trying to be sexy with the. The product or service that we are positioning as a franchise or business where we should be focused on the relationship. Oh, and by the way we sell this. That's the, that's the piece I think we've missed in the last bunch of years.

[B]

Well, and I wonder if that's tied to the rise of the franchise sales organizations.

[A]

I think in part because the, the personalization of those messages is a little bit diluted in that, in that conversation. And when we look at the franchise development stuff that we've put in place for franchisors over the years, there's always been a real focus on building the relationship first and then giving them the information about the business. And to the extent that our process of introducing a potential franchisee in the business is just that. Information, experience. Information. Experience. Emotion. Information. Experience. Emotion. Emotion, Emotion, emotion. So we're drawing them into the relationship before we even start talking about how we sell stuff or who we sell it to or why it's important. We have lost that connection through the use of brokers and franchise services businesses and the like because they're not living it the same way a franchisor is. They're not, they've not got the emotional connection to the business because they didn't build it or they, they didn't have the struggles that, that help give you the confidence. You could stand there in front of a potential franchisee and say, I've had a few struggles, I got out of them. I can get you out of them too. And here's how we're going to do it together.

[B]

That's right. Yeah. And I think we, we do as good a job as we can with that at Homefront Brands. It's all that we talk about here. It's, it's, you know, we, I just did two hours of training with a group of brand new franchise owners and it was the first. It's what, it's, it's, this is the values, this is our relationship. This is, this is what you're going to face and it's all the things. Right. And I put a quadrant up there of, of you want to build wealth for your family. Businesses are part of it. Marketable securities, real estate. And you know, this fourth one, that's a kicker. Like, okay, so you're on this journey together. This, this is, we're in relationship to build you a successful life. To build you a successful life and all the things that matter. And it's a slippery slope because we still made a mistake and because we're in a competitive environment and we're trying to catch eyeballs and marketing's gotten sophisticated and everybody's got the newest, hottest franchise thing out there and we have to compete for those people because we need people as well. And I mean we Made a mistake where we went to market and we over emphasized a product and it's like, no, this is, that's why, it's a wonder why you know, people, it's not resonating with people because we're leading with a product.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And you know, if you, if you're forced to sell, if you're, if you believe that you're forced to award franchises at all cost now, you're gonna be focusing on numbers and the sizzle. Right. But at the end of the day, business ownership is not the easiest thing that people can choose to do. And when it gets tough, you've got to have people that are mature, that are in your corner, that can give you the feedback that you need, that can resolve conflicts in a healthy manner. None of which is going to the contract. It's all interpersonal. And the other thing that I'm very proud of at Homefront Brands is that, and it's been a talk track that I've had, I've done 500 times. Within the walls of our businesses, we're focused on these people out, these people's outcome and everything that they need to do to build themselves the capabilities, the confidence to one brick at a time to build a business. Like, we need to make sure that they get to a destination. Like you said, when you get into something, you got to know what the destination is. Right. Cheshire Cat was not right. Cheshire Cat was right. You know, if, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. Exactly. You know, so, so, you know, and, and sometimes, and you know this as well as I do, I mean, we have a population of franchise owners out there, hundreds and hundreds of them.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Cancer happens, divorce happens.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Accidents happen. We had a family in a plane crash that, that passed away. People go to rehab. Addiction happens. So in, in those situations, because we're focused on the outcomes, if people say, I just need to get out of this or close it down, we will fight them to resell that business and to operate that business to get them some money on their way out the door or whatever it is, you know, just because they say, you know, I, I'm in this bad situation and I've got to give it up. A lot of franchisors would say, well, sign the paper, goodbye, we'll let you go. I mean, and, but we're going to go and we're going to make sure that that family gets as much of recovery as they possibly can out of the business. And we'll waive fees we'll send people, we'll do everything we need to, because when they committed to us to build the business, we committed to them to get the best outcome possible for them. And if the opportunity for them to do it has been taken from them by circumstances, then that doesn't relieve us of the responsibility to continue to try. And that's a subtle but significant thing. And I think it makes an impact on our people and the way that we support and the way that we care for our franchise owners.

[A]

Absolutely. And that's where the relationship becomes the agreement. And we just. And this is the widget we sell. And when I have potential franchisees come to me saying, hey, I'm thinking about buying a franchise, what sector should I get into? I said, it doesn't matter, it's really not important. Go and find the leader you'd like to work with that has the vision, that has an understanding of where the business is going and how he's going to take you on that journey or she's going to take you on that journey, have a conversation about how they're going to support you emotionally, support you when things are tough, when it isn't going quite right. Oh, and by the way, we'll sell that stuff on the way as well. We've lost the real reason that people are wanting to get into this business. And the real reason is they want that relationship, they want the support. And when I had that conversation with potential franchisees have done for 30 odd years now, it's always, always try and bring it back to the relationship and saying, forget the widget. It's not about selling coffee or cars or donuts, it's about the individuals you're gonna work with. And by the way, here's what we sell and if that works for you, that you've got the confidence of the relationship, that everything else will fall into place.

[B]

You've traveled a lot, you've built a lot of businesses, you've got a young family now.

[A]

Yep. On the light starter.

[B]

What, what can you share about? You know, first of all, and I had that talk this morning with people with our, with our class, having an early entrepreneurial experience is the best thing that you can give your children. Showing them and people an early entrepreneurial experience is correlated to a successful entrepreneurial outcome later in life. So sometimes I have people that come in from corporate America and nobody in their family has ever been a business owner. And I'm like, you can be the one, okay. You can be ambitious and you can, you can develop capabilities that you have Bigger than you ever, you know, more capable than. Than they would have, that you would have had you not been ambitious enough to try this. You will uncover capabilities that you don't have that now, you know, you need. And while you're struggling and fighting to do all this, there's going to be people around you, a brother, a sister, a child, an aunt, an uncle, that are going to be watching you do this business. And you don't know it, but you are going to inspire them to be an entrepreneur. My dad had his own business. My dad had a failed engineering business. You know, he worked for somebody. It was great. He was a great guy, man. And then he had an engineering business with a partner. And, dude, when I was 14 years old, I was a big kid. I mean, he'd make me put a sport coat on when they had clients coming in. I would have to go sit in the cubes and pretend I was a worker. Like, dad, like, I'm 14, by the way, dad, I'm 14 years old. The lapels on this shirt are ridiculous. It is the 70s they take. These are. You should have thrown this shirt out 10 years ago. Okay. My dad had an afro that touched three decades. I mean, he had a perm. These 80s, 90s, and I think it touched 2000s, you know, so he was, it was Peter Frampton, you know, but like, I watched him struggle and I watched him work Saturdays and Sundays and I watched him, you know, have challenges with his partner. I watched him buy some of the first computers that came out and get a loan for a hundred thousand dollars for a bunch of PCs. Three years later, he could have bought them for $10,000, did the same thing. Yeah, but like, it's, but the business, but it, it sunk them. You know, it was one of those things where it's just like, we're paying on this, on this loan for computers, by the way. We need to replace them and we can do it now for 10 grand. They're a hundred times more powerful. But so look, he didn't make it. I mean, he made it for probably 10 years. And then he took a job for a big company and had a nice pension and retirement and did. Had a nice finish to his career and all. But, man, I watched that. Like, that was, that was my lived experience from the time that I was 10 till the time I was 19. Watching them do it. And then I. For me to be an entrepreneur, it just, I just knew what it looked like. You know, so much can be. People don't realize what if, if they just Think it's about the dollars and the cents that I'm gonna make in the first 90 days. Yeah. And it's important, right? I mean, you gotta watch your costs, you gotta drive revenue and you gotta control your cost and you have to do all the things. But, like, it is really so much more about transforming yourself. And. And then what I. What they don't realize, Troy, what they don't realize is, yes, you're going to be building financial freedom, economic security opportunities, but what a business really does for you that a job doesn't, is it gives you the freedom of your curiosities.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

If you're working in a cube or somebody, you cannot join eo.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You can't join the Genius Network. You can't join ypo. You can't say, I'm going to go to this conference and I'm going to learn that. You can't go to Tokyo and say, I've got time to do it, because guess what? You have to show up at work. So what it. The. The most. Even if it's break even on the dollars, and maybe even it's harder in the first couple of years, you are going places that you would have never gone, meeting people that you would have never been with. And. And the people that I see embrace that piece of it are the ones that become wildly successful and, you know, maybe they leave our system after five, seven, eight years, build a big business, have a great exit, and then they go and they do something else. And I'm fine with that, Troy, because that's like, that's what we're here for. We're here to create outcomes for people and to improve their lives.

[A]

Well, and as franchisors, we should be encouraging that anyway. And some of the early conversations we have with potential franchisees, as always, when do you see yourself selling this business? And they don't really understand why you've asked the questions. Hang on. Are we talking about getting into this business? Absolutely. But when do you want to get out of it? Because what I'd like to understand is what that journey looks like and how we can help you facilitate that at the right time for the right reason, for the right outcome. And it's an unusual conversation for franchisors to have, but I think it's back to my earlier point. It's an important conversation to have because that also strengthens the relationship. I know you're going to leave me one day, and I'm okay with that. Let me help you work towards that day. And when we get to that day you decide you want to stay. Happy days. But if you do want to go, we've at least fulfilled your goals along the way, and we've got you to the space and place where you wanted to be on your way in as you exit.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So any comments about are you enjoying your family right now? You've got young kids. You try. When we spoke, we were in. I don't know where we were, maybe Vegas at a conference, and we had a couple of drinks together, and I just really enjoyed the conversation. You were telling me that you had taken off time to travel with family. What's that been like?

[A]

It's been probably one of the best decisions, not probably the best decision I think I've made in my entire career. When we had the transaction in 22, I stayed on with the business for 12 months. As chairman mid 23, we started to take a bit more time off and just, you know, relax a little bit, because, as you know, transactions are challenging. They really, really take it out of you. And you almost have this fear of crashing to your point earlier in this conversation where what happens after I'm done here? What am I supposed to be? What sort of a person should I all of a sudden become now that I don't have that relationship that I've lived with for so long? We had a moment in time where we put an offer on an apartment in Florida, where we live, and it fell through. And I just turned around to my wife, Dominique, and said, well, what do you want to do? She said, well, why don't we just travel? Our kids have always been homeschooled, so it was never a problem. They're always portable with us. And that was done deliberately from day one for us. And that was, you know, end of 23, and we're still traveling two years later. We've in fact, got all of our stuff in storage in America and in Australia. Two storage units in different parts of the world. And we've been homeless for the last two years. So we do homeless quite well, Jeff, just by the way. But it's been the best experience that we've had with the kids. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time, and it's also taught me now that I can be anywhere in the world and no one cares. The people I'm working with now, the businesses we have interests in or investments in, those partners that I have, do not care where I am, do not care that I don't walk in the front door. I can be anywhere in the world and still have impact. On them, their lives, their businesses. And that's been a really, really big shift for me because it's helped me understand that I have these new options now to do different things in different places with different people and have entirely different conversations that didn't seem to be available to me five or six years ago, but I'm enjoying now. And certainly the time with the kids over the last couple of years has been extraordinary.

[B]

So do you do time blocking? Like we're going to be a month here and three months there. And how many. How many weeks of the last hundred weeks have been on a cruise ship?

[A]

I hate answering this question, Jeff, because it makes me look so lazy.

[B]

No, no, no, no. Don't answer it then. You don't to have. But I was fascinated by it because I. I mean, to be on.

[A]

To be.

[B]

You have no maintenance.

[A]

You don't have a. You have.

[B]

You don't have any maintenance. You just go from one place to the next. But I'd like to settle in probably for, you know, three or four weeks here and there.

[A]

We do. And, and we do block it. We're like, we're in Australia for six weeks. We head home. We're in Florida for three or four months. Next adventure is into Asia for a month. So Dominique does put us in places where we do get a chance to unpack and, and relax and make new relationships or new friends or I'm there for a purpose, for a project that we're working on. First answer to your question is we've had five different cruises this year or last year, in 2025.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But now use it as a reason to get from one place to the next rather than getting on an aircraft. So I still get to work. The kids get to have fun with friends on boats because, you know, in their world schooling environment that they now live in, a lot of these cruise ships have. Have world schoolers on board. So they not only learn from each other, but also make great friendships around the world as well. So it's turned into an entirely different lifestyle for us in the last couple of years. But so long as I can still get the job done and everyone has a good time, I think we're on the right path.

[B]

Oh, man, that's fascinating. You do any river cruises?

[A]

Not yet. Because most of those adult cruises, they don't.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Invite children on those cruises. But when the kids leave their home, then certainly Dominique and I will be out on those for sure.

[B]

Yeah. Awesome. Well, Troy, this has been amazing. I've got a, A curveball if you want to play, I got a curveball to throw at you and then I got a fastball straight down the middle. But before we do that, do you do you have if anybody wanted to get in touch with you, how would they do that?

[A]

I'm pretty easy. Troy hazard.com I'm the easiest guy in the world to find, and I do answer emails when they come in. As you know, I spend a fair bit of my time as a professional speaker around the world as well. And the same thing I say to my audiences, if you've got a question for me, send the email to me, go via the website, you'll find me, and I'll happily answer any questions or offer up any help that I can. That's the eo ypo way we do things around the world. And I'm happy to be that guy if anyone needs a hand.

[B]

Awesome. Any television appearances or television shows or any cool media stuff that you got planned for this year?

[A]

I actually came off one this morning before I got to you. I do a regular thing on a show called the Big Biz show in the us it's on a couple of cable networks. I think we go into about 100 million homes and I do that weekly. Had been doing that for 12 years or so now, and I had my own show on that network for a couple of seasons as well back when we were living in San Diego some years ago. But all of that material is on my Vimeo channel if anyone wants to have a look at some of that stuff. I keep all those clips and a bunch of clips from some of my stage work. There's about 300 and something different videos on that channel and it's just vimeo.com Troy Hazard so those sort of resources are all free and if they can be helpful to anyone, that's a good day out for me.

[B]

Yeah. What's the premise of the Big Biz show?

[A]

We call it business with barroom flair so we don't take ourselves too seriously. And most of the segments, I do have a bit of humor in it. Or we try and make fun of a situation that sometimes the mainstream media want to blow up and turn into fear. We try and find a different angle and it's one of the few shows that is still independent. It's still down the middle. It's not left, it's not right. We're in the middle and that's why I'm still there, because I love the guys that are on the show. We have an open conversation from both sides of the fence. And we are grassroots old school broadcasters where our job is not to have an opinion. Our job is to give you information and to entertain so you can make your own opinion up yourself. And I think that's, you know, one of the things that media or shows in general or podcasts, online stuff, whatever, we've kind of missed that a little bit. You know, I love what you're doing with this show because it's exactly that. It's down the middle. Make your own opinion. Here's what, you know, my guests have got to deliver that might be helpful to you. Outside of that, we're just here to give you information.

[B]

Yeah, we chop it up on both sides of the aisle.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Yeah, we have gotten canceled a few times, but, you know, hey, you know, like when it starts going that way and, and I've got a guest and they start, they say a few things and I like, I know when it's past the point, I just, I'm like, well, we might as well just chop it all the way down because nobody's gonna see this.

[A]

That's okay.

[B]

Yeah, nobody's gonna see this because we don't, we don't have the kind of audience. But we can overcome, you know, censorship. Yeah, but, but you know, we're not a political, we're not a political show. I mean, we're, we're, we, we're here to inspire entrepreneurs and, and bring people the very best of. Of people's experiences. Because everybody out there really, whether it's a side hustle or anything, they should really consider a business as part of their portfolio. And I think just making it accessible and like, you don't have to have a college education. You don't have to have an mba. You don't have to have a lot of resources. You just gotta have the gumption to, to take an action and the network

[A]

to support that, that, you know, that move.

[B]

All right, well, Troy, here's the [e-mail]. great place to go. Go to Vimeo. Backslash forward, slash. Troy Hazard.

[A]

Maybe something like that.

[B]

Something like that. You can figure it out. Here's the curveball, Troy. Gun to your. Gun to your head. Hate to say it. Gun to your head. You have to start a business in the next 30 days and it can't be something that you're currently doing. Where do you see the opportunity in the market?

[A]

Yeah, there is a curveball. I, I'm excited about this whole human handover piece in the world of AI, where every other conversation I have with Every other entrepreneur around the world is about AI. Are you using AI? What are you doing with AI in your business? How is AI helping you in your day? And frankly, I don't use it. I, I, I have not opened chat that gtp. Whether that's the right way of looking at it or the wrong way, I am not going to have that skill set to leverage what that looks like in the future. But what I can do is do what I am good at. And what I am good at is inserting myself into the conversation and being part of that human handover. Where it goes from using technology or the technology enablement to bringing the human element back into it. I would be looking for those sort of businesses and businesses that you, you can see a flaw. If its sole purpose is technology, then that's a bad business to be in, in my view. When we've been in technology and we realized that our edge in that technology business was the human element was not to be the best platform or have the best technology. It was to have the best conversations with CEOs who didn't understand technology but needed to feel that there was a human element in the conversation and the contract we were going to create. I still believe there's a great space for that. And I've been looking for those sort of things in different sectors where we can still be relevant in that sector. Leveraging the technology, using the technology, but bringing it back to the relationship that we all want as humans. The conversation we want to have that is not automated, that isn't from a call center somewhere else in the world that is run by a bot. We still need that as humans. And I think that's one of the opportunities that I think are important and where I think I'm going to have a lot of focus on that in the next five or six years. And the other element is still in the services. We're in here in Australia trying to put together a project in the electrical services space where we're looking to aggregate a bunch of businesses here and build a bit of a platform. And so far it's going great for us. And the reason we're doing that is that you're always going to need an electrician, right? And you're always going to need someone to give you the confidence that they've come in and fixed it so you don't electrocute yourself because you've used technology to fix something like that, which is essentially or could essentially be a deadly problem. They're the sectors that I'm still focused on and Then still bring again the human element into them to remind people that that piece of the relationship and the transaction is important.

[B]

Last question. Fastball straight down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

[A]

Start with the end in mind. Know what you look like when you grow up? It's a question that I ask a lot of people when I'm on stage, when I'm having conversations like this. What do you want to be when you grow up? If you don't know the answer to that, then as you said earlier, all roads are going to lead to the right destination. So with everybody that I'm talking with that's looking to get into business, grow their business, or even exit their business, start with the end in mind. If you want to get into business, what does it look like when it's finished? You want to get out of the business? What do you want for that business when it's finished? You want to build, create, or own your own future, you need to know what it looks like when it's done. And so I'm always asking people to start with the end in mind and know what they want to be when they grow up. And if they can answer those two questions, then at least we've got something to aim for.

[B]

Perfectly said. Troy, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for being on. Not a problem.

[A]

Thanks for the invite. Might have loved it.

[B]

Yeah, outstanding. I'm Jeff Duden, and we have been here with the incredible Troy Hazard on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.