HealthNow presents... Tim Boyle

uh welcome back we're at uh episode two of the health Now podcast and I've got a pretty exciting one today uh we've actually invited uh one of our team members and as many of you watching this Podcast May know I'm extremely fortunate at Health now uh part of my founder journey is been supported but be has been uh all about being supported by amazing people uh both in my team and our investment community and then also our advisors and um yeah as I say I'm I'm really grateful uh and glad to be able to to have Tim jump on today who's currently operating as our chief marketing officer at Health now and has a really exciting background having built uh or co-founding uh a really exciting uh international business operating in the fleet maintenance software business so Tim welcome uh why don't you sit the scene give us a little bit of your background what you've done in the world and then we can crack into a hard conversation thanks mate and it does seem odd that um I'm actually sitting here on the microphone for this pod when we've got such a stellar lineup of of guests that are doing amazing things hugely relevant to health now to making Healthcare more accessible and the HR space and all the great things that we're doing but um I'm always a fan and an excited participant to to tell a story and um hopefully joining the dots sort of between whip around and and where I've come from to why I'm I'm here at Health now um sort of helps people understand the great mission that you've kicked off here but to set the scene um for those and and I I guess whip around really focused our energies in the US and so a lot of people in New Zealand probably haven't heard of whip around or or come across it if you're not in the um the Fleet Management or Fleet Maintenance space but uh seven or eight years ago a good friend of mine James and I founded a business um really focused on uh a problem that we saw here in New Zealand which um at the time peered up with the changes in health and safety laws uh the health and safety at work act and there was a lot of focus on businesses and the in the transport sector about safety pre-trip and post-trip inspections um what they were doing in the maintenance of their Fleet because of this sort of high threshold around compliance that was coming in with this new legislation so we built a pretty simple product at that point um you know fast forward kind of six six or eight months and we were really fortunate to find out that what we' built to potentially knock down doors in the New Zealand Market um was actually far more relevant in the US and and landed really nicely in a federally mandated uh regulation around vehicle maintenance record retention vehicle inspections and so over the course of uh sort of six or seven years from there on we we buildt a business up in the US um primarily focused on sort of larger commercial Motor Vehicles everything from trucks and buses to um rubbish trucks and and everything in between so it was a it was a great journey and um a huge amount of learning and and good lessons and bad lessons all boiled into um you know into that Journey along the way so that's really how I guess the the journey for me personally got into um got into Tech and uh it's been you know really ingrained in me now as such a um you know a passionate part of the world to operate in from a business perspective as as Tech and that's really led me I guess to to how we caught up last year and now Health now sits on my LinkedIn as CMO and it's been a pretty magnificent um you know Journey with you over the last six or eight months sick man it's interesting as I hear you tell the story back uh this time I've only just just put together the dots on the the regulatory environments around Fleet Maintenance and also around occupational health and safety it's also quite comedic how um you know I tend to throw that line around you know around specifically in the truck driving or the the trucking industry of um like all companies that have trucks maintain their their fleets because they want their fleets to stay on the road but yet they're not maintaining their people with the same level of uh of detail or energy there's I mean I've drawn so many um so many parallels between what we've you know what we did at whip around the things that worked the things that didn't some of the driving forces behind that and one of the most obvious is exactly what you touch on is that um and we'll probably talk about health now in a in a slightly more focused context around this but I think the whole notion that you have championed that historically people have been really focused on um their Capital assets their Machinery their equipment um this High kind of Entry cost to that the actual Financial outlay seems to drive the intention and willingness to spend and maintain those things over time so you know routine maintenance inspections things like changing oils and filters and all that kind of stuff is so commonly accepted when it comes to machinery and equipment and vehicles um but coming now full circle into the health now world and being able to Champion that um to organizations to say well your people are actually your most valuable asset um they are the ones that you know have this cascading effect to keep your Machinery working they are the ones doing operating the Machinery the other ones extracting the value out of that nine times out of 10 but this whole historic perspective that you know I think probably in the last um decade or so we've become acutely aware about um physical health and as I touched on with whip Brown you you've had a whole lot of um kind of liability and risk hanging off and this was certainly our experience in the US around health and safety and around liability and around the physical well-being and the guard rails that get put up um in heavy industry in particular around that but only now and potentially you know i' say since Co I think this has probably been more and more emphasized for a number of different reasons but this whole psychosocial health and safety mental well-being this whole holistic kind of spectrum of people's different needs um that is really sort of the parallel to what to what whiper around was doing for Fleet Management um Health Now is really trying to do uh for organizations and their people and I think there's a huge parallel to um you know those two things for for organizations why do you think um just going back to the whip around example and then we'll draw some more parallels between whip around and health now why was it important for organizations to make that uh shift to a technology Centric Fleet Maintenance approach um we were sort of Lucky in the whiper around journey I think that a the US is huge and it had this regulatory kind of backdrop that when we picked up the phone to somebody there and said hey how are you managing your inspections how are you managing your Fleet Maintenance we know that you are bound by these rules and regulations there was enough of a pain point there they were terrified of the law they were terrified of compliance um a lot of them were the the ones that weren't managing it well were because there was a huge risk in being audited and investigated and and the penalties were severe not only um you know from the regulatory side of things from the Department of Transport or the um Federal Motor Carrier safety administration but the Civil penalties in the US are high as well you know if you have a crash you injure somebody you kill somebody and it can be linked back to a maintenance failure um then you know you really are they've got a term there called nuclear ver verdicts and that's actually quite true because you um you lose one of those and over 90% of those cases you will lose if there's any sort of at fault action from the Fleet Maintenance so there was this backdrop there that people were already sort of scared the industry was still largely paper based um and so timing was a really interesting component where we could kind of get the cut through talking to people that were struggling to manage this increasing bar of um of Regulation and compliance they needed technology a lot of the mean you think about the nature of Transportation you've got vehicles moving everywhere there's so many moving Parts there's multiple drivers there's shifts there's multiple states that you're operating in often multiple locations yet the the law hadn't evolved around um how that really worked in a modern sense the onus was on records to be kept in one central location um you had to have access to them at any given time and so people that we were working with were actually sending boxes of forms and Records you know to the next state to head office you know huge big boxes of of hundreds if not thousands of pieces of paper so technology is the solution to that um and I think a lot of Industries and problems are being solved obviously um in in this Modern World by just digitizing ation even in the simplest of ways just by saying look that that physical piece of paper or record or what it might be can end up in five different places if you digitize it it can happen quicker you can have greater control you can have all the data and insights that come with that and it can end up in everybody's inbox or or filing cabinet um that needs it so it's easily accessible so I think technology was the logic the the hard point with that is taking people along that journey and convincing people who have been managing Fleet Maintenance on a whiteboard on a spreadsheet not at all um and taking them on a journey that technology is going to help them it's not just a cost interest the idea of um of Fleet Maintenance being managed on paper scares me it's just like how are you supposed to meet your your regulatory requirements how are you supposed to make sure those documents are in one place like the again just the idea of chucking documents into the mailing system what if they're lost if they're lost 100% And you map out those Journeys um where you actually look at the physical process that you know let's say a pre- or post trip inspection has to go on to become uh accessible in in the format that it needed to be starting with the driver doing that inspection then whether they physically took that into the office at that point in time did the person in the office then scan it in a scanner and then receive it by email then have to afford that email or save it into a there's this huge huge um journey and and sort of job to be done that could be quite easily solved in such a short a period of time um so I think that you know it would be hard it would be really really hard not to draw a parallel between what you're talking about now and the way that reimbursable occupational health and safety and health and well-being programs are being managed right now well absolutely and the parallel that I draw is we talk about at Health now a lot and we talk about with the people that we are dealing with the people that are coming on this podcast you know these hugely passionate enthusiastic HR or or occupational health or health and safety and well-being kind of um Champions the diversity of the workforce now whether that's ethnic diversity age diversity racial diversity there's so many different spectrums of that um that it's like a fleet of trucks it's like you've got 10 different B trains that travel up and down the country carrying logs and then you've got you know 10 around town kind of delivery vehicles that have got packages and then you've got um all you know some rubbish trucks all of them have different needs they have different equipment they have different parts and suppliers and networks that they need to access they have different um scheduling of when those things need to um you know to be repaired so you've got around town Vehicles they have a slightly different frequency they're using their brakes more they they're putting more pressure on different components because their job is different to these L haul kind of of just Cruise along the road at 60 M an hour barely touch the brakes and and um and you know stop every 6 hours for a cup of tea that is like the people that we deal with in these organizations and I think that's been the real eye opener for me coming into Health now which has been quite exciting is is not to sort of simplify it but I think in reflection I didn't even appreciate during the whip around Journey um we sort of understood a lot of this but leaving whip around last year I didn't really understand the the correlation between people and and equipment that I do now uh and the way that Health now is able to unlock that absolute flexibility in choice and that one One-Stop shop what we were always trying to do at whip around is build a solution that added the value that did the hard work that kind of almost automated that decision making so you you would get served up um what needed to be done when it needed to be done or when it was coming up so you had all of the different parts in inventory you had all the different equipment you had all those things were already kind of built into the intelligence of the product very hard to do that with people I don't think any sort of Technology certainly probably In Our Lifetime is going to be able to predict the mental health or mental well-being or physical demands or needs of individuals in a Workforce and so I think the you know the need to have something that is very easily administrable um from the organization level that has that equity and that that coverage but to be able to let people make their own decisions as people um that's the big difference between dealing with a fleet of trucks which is kind of programmed it's binary you almost know within reason what what needs to happen and when it needs to happen people are very different in that sense they have the same maintenance needs but they're very unpredictable and they're also individualized right I was um while I was coming back up to Oakland this morning I was just thinking how we actually have built a solution where one size fits all but one size only fits all because once you actually provide that solution to the individual one size fits one and that's why that's why we're able to empower people to go and make their diverse individualized decisions to move themselves through their health and well-being Journey um just I'm really Keen to just to get you to to Chuck it on the record how did how did we convince you to join the health now Mission what's what what what attracted you to this from the Fleet Maintenance business and to now cuz as you've already alluded to it sounds like there's layers of complexity with people that weren't there with with trucks um and I think you know for the record i' I'd left whip around um for for various reasons I felt it was the right time for me to sort of step back and and just um play a more active role on the board we had a great team in place operationally we were very much focused on the US so you know there were some big decisions to be made that that were um you know potentially not the right ones if we were to to hang around and and move up to the US and kind of do that we we felt we had the right team in place to carry that forward so that was a big step for me anyway after being so involved in in something growing something from you know the ground up really into a a reasonable size business um you know I felt pretty satisfied I'd kind of ticked a few of those boxes that I was ready for a new challenge and I think I didn't have any intention whatsoever to come and start working at an early St startup again and I think Steve a lot of people in your team probably would say the same thing I don't think anyone stuck their hand up and thought I'm going to get back into a really early stage startup but I don't think anyone would ever put their hand up to make that decision you're either stupid or something something's wrong with you I was listening to um Shane Bradley's podcast on and I know he's a he's a friend of yours but that guy loves to start early stage businesses over and over again he's pretty impressive but I guess um thinking I was going to get down sort of the head down the Consulting path I thought I'd learned enough I had a skill set around the good thing about early stage companies is you end up doing a bit of everything and you're always you know everyone's in marketing everyone's in sales um you learn enough about product even though it's not my my forte you learn enough about um you know leadership and a few other things I thought uh I've probably got a bit that I can give back and I think I'm really interested in in Tech I like early stage companies and I think I can probably kind of dot down into a couple of them and and add some value and find some enjoyment watching you know those early early phases of growth and success which are just so exhilarating I think and seeing so much of it in the New Zealand Tech scene um has just been hugely inspiring to me over the last couple of years I thought great there's a home for me um until you know I can sort of figure out what the future may hold you know do I have enough energy to kind of look at doing something again um so I think St you and I agreed that we were going to do about 10 hours a week or something like that and I'm not sure whether you actually knew that that was never going to work but um I started doing my 10 hours a week which I think was probably realistically 20 hours a week um you know all said and done by the time you you putting your brain power into things and chipping away at night and thinking about and in the shower but over the course of sort of the back end of last year I joined at a pretty interesting time as you'll remember Health now had a previous life which you know in its own right was a successful business um and I think that's you know something that you you'll always look back on with some fondness I'm sure but had reached a point where you knew there was a Better Way Forward and I came in just after that the decision had been made to really double down on the value proposition of connecting employers with their people and and and really that mission that you have championed since day one when we met um which was really genuinely looking to provide better access to healthare for everyday people and I think the the asterisk to that that I've always found really interesting is you knew how to do it it wasn't just a grandiose idea you knew that going back to the start of this conversation employers needed to play a bigger role in that and that whether you look at all these macro ideas of the health system not being as good as it should be or a cost of living crisis and people having their own affordability issues all of these things are huge things to try and Tackle but there's a very very clear Lane where people are the greatest asset of most organizations and that you don't you didn't believe um that they were doing enough to provide for for the health care of their people and that really resonated with me and as we started kind of working together and I could see the dedication and vision that you had for this given your history you know in the actual sort of clinical side of healthcare um I started drawing the parallels to whip around a little bit I started you know understanding that this business had a huge purpose behind it and that was one thing that um working in a in another business like whip around you find so much more cut through when you can resonate with the people that that you're trying to communicate with when you're trying to bring customers on board you're trying to build an audience it's that whole saying you know people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it and from very early on in my journey at Health now I could see there was a why we did it and that was front and center um we were always we we got our first few customers onto the the card product just purely on a why right quite quietly before we even had a product exactly before before the product was really live there were customers lining up because they bought they bought what we were doing and so that was a great thing to be able to leverage particularly from a marketing standpoint but just from a a soul perspective you know if you're going to spend a lot of your waking hours you know contributing to something you got to believe in it and you've got to believe that there's a future in it and that's what I saw very early on I also saw the other people in the team that had been through obviously that phase slightly earlier than I had you know with Dave and Andrew and um you know there there were people that had joined this journey before me that had clearly seen the same thing and these are senior people who in their own right had had really you know built businesses found great success and had felt the same way that I had about coming into something that that there was a very clear path forward so you know without ever intending to it we get to the back end of last year and I mean I don't even know whether we had a formal conversation about it but I knew inherently that um that you know I was going to end up in some capacity sort of working full-time at Health now and and getting really excited about it and um and starting to learn a lot more and be open to learning a lot more about a part of the industry that I'd never spent a huge amount of time in um of you know other than being involved in a business where we you know over the course of our years we probably hired hundreds of people um across different countries and all that stuff so you understand the needs of employing a Workforce and you understand the processes around it you build relationships and you get to know a lot of amazing people over there which I think is one of the greatest things about being in business is the people side of it but I'd never I'd never spend a huge amount of time with recruiters or HR leaders or you know even health and safety leaders that now are certainly emerging in our world with this remit around well-being and I just found this unbelievably positive engaging passionate community of people that genuinely most of the people I've talked with you know since we've been at Health now and we're we're talking to hi it feels like they're not at work it's like this is their passion or their Hobby and they they come to you know work to generally better and advocate for their Workforce and that was really refreshing because I don't want to say anything bad about Fleet managers because there's a lot of amazing ones out there who are gen genuinely dedicated to their job but sometimes you do feel like they're at work you know they're up at 4:00 in the morning they deal with problems you know Fleet managers are problem solvers not to say HR people aren't but U I've just been so impressed by the the huge level of capability and determination and Innovation and excitement that a lot of these people you know Mark who sat in this chair a couple of weeks ago guys like Mark and some of the guests that we've got coming up um on here you know I think just really it's an interesting space to be and and T timing is always such a huge part I think of success you can you can make success by hard work and the whole saying you know and this is another part I think of of my journey in health now is you know you're a great Visionary hard work you make [ __ ] happen you know for our sins some days but um but you know timing is everything as well and I genuinely feel piecing all of these things together there is a global shift and I think all the different markets that we're looking at each have a little Nuance on that but there is a huge wave now of organizations starting to realize that um they should they could and they probably will become more connected to their people in that health and wellbeing space um but it's hard they need I've been really pleased to see that too and and again you already know this butd it's like um it wasn't too long ago that humans actually realized that we should be maintaining our our physical Machinery right like it was the Industrial Revolution where they started to realize that they didn't just need to throw things away they could fix things and then you start moving through history and then they started to actually proactively and productively maintain their Machinery to keep them working and then now as you say there's this timing thing that's occurring where people are starting to have the same a same approach towards their people because they've realized that first and foremost it's actually cheaper to have it's it's cheaper for a number of reasons but one reason is it's cheaper to have that person stay in your business because you don't have to like spend the money trying to recruit another individual and then train them up to get to the same level of the person that you've got in the role already so let's look after them and give them a reason to stay but then it's also cheaper because you're not losing a bunch of Ip out of the business which then thing can go and be utilized by a potential competitor or other so it's like and then and then you overlay that on top of this Market where it's been so hard to employ high quality people because a players are always going to have a choice of where they work so how do you actually build your employer brand how do you have that competitive employee experience uh and then further to that like you just want your people to be productive like for for me right and and the seat that I um where I sit like I kind of look at health and wellbeing with an organiz ations uh yeah I I really want there to be healthier more proactive more productive people because they're healthier but then I also look at it from just a business perspective and and a p now it's like why wouldn't you want to get the most out of your people and get the highest level of performance absolutely and I think we've sort of you know this may be kind of unintentionally reflective of my journey um with health now but we've got these kind of three pillar pieces of content that are kind of in my mind the way that I'm viewing the health Now sort of proposition and the role we play out there the first piece of content that we put out last year was the employer market report and it talked about really interesting things about you know gen Z and about Millennials and about these different tiers of of generations of the workforce that have different demands and different ways to work and value different things around benefits and health and what they prioritize as being different and how organizations need to address those quite differently and there's challenges within those so that kind of set the scene hey this comes back to that whole timing thing there is this shift going on and we've got this fundamentally new generation of people entering the workforce that think so much differently to anyone that's gone before them fruit B doesn't mean nothing to them they want something tangible something real yeah and and they care a lot more you know more deeply about sort of things in different ways and potentially people that have gone before them so you know that's one layer of that div piece but you know there is a global shift I think since Co um I was reading a report the other day and they called it that we live in this kind of Eternal state of poly crisis at the moment and it's it's everything from you know mental health it's from Co it's from Wars it's from climate things it's e there's always you know there is a lot of negativity out there and you can see how it does we you know weigh heavily on people and so the need for organizations to be helping and support supporting and contributing to their people is probably greater than it's ever been and I I genuinely see that and then we sort of evolve to hey organizations are acknowledging this and they're saying yeah how how are we going to do this we've got these you know issues that we need to solve for we want to be or good companies want to be supporting their people more but we've got to try and get the budget we've got to try and justify the expense and so then we put out the ROI of employee well-being report and that scouted the globe for all the hard data on exactly what you were just talking about which is how do we justify this on a p&l how do we actually take a dollar and and you know maybe shop that up the the chain a bit to someone who's a little bit cold-hearted or a little bit disconnected from the business you know they're just a shareholder and a listed company they're not actually within a team and and you got to understand business is business and some people think that way and so we really were able to quite clearly justify hey there is actually economic returns that are quite well documented that by investing in your people through uh employee health initiatives through well-being benefits and programs um has these tangible returns either massive savings on turnover or productivism and mind blowing some of the data that that came out of that report and so I think that's why we got so much attention around that report is people are going okay I've got this this I can write the business case well they will be able to write the business case because our next piece of content that we've got coming up is answering that question where they've got the circumstances we've got the ROI of employee data to say of wellbeing data to say hey you can justify it but then still some are also going we need to package this up in the right way and so it's so fortunate to have Market kinetics working with us on developing this guide for developing a business case to get the budget for these well-being initiatives if you didn't have it already and so I think there's this constant Evolution we're working with the market we're working with the people that we're talking to you know taking them on the journey that we are um and getting deeper and and getting sort of closer to the issue or with that end goal in mind of actually being able to have the impact that You' have desired for so long what do you think's been the most surprising realization over the last six months working in health now around employee health and well-being and occupational health and safety I think it's been an eye opener for me how prevalent the awareness of the problem is um picking up the phone more of the not to people that go yep we know what you know either they're going this is amazing this is the solution that we've been looking for that we didn't know exist and let's do business but then you've got the other ones that are still in sort of more of that consideration phase and they're going hey we absolutely acknowledge we need to be doing more and what we're doing these hardcoded onetoone fixed kind of solutions that we've offered aren't touching the fringes of our Workforce you know we they're starting to realize that what is is being demanded by their people is very different um yeah that's actually um I had someone say that to me the other day that they don't want to benefit that's just going to hit the people in the office and that's why it was so important to them that they had some reporting around at what point what what type of individual in the business was actually utilizing the health now platform because it gave them the ability to prove that it was hitting those those people at the front lines of the organization those people in the warehouse those people actually putting um putting the products onto the back of trucks uh like um erecting scaffolding and and whatnot so it makes total sense so I think that is definitely there there is this absolute Desire by most good companies to want to do things that are more Innovative they're more employee Le they are a solution that is going to get higher utility it's going to have better access it's going to result in better outcomes the other thing that I would say is I think this um understanding of the markets has become really interesting and so what we're doing in Australia now I think is is so exciting you know looking at more if we go to our sort of must needs wants methodology um which we don't have to chew through today it's probably it's probably another podcast to be honest um but looking at that absolute must the pointy end of of kind of the wedge that we're talking to these huge organizations over there and it's the regulatory environment that again sort of gives me shivers down my spine when I think back to Whipper around and and how much I really appreciated having that backdrop of Regulation that you could talk to people you know how to identify your Market um you know who has to be doing what and you know that you've got a solution to help them with it so it just becomes a much more focused approach and Australia is really exciting for us in that sense that the Occupational Health sector and regulation is so much different from here in New Zealand um you know these periodic Medicals the way that organizations have a respons posibility to help their people manage injuries but how that's being delivered at the moment is so broken in that you know the majority of these are trying to be served by these fixed Clinic networks you've got people going from reimbursements that are taking 12 weeks reimbursements I mean who has money in the bank account to to hang off for 12 weeks um you know in in this sort of day and age so particularly when you're dealing with a lot of blue collar workforces um you know lower income um but it makes sense right cuz again when we think around the that benefits have been traditionally delivered they haven't had another Choice than to make it complicated and Antiquated and paper bound or or what not because there hasn't been a way to actually get money into the hands of their employee base with the control that's needed to ensure that the funds are actually going to the right areas and it's it's for me personally when I look at the way that it used to be delivered I feel like organizations would just being effective custodians they were just making sure that the money that they were trying to get to their people was going to the right place and that's what led to the complexity whereas now when similar to your whip around story when you actually just digitize the process and use technology to then bolster the way that you're delivering that experience to then provide the rails or the parameters of where it can be used you are able to provide a simpler experience to that employee which then it removes the financial barrier that traditionally exists absolutely and it it does give us the ability to go in that full spectrum you know you you address the you address the sort of the the sharp pain point of just functioning meeting compliance getting people in for Medicals and things but you're all of a sudden at the same time starting a conversation about what more could you be doing for your people you know good companies are not just paying for their annual required medical for their truck drivers because yes you've got to do it and there's a better way to do it and there's a you seconds sorry was your phone can just check it off I'm just picking that up unfortunately I'm hearing I didn't know what it was for um and we're back and we're back yeah short a break uh so we were just talking about the the conversations we have which are very much focused you know in in some organizations in the harder Industries and Mining and Trucking and construction things where there are these regulatory um defined Medicals that that need to happen that's not an emotional experience for for an employee you make it more convenient you give them more choice about where they want to access it you create convenience but I think what that stimulates is an opportunity when they've got the technology that Health now offers you've got an opportunity to go well you've now got the platform what else can you be doing to become a better employer what other benefits can you offer strengthen that employer brand that employer experience absolutely and that's what really makes you know or gets me excited about Australia is is there's a a really clear line of sight into certain industry sectors that we can solve a problem for immediately and I think you know have an impact on the bottom line and create convenience and and better cut through and utility into you know meeting their compliance requirements but once we're in we've got the platform to really talk to them about some of the things that are probably a little bit more New Zealand Centric around engagement and and delivering Equitable outcomes and actually having those kind of healthc care impacts that you know the whole seed and and sort of um Phoenix of of Health now started with here yeah has there been anything um that surprised you in a negative way um not in a negative way I think it's been a really good reminder for me you know time you know the woman in my life have got two children will always remind me that you never remember the pain of childbirth for example because your body is kind of conditioned to and I think that happens for a lot of things early stage businesses are hard work and you've got a limited amount of money and resource to achieve an outsized sort of return really that's that's a challenge um and I think you kind of forget even though there's so many similarities you do forget what the early days Al like and and I think I mean I I understand it and so I I try my best to kind of support you know those knowing the pressure that you're under every day and and how hard you know some of those days are and how long they are and how much you've got to do and consider and all the decisions that come with it and so I think for me it's been like oh my gosh that's right this is what it's like again to be um I remember that to be back here but in the same way it's invigorating but it's terrifying but it's sort of you know that's so it's not a negative but it's it's been one of those kind of hard reminders of like [ __ ] that's right this is what this is what good grunty early stage companies are doing but yeah they're the easiest things um that hard work is always so easily um Justified when you keep having the winds and when you get the the winds and the new customers coming in the door the Marquee customers that everyone celebrates that you're like I can't believe you know we're bringing on this these these amazing companies but then you actually going back to kind of being in this really critical Mission purpose-led kind of approach that Health now firmly is it's hearing those stories from the end users about going to the dentist for the first time in 10 years having that tooth removed or taking their kids to the the doctor when they're sick when they wouldn't otherwise be or reducing the financial pressure on other elements of their life uh it's funny that you you rais that cuz that's that's genuinely what um yeah what what for me kind of makes this all worthwhile and I was I think it was like two or 3 weeks ago when we sent that um request for feedback out to our in user base that had transacted and um transparently like the only reason I probably sent that out cuz I was needing a little bit of a little bit of an emotional booster but it's good and you got it mean the responses we got from that were were amazing and found um precancerous um a precancerous skin Legion that was removed gall stones the the uh first time going to the dentist in 10 years the rod and tooth that was extracted uh yeah man those those were cool stories and I think the way that they like internally we measure as much based on those as we do kind of the financial things that we have to as a business because you know we've got to keep the lights on we got to keep investors happy and but I think tracking every day how much spend you know is is on the platform because that's not a that's not a revenue stream for us that's genuinely an impact metric for us so we get excited when we're talking about you know x amount of hundreds of thousands that's been spend on the platform and this is the impact that we've had out in the community that without Health now without the support of the organizations that have bought us on board wouldn't be there or it certainly wouldn't be there in the convenient efficient way um that it otherwise would have been so I've really enjoyed you know banking those wins the emotional wins the Feelgood wins and and I think it just makes the ability to talk about what we're doing so much easier so I mean I've you know I find it so natural to tell people out in the world what does Health now do like what are you guys up to what what are you doing there and I actually love um on that utilization comment I love the fact that we don't have a direct economic relationship with spend I think that that for us is probably one of our our real power plays because it means that you know we we are authentically trying to empower people to do what's best for them with the money that they have available we want to show them how much money they have left because you know the money that's not spent we're not charging it's it's like we want them to go on access Care at a provider that's best suited for them not at one that we're getting an economic Kickback from because we don't get economic Kickbacks on the money that's being spent we just want them to go and do what's best for them where they want to with who they want to for why they want to and we also want them to get through as much of the money as humanly possible to deliver a better health outcome and I like the fact that I think we're building confidence to not deal with the companies that don't want that and you know you know there's been a few examples of those recently where um we're having a conversation about coming on board and someone said oh it's the cost thing said oh look we can deal with cost you know we can negotiate yeah let's have a chat oh no we don't want the money to be spent we don't want the allowance to be spent we don't want the utilization and you sort of there are and and noting noting they've already got budget budget set aside they're giving everyone 300 bucks per employee per year so I mean I think we're I'm really fizzed on the fact that we know that we are wanting to work with good companies for the right reasons the ones that know that we send the balance reminders and encourage the spin that we're our product is working hard to get the utility of that money because we know that when that money is spent people are happier and healthier they're more productive they're more engaged all those good things that we Champion only happen when that spend happens and it is genuinely um you know fulfilling to see the companies that want that they want that that money to be spent and they celebrate when it the same great companies that were already delivering great employee experiences it's it's we're becoming another St stamp on on the window to say hey I'm a great employer like I care about my employees I want to show them in a tangible way I'm an early adopter of great technology I again I want the utilization I want the stories I want to be able to tell my board around our ESG that we're doing something for the social good of our people totally and I I just don't think you can ever underestimate the the water cooler chat when you've got people that have had a good experience and there's a good cuz I guess we've all been it we've all worked in so many different organiz ations and corporates and small business big business there's often an an already ingrained negativity sometimes about particularly corporates they're going to try and get me they're going to screw me somehow where is it coming from next um but when you actually flip the script and go hey company X has gone out of their way to give me this money they want me to to invest in my own health and wellbeing they've made it easy for me and they're encouraging me to spend it it only takes a few good positive conversations around around the workplace to have a massive impact in the culture and you know a lot of and we know culture leads to outcomes culture of productivity and profitability and a lot of companies now obviously are tracking that in some way through engagement surveys and we get that feedback so often is is our Employee Engagement is on the improve um since we've put Health now and because of just that absolute Grassroots kind of sentiment that that filters through a business it's it's similar to what I was saying um before our chat around how I'm getting to go and do a bunch of these onboarding sessions in person now and you know there's there's been one at a hotel brand not to be named we went in and they were having their quarterly catch up and they had a bunch of the the Frontline workers from housekeeping and porters and reception staff uh involved in this this conversation where they were talking all about uh economic performance of The Wider group and it was it was quite a quiet environment when I walked in there wasn't a lot of Engagement because it it didn't it wasn't actually things that really mattered to them at an individual level and then um I was invited up to do my presentation on health now I was able to say like like hey I'm Steve I've got some really exciting news each and every one of you is going to get insert X for your Healthcare of a year and there was just this instant moment where everyone looked up and they were like what like what do you the hotel is going to pay for my Healthcare and like just smiling faces and I went through the presentation and I remember this other moment uh where I was like and your employers turned on doctors dentists insert insert insert and I was like and what that means is that the health Now card that you're going to get is going to work at every single dentist in the country as long as they accept Master Card and this guy literally after I said that put his hand up and was like is it going to work at my dentist and I was like and it's going to work at every dentist man you can go and get that that checkup that you've been waiting on and as I went to leave um you know the the guy that invited me along to do the presentation just like thank me for my time and and everything and he literally said that was the most engagement we've ever had from a meeting with our staff and like the number of stories that I could tell uh of a similar out even the one this morning right like down in down in the lower regions of the south island and Cromwell on boarding a customer and you give them this the the spel and then you um you walk away and you hear them go off into their groups to go through the onboarding chat and they're talking to each other about what they're each going to spend the money on and it's and this is like hardworking bluecollar Lads that probably uh I mean broad Strokes here but probably haven't prioritized their health care uh unless they've been told to from a significant other now we're hearing them talk about how they're going to book into to go and see the dentist for the first time in however many years or go and get that M map or that flu shot or insert other healthc care service so it has been wild I think it it really gives the ability for you know one thing we've talked about a lot that I think is a really important thing and you've been a massive champion of it is the card and you know it's a physical card it's going to be a a digital card in time obviously for large scale customers but that sort of an everpresent tactile relationship that um that you have with that organization expense reimbursement you're spending your own money and then you've got a painful process to get that money back and all you're feeling is really you're just getting your money back again and so it's sort of this unemotional thing having that Health Now card has that impact where your employer in your pocket and you're spending their money to in that time and the ability that we're starting to see with people using the platform around more seasonal things so the flu shot for an example is don't bring a b get a nurse to come with 100 flu shots into the office and only 30 people are turning up because half of them don't work in the city or and then you do the pul survey and then they want to go and see their own provider in their own time people are you know are far less trusting I think of of farmer of corporates and things you know not to get into a conspiracy theory but people I think are becoming a little bit more conscious of that and so the trusted relationship with people in your community who know you know your your health records and things and being able to go to them um you know there is a cascading effect of healthcare and being doing something in isolation just because it's the the company doctor or the company nurse or whatever they don't have full visibility of your health records where you've come from what's best you and and I think there is sort of risk in that that Health now gives you the ability to really access you know a continuation of the health Journey that you're on yeah I like the idea that um you know providing people with funds to be able to proactively and preventively Access Health Care to lead to better long-term Health outcomes you know like it's it's kind of like that concept of an an apple a day keeps a doctor away it's like what's really going to keep the doctor away is going to the doctor what's really going to keep the physio way is as going to the Physio and getting the treatment you need and completing that session of treatment what's going to keep your mental health in order is prioritizing it every single day and doing the little things continuously over and over to have those better long-term Health outcomes and if again if your employer there to help you participate in and access the things you otherwise wouldn't access because for whatever reason humans have this begrudging relationship with expenses pertaining to health and or well-being and then the employees now there to remove that that begrudging feeling and make it more accessible you are going to do the things for the for you're going to do the things when you need to do them and I also think one of the outcomes of our um Roi of employee well-being report was sort of some recommendations on on you know how to justify productivity and engagement and things like that and and you know one of the things that's quite clearly documented is something's better than nothing so start somewhere and I think you know Health now is just a very clear easy way to do that um I think it also just when it comes we come to mental health which has being such a you know such a prevalent um challenge for a lot of people now for a whole range of different reasons presenters and costing businesses 27 times more than absenteeism um through lack of productivity lack of Engagement because people aren't at their best because of mental health just the fact that people have that initiative the company has done the something you've put the card in in their hands whether or not they need to spend that money immediately on their particular challenge of the day I think the fact that they feel belonging they feel supported actually goes a long way anyway into supporting people whether or not adults like to be treated like adults ow them with some Freedom some autonomy and some Choice like don't provide don't provide these like single vendor options where they can't go and see the person that they want to see or that their mom or their friend or their alternative family members recommended them I mean I love our little analogy that's you know a little bit silly but you know the whole well-being is a spectrum and and sort of resonates I'm a big believer that education you know there's big challenges in our education system because kids are so diverse in their way they learn what their strengths are and there's an analogy about teaching a goldfish how to climb a tree you know sort of a and I think that applies to health care as well that wellbeing of spectrum and the silly sort of joke that we egg on a few people in the in the benefit space is the fruit bowl you know how arrogant do you have to be to put a fruit bowl in an office kitchen because what if I don't like fruit what if I'm allergic to Fruit what if I actually think ice cream is better for my mental wellbeing and so it's a bit of an ongoing we're not pushing ice cream gag but it sort of is that mentality is breaking the hole the company always knows B people very views about whates them happy you knowes them calm what makes them feel um you know belonging and and you know the term thriving is obviously a big term in in the people space and so I just love trying to challenge that concept of even something that clearly is a good addition to an office being a fruit bowl and and you know that whole generation of fruit bow consumers you know has probably thoroughly enjoyed the fruit but I love breaking that mold and that even the fruit bowl is an assumption that I think organizations can do better for um and that's give complete choice and autonomy to their people about what it means with them with the guard rails so that it's not your pry card it's not cash it's not something that ultimately when you do go to a board you go to other stakeholders and you've got some reporting right we so you can say where it's been spent cuz that's that's part of the that's part of the story as well for companies like if you're um and I was actually going to ask this question to maybe maybe we do just get into this as a question first and then I can um riff off the back of your response but should we have a little um Health now vers gift card conversation oh love it what's your thoughts what would you say to a company that's um on the fence about you know do we go with health now and we can just why not just get a gift card well where do we start obviously the the very well-known statistic that GIF cards make their money from The Fairly chunky percentage call it 15% that is never spent and we've all been there we've all had the $4 left remaining on the gift card from whatever we've we've bought if we haven't lost the gift card and navigated the nearon impossible process of trying to get it reestablished but there's always four bucks It's never enough to buy the thing that you need so you'll never I mean I don't think I've probably met anyone that spent the last cent of a gift card so it sunk cost organizations are putting money on something that then vanishes back into the ether of the gift card company at some point in time the money's already spent once it's spent whether it's used if it's not used if it's used for the purpose that it was intended for or not so I think Health now provides the alternative where the company only ever spends or or records that dollar being spent when it's actually being spent um and spent within the lanes that it supports that support its culture and and values and and ultimately the budget as well so I think that that world's apart um and I was doing um some math on it this morning just cuz we we had a customer we recently onboarded uh where they were making the decision between utilizing Health now as a delivery mechanism or another another form of um card delivery mechanism that was a pre-loaded essentially a gift card uh and where we ended up Landing you know they've been on the platform now they had a six-month utility period uh to go and use all of the funds that had been contributed and again obviously Health now not charging money that's not spent where they ended up Landing was it about 75 or 72% of utilization thus far we expect they're going to get up to about 75% of the funds on offer so um the first thing first thing to note right is that they've got essentially a saving from the initial outlay because they haven't utilized 100% of the funds and we're not going to charge them for the funds not spent even when you consider the cost of US printing all the cards and then them paying for the product for the six months of with us and the fact that they've only contributed a small amount to the cards they've still come away with a $23,000 saving on what it would have cost them if they had the total outlay up front on day one and to me it's just like like I I hadn't done that math because it's not um I mean in all honesty right like it's not where not where our heads like cuz we are so focused on the health and wellbeing outcomes and trying to utilization and delivery but when you start looking at the math and just going like there is no version of reality where it's an economically Sound Decision to go and make that choice over our platform if you're trying to deliver that that that money for a health and a well-being strategy absolutely and and we do focus on the outcomes but we also have to educate guide take people on a journey because it is quite an Innovative new way of approaching this this emerging Trend this existing problem and so it's not as simple as just saying here's the answer you've kind of got to build that thing and the amount of conversations that we've been in even where people are telling us we don't have budget for another 6 months or you know until our our new Financial year and it takes a pretty quick conversation to go you probably do have a lot of the budget are you investing in this are you doing this are you providing this oh yeah we're doing that we're doing this we're doing that well there's a lot of assumptions you're making on behalf of your very diverse and dispersed Workforce here that probably aren't getting the utility or the engagement or the having the impact that that you might hope for let's go grab that budget let's circulate let's we're not preventing anyone from doing those things giving them the choice for themselves as to whether they want those things do they want a flu vaccination at this particular point in time do they want I'm not going to say do they want a fruit bowl because probably scraping scraping pennies but so many of these things are kind of you know put out there they're sunk cost they're low utility they're not relevant to everybody or utility is not measured that would be my challenge to to the well-being world that's got fixed cost for variable utilization like publisher utilization numbers like tell us tell us how much of how many people are actually using the things that you're selling on a per employee basis tell us how much of the money that's going onto the cards is actually that you're charging for is actually being spent because then you're having an open honest transparent conversation like we can tell you how much we can tell you exactly where our money is being made and it's nice and cheap because we know that companies no it's not it's it's priced as it should be priced because we know what is always going to be true is that companies want more for less like we're operating on a first principl basis we've got a we don't have a relationship with the money that's spent because we don't want to be um we don't want to be we don't want our our approach to how we try and uh get the funds to be utilized to be affected I agree and and there is always best intentions never really land going back to the utility Point we've all been in situations where there's been a wellness day or some initiative at an office and I think we can all probably be honest that you know some of them are going to be more focused to female employees or people with certain kind of interests that are totally irrelevant to half the office that may not have that and so I think even you know the best intentions of these in-person days or events or or things that happen I I couldn't think of one where everyone is going to get the same level of outcome of that and so by default you're probably you know to get 50% utility on some of these things or 60% is going to be a challenge and I'll tell you that before you even walk in the door and so you're either then having to separate out you know these events and do things that are a little bit more cated for that group and some that are more cated for that group all a sudden you got five different vendors You' got a huge amount of cost and you know you're not achieving what you actually set out to do in in the in the first place and so I think good companies are starting to become more aware of that now but um people don't like being told what's good for them they like making those choices for themselves and um and that's really you know creating a movement so what are you um again moving to a completely different topic just so so we can round this conversation out what do you think the challenges for health now are going to be from your perspective over the course of the next three six and 12 months noting we've got some chunky goals of getting to 100,000 lives in the next I love those goals I think to be able to turn around um you know in in a year or so's time and say that we've got that many people and and you know lives is a is a good way of talking about it I know we we Dart in and out of using that terminology but I do like it at a core because that is essentially we are impacting our life not just a person um we're impacting an actual experience of a person of a life of a of how they live um and I think that does really hold some value so I think turning around I've got every confidence we're going to get there I think the you know the the early feedback and momentum that we've got really paints that picture that that those are achievable or be at a stretch and to be able to turn around in a year's time and go holy [ __ ] you know that is one hell of a growth curve um then I think that's going to be really really exciting I think the challenge always with good Innovative technology and and you know technology is kind of a a tag word but I think good ideas and I really think this is an Innovative idea support supported by good good technology um is that you're going to have to inform people you're going to have to break down those barriers you know Australia really present some of those of just a long time of doing things a certain way and you know you have to really paint a different picture you do have to get down all these different layers of of the conversation and and get people to build trust and confidence that what you're doing works because people are scared of change they're scared of failure they're scared of you know things not working because when you're dealing with tens of thousands of employees potentially um it's that story right of the big company that we spoke to in Australia where the head of people and culture and also occupational health and safety literally said to me you know Steve I'm not going to put my job on the line to get your New Zealand based startup into our 30,000 person organization in Australia and and earning those stries exactly so I think that's our challenge is to build trust um build the right Rapport partner with the right people and ultimately that becomes easier and easier to do as you deliver you do what you say you're going to do you deliver the outcomes and you surface those stories back up because anyone going back to our first sort of comment in this is is people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it and and I think we're on a great path to being able to communicate why we do it and the evidence is there people are getting that benefit organizations are seeing the benefit the people are seeing the benefit um and so as that snowball builds I think all of those things become slightly easier to do um where you know I think that number that that we're putting up um becomes a hell of a lot more attainable I share that opinion too I think um trying to work out how we can have as many Ono many conversations as possible as quickly as possible to get those people from awareness to consideration to a buying decision where you know frankly they are literally just moving their existing budget from point A where it's Antiquated and complicated to point B where it's now delivered in a much more efficient simple more effective way where you're making it as easy to Access healthcare and wellbeing as paying for your cup of coffee in the morning like that that's the part of the story which um I think we're going to obviously be focusing on as a business hence we've got this podcast and we're getting some amazing guests on board that are in that HR space to tell their story um tell any final remarks anything you want to close out the story look just you know thanks to to you um and the rest of the team for having me on board um it's exciting you know I'm thrilled to be here and and genuinely uh pumped about the momentum that's already kind of happened in the short time that I've been here um but you know hopefully I can get sit back down in this chair in a year's time and we can reflect on how we've got to where we want to go and talk about some of these big deals that we haven't been able to talk about uh publicly just yet that are dropping on the 1st of July 100% should we get back to chewing glass and steering into the abys start up life yeah sweet thanks Tim thanks mate