Joe Mercorella Transcript
Clint Betts
How are you? Tell us about yourself. I've done some research on your company, and I was looking at it this morning. It's really cool, and you're actually doing important work. I guess a lot of companies do important work, but yours seems more important, let's say that.
Joe Mercorella
Well, I think I agree with you. A lot of companies do a lot of important work, but I think as an entrepreneur, it's always nice to be connected with your passion. If you can combine the two together with the entrepreneurial spirit and what actually is meaningful to you at heart, I think you nailed it. Fortunately for me, I was lucky to get introduced in about 2010 to Salesforce, which obviously I love as a technology and the disability and age care sector in Australia. And that two sort of spiraled me onto a journey that has landed me at Luminary. You can't fabricate these things in life. You have some directional things that you want to go and do, but ultimately, you have to have a bit of luck along the way. And so, yeah, for me, this is an incredible thing, and our vision is really to have sustainable healthcare globally. We've got a strategy that we believe we'll achieve. So yeah. We're super excited.
Clint Betts
And it's called Lumary?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, Lumary.
Clint Betts
Lumary?
Joe Mercorella
You did, yes. You got it. Some people say variations of it. Luminary, even though it's written-
Clint Betts
If it was Lumary, I would've said Lumary. I always screw up, no matter which one it was, I would've screwed it up. So, no matter which one. So, tell me about this disability organization that you went to because I understand the Salesforce piece, but what was that about? What about that changed you?
Joe Mercorella
What changed it? What started it? Your typical sort of working for a government. They had a lot of legacy technology. They needed to uplift it for the sector. And I was fortunate enough to spend some time in giving some direction around how to go and do that. From there, the Australian government introduced a major reform to the disability sector in 2014. Obviously, being in the sector, I had access to a lot more intel than others might not have. I was really keen on making a product tech business; I just didn't know what vertical to go into. Looked at several before this one.
But in that reform, really what it did was mandate the use of technology and establishment of digital business more profoundly than whatever had been done in the past. And so I could see that, I could see the gap in the market, the need was there, and it didn't look like there was a pathway for resolution. And so I thought, I think this is something I could make a difference in. And so yeah, there was the driver to make a difference and also the concern for the community because if there aren't people thinking like me, well, who's going to make the change in the shift? Who's going to do it?
So that was one concern there. And Australia is much more conservative than the US in all aspects. And so I was lucky. And then we were in a sector that was mostly concerned with charities. So, the disability market in Australia is mostly not-for-profit organizations that are looking just to make a really good community impact. Many of them were established from religious orders in the past. A lot of donations were made to help establish them, but fundamentally, they were operating at a significant loss between 40 and 50% opex. And so not a good place to be if you want to...
Clint Betts
Yeah, that's not good.
Joe Mercorella
And then the government's mandating 12% and it's like, well, how do you bridge this gap?
Clint Betts
I thought you said the government was conservative, it sounds like they're-
Joe Mercorella
Well, they made some. Well, I'd say the marketplace was more conservative, but the government wanted to institute some real change.
Clint Betts
I'm just kidding.
Joe Mercorella
So, with that in place, major reform needed to happen, and it took a couple of years. Many of the providers I went to engage with as prospective clients thought I was a bit crazy. I was talking about this thing called the cloud, and everyone wanted something on-premise, and I was like, this is not going to work. What you need to create here technically won't work. But after two years or so, we got our foundation clients and helped them bridge their anxiety about being the first in the market. But then they played a pivotal role, as all foundation clients do, in being advocates in the market and helping encourage the next lot. And the rest is history sort of thing.
Clint Betts
Yeah. You know what's interesting when you brought up the cloud, we've kind of skipped that. We could talk about the internet revolution, and now we're talking about the AI revolution, but the cloud was a really big deal and still is a huge, huge deal. We kind of skipped that.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think it's because it just became so consumable in markets so quickly that people adopted it and the mentality around it all changed. But I think the more risk-adverse organizations, particularly in Australia, were obviously concerned. Even the federal government, state governments took them a while to change across the clouds and they're still doing it today.
Clint Betts
Isn't that wild?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah.
Clint Betts
You can always find an industry or sector that's still running everything through paper or something.
Joe Mercorella
Oh, it still exists today. I mean, even in the home care market in the US, there's plenty of paper-based.
Clint Betts
That's a great point.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah. So, examining new markets now, it still happens in Australia. Maybe they're bridging the gap for most of the technology aspects of their operational systems, but there's still a number that is paper, or still better than paper, but it's in Word documents and files, which is not a secure way to [inaudible 00:06:03] yeah, still not good.
Clint Betts
Interesting.
Joe Mercorella
We're getting there.
Clint Betts
Tell me about what it's like to build a company in Australia. You're the first person I've ever asked that question to.
Joe Mercorella
Oh, yes. Very hard. In particular, where I'm from, so I'm in a smaller place than Utah or Salt Lake; it's called South Australia and Adelaide, where there are just over a million people in the city or in the metro area, and just under 2 million in the whole state. And whilst there are innovative things that are present in our community, there isn't really a playbook or a group to be part of to truly know how to seed and find a business like Lumary. A lot of people thought I was crazy or nuts doing this thing and didn't understand.
I had a lot of pushback even with my own partners at the time, but I took some inspiration from more the East Coast, so people more familiar with Sydney or Melbourne, but in particular Sydney. And yeah, there was definitely more entrepreneurial spirit in the tech space there. So I leveraged that and tried to make the right connections in networks as I could to help gain insight as to how to go and instantiate the organization and put it into a structure that would enable me to run a product tech business. But without that, I don't know if I would've been able to do it because, back then, ten or so years ago, there was far more data that, again, that's more accessible. And so it's the speed at which you probably could ChatGPT on how to go today, but back then, it was a lot harder.
Clint Betts
Was AWS around? Could you build on that?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, you could build on that. Yeah, you could build on even dynamics back then; it was the early stage. However, compared to the Salesforce platform back then, it was still immature. But technically, you could build on these types of platforms. But it is challenging, and it's something that I spoke to Ryan about earlier today, something that I want to change or make an impact and help with the community. And there are some movements towards it, but I think we've got to invest significantly more in order to really help young entrepreneurs enable themselves to incubate and move into the next stages without necessarily all the difficult phases of funding that they might have to traverse.
Clint Betts
Yeah. You mentioned Ryan, who is the great Ryan Westwood, the CEO of Fullcast, a wonderful man. He's actually in the room right now.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, I said it like that.
Clint Betts
We're performing for an audience of one, which is incredible. I wonder what the venture ecosystem is like in Australia, because as I think about that, particularly if we're talking 10 years ago, the venture ecosystem, even in Utah where I'm from was not great, I want to say. There wasn't tons of capital, it wasn't super easy. So what was it like there?
Joe Mercorella
I think if I'm, look, my history's not exactly perfect, but I imagine, or from what I understand and gleaned, that there was probably only a couple of funds that you go and prime and raise capital within a structured way from venture capital. I think more came on; there were a lot of silent or behind-the-scenes type investors that would make investments and help companies grow for sure. But definitely, there's been an uplift in the last five or six years; each city has tried to introduce a tech silicon slopes-type thing to some degree, and there are far more funds now available. So, let's say that when I went out to raise three or four years ago, I probably made about 45 or 50 first intro calls to VCs. But I suspect if I had done that five years earlier, I would not have been able to engage with that many. So it's definitely uplifted or entering into the market and supporting different phases of ranges of raises. But yeah, so it's definitely changed and shifted for the better.
Clint Betts
Have you been able to stay in the area where you're from and where you built it or have you had to move to Sydney or Melbourne or these places?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, it's a good question because I think I probably would've found my life easier if I did move from Adelaide to Sydney in particular. I traveled there quite a bit, but my constraints were my family there and children and stuff like that.
Clint Betts
I'm glad you didn't.
Joe Mercorella
And so I didn't. So, my other co-founder partner, I said we'll keep it here, we'll base ourselves here, we'll do the best that we can. We'll bring in more talent, we'll create talent, and where we have to go outside, we will. But in Australia, we have about 180, 30 staff and about 80 are from the original founding city. So we've tried to retain it as much as we can.
Clint Betts
I love that. I think entrepreneurship should focus on building where you live so you don't have to move.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, well it's always nice to give back to the community so we're trying to reinvest back.
Clint Betts
Yeah, where you grew up. Why are we building New York City again? Who cares?
Joe Mercorella
Exactly, exactly. I think there's just that natural desire as well to
Clint Betts
Yeah, you want to be in the fix of things.
Joe Mercorella
-give back to where you grew up and what was invested in you, and you want to see others prosper and do the same thing. And I don't think it's sustainable for everybody just to move to the same location anyway. And this city's beautiful, it's the first time I've been here, but I think it's fantastic.
Clint Betts
Yeah, this is Provo, my friend. This is not even the big city here in Utah. I am even resisting the big city in Utah, which is 45 minutes up there.
Joe Mercorella
Well, it's lovely though. It's really, I don't know, very peaceful.
Clint Betts
Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah, that's great. So what is it like to build in Australia and then try to go into other markets and other countries and start focusing on more international stuff?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, well, the advice prior to going to the US was that very hard. Most fail, you'll be there for a while, and you could sink your whole business with that initiative. And then there was the standard, I don't know don't know if it's common here, but from an Australian perspective, it's a standard, there's one country, but there's 50 states, and then there's hundreds of counties and so forth. So everywhere you go, you're going to have different regulations, rules, and so forth that you need to navigate. And I was like, oh, it's going to be like [inaudible 00:12:28]
But interestingly, when we did the analysis in the market and what was required in order to produce the product and take out technology and replicate it here, we found that many organizations had simplified some of those factors that were concerns, and they weren't the issue or the big problem that everyone sort of built up to be. So our journey is we did a lot of analysis for a year, started building the product, took us about nine months, released the MVP, and took us about another four or five months to get it into a production state that we were all happy with, at least in an early phase. And then another nine, 12 months to solidify it as what we think is now market leader, well, sorry, I should say the market is telling us that it's leading.
Clint Betts
For sure.
Joe Mercorella
And whilst I would've done something slightly different overall, what can I say? They came with challenges, so don't get me wrong, but it wasn't too bad. I think the hardest thing is always finding the people that you can trust. And I think for anybody broaching into new geographies, that's going to be the hardest thing that you try and tackle because trying to find that person that you can center and bring a community in that is trusted is going to be the thing that you're going to probably spend most of your dollars in time on trying to determine. And I think we're lucky with some of the things that happened and unlucky in some things, too. But overall, where we are today, we're super happy.
Clint Betts
Well those who told you that it would be hard to go into America discounted the value of your accent, that helps here.
Joe Mercorella
Do you think so?
Clint Betts
That helps here.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah.
Clint Betts
Yeah, for sure.
Joe Mercorella
Right.
Clint Betts
Have you noticed that?
Joe Mercorella
Well, it's definitely a differentiator, but in the same way, I would say there was always a query as to whether this is an Australian company or a US company. And the reality is they're two separate entities. But when you keep hearing an Australian, and in fact, the head of our ABA business today, I was going to say a pom, but he's an Englishman, as we say in Australia. So you're hearing from an Australian and someone from the UK, so hold on; is this an American company? What are we dealing with here? But when we can speak with conviction as to what we're solving for, I think that all despite-
Clint Betts
You just need somebody to get a southern drawl, and then you'll have it all figured out.
Joe Mercorella
I'm not even going to try. As much as I've heard various accents here over the years, I will not have a crack at it.
Clint Betts
How do you think AI is going to change your sector and your company?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, you see lots spoken about AI; a lot of it is rubbish, I think, as a means of just propaganda trying to push something. And I think, really, in many cases, mask the inadequacies of some of the technology companies around their product roadmap and real evolution in what they need to do. And in some cases, it's real, and it's genuine, and it's making a material difference. But an organization like us that has real deep subject matter expertise in the domain that we're operating with and we capture almost essentially the entire operations of the business, we can use AI for a genuine benefit and real automation and understanding in what processes or practices can gain more efficiency, what things can we be more predictive in, yes. But you need to establish in technology that when you're implementing some sort of core operating system into the organization, it has to initially operationalize, begin with.
It needs to be robust, you need the foundation and then you can build on it. But everyone wants to build this average thing, to begin with. Not everyone, I shouldn't say that, but there are many iterations and examples of that. They try to put AI on top, but you're not really fixing the systemic issue that you've established by not building the foundation right to begin with. It takes more time in different verticals and industries, but you've got to start with that layer, and then it becomes easy. So, for us, the journey to incorporate AI is going to be fast because the foundation is solid and has taken many years to get right.
Clint Betts
And you have a ton of data.
Joe Mercorella
Ton of data.
Clint Betts
AI is only as good as the data.
Joe Mercorella
Anything's only as good as...
Clint Betts
Yeah, exactly.
Joe Mercorella
Rubbish in, rubbish out, it's the same. It doesn't change whether you want to speed it up or not speed it up with technology. But no, I think we already use it internally. I guess most tech companies are looking to integrate it more with each individual, even as an assistant and just helping with general expediting and that sort of comms or messaging or documentation or analysis of investigation into sort of works. But within the actual software itself, yeah, there's heaps of opportunity, but you've got it. The way that we operate our software fundamentally provides a blueprint for an organization to run a proficient business. So we're basically partnered with them. It's not. Here's the software; go and try to make it work and see how you go. So, their operational needs and know-how have to be embedded. And then we have to maximize and through the use of AI and other ML and that sort of stuff to do it better.
Clint Betts
I don't really understand why people are putting AI in their company name these days. It's really interesting. It's like you have a subscription to ChatGPT, does that mean you're an AI company? I don't get it? It's actually really hard to be an AI company. Almost impossible.
Joe Mercorella
It's very hard. It's very hard. And I think it's super confusing to, I mean, not just to those that are experts in the domain or in the domain, but to those that are not in technology; it's absolutely foreign to them. Like, oh, it must be AI. And so it's great marketing but doesn't help them, so I think, yeah, technology overall just needs a lot better ethical regulation. And then I think just overall, I think something that's lacking.
Clint Betts
The ethics of that is actually really interesting. It's interesting you bring that up, the ethics of calling yourself an AI company when really all you're doing is feeding something into some AI or OpenAI thing, and it's not really the same thing, but it's got to be helping you internally. Like you said, it's helping you internally with efficiency and things like that. Where have you noticed the best places and the best areas internally that are helping you from an efficiency standpoint?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, I think it started, and look, we've got a way to go, I think, to become more mature in it. But it started definitely more in the engineering department. And I think it's sort of crept along now organically into customer success and product and service and implementation, that sort of domain, but it is still, even for us, it's new, but I would say a hundred percent in the engineering and QA of things, and there's still more room for improvement.
Clint Betts
What does a typical day look like for you?
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, right. Well, I work across three time zones, so that doesn't, that's not always great.
Clint Betts
Do you know what time it is right now?
Joe Mercorella
I think it's about midday.
Clint Betts
Yeah.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah. I've been on a bit of an adventure this morning.
Clint Betts
Oh, for sure. Guaranteed.
Joe Mercorella
I've got a great leader following me, and I'm following him around. So, on a typical day, I normally start around five. I start with the US, when I'm in Australia, this is, and then once those sort of engagements are finished, start with the continuum, sort of typical management meetings and so forth early in the morning, setting the frame in the day and that sort of stuff or week or month or whatever the period is for it related to. And then a chunk between is whatever it is. So there's that. And then, in the evening, it's the UK catching up with that aspect of the business.
Clint Betts
What do you do for fun? How do you stay grounded and sane?
Joe Mercorella
Oh, so yes, good question. Very important. Family is obviously very important to me. Faith is very important to me. And so Sunday is reserved for church reflection, time with the family, understanding what the values and importance are in life, and all sorts of stuff. I also need to give a little time to reflect and make sure that I'm on the right path and doing the right thing in the community. And then Saturday is reserved for me; I typically do a little bit of work in the morning. I've slowed right down, though, and it's nothing to where it was every day in the early days.
And then it's basically try and, the kids and I now, they wanted to start learning golf, so I thought, well, I'll play golf with them too. I don't mind golf. And so we might go all out, all four of us will go have a round or just go to a driving range. So that's something like that together. Or just catching up with family and that sort of stuff. I don't really do, if I do something, it has to be done with others. I won't go do something for myself, just me. That's not how I operate. And I get satisfaction out of seeing everyone else's enjoyment and just being with good people.
Clint Betts
Yeah. That's awesome.
Joe Mercorella
That's it, really.
Clint Betts
What do you read? What reading recommendations would you have for us? And I'm not talking just business stuff, I'm just generally curious.
Joe Mercorella
I try to read the Bible a lot.
Clint Betts
That's a good one.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, try to get some wisdom. I think that's all our, should be all our number one goal.
Clint Betts
I think that might be the best,
Joe Mercorella
But yeah, it should be at the top if that's what you believe in. So yeah, that's definitely up there. I will listen to several podcasts. I like learning about just the dynamics of the world and what's going on. My wife in particular loves particularly US stuff, related stuff. So I'm always listening to her and then following in and seeing what's going on there.
Clint Betts
Like culture, celebrity stuff, or politics?
Joe Mercorella
Culture, no, more politics. I say culture, politics, or even just politics, but really, what I think we're talking about is just the way the world's evolving. So, it probably gets categorized into politics, but really, at the end of the day, it's more about that, and then how does that align with our faith and that sort of stuff? So where's the conflict happening, and how do we raise good children and be part of that?
So there's that. I like to read various books to learn about economics and psychology; it is definitely one of the things that I probably spent a long time learning. If you're raising any sort of company, you better start learning about people. Otherwise, you're going to run yourself into a few struggles and problems. Better understand how this thing works a bit more and what makes up people because it becomes just a lot easier to understand and help people navigate through their problems. And then sometimes it will work, and sometimes it won't. So definitely, yeah, psychology, economics, not really technology. I think I spend enough of that during the week just learning from the past, historical books, documentaries, and that sort of stuff if I have the time.
Clint Betts
Yeah, I love it. That's great. What do you think about the United States in Australia? I asked this question. I don't know when this will go live, but we're like, and you don't need to comment on any of what I'm about to say, but we have a presidential election, I think, in 18 days, which is a big deal for us. Is it a big deal in Australia?
Joe Mercorella
Mm-hmm.
Clint Betts
It is?
Joe Mercorella
Oh yes. You would not believe the amount of it, and I don't watch it.
Clint Betts
Sure.
Joe Mercorella
I can't. It's just too much.
Clint Betts
Yeah, you're smart.
Joe Mercorella
It is on TV all the time. Everything that happens here, at least a summary of it is publicized in Australia.
Clint Betts
What are Australia's views of us in the United States and our political system?
Joe Mercorella
It's a good question. It's going to range, right? Well, I think one thing probably everyone will agree on is it's very much polarized. So yeah. So there's definitely, I'm sure most Australians would say that. And I think that's had a major influence on the Australian community. I see that affecting us as a means of polarization as well.
Clint Betts
Interesting.
Joe Mercorella
Which I'm not happy with.
Clint Betts
Yeah, we're exporting that. That sucks.
Joe Mercorella
So you've been amazing in the earlier years of this beautiful country, been amazing in influencing people in the right way. Unfortunately we've lost our path a bit, haven't we.
Clint Betts
Yeah, I can't even imagine what it would be like to. Are those the two candidates that they chose? That's who they're picking from? Do you have those moments? As Americans, we all have those. What? Those are the two? But that's every four years. But in particular, it must be odd in this era that who we're putting up and who we might elect is pretty wild. It is actually crazy.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah. I mean, the last eight, 10 years has been, I think, crazy. Also, I don't know. And I'm no expert on politics. Let's call that out right now.
Clint Betts
Oh, me neither. Yeah.
Joe Mercorella
But what's interesting here is that it's a four-year tenure. It's not in Australia.
Clint Betts
What is it in Australia?
Joe Mercorella
You can keep getting reelected indefinitely.
Clint Betts
I don't like that.
Joe Mercorella
Well, see, you say that. But I think, as a business owner and entrepreneur, how much can I be affected in four years? How much can all eight years, and how much can I affect over 10 or 20?
Clint Betts
The predictability of that is probably pretty good. You know what you're going to get, and as long as things are going well, that is kind of interesting, actually.
Joe Mercorella
I don't know where the right or wrong is, but it's just-
Clint Betts
I don't know that we've ever had a president we'd want more than eight years. I'm just speaking on behalf of America.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, yeah. No comment. I have no idea. I'm not a citizen. But we've had prime ministers in Australia, I think they've had 20.
Clint Betts
Wow.
Joe Mercorella
Now look, like I said, I'm not an expert, but I'm sure there was one that was just over 20 years old.
Clint Betts
That's wild.
Joe Mercorella
There are definitely ones who have more recently been 12. Yeah. And the country was, Australians are probably going to knock me up now. But I think many times, it was not like it was an unreasonable state. Otherwise, I don't think those people would've been reelected for the most part. But I think it did give stability to the country, structure, order, and at least the pathway. And if you didn't agree with it, then okay, fine. You change who you want to vote for.
Clint Betts
There is something about predictability because right now, we're in this, at least in the United States, where we don't know what's going to happen next year until that thing gets sorted out. How much away from the politics, how much do you look at our markets and what's happening in the stock market here versus the economy there? Are they mirroring each other? Are they like...
Joe Mercorella
Well, our stock market is basically terrible. It's mostly in a rut. I think it's because of this. It's a hundred percent because of the influence here.
Clint Betts
Oh, interesting.
Joe Mercorella
And well, we don't know what's happening economically, so people get scared and then put their obvious investments into more secure assets. And do I look here? Yeah, look here a little bit, but I just generally don't understand this fiat system that you have here today. So, if you call it, I don't understand how it's even; yes, I mean, I do understand it, but I just genuinely don't believe it still exists like this. I think I won't get into too much more than that if you don't want to, but that's-
Clint Betts
No, I want to.
Joe Mercorella
Oh, you do? Okay. I think I find that absolutely fascinating. And I don't know whether crypto has helped or not helped with it. I don't have a perspective. I don't know anything. I have enough education or knowledge to know that. But I definitely think the way it's structured today can't be right.
Clint Betts
No, it's not. There's no way. We're trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in debt. We're doing all sorts of crazy things and we're supposed to be the richest nation. But it seems like the dollar's getting less and less value, you're seeing, but yeah, anyways, I could go on forever, but the Bitcoin stuff is interesting and crypto is interesting because that means there's no longer nations if that wins, which is kind of wild.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah. Yeah.
Clint Betts
I hate it when they say it out loud. I'm like, you can't say that yet. You got to get calmed down. You can't say you're taking down governments. They're going to take you down before it gets too big.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, I guess it depends on how we want the world to operate. I think having the state system here, I think is a good thing for this country. It means that there's, I think, better use of the funding and understanding of what the community wants to go and establish and create. And I guess I'm concerned-
Clint Betts
It's cool we've made that perception for you.
Joe Mercorella
Well, I think, yeah. Well, it's-
Clint Betts
I don't think it's actually true.
Joe Mercorella
Well, it appears to be more true.
Clint Betts
And meaning we are not good at managing money. The state system is awesome, right? Because if you don't like one state, you can go to another one and it is drastically different.
Joe Mercorella
Whereas in Australia, it's not.
Clint Betts
That is really true.
Joe Mercorella
It's very similar, right? I mean, yeah, I don't even know what things I would say that I'm majoring in; I think it's more about the environment, like different weather, maybe some different opportunities work-wise. But for the most part, it's the same.
Clint Betts
Yeah. Rural Texas is a lot different than Seattle.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah. Okay. Yes. Well, I haven't been to either, actually, but I'm going to say-
Clint Betts
Those people would not, but both would get along with you more than each other.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah, right.
Clint Betts
Entirely.
Joe Mercorella
Yeah. Okay. Some sort of like the hybrid.
Clint Betts
What I'm saying is we're on the verge of civil war, my friend. No, I'm just kidding.
Joe Mercorella
Oh, hope not.
Clint Betts
I'm just kidding.
Joe Mercorella
Oh, god.
Clint Betts
All right, finally, we end every interview with this question.
Joe Mercorella
Okay.
Clint Betts
And that is at CEO.com, we believe the chances one gives is just as important as the chances one takes. When you hear that, who gave you a chance to get you to where you are today?
Joe Mercorella
Ooh, that's a great question. You go back. I think I have to go back. I'll have to say, without getting too emotional, my family, I think fundamentally. My grandparents, who made the journey to go across from Italy to Australia, started in an absolutely foreign country. I mean, it would seem absolutely ridiculous today to consider it. They're my parents. My dad was a big influence, and my mom was a big influence, affording me opportunities and enabling my entrepreneurial spirit. And I think without that, I don't think I would've taken the next steps. And whilst I was probably a little bit more out there compared to them, they set the right foundations and principles in me, which enabled it. I think that was the major thing, I would say.
Clint Betts
Thank you so much for coming on, and thanks for coming in studio, really. It means a lot.
Joe Mercorella
No, I enjoyed it. This is fantastic. Yeah.
Clint Betts
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Edited for readability.