Does Autonomy Help Make Better Business Decisions?

Does Autonomy Help Make Better Business Decisions?

Sean: So one of the companies I work with, it’s a very big auctions company here in the Philippines. Has that been a model that you have – on top of all of the monetization models that you have mentioned, is that a model that you’re also looking into? Because this company I’ve worked with, I was so surprised, but what they, one of the things that they’re doing is actually buying all of the projected items or returned items from the biggest e-commerce stores here in the county. And they just auction it out.

Josef: Actually, yes, because where in fact that they are very good partners. In fact, for someone like us at the beginning stage, because they have ways to bring such a wide variety of items back into circularity all at one time. Right. So I think at the beginning stages, it was quite tricky for us because there’s so many different things that we collect. Right.

And there’s not very many partners, or charities, or upcyclers who can really take any kind of item. So we’d have to find 40, 50 different types of partners before we could even operate because of the sheer sort of variety of what we collect. But companies such as the one that you’re mentioning, I’m pretty sure we probably work, exactly we have worked with them, is actually very useful for us because they can really help us accept a very wide range and allow us to test the market at a very early point.

So I think they’re very interesting and I think more and more of those businesses are finding a way to get themselves online. Because of course, physical auctions and things like that are a little bit more tricky now.

So themselves having a decent online platform that they can actually hold the auctions and so on and so forth is really important. I’m not sure if we would consider as Humble ever having an auction ourselves, we might do the occasional charity auction. We actually had a dream at one point to have a gallery of upcycled products from some of our artists and then have a charity auction for all of those things, which could be really exciting.

But as a core part of the business, we probably wouldn’t go into that, but we would happily work with other auction companies.

Sean: I could only imagine the scale that you guys are operating right now, getting all of those stuffs that people would ask you to collect and storing it someplace and having it all processed.

I’m wondering, how big is your team right now at Humble?

Josef: We have a shockingly small team. And we’re very lucky because we’ve had some help, you know, from partners or from, we’ve had wonderful interns. They’ve just been like on a completely different level. But it’s been Nina and me, to be honest, we had one or two people sort of for short projects in the past.

But in terms of full-time, we’ve just hired a BD head. So we’ve got a BD manager who started one week ago, other than that, that’s the only full-time people in Humble. So we’ve been lucky enough to have these genuinely ridiculously talented interns with us.

 I think, you know, sustainability, startup, design, these are all kinds of words which resonate with that generation at the moment, and then I love that, right? Like bright young people kind of care about this world, which we’re really lucky because it means that we get just these just unbelievable people applying and wanting to spend, you know, three to six months getting some hands-on experience and understanding the whole process.

And that’s been one of the reasons perhaps why we haven’t had to build such a big team yet because of those interns. So we take them through something called the Grow program, which is just something very simple, but unlike the internships that myself and my co-founder have gone through, which I’m sure you’ve been through this too Sean.

Where okay day one – hello intern. Here’s a thousand business cards upload the info into Excel. Right? You and I have been there. I think we’ve all being in those situations where it’s just, it’s mundane, it’s pointless. And I think now it’s changing more, which is great because people are a lot more vocal and these sorts of things are kind of not more, not acceptable anymore, which is great.

So we really put a lot of emphasis on making sure that we’re getting them one step closer to their dream, whatever that might be, even if it’s not related to Humble at all. We’re giving them proper hands-on experience that they can make mistakes. Right? We put them in that position where they can really have autonomy and actually make mistakes at that age. When they probably wouldn’t be able to make decisions or have responsibilities like that for at least another five years.

And we want to do that and we take that on the chin because we just believe in developing people. We want to have another impact element to it, which is in sort of young people being able to grow and experience different things. Of course. The cost of that is different because it’s maybe not as much money as salary, but it’s then cost in time.

And that’s just a management exercise of how much time you can give versus the benefit that you get from it and also the people get. Then finally on top of that is we’ve worked with partners who can help us. So on the supply chain side, we have a great product called Kahon.ph who you should have on your show by the way. The founders there and Nick – and Nick Padilla and Carlos are fantastic, fantastic families.

Sean: Well, noted.

Josef: On the level, really. And we’ve been very lucky to work with them because they actually started as an on-demand storage startup. But they’ve got another element to their business now, which is this kind of plug-in tech platform of supply chain support.

And they help companies like us, which is something which they’ve been testing and it’s a much newer product and their original service, but we’ve been sort of the first client, one of the first couple of clients to really try and test that with them which has helped hugely because it means we get access to a lot of warehouses and a lot of trucking, et cetera, without having to actually build that all ourselves.

So those are the reasons why we’ve been able to keep quite a lean team so far.

Sean: And that is amazing. Now I’m wondering you are also the managing director of Penbrothers with maybe more or less 70 people working with you. What were some of the things that you were able to take from this experience, which you’re still, you know, you’re still there, you’re still working with Penbrothers?

And how did you take all of that experience, all of that wisdom that you’ve garnered there? Because I’m sure you got something out of it. And that’s the reason why you’re able to have a very lean and amazingly, not shockingly, but amazingly lean team of just three people. What are some of those lessons that we can learn from you right now?

Josef: Yeah, so I mean a huge amount, right? I don’t think Humble would be anything like if it weren’t for those experiences in Penbrothers. So I’m very, very lucky and thankful to my co-founders at Penbrothers and the entire team because I’ve had there over three years of really learning what it takes to lead a team, to build a startup, and scaling a startup.

Right. I think we only had 17 people at Penbrothers and now we have pushing 80 people and we employ 500 people for other startups around the world. So I’ve been very lucky there, I think. But funnily enough, it also has no downsides, but it has as a funny, a couple of curveballs. And I’ll give you one, which is more of a personal thing, it’s my fault, not anyone else’s.

But like, at Penbrothers right now I have a C team, right? So I’ve got a COO, a chief transformation officer. I have extremely senior people who I can rely on for all these different things. And so going from that, which is really just, okay, hi, Patrick, Tom go, whoever it might be. This is the problem. Let me know what help you need to go and fix it. I’ll speak to you in a week when we’ve got brilliant solutions on my table. Right? Fantastic.

Compared to when I experienced a problem at Humble. I’m kind of looking around, where’s my Patrick, my Tom, and my guy and there’s no one, right?

I’m the one picking up the phone. And of course my brilliant co-founder, we’re both from the same boat and we’re the ones that are rummaging through finding the leads and on the ground at the warehouse sorting through the items.

So there’s no more delegation. It’s almost like you’ve gone back 10 years in kind of how you run an organization and go from really delegating all these tasks to a big stable team, to getting your hands very dirty and doing it yourself. When normally that progression is the other way around. Right? Normally you kind of go from doing it yourself all the way up to eventually leading on this.

So that’s quite a, I hope slightly amusing kind of curveball there, but in terms of lessons learned, I mean, I think managing people, in general, is always one of the most crucial, if not the most crucial lessons learned. Because whether it’s an intern, whether it’s a COO, whether it’s an investment board, whether it’s a client or a customer, being able to manage relationships and speak to people, and understand the maturity of how that changes through time and how you need it.

Adapt the way that you’re speaking, depending on the culture or the person, the stage of the person, the feeling of the person is really an art form, which I think we never stopped learning. And that is something in Penbrothers. That’s, I’ve really, really learned because I’ll speak to sometimes very junior people, other times my co-founders, and completely different sensitivities as to how to speak to people there.

So that’s one I think. Another one I think is culture building, which again is, it’s got similarities to that one. But culture for us is so important. And I think you learn that only when you’ve been in it, because of course we can see the big, beautiful companies, the Googles, the Canva’s of this world, and we see all of this amazing culture.

But to actually be there and experience how not to build culture and is really, really important to then understanding what you do need to do, right. And simple things, you know, creating psychological safety. I say that simple, that’s not simple, by the way, you know, it’s like extremely difficult, which I’m sure, you know, very well. But creating psychological safety, creating an area where every level genuinely has the confidence and the ability to innovate and to make mistakes.

Things like that is so difficult and I learned that in Penbrothers, by making lots of personal mistakes, but also seeing some good times also with regards to culture development as to blossoming into what it is now. Because then of course in Humble, when you’re starting from scratch, you get the chance to do it all again from the beginning.

You already know the kind of culture that you want to create. So you’re a lot more conscious of it as to how much attention that should go into that. So like for example, one of the very first people that we want to hire is ahead of culture, but there’s going to be like role number one or two or three, because if that’s right from the beginning, then everything else can just follow suit in a lot smoother way.

Find a one who will just be business skills. I think in terms of being able to understand the different elements of finance and sales and HR. I mean, when I got the job in Penn brothers, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. And really, and I can say that cause it was three years on now and I think they’ll forgive me.

Well, I was an all-right sales guy, that’s about all I had going for me. And when I joined there, you know, having to manage PNL, cash flow, understanding all of the different elements of employee engagement, player relations, and the labor laws and all of these different sites and facets to a business.

I just knew nothing about having to learn it, because of course, even if you are MD  (Managing Director) of lots of capable people, you should still understand how each function operates so that you know how to help them, where you can spot them, where they might need some of your support. So that was one, you know, really understanding each function of the business. Because if I didn’t have that from Penbrothers, it would have been a far greater struggle at Humble for sure.

Sean: Thank you for that. That’s a boatload of wisdom that we can get from you and yeah. Dealing with culture. That’s already one entire podcast recording that we can do with that.