Many founders avoid thinking about exit readiness while they are still building the company. It feels premature. Worse, it can feel like a distraction from growth.
But that instinct often creates a structural problem later.
Companies built around founder hustle, informal operations, and unclear metrics can appear successful on the surface. Revenue may be growing. Customers may be satisfied. Yet when the time comes to explore a sale, those same companies can prove difficult to value or even impossible to transact.
The underlying issue is not performance. It is design.
As Draven McConville’s experience building and selling Klipboard illustrates, companies that successfully exit rarely pivot toward acquisition readiness at the end. They were built that way from the start.
An exit is often described as a transaction. In reality, it is the final outcome of years of operational decisions.
Investors and acquirers are not simply evaluating revenue growth or product quality. They are evaluating whether the company operates with institutional discipline: clear metrics, reliable reporting, documented systems, and leadership structures that do not depend entirely on the founder.
For many early-stage businesses, the opposite dynamic exists. The founder carries sales. The founder makes most operational decisions. The founder holds the key customer relationships.
That model can work during the early stages of growth.
It does not translate well to an acquisition process.
A buyer evaluating a company must determine whether the business can continue operating — and growing — after ownership changes. If the organization depends heavily on the founder’s personal effort, that continuity becomes uncertain.
The result is predictable: valuation pressure, buyer hesitation, or transactions that never materialize.
The alternative is to build the company with exit readiness embedded into its operating model long before a sale is contemplated.
One of the most consistent patterns in scalable companies is the founder’s transition from primary operator to system builder.
Early-stage companies require hustle. Decisions happen quickly, and founders often fill multiple roles simultaneously.
But businesses that scale must gradually shift toward structured execution. That means building teams capable of owning key functions, implementing systems that standardize operations, and creating internal accountability around metrics and reporting.
For McConville, this transition was essential.
Founder-centric organizations may generate early momentum, but they struggle to sustain growth when complexity increases. Leadership capacity eventually becomes a bottleneck.
The goal is not to remove the founder’s influence. It is to ensure that the company’s progress no longer depends on the founder doing everything personally.
As McConville explains, “You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room.”
Scaling companies depend on leaders who can assemble capable teams and give them the authority to execute.
Another signal that shapes acquisition readiness has little to do with valuation models or investor presentations.
It shows up in customer behavior.
Founders often debate whether they have achieved product-market fit. The answer typically becomes obvious when customers begin to rely on the product as infrastructure.
McConville experienced this moment in a particularly vivid way.
During a brief outage that took the platform offline for just seventeen minutes, the reaction from customers was immediate and intense. The volume of complaints initially appeared alarming to his team.
But to McConville, the reaction revealed something more important.
“The customers screaming meant they couldn’t live without the product.”
Customer dependency signals that the product has become embedded in operational workflows. That dependency creates durability, which ultimately becomes one of the most valuable characteristics of a software business.
Acquirers look for companies that customers cannot easily replace.
Founders often emphasize persistence as the defining quality behind successful companies. McConville agrees — but only partially.
Persistence without learning can trap companies in cycles of unproductive effort. The difference between resilience and stubbornness often comes down to how quickly a company adapts to feedback from the market.
In McConville’s words: “Persistence matters, but smart iteration matters more.”
This distinction is especially important for product companies.
Founders frequently develop strong emotional attachment to their original product vision. That attachment can create blind spots when customer feedback contradicts internal assumptions.
The most effective companies treat customer behavior as the primary signal guiding product development.
“The real feedback loop is your customer.”
Iteration guided by real usage patterns improves both the product and the business model. Over time, those adjustments compound into stronger retention, more predictable revenue, and clearer strategic positioning.
All of which simplify the path toward a potential acquisition.
When acquisition conversations begin, many founders discover that the transaction process is far more operational than they expected.
Due diligence demands detailed documentation, financial transparency, and comprehensive reporting across the organization. Missing records, unclear metrics, or poorly structured contracts can slow or derail the process.
McConville approached this differently.
Because Klipboard had outside investors, the company already operated with structured reporting, organized documentation, and investor-grade metrics. The same discipline required for raising capital also prepared the company for eventual acquisition.
As he explains, “Having your ducks in a row makes an exit a hell of a lot easier.”
The lesson is straightforward: operational discipline is not merely administrative overhead. It reduces transaction risk and shortens the path to a successful sale.
Companies that treat documentation, reporting, and governance as strategic assets often find that exit processes unfold far more smoothly.
One of the most persistent myths in entrepreneurship is that an exit represents a singular moment — a deal negotiated at the end of the journey.
In practice, exits are cumulative outcomes.
They reflect how the company was built: how teams were structured, how customers were served, how metrics were tracked, and how decisions were made under pressure.
Companies that eventually sell well rarely reorganize themselves in the final year to meet investor expectations. They already operate in ways that investors recognize as scalable.
That preparation may begin years before any acquisition discussion occurs.
For CEOs building companies today, the implication is simple but often overlooked.
If you want the option to sell one day, you must build the company as if that option already exists.
__________
Draven McConville is the founder of Klipboard, a SaaS platform serving field service businesses. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
He built and scaled the company after beginning his career under difficult circumstances, including a period of homelessness at age eighteen, before ultimately selling the business to Kerridge Commercial Systems, a global ERP provider.
His experience provides a practical perspective on the operational decisions required to build companies that scale — and eventually become acquisition-ready.
__________
Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
__________
The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
__________
Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
Transcript Summary
Full Transcript (AI generated and might include errors)
Jeff Holman (08:30.738)
Welcome back to the breakout CEO. am Jeff Holman, your host. I'm so glad to be here today with you and to bring you some thoughts and insights from Draven McConville. Draven, thanks for joining us on the show.
Draven McConville (08:45.709)
Thanks Jeff, great to be here.
Jeff Holman (08:47.686)
I'm really excited to talk about your story. You've got a few kind of hooks in your story where it started, but then you've got some really big examples of growing businesses and making hard decisions since that point in time. And so it's going to be a fun story to talk about today.
Draven McConville (09:04.575)
Yeah, I'm looking forward to sharing it. It's been a journey, but I think business is always a journey. So looking forward to sharing.
Jeff Holman (09:10.944)
Definitely is. If someone were to look at your bio, what would they see? What's the thing that strikes them the most and they always they're like, they go the kind of the go to part of your bio.
Draven McConville (09:24.109)
I think probably the go-to part is I was homeless when I was 18. And I think most people always question, well, how did you go from being homeless to selling a tech company to private equity? And it's always a curiosity of what did you do along the way in order to get to that? Homelessness is one part of their question is like, you know, why and how and what.
Jeff Holman (09:30.047)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (09:53.518)
what was that experience like? But I think it's more so focused on how did I go from there to there? And I suppose you were mentioning a little moment ago, what decisions did I make? I can tell you I made a lot of bad decisions and right decisions. But I learned from the bad decisions too. So yeah, that's probably the thing that they focus on.
Jeff Holman (10:00.98)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (10:08.192)
Good.
Jeff Holman (10:13.44)
We're going to get into all that. What's the part that you think they miss when they, not that there's anything wrong with focusing on your of your origin story, but what's the part that they miss when they focus on the origin story? Is there a backstory or other deeper moments that are harder to grasp if the focus is somewhere else?
Draven McConville (10:34.709)
think, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs have a backstory of sorts, you know, whether it's having had an experience that's driven them to go and do that. I think the bit that they probably miss is how strategic I was about my life and what goals that I actually set for myself and I pushed myself to achieve. I think they kind of
Jeff Holman (10:40.746)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (10:54.548)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (11:04.405)
maybe get lost in the rags to riches story and it's like very humble and great and well done. And don't get me wrong, there is an element of that, but for me to move from there and, you know, and once I moved out of that, I had other steps, you know, at what point did I stop? I was very strategic about the things that I was deciding to do and focus on and move forward. And that's the bit I think that they kind of forget or overlook.
Jeff Holman (11:25.504)
Yeah.
Okay, well, let's dive into that stuff today then. I want to hear that. Not that the rest isn't great, but it'll be fantastic to hit some points that maybe are missed in other conversations. So let's not start with your homelessness part. Again, I just don't want to focus on that, even though I'm sure that's a critical part of who you are. But tell me a bit about, let's kind of jump ahead a few years or...
Draven McConville (11:52.919)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (11:57.877)
however long we need to. Tell me a bit about the fact that you built a couple companies and what those companies were just for context for our audience.
Draven McConville (12:05.536)
Yeah, sure. Like homelessness, I gives you a lot of resilience and I suppose a determination to make a change. I'm so I obviously didn't jump into starting businesses straight away. That wasn't wasn't so simple as to do that. So I've had a whole range of different jobs from, you know, being a nightclub manager and running a nightclub to I'm working in the mobile phone industry, etc. And then I got into the.
Jeff Holman (12:15.018)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (12:34.226)
Okay.
Draven McConville (12:35.296)
the creative industry. But I was always restless and I was always wanting that next thing and my mind was very, very curious. And when I was in the creative agency world, I got involved in doing websites, et cetera. But I remember the advent of mobile phone apps and I thought to myself, there's an opportunity over there.
Jeff Holman (12:55.188)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (13:04.204)
And I remember going to the owner of that creative agency that I was in and presenting that opportunity. They didn't get it. It was lost. Cut a very long.
Jeff Holman (13:15.68)
So this is like 2007, 2008, 2009, somewhere in there.
Draven McConville (13:18.922)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was the recession. I know that very clearly because I was thinking to myself, what else can I take to my customers that they might want to buy right now? That wasn't just, you know, the normal. And because we were in a recession, it had to drive value for them. And that's where the apps kind of came around and they didn't kind of buy into it. And I thought, be damned with that. You know, there's bound to be a customer that will want to buy it.
Jeff Holman (13:23.817)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (13:30.612)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (13:48.842)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (13:49.005)
and then that'll approve to the owner of that business that I can do it. However, as you just mentioned, 2008, 2009 recession was really kicking in and they decided to make redundancies in that business. And I wasn't on the chopping list. And there's simple reason I wasn't on the chopping list is because I was accounting for so much of the revenue for within that business. So unfortunately they let go of some other people, but for me that kind of made my decision is like.
Jeff Holman (14:02.688)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (14:09.874)
Okay.
Draven McConville (14:17.164)
It's time for me to fly my own wings and being control of my own destiny, steer my own boat. So yeah, I started the first business, which was a digital agency, but it was very much focused on UI, user experience and mobile app development. And we built over a hell of a lot of different mobile apps, babysitting apps, phone apps, but then we got very serious.
Jeff Holman (14:22.026)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (14:43.046)
into B2B apps and the terminology was enterprise mobility. So again, focusing on the strategic and looking for the opportunity, I seen that niche and we ended up working with a lot of different brands like Kia Motors, Jaguar Land Rover, Terics, Caterpillar, et cetera. And great business, service-based business, but it's hard to scale service-based businesses. So then I started
Jeff Holman (14:47.733)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (15:02.496)
Okay.
Draven McConville (15:12.492)
Klipboard, which is a field service software management company.
Jeff Holman (15:19.338)
Okay, and by that, explain for our audience what that is.
Draven McConville (15:22.71)
So basically for people that work in the field carrying out trades jobs such as plumbers, HVAC engineers, technicians, all of those people that don't want to do paperwork in the field and also need to know where they got to go and what date and time they got to be there, we developed software for that. I built the first business, sold it, started this business, and this time around decided to take outside investment into it. So that was my first
journey on the investment cycle and what that looks like and what the process is of like that is. And anyway, scale that business and just recently sold it in July 2024 to a billion dollar ERP software company called Kerridge Commercial Systems. However, they have subsequently rebranded themselves globally.
Jeff Holman (16:09.621)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (16:22.86)
to my business's name, Klipboard. Yeah, which was a bit of a nice thing to see and faith in and then believing in what I had created and how I could go on to be a global stage. So that's the two businesses.
Jeff Holman (16:25.406)
clipboard. wow.
Jeff Holman (16:34.997)
Yeah.
That's fantastic. Yeah, I appreciate the overview. I want to jump into each of those and maybe some of the decision points in those businesses. But before we do that, you mentioned, you said a phrase earlier, you said you thought it was time to take control of your life. Was that like a new posture for you? Or had you always been in control of your life and this was just an extension of how you normally operate?
Draven McConville (16:45.45)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (17:04.044)
I think I always liked to think I was in control of my life and then a sad reality of obviously being made homeless because of certain family circumstances reminded me that I wasn't necessarily in control of my life and that I needed to ensure that I had a framework or mechanisms around me that couldn't put me in that situation again. However, obviously the only
alternatives to me at that time was to work and to survive and start to stabilize what my life was. And then was only then could I think about, as I said a moment ago, taking control and steering my own ship. I think it's always been something in me that I've always looked ahead. I've never looked at what today is or what
Jeff Holman (17:57.524)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (18:01.196)
tomorrow really is, I'm always thinking way, way, way far ahead and how am I actually working towards that goal? Even if it might seem completely unachievable, my metric is how am I getting towards that? And so I've always wanted to kind of control my direction or my strategy for my own life, I think.
Jeff Holman (18:25.737)
What is it that tells you, what kind of signals do you look at that tell you when you are in control or when you're achieving a sufficient level of control in your life, right? There are always external factors.
Draven McConville (18:38.353)
always. And like, as I said, with my second business, I took investors on board. you know, you've got to external factors exactly and external factors of whenever I was building that business, we had Brexit here in the UK, we had COVID, which, you know, has an impact, et cetera. So you're never going to be in control of every aspect, but you should always have some level of control over certain levers within your.
Jeff Holman (18:43.584)
External factors right there.
Jeff Holman (18:55.37)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (19:07.113)
within your business or within your life that you can change or adapt to whatever those external factors may be and be quick to react to them. know, COVID, if I wasn't quick to the reaction of that, then my business could have taken a potentially different turn. And I looked at it in a different manner of thinking to myself, well, they're going to shut down all these offices. And I...
my software is for field workers that can't go into an office that used to go into an office because they used to have to bring paperwork back after they do a job in the field. So that's only my thought was, well, that's only going to accelerate the market to think, you know, we need to invest in software to help us do what we used to do in a manual paper based approach. So I thought I better double down on the message around that. So
Jeff Holman (19:40.745)
Right.
Draven McConville (20:05.044)
Instead of panicking, I looked at it for what it was and thought to myself, well, how can I capitalize out of this on a negative situation? And I suppose that's no different to when I was homeless. I'm in a difficult situation, it's negative, it's not what I want to be in, that I'm having external factors impacting me, but what can I do to get out of this situation and how do I capitalize on it?
Jeff Holman (20:12.617)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (20:15.936)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (20:24.714)
Yeah.
Yeah, I like that. I assume that's a theme that's carried throughout your life. It also brings up a kind of attention, it seems like to me, because you mentioned that you're, you know, you're always looking way ahead. You're really far out there. What are the big goals? But when you have these external factors come into play, like COVID or whatever, you have to also balance that long term vision with the reactionary kind of in the moment reality. Yeah.
Draven McConville (20:39.168)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (20:54.197)
Short-term realities. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (20:56.992)
Is that a, does that come naturally to you to hold both of those in balance? Cause for some people it's really hard to do one or the other, you know, well, let alone both.
Draven McConville (21:08.579)
I think I manage both. I am a long-term vision thinker and the direction of play I want to be, but I can also very much short-term hustle because I've had to short-term hustle in life. But I don't let that be the overarching factor of what direction I'm going to go. And I don't want to get into the hustle every day. I've got to think of a bigger picture is ordered how to build something that
Jeff Holman (21:16.34)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (21:24.361)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (21:39.044)
is much more sustainable and beyond just me hustling. And I think a lot of business owners can get stuck in that trap where they build a business just around them and what they can do and what they can achieve. Whereas what I have tried to do is empower people around me. You know, I don't sit and declare that I'm the smartest person in the room and I don't need to be the smartest person in the room. I think what I do is lead others with the vision that I've set and
Jeff Holman (21:42.216)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (22:01.962)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (22:08.574)
allow them to harness their skills and build what we need to build and put around. So then if there is those external outside factors, it's those people with my leadership can hunker down to try and react to those, to keep building going forward. Do you have to pivot and shift a little bit each and every time? Yeah. You know, if a business doesn't constantly keep changing, it's actually in fact dying in my opinion.
Jeff Holman (22:37.418)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (22:37.811)
So you should never rest on your laurels. It should be constantly adapting. It should be constantly asking itself, is this the right direction? Is this the right thing that we're doing? Even though the key indicator of your generating revenue and growing might be singing, it still might be the right thing in the long term.
Jeff Holman (22:57.864)
Yeah, well, I think we can end here. You've given everybody the keys for success. It's a simple recipe. It's hustle and vision and control and empowering your team. If you can just do those four things, then any business will work,
Draven McConville (23:10.283)
I wish it was so easy Jeff, but yeah, if you do do those four things, you should have a level of success. do you know what? Everyone says to me, you're lucky or why have you had success? It's come down as a real one thing if I'm being really honest, sheer, sheer hard work. And I think if you're prepared to put it in the hard yards to do what it needs to do and give that 10 % more than the person next to you.
Jeff Holman (23:30.837)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (23:40.489)
then you should have some level of success for sure. You can get all the other things wrong.
Jeff Holman (23:44.685)
How did these, yeah, how did these things show up, these qualities and these traits that you have, how did they show up in your first business? What moments in time were you like, this really demonstrates that I was doing these things?
Draven McConville (23:55.656)
I'm...
Draven McConville (24:02.931)
I think when we started winning better and better clients in the first business, know, agency business is, don't know, software agency, businesses, design agency, whatever type of service agency model really works in your portfolio. And, you know, who have you done the work for and what success did you deliver for them by doing that work? And,
Jeff Holman (24:19.989)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (24:32.426)
I used to call it my drawer of shame and it sounds terrible to call it that. Yeah, it's a drawer of shame. So it's work that we done that we got money for, but we weren't necessarily proud of. And we didn't want to display it in the sense of like, was a great piece of work because it maybe didn't meet the design criteria that we had set for ourselves. But looking back on it,
Jeff Holman (24:35.104)
Your drawer of shame.
Jeff Holman (24:41.706)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (24:56.65)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (24:59.444)
That kind of terminology now annoys me a little bit because it wasn't a drawer shame. It was actually the drawer that helped build our business because it funded, you know, all the staff that worked for us. It funded the business, et cetera, to then allow us to maybe go off and do projects that weren't so well-paid, but had the grandiose PR that went behind them. They had the big name that went behind them, but...
Jeff Holman (25:20.564)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (25:29.034)
kept letting us move the needle a little bit more every time. So that drawer was the bedrock, I think, really. And shouldn't be anything that we should have been shameful of, but I think that's just agency world, really.
Jeff Holman (25:33.109)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (25:43.006)
Yeah, that's interesting. It reminds me in the legal world, I'm an attorney and you hear people say, I've got my wall of shame. they, you you look at a lot of attorney offices, they've got a wall where they've posted all their diplomas and whatever. And then they might have another wall where they've, or a place where they put all of their rejection letters. Every law firm that's ever rejected them, say, it's, you know, thanks for applying, but you're, you you're, you're not a good fit or whatever.
Draven McConville (26:09.899)
But they're good reminder to keep you motivated.
Jeff Holman (26:13.396)
Yeah, and I love that you're rethinking the terminology. A drawer of shame is very illustrative. mean, maybe some people have a drawer of shame that doesn't involve work and they open that drawer and they're like, it just reminds them of everything, to have that, it sounds like you're redefining that as maybe a drawer of progress or, you know.
Draven McConville (26:35.208)
Yeah, our foundational stuff, you know, I think, I think as you go through life and you go through business, you always reevaluate or you can look back and look at things in a different mindset because in the moment or when you're doing that, you'll have that perception of it. I don't always think it's good to look back too much because I think looking back can distract you from going forward.
Jeff Holman (26:37.717)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (27:03.722)
and actually hold you back as well because you can dwell on things that are maybe weren't so good and therefore you don't have that catalyst to go forward. But I do think looking back you can evaluate and where you can evaluate is were you messed up? What screw ups did you do? Or what things did you do wrong that you could have done better? And evaluate what the learning was from that and therefore not do it again.
Jeff Holman (27:13.792)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (27:21.877)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (27:30.815)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (27:32.778)
You know, I always said to my wife, you know, any business I've started, would be great if someone just came along and told me the bits that I could avoid. It would just make it much easier. And I think that's why a lot of people maybe listen to podcasts and listen to business things is kind of to try and hear from others, wherever the big pitfalls that I can avoid and go forward, you know, are to find hope in what they're doing to.
Jeff Holman (27:49.162)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (27:57.289)
Yes.
Jeff Holman (28:02.419)
Yeah, that's certainly why this podcast exists as I've worked with CEOs behind the scenes on lots of legal issues. It's a, you know, I see stuff and I'm like, I have other clients that should know this is like, this is more common than you think. Or someone's been down this path before. You're not, you're not the only one dealing with this. Yeah, exactly. But you know, since they're clients, I can't tell the confidential information about my clients to other people. So instead we invite people on the podcast and we
Draven McConville (28:20.97)
You're not alone.
Jeff Holman (28:31.687)
Reveal everything here. So yes, really appreciate you sharing these thoughts. How did, what did you do in the agency to overcome that traditional agency aspect where you, know, it's, it's hard to scale the, you know, the people are, the people are the people and you have to deal with people issues in order to get any scale. What was, what was the key that you, you think you did in that business?
Draven McConville (28:33.448)
and share. Yeah, it's a good way.
Jeff Holman (28:59.933)
to move it forward and prepare you to move on to clipboard.
Draven McConville (29:03.978)
I was going to give the short answer and just say I sold it, Jeff, and moved on. I would be lying, being a little bit tongue in cheek and I would be lying to some extent. But whilst there, we did realize the difficulties of scaling a service based business because you're project to project to project and you don't have that underlying recurring revenue model per se. Now, we developed a lot of projects there.
Jeff Holman (29:07.618)
Hahaha
Jeff Holman (29:22.836)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (29:28.958)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (29:33.204)
probably about 300 odd and a varying degree of complexity and scale and software. So where we did get some underlying revenues to keep that machine going that we could depend on when there was peaks and troughs and projects was bringing in maintenance fees and support fees that customers were paying on a monthly basis for the...
the software, the custom software that you had developed. So you were just there as a support function. And that allowed us to have some underlying recurring revenue there to pay for costs. But it is very difficult to scale. And you're scaling it with humans as well, because it's directly related to their human output. And humans are great. We're all lovely people, but we all have our flaws too. And we may want to go on a holiday like I'm going on.
Jeff Holman (30:24.935)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (30:29.257)
take some time out when you're right in middle of a project. So there's all of those difficulties, but it was a very good business and it allowed us to get involved in a varying degree of different businesses and projects and understanding them from a grassroots level. know, Klipboard came about out of that business because of what we learned there. And what we had learned was, you know, there was companies out there that had
Jeff Holman (30:30.015)
you
Jeff Holman (30:34.024)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (30:58.535)
workers in a field and they needed what was termed enterprise mobility. They wanted good user experiences, et cetera. We started to understand what a recurring revenue model looked like, et cetera. And we thought, well, know, chasing enterprise is hard. It's expensive as well. And more more people with the advent of SaaS wanted to just buy things in low cost subscriptions, you know, and not.
Jeff Holman (31:27.113)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (31:28.019)
build expensive bespoke software. So again, I kind of seen that, but all those learnings came in the clipboard, you know, what it was like to build enterprise software, cetera, all of it.
Jeff Holman (31:36.663)
Yeah.
I want to get into clipboard. I think there's some interesting stuff we can talk about there. But first, I want to highlight something that you said because I think that entrepreneurs, at least a lot of entrepreneurs I know and I've talked with, don't necessarily think about it in the way that you've articulated it. And so I think there's something to be said of real value for what you said. so bear with me as I draw this out for a second. A lot of companies these days, especially three or four or five years ago, recurring revenue was like
the end all be all, I need recurring revenue, ARR, MRR, whatever, so I can get investors, right? That's what drives the investor side of things. But as you've stated it, and as you're talking about having project work that comes in irregularly perhaps, and then underlying maintenance work, recurring revenue at its most fundamental basis is simply cashflow management, right? And so whether you're an agency or you're a...
car dealership selling cars, but then doing service, you know, behind the scenes, like you're really trying to flatten out the cash flow issues that would otherwise come up. and that in and of itself, isn't really what investors are talking about, at least not in those terms, right? But, but it's the same fundamentals that give you what we're now talking more about today, unit economics, right? It gives you, gives you a sustainable business.
in addition to or maybe instead of an investable business.
Draven McConville (33:13.629)
I think they are really key points that you just mentioned. are sustainable business versus an investable business. yes, recurring revenue has been that golden goose that everyone has talked about over the last number of years. And I agree somewhat with what you're saying. It's cashflow management. It is to an extent, although a really good version of it, I suppose, but it's only a really good version.
Jeff Holman (33:31.839)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (33:42.153)
if you're heading all the other metrics that go along with it to drive that revenue. So, well, so, you know, a compound and recurring revenue model is beautiful thing. You know, if you do $1 million in one year of sales and you have a retention rate of 95%, therefore meaning that you'll turn 5 % of your customers, that's 5 % leave.
Jeff Holman (33:47.827)
What do mean by that?
Draven McConville (34:12.104)
and don't renew. It means that you're going into year two with $950,000 of revenue. Beautiful, you're going in, you can forecast, you can really measure it, what cash is coming in. Therefore you can take that cash and say, I'm gonna invest heavier in marketing here. And you keep building and building and building and building. That's when the model is beautiful. But all the other things you have to get right to make that model beautiful. And those things are, is the product right?
Jeff Holman (34:13.396)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (34:42.897)
as the product got market fit? Are people wanting to buy it? Is the pricing right? Do the customers want to spend that much on it? Is the contractual terms right? Are the feature sets within the products right? Is the marketing right? Is the customer success and training and implementation and onboarding and support team delivering a good service off the back of the seal of that software? Yes. Is the hosting stable? Is it secure?
Is it maintained? Is it got the latest UI or is it getting IDated? The list goes on. And then there you get those metrics, right? You still got to get the people metric right as well.
Jeff Holman (35:20.039)
So.
Jeff Holman (35:26.365)
So it's not just hustle, vision, control and empowerment. There's a lot of factors. How did, well, so with all these things, like how confident were you going from the agency into clipboard? Did you feel like you had nailed a lot of these things already or were you having to develop them along the way? What did that look like?
Draven McConville (35:32.649)
It's that plus others.
Draven McConville (35:42.217)
You
Draven McConville (35:50.653)
I think Jeff, you're asking that question because you know that I'm going to lead in by saying no.
Jeff Holman (35:55.04)
I have guesses, I have guesses, but you know, I could be surprised.
Draven McConville (36:00.103)
No, look, of course you have to have confidence in business. And I think probably it's what confidence is carries you through most of the things in business. And, you know, there's that old saying, faking it until you make it really. And I do think there is a small element of truth in that. know, you've got to present yourself in business in a confident way and that you can deliver upon something. And I suppose I got that from agency world.
Jeff Holman (36:16.66)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (36:29.193)
because I was going in pitching to a large company with nothing tangible, nothing to show them, just a concept. And they had to believe in me that I could deliver that concept and get them the end result that they really wanted. So that's probably where that confidence comes from in agency world. But did the metrics come from agency world? No, no, no, no. SaaS is a complex business. It's...
Jeff Holman (36:36.733)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (36:58.129)
very metrics orientated. It's very much looking at every single part of the journey that a customer will go through from touch points and understanding all of those touch points and putting together. It's very methodical. And you've got to measure every single bit of that to understand it. But you've also got to have a level of gut instinct in there too. And that bravery and confidence to go, yeah, my customers are not really telling me that they need this or want it.
Jeff Holman (37:19.518)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (37:28.051)
but I actually think they do and having the confidence to go and try that, you know, but then measuring it and it gets back to that too. So no, the agency world gave me confidence in a different way, but it didn't give me that those metrics that SAS really drives. Did I get them wrong in the early days of starting clipboard? Yes. Was I looking at the wrong indicators? Yes. Was I excited to someone that just bought me,
Jeff Holman (37:31.102)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (37:57.435)
our product and not really understanding why they bought it? Yes. You know, was excited when investors showed some interest in maybe writing a check into the company? Yes. And then did I learn that you had to find the right investors, the right customers and all the other things that go along with it? Yeah. So.
Jeff Holman (38:14.719)
Yeah.
How much of it is just straight persistence and how much of it is what you might call smart iteration, right? Because you can, people say, as long you're in the game long enough, you can, you you're going to win eventually, right? But we see people who persist and persist and persist and maybe they're just not in it long enough, but maybe they're not like doing the right cycling while they're persisting. Does that make sense? They're not iterating through things in a...
test and feedback loop so much as just pushing, pushing, pushing into the same wall.
Draven McConville (38:54.32)
So I'll split that in two. It does need a level of persistence for sure, because you're going to get hit in the face so many times you'll care to forget. It's a roller coaster. But you do need iteration and smart iteration. And I like that terminology actually, smart iteration, because I think companies can iterate on things in a vacuum.
Jeff Holman (39:19.551)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (39:20.07)
And I think that's where a lot of founders can go wrong is they become very emotionally attached to their product and their love of the product and what their vision is for the product that sometimes they can become completely blinkered and deaf to what the real world is telling them. And therefore they're iterating on what their vision is and not the real feedback loop.
Jeff Holman (39:29.438)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (39:39.016)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (39:48.871)
The real feedback loop is your customer. If you're listening to your customer and listening to your ideal customer profile and what the market is really telling you is what you should be developing and putting into your product and going and selling. Because what you think is two different things. There's a little bit of that magic that as a founder, you've got to bring to the product and sprinkle in with it. But the core engine of it should be driven by what the market and your customer is saying. And persistence to deliver that is
Jeff Holman (39:51.423)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (40:17.619)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (40:18.364)
the one thing, but I think what you're probably seeing now in the market is the end of an era because for the last 10 years, we've seen cheap credit and cheap debt and that's fueled venture capital and it's fueled P, it's fueled all the funds and a lot of founders got funding and they got a lot of funding, but are their companies actually sustainable?
businesses are, as I'd say, zombie companies. we've heard, you know, some people will have heard that term. I either just walking around living off the money that they've got left and they're in that persistence mode of like, yeah, I'll get to the exit or I'll get to that. But when you go and look under the hood, that business isn't a sustainable business and therefore won't actually get to an exit. It'll probably get, it'll probably end up as a fire sale or nothing. And that's because of
Jeff Holman (40:59.241)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (41:11.071)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (41:16.273)
Or ghost town, right? You're making me think of sometimes I was in China a few times and I took the train between Shanghai and Beijing once or twice and just to kind of see the countryside a little bit as I was traveling. And as you're going down, you see some cities, like full cities that have been built that are just ghost towns, right? The buildings themselves have foundations, but the cities as a community never had a foundation.
Draven McConville (41:18.171)
our Clue Talk.
Jeff Holman (41:44.734)
And I kind of viewed that as, you know, when you're building with VC money, you have the luxury of building the buildings with no population and see if they'll come. And if they come, then it worked out great and you were super smart. But if they never come, then, you know, your business will just fold and VC will move on to build the next city or should I say buildings and see if they come there, but you may be left with a ghost town. Whereas I think when you
when we start talking bootstrapping and fundamentals, we're really talking about, you know, you don't have the luxury when you're bootstrapping with your own money and your own finances and your own resources. You don't have the luxury to build the buildings and just wait and see. You need to build a little bit, make sure people show up, build a little bit more, make sure more people show up and do those in, you know, in balance, not everything upfront. Build the buildings first and wait and see.
if you can get the population to show up.
Draven McConville (42:45.168)
And it links back to that comment that you said, smart iteration, because you build a little bit, you get some customers on board and sure as hell they will give you feedback because you'll have got an early product and they're buying into you. So some of the early customers that we got in Klipboard, we still have them today. And they're champions and they feel proud, nearly.
Jeff Holman (42:49.758)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (42:56.36)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (43:06.114)
awesome.
Draven McConville (43:11.888)
when you talk to someone, they feel proud that they were part of your journey as well. And it moves beyond them just giving you money every month. And we have very close relationships with our early customers because yes, they did help develop what we've now gone on to grow. And we didn't raise substantial amounts of money in there.
Jeff Holman (43:16.904)
Yes.
Jeff Holman (43:32.243)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (43:38.222)
in the early days. it made us have to be smart. weren't drunk on capital. And I think also going back to the agency world where I had to build it with no outside investment and go and hustle and get deals in through the door also kept me smart and lean on how to build a clipboard.
Jeff Holman (43:42.867)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (43:58.354)
Yeah. What do you think was the inflection point for you? Or maybe there were multiples as you were building clipboard. Where did you see that the efforts finally started to pay off and you started to see that exponential growth relative to the inputs you're putting in?
Draven McConville (44:13.48)
I think you can look at it from a chart point of view and say, oh, look, revenue is growing and the rate that we're bringing in customers is growing, et cetera, and all those good metrics of inbound, bringing in inquiries or referrals and all of that beautiful stuff.
Jeff Holman (44:27.881)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (44:35.113)
But as a leader, the charts react to some of the leadership decisions you make, right?
Draven McConville (44:43.655)
Charts, yeah, they do. They do react to what you're driving, but I don't completely just live inside the chart. I'm also listening to other indicators that are outside of a chart and a feel for what that business is. And the thing that I was gonna say was, I knew the inflection point came along whenever we...
Jeff Holman (44:53.236)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (45:08.977)
Touch wood, I say this, in the last 10 years, if you've ever had a 17 minute outage, and it actually wasn't even a cloud outage, it was the domain register, something outside of our control, there's one of those external factors, had made a mistake on the pointing of the domain and took our domain out of action for 17 minutes. I remember that number really precisely because in 17 minutes, I've never seen so many customers scream.
Jeff Holman (45:20.883)
Yes.
Jeff Holman (45:26.801)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (45:30.589)
Wow.
Draven McConville (45:38.791)
about it. And I remember my team going, oh my God, what are we going to do? What are we going to do in panic stations? I'm sitting there thinking, wow, they live and breathe this platform. They absolutely love this. They cannot be without it. And I remember thinking, well, if we get through the next 17 minutes, we'll be fine because they're going to love it at the other end again. And now obviously you manage that situation afterwards with
Jeff Holman (45:40.101)
Yes.
Jeff Holman (45:49.733)
Yeah, yes.
Jeff Holman (46:02.345)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (46:06.472)
the right communications to your customers and explaining the situation and being transparent with them. And, you know, we didn't lose any customers off after that point. It wasn't an arrogant position of like, my God, you're so diehard about my product. But it was a reckoning moment for me to go, okay, we're in the right trajectory.
Jeff Holman (46:23.999)
I love that you say that. was talking with another early stage founder, building a platform, lots of users. I'm a user and a fan of the platform. And he was lamenting some of the problems and you can't keep everybody happy and it's hard to be a founder. I love that you explained it. You said it better than I did, but I had the same approach. said, listen, again, from a...
from a counseling perspective, which I often fall into because of my role, I said, are hard things, you're gonna make it through it, but look at how many people are relying on your business. They're complaining because when it works, they love it and they want it to keep working. most of these people are, it's maybe not the best way to display your loyalty, but it's really in a lot of ways, it's a display of loyalty to the business and to what you built. And that's commendable.
Draven McConville (47:20.775)
Yeah, those people are bought in. They're bought in, you know, and they're complaining because, you know, they need it, they want it, and you happen to not be there. I think, look, there's obviously different types of complaints if you're not delivering the service level or you're doing something to the platform that really, you know, you shouldn't be doing. And the one thing that we've always been careful about
Jeff Holman (47:22.025)
So, yeah.
Jeff Holman (47:31.997)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (47:48.091)
that we've done to the platform is we've never taken anything away from any customer. So whatever they've bought from us, they've had it, even if that feature has never really taken off with the rest of our customer sets, we don't make anything redundant because I think that's sure fire way of irking a customer that's come on and given you loyalty over the years is to take away something that they feel is really valuable.
Jeff Holman (47:52.03)
Hmm.
Jeff Holman (48:16.916)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (48:17.904)
So there's ways of managing things, isn't there? Look, I talk to young startup founders all the time. Trust me, I can feel their pain. I've been there.
Jeff Holman (48:26.335)
Well, I'm curious, how did you set up or did you were you proactive about seeking an exit for the business? Or did that come up out of the blue? How did that transpire?
Draven McConville (48:40.549)
I think, look, when you take outside investors on, that's always on the table. So you before you take outside investment or capital from anyone else, you got to know to yourself that one day you're to be selling this business and never mind selling this business. You've got outside investor influence in your business as well. And you better be picking the right investors because you're getting married to them for a period of time. And so we had we had
Jeff Holman (48:58.376)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (49:10.449)
Great investors, very supportive. I'm very supportive on the journey because we were building very complex mission critical software, which takes time to build. And therefore you can only get certain amount of early adopters as you progress. But that was because I was trying to pick the right investors from the beginning. When it comes to the exit, they weren't saying you gotta sell.
Jeff Holman (49:26.27)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (49:39.961)
In fact, they had actually just written more investment into the business. And the reason that they had is because we were growing and growing and, you know, they were on that, they were on that journey with me and what my vision was of where we needed to go. But field service management software was overlooked by investors and private equity and institutions for a very long time because it wasn't, it's not sexy. It's just process driven.
Jeff Holman (49:40.051)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (49:44.127)
Mm.
Jeff Holman (49:55.005)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (50:10.727)
tangible software that makes a difference, but it's not sexy. It wasn't the buzzwords of big data and you know, even more recently AI. But they woke up and the reason they woke up is because it was the last big white space in software. So 52 % of field service companies globally have no software. And that was when I started and I think Jeff, it's actually at 50 still. know, it's huge.
Jeff Holman (50:18.644)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (50:32.456)
None.
Jeff Holman (50:37.65)
Really?
Draven McConville (50:40.294)
huge segment, huge. And it's going through serious transformation because you have owners of those businesses come into retirement and the younger generation are coming into them or there's NBOs, cetera. And they're looking for technology transformation, digital transformation within those businesses. So it's only going to accelerate once P and.
Jeff Holman (50:50.943)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (51:01.575)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (51:08.12)
Et cetera, get a whiff of those things there. They're on it. And I could see consolidation happening in the market as well and various different field service software providers being rolled up, which didn't bother me. I've again, gone back, I'm steering my own ship. I'm aware of it, but I'm steering my own course. But we had a number of approaches, quite a number. And I was polite with all of them because I always thought, you never know, one day I might have to.
Jeff Holman (51:32.115)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (51:38.854)
have that conversation or brought our doors. So I kept all of those kinds of relationships, all was ongoing over the, over a number of years. And, and some were trade buyers. So other competitors in the market. And I, I was just really thinking to myself, okay, I'm seeing consolidation, taking the business to this next stage. Where do I want to go next with it?
Jeff Holman (51:53.737)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (52:07.399)
and do I want to exit? And I think for me personally, it was a healthy option because I wanted to take some chips off the table. I'd done some hard yards and I thought it was time to reward those hard yards. And also I thought, where's a good home for this business to then flourish to the next stage of its life. And that's how we ended up with the current buyer.
Jeff Holman (52:20.446)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (52:32.442)
not a trade buyer per se because they didn't have any field service businesses in their group. They're owned by Private Equity and they're predominantly focused on ERP in wholesale distribution, automotive and rental. So it was a very complimentary add-on for them. Yeah, good portfolio platform. They've about 30 odd thousand customers and I thought to myself,
Jeff Holman (52:38.652)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (52:53.641)
good portfolio platform.
Draven McConville (53:01.84)
great, we can cross sell into those, we can grow, et cetera. And it gives a really good, strong, stable home for the business and the team. Because again, people really matter to me. And I think it was important for the team wherever we were exiting to that, you know, that that was a good home for them.
Jeff Holman (53:20.733)
Was the business exit ready all along? Had you planned this and kept everything in order or were there things you had to do once you decided to sell to really level up the business? I know a lot of people, you know, the documents of course are a huge problem sometimes for businesses who haven't kept good documentation. Team issues can come up and even leadership issues where you're like, hey, what's, you know, what's my role? Do I fit in? Do I want to fit in?
You know, is this my company or is this the, you know, a broader organization that can live without me for a longer term? What did you do to prepare for this type of transaction?
Draven McConville (53:49.808)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (54:05.009)
Well, lovely lawyer question there, Jeff, in the sense of, know, in a transaction at due diligence is always an important factor of having a successful exit. I was always prepared. And the reason that I was always prepared is because I was always ready to raise capital, which is a similar, not as extensive, but, you know, I always had a data room ready. I always ran a
Jeff Holman (54:26.461)
I got it.
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (54:35.032)
A clean ship and had documentation and everything ran properly.
Jeff Holman (54:41.021)
which is not always common, right? There are a lot of people who don't do that and these things catch them by surprise.
Draven McConville (54:47.286)
Yeah, it's not common at all. I think I'm a very diligent person in the sense of I like to just go home and put my head in the pillow and rest peacefully at night. making sure everything was right. You we had a very good strong accountant, our own lawyer was very good. In fact, you know, some of my angel investors were lawyers as well. So maybe that's what kept me kept me in my toes too. But I think I was I was always prepared. There was always a data.
there was always a deck ready of what the business was. It could always pull the metrics. It could always pull the numbers. It could always report on those things because there was regularly reporting to investors too. you it was always prepared. And I think that's really key because if you want a good, smooth exit and transaction and no hiccups on the, what the original term sheet offering was and for them to try and offer you lower whenever you're down to the wire, then
Jeff Holman (55:41.502)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (55:47.206)
having your ducks in a row makes it a hell of a lot easier for sure.
Jeff Holman (55:53.054)
And how did you prepare personally for this? Because this is a big, I mean, big, big moment for the business. Maybe a lot of money, you know, exchanges hands, all that type of stuff. But for you personally, how did you prepare for this? Like, were you prepared? Were there things that surprised you when the closing happened?
Draven McConville (56:12.154)
Yeah, I would be lying to you if I said I was prepared personally. I think any founder that has built a business, it's going to feel like they're handing their baby over somewhat. Had I got myself prepared into the sense that it wasn't going to be my ship anymore or my train set anymore? Yes.
Jeff Holman (56:18.333)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (56:28.115)
Yeah. Yeah.
Draven McConville (56:41.857)
I'd got that understanding in my head. Obviously, monetary aspects do make that a little bit easier to swallow for sure when you're receiving a check.
Jeff Holman (56:44.767)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (56:54.173)
Yes.
So you're saying the transaction went well financially.
Draven McConville (57:00.077)
the transaction went well financially. Yes, I'm certainly not going to complain about that. And look, that's another learning curve, you know, because you're it's newfound wealth, know, large sums of wealth. And I think you you have the personal side outside of business and understanding that and friendships and relationships and people now understanding that aspect about you too. And also accepting it within your own self as well.
Jeff Holman (57:12.03)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (57:21.683)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (57:29.857)
And that's one aspect of it. But from a business point of view, being ready, I think it can be up to a point, but it's only when you start seeing things happen and then others have an influence in your business or the way they run things is slightly different to how you run things is where you'll go, I wasn't expecting that necessarily. It's only as you go through it.
Jeff Holman (57:48.915)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (57:59.686)
And I was learning to take a breath, evaluate the situation and understand where the direction of play is. think the thing that probably helps me the most, Geoff, is I'm a very collaborative person. I've built both of my businesses with the help of others around me and collaborating with others to achieve that success. So I didn't go in with a mindset of like, it's my way or the highway. You know, was quite open to.
Jeff Holman (58:14.089)
Okay.
Jeff Holman (58:25.501)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (58:27.333)
What can you guys bring to the table that I haven't seen before? What's new to me that I've never witnessed that I'm going to learn from and develop from? So I went from that angle. Are you going to agree in everything? No, but that's life. That's life.
Jeff Holman (58:31.592)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (58:43.837)
Yeah, yeah, no, it sounds like, sounds like sending a child off to be married or when they're getting married, right? And you're like, I've done my best. I've had this illusion of control a little bit with, you know, some influence at least. And when they get married, you're like, well, I didn't expect that. And those are different decisions, but those are your decisions. so I...
Draven McConville (59:09.605)
Exactly, exactly. You've got to live by your decisions. That's what you've to do.
Jeff Holman (59:13.521)
Yeah. Well, this is, this has been fantastic. I appreciate you taking time to share this with our audience. What's a takeaway or, or even, you know, something that as you look back, you're like, you know, there's one thing I wish I would have done and I didn't do, or there's one thing I wish I would have done better. We're not talking about drawers of shame right now. And, you know, but, but as you look back, if you were to open that drawer and say, you know what, one thing that I would do differently, knowing what I know now, what would that be for somebody else?
who's behind you on a similar path.
Draven McConville (59:48.161)
I'm going to answer it in two ways, Geoff. This is a really good question, actually. I'm going to be that awkward guest and have two answers for you. 50 shades of grey. I'm not a person that lives with regrets, you know, so I don't look back and go, God, I regret I've done that.
Jeff Holman (59:56.051)
Hey, that sounds very lawyerly. You just have to start it out with it depends and then give your two answers.
Ha ha ha!
Jeff Holman (01:00:11.005)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (01:00:14.596)
right, you know, and what could have done differently? I look at it and learn and move on. So, you know, that was my first answer. I don't really dwell on that too much. But if there was something to look back on, I think having more mentors around me and people that have been through it,
Jeff Holman (01:00:20.734)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (01:00:43.641)
would have been more helpful. Don't get me wrong, I have a very good chairman and some really good people around me, but haven't even more, you know?
Jeff Holman (01:00:54.206)
Who would you look for? And I'm just asking, genuinely curious, because I know a lot of CEOs have issues that they want to talk about. And they say, well, I can't talk to my investors about that issue. And I'm not going to bring this one up with my employees. And my family's tired of hearing me talk about whatever. How do you find that real, that kind of most trusted mentor? And what would that look like if they exist?
Draven McConville (01:01:13.732)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (01:01:22.757)
do think sometimes those trusted mentors can come out of the most simple business relationships that you weren't actually really looking for. you know, I have now other people around me that I would classify as a mentor, but they're not necessarily just from solely a business background. They have another type of perspective or viewpoint in the world.
Jeff Holman (01:01:44.413)
Mm-hmm.
Draven McConville (01:01:53.167)
get inside our help from there, but I'll also then have maybe someone from another perspective who is in the business world involved in something completely different. I don't believe that you can get everything from one person. So I think you need to assemble a range of different people around you that are supportive and bring different things to you that are not necessarily always business related.
Jeff Holman (01:02:01.78)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (01:02:21.96)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (01:02:23.109)
You know, like one of my long term friends and she's a lot older than me. I actually worked for her for a period of time. She ran a magazine in an architecture magazine and she's she's been a great mentor because she's very creative. She's, you know, an artist. She's incredibly well read. And, know.
Jeff Holman (01:02:38.527)
Hmm.
Draven McConville (01:02:51.532)
I can speak to her about a business thing and she'll give me a completely different perspective on it. But then I can also speak to her just about life, you know, and what that day might have been like. And again, she'll just give me wisdom that only years can give you. So I think just to have a range of different people from different walks of life is what I would suggest.
Jeff Holman (01:02:58.696)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (01:03:14.141)
I love that. Is there anything else you'd want to leave with the audience? Anything that you're doing or how to contact you if you reach out with, if they reach out to you or anything like that that you'd like to leave with them?
Draven McConville (01:03:26.116)
I'm Luke. I have a big wide open door. I love people, love meeting people, love chatting as you can probably tell. Today I'm on LinkedIn. Feel free to message me there, connect with me. I'm always sharing stuff there, always willing to connect with people, always willing to just jump on and have a chat as well with people, because you never know where that may lead and what you may collaborate on and do, et cetera.
Jeff Holman (01:03:34.175)
yes.
Draven McConville (01:03:56.14)
So currently I'm obviously still involved for the business, et cetera, but I do get involved in other startups as well. So I was loving talking to founders that are at that stage that I've been through and I can share my wisdom with, whether they listen to it or not and make their own decisions, that's absolutely fine, but it's always great to share.
Jeff Holman (01:04:19.935)
Well, we hope they're listening at least on this episode of the breakout CEO podcast. So Draven, thank you so much for joining us today.
Draven McConville (01:04:23.276)
Yeah.
Draven McConville (01:04:28.004)
Thank you, Geoff. It's been a real pleasure. Some really interesting questions there. You got me on my feet, for sure. Thank you.
Jeff Holman (01:04:33.407)
It's been so much fun. Yeah, thank you. And thanks to our audience for joining us again on this week's episode of the Breakout CEO Podcast.
