Opening a beer faster, with Oli Thomson

This is a special episode for two reasons: (1) it is my long-awaited debut in Australia, a market that's slipped through the gaps for too long on this show, and (2) it's a birthday bonus episode. Well, no, actually, it's actually special for three reasons, because it is also a story about taking chances. First, someone had to take a chance on Oli, when he was a restaurant manager looking for a change into credit risk management. Then Oli had to take a chance on a restaurant of his own, when he was looking for a change out of credit risk.

Oli is now at ERA, which you can read about here https://era.bar/ and if you're in Brisbane, book yourself a table (they're at 3/75 Redcliffe Parade, Redcliffe, QLD 4020)

You can read more about the fight to save Suttons Beach Pavillion here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-29/qld-redcliffe-sutton-beach-pavillion-rally/101106584

On a happier note, Oli wants you to visit Tasmania, if you agree check this out: https://www.discovertasmania.com.au/

And you'll have heard about Oli's fantastic wine guy, he's at http://www.thewinetradition.com.au/#/home Or if beer is more your thing, he also gave shout outs to https://www.catchmentbrewingco.com.au/, https://www.bentspokebrewing.com.au/pages/beer-core-range, and https://yourmatesbrewing.com/products/larry

You can learn more about myself, Brendan le Grange, on my LinkedIn page (feel free to connect), my action-adventure novels are on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is at https://confirmu.com/ and on episode 24 of this very show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24

If you have any feedback, questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on my site: https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/contact-us

Regards, Brendan

The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:

Oli Thomson 0:00

Australia is a Western economy it was small but almost used as a guinea pig. So we're working with PayPal and eBay guys to look at launching that PayPal credit without credit checks before BNPL was ever a thing.

Brendan Le Grange 0:16

Writing these episode introductions can be a blessing and a curse. I swear there have been times when it took me longer to write, record and edit the two minutes up-front than it did to write, record and edit the 30 minutes that followed.

But then there are times like today where thinking around for an introduction bubbles some long-forgotten fond memories to the surface. My career in credit and my enjoyment of a cold beer haven't often had a chance to overlap, at least not during work hours. But when I was based in the centre of Johannesburg, our office was just a five minute walk from The Benders Arms, a classic old school South African pub.

Now where the perfect English pub might be described as cosy, the perfect South African Pub is cool, thermatically, if that's a word: hardwood floors, few windows and lots of cold beer. The Benders Arms was just like that. But more importantly, it was far enough down its eventual slide to decline that you're unlikely to bump into the big boss.

Plus it served a greasy but delicious Bravo's role for prices that if I were to quote them here would make me sound like my parents in the movie and popcorn for a penny.

So while I started by saying that my career and credit and my enjoyment of a cold beer hadn't often overlapped. There were a few glorious Friday afternoons in summer when it did, where I would take Thys Rossouw - now a senior credit portfolio manager at Nordea but then just a year or two post graduation - for a team meeting and an ice cold Castle.

Anyway, it's my birthday today. So this one's a bonus episode, and a little bit more lighthearted. Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange.

Oli Thomson, welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers for an episode that to me is a bit reminiscent of what I did with Gideon Griebenow - who was a credit analysts turn independent computer game developer. Though in your case, when you stepped away from credit, it was going back to your roots.

So start at the beginning. What was your first career?

Oli Thomson 2:32

When I grew up at school, I wanted to follow roughly my father, who'd been a firefighter. But while my mates were doing paper rounds, 15 or 16ish, it was too cold and hard work for me so I got a job in a kitchen washing pots and began my hospitality career.

It started a love of food.

I still wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, so I kind of fell into cheffing. And then got the opportunity at 19 to move to London to run a small bar.

My big ambition as a 19-20 year old who thought he knew it all, was to own his own restaurant one day. And then a friend of mine opened a restaurant in Nottingham. So we're a small independent restaurant in Nottingham, the food scene back then was just starting to take off. But we struggled as a small business. And thankfully my big sister at the time was a PA at a company called CCM (Credit Check Nottingham) and it was just turning into Experian.

So she used to send some of the business guys down for lunch and support the restaurant and I got to know quite a few of the senior directors. I think it was one summers week, I'd been working 70-80 hours which is pretty typical in hospo - missed parties, missed a mate's wedding - and a lady called Marie Rowley or Marie Archer at the time ran the outbound customers sales department for Experian. She said, well, why don't you come and work for us in an office a nine to five.

My first response was I've never had a job sitting down.

So it was a bit of a weird opportunity and jumped at the chance and must say... I hated it. Worst job I've ever had. So I sat down with Marie and I said, look, it's just not for me, thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Somehow she recognised something in me. She said look, you really need to stick at this and do it for a year to prove your stripes. And then we'll look at moving you on within the business. True to her word after about a year she gave me a role as a client training executive. And I loved it and did that for a few years. And then another department and Experian offered me a role to run the Royal Bank of Scotland relationship one of one of experience top five UK accounts very daunting being being very young. Someone found out I had Scottish heritage so they were like yeah you'll be flying up there in our in Scotland dolly that they'll love you so I got on the train and went to Edinburgh and RBS and thought this is a big account, you know, it was very, very challenging. But I had some great support and mentors at experience so Colin Wrigley who was a previous client of mine at Bank of Scotland and Tim Morris, Tim Hauge, and of course, Marie very much formed my mentorship and train me at Experian.

I worked in consumer bureau sales, business information credit risk analytics fraud, and doing the training role and sales and relationship manager. It really rounded me and I had a fair you know, understanding of the overall company, how I fell into it into it, I still don't know the right place right time knew the right people.

Brendan Le Grange 5:30

Looking at your background, you know, you spent was a good eight, nine years in the UK. But if that was a big move in terms of industry to go from hospitality into consumer risk into consumer data, it was then a big geographic move that you'd made next, when you went with Experian to Australia.

Oli Thomson 5:47

The opportunity came up in Australia through a guy called James Bradley that I'd worked a little bit within the UK when he came over as a sales guy. The opportunity came up in Sydney with telcos didn't know a lot about telcos understood that proposition so, yeah, I applied for the job, never thought I'd get it. But within six weeks from application start, I was on the plane moving out.

When I arrived, Australia and New Zealand was still in a negative data sharing agreement, so only sharing defaults and negative payment history. So there was a massive opportunity for growth.

But being a new person off the boat, as the Aussies would say, they'd all been watching the UK with great interest for the financial crisis, obviously trying to avoid one here in Downunder. So again, right place got off the plane, everyone wanted collection systems, they were worried we're entering into a financial crisis. Pretty much within the first 6/ 9/ 12 months, I was in front of all of our major clients in the banking telco utility space talking Tallyman, we managed to get our collections platform into all of the big banks, couple of the telcos and then started travelling around Australia, New Zealand, bit of work in India, Singapore, Malaysia, looking at leveraging that management propositions,

Brendan Le Grange 7:01

Suddenly, Australian companies, instead of having a small market far-removed from everywhere else, can serve international markets. And you saw obviously, the Buy Now Pay Later wave out of Australia, but even before that.

Oli Thomson 7:14

Couldn't agree more. I mean, it was quite a few of the Tesco Bank guys came out to work and set up a few of the banks over here.

And you know, being able to open up an application for a credit card on your mobile phone in Australia six years ago was pretty much unheard of the Tesco guys really helped launch that through :86 400 and a few of the other banks, but also looking at Australia as a bit of a small testing pot. I mean, I did some work in the early days with PayPal when they were looking at bringing PayPal credit here because as a Western economy it was small but almost used as a guinea pig.

So we're working with PayPal and eBay guys to look at launching that PayPal credit without credit checks before Buy now pay later was was really you know a thing.

Brendan Le Grange 7:52

Let's start coming back to your story.

It was you moved to Australia with Experian and you stayed there for a good amount of time. So six, seven years. If I'm doing my math right, when you left to experience it wasn't to go to TransUnion or FICO or one of the sort of similar players in the space it was to go and start your own restaurant and venue space.

So talk to me about what Suttons Beach Pavilion, it was a restaurant of the year three years in a row, very much not another credit role. What inspired that move back to your roots? What was it like to now finally realise that dream? And how was it different I guess to to a nine to five office job.

Oli Thomson 8:30

So in Australia, there's a great law that if you've worked for a company for 10 years, they have to offer you long service leave or the pay, which is three months salary. So I planned a trip to drive from Sydney to Brisbane, their national parks basically no tarmac, a minimum 16 Day drive.

So I had my three months long service lead, say plan to drive up to Brisbane come and see an old service manager friend of mine from experience that was living up here. And the plan was to spend three weeks getting to see her clean my car out, restock and do some of the fantastic islands off the coast here in Brisbane. I'd got as far as Newcastle, which is about 200kms north of Sydney and the phone rang to say when are you getting here? I said well, we've got a great business opportunity for you.

What's the opportunity?

Oh, it's a restaurant definitely not interested.

Cue follow-up phone calls. I conceded. Send me the books and I couldn't believe it. This was a 1937 art deco doing Israeli food on an Australian beach within spitting distance from the sand.

Yeah, followed my heart got up here a bit quicker. Had a look at the place and pretty much myself and my two business partners jumped out and bought bought a restaurant.

So we took it from about million and a half dollar turnover and doubled that over the next few years. This was a jump back into something that I was truly passionate about. And yeah, we won quite a few accolades best restaurant in the air as you say runner up in the fish and chip shop. We've got silver in the awards for the region and I think there's over 300 fish and chip shops, numerous other accolades and that was the plan was was to retire with a restaurant.

Sadly, our landlord, the local Moreton Bay Regional Council had other ideas. They've not maintain the building, it was to say it was over 85 years old. And they made the decision to demolish it, which just went mental community outcry, half a million people a week were interacting with us on social media sharing their disgust. So I was put in front of every channel station, Radio Station, TV station reporter what's going on, and the fight still continues. I mean, it's nearly a year to the day we closed the doors, we had to make the 48 staff that worked with us redundant, but yeah, a year to the day the building's fallen into further derelict conditions and didn't know what I was going to do whether I'd continue in hospital open somewhere else, or come back into credit risk.

And it really was a turning point for me. I wasn't sure. So I jumped in the car and I had seven months off travelling, came back to home and friend asked me would I want to run his bathroom so we got that open just before Christmas. And I'm, I'm currently doing that this town.

Brendan Le Grange 11:15

It really is sad when these these fractures are seen only for the sort of the value of the wood and the brick and the cement that's there. And people say, Well, it'd be expensive to fix it when Yeah, they're such a part of the community.

Oli Thomson 11:27

I mean, this area brought the world to BeeGees. You know, they used to play at this pavilion in the early days, this place played such a big part of the community's history, a lot of memories.

I've I've accepted, we've lost the business, it's gone. But now it's about protecting the heritage and the history before it is all gone. And it's new skyscrapers and just another another beach resort.

Brendan Le Grange 11:47

But yeah, as you said, that decision is made in through and you took some time off so was there to carry on on your sort of four by four drive through the sands of Australia or what were you doing for your seven month recovery break?

Oli Thomson 12:00

I've got a big you two big four wheel drive, drove to Melbourne, got on a ferry for 12 hours over to Tasmania and then drove right down to the south of Tasmania camping in a tent on my own wilderness. You know, no one around for a couple of hours. It was amazing. After eight weeks in Tasmania, which is stunning part of the world and anybody that's watching this, go to Tasmania, it really is everything and more. It's got so much history, heritage beautiful people beautiful food wine produce, but it just got a bit too cold.

So I booked flights to come back to the UK. I've not seen family for five years, came back to the UK in July just in time for the heatwave ended up staying for nine weeks. Actually, it was so nice. The weather was so good. It was so good to see everybody. And it's the only time since I emigrated about 12 years ago that I've actually considered moving back to the UK saying that over a couple of days with mum and dad. They said Yeah, I'm sure I can understand why you want to move back. But it's July August now do you think you'd still feel the same in November?

And that was when I thought no, let's go back to Australia so I came back. Another passion of mine is scuba diving. So I went off on a week sailing trip out of Cairns exploring some new reefs and diving with sharks and all that great stuff. Bit more fishing up to the top end and then down to Alice Springs in the desert but back to Redcliff my home moment in October only been back two days big beard you know live in the the nomad lifestyle and a friend of mine rang me up and said look, we're really struggling to open this new craft beer bar before Christmas, we've got no staff, no menu, no nothing. What will it take to get you involved?

So again, jumped in got the place open. Yeah, we opened end of November. Very, very bad time to be out in post COVID coming up to Christmas hospitality challenges. There's something like 20,000 empty roles across the country here for hospitality. We close the borders and stop students and backpackers coming so it's been tough and getting produce. You know, we are a small island. Well, a large island but we're a small country in the middle of nowhere, getting produced here wine from overseas, some of the produce struggle just because the shipping constraints.

So yeah, here we are now three months down. Bar has been open, pretty good feedback,

Brendan Le Grange 14:09

That's ERera bar in the same sort of areas at Red Cliff first up

Oli Thomson 14:13

the road. So yeah, about 600 metres from the old pavilion, we're kind of on what I'd call the high street. But really just trying to create the vibrancy and why it's called ERA, it's going back to that golden era of the 80s and 90s with good music good friends and, and bloody good beers.

So that's that's really our ethos.

A lot of people have followed us from the pavilion and say we had something like 25,000 followers on social media. So a lot of those are now coming into the bar. So it's great to see a lot of the friendly faces a lot of my team have come back to work for me. And customers see that the team worked well together. And I've worked in many teams with with many different managers over the years in corporate and hospitality. And I really try and foster that that team family without it sounding too wonky.

Brendan Le Grange 14:53

I did a quick Google of everything before having this conversation. And not only were the rankings very high I sort of very close to five star averages on the Google reviews but scrolling through them I think every one of them is complimenting the staff. So obviously doing a good job on that front.

And, yeah, 20 beers on tap. Obviously Australia is a country well known for enjoying a beer and these days for producing, but what would you recommend you? What are what are your favourite on tap at the moment?

Oli Thomson 15:19

Oh, look, they're ever changing. And that's been the great thing. It's been like being a kid in a candy store. There's over 700 craft breweries in Australia, 700 craft breweries for a population of around 23.5 million. It's massive. We've just had the top 100 independent craft beer votes at the weekend - this is a nationwide competition - and of the top 10, I have two of them on tap at the moment.

So Larry pale ale is one of my favourites and BentSpoke's Crankshaft IPA, but some of them are just become crazy. I mean, we've got biscuit ales on, I've got mango sours, I've got raspberry salsas- what you can do with a beer now is just crazy. One of our best sellers which goes very well with the climate here, using all natural produce, is a local brewery, Catchment Brewery up on the mountain. They do it a hot brewed ginger beer, which is a gluten free, sugar free and it's sensational, refreshing bit of lime in there perfect for our balmy, humid summer days.

This weekend, we've got we've got live DJs, Friday and Saturday night. In fact, I take to the next Friday night, I'm a bedroom DJ with a few few beers in my hand - although since I started the bar, I've put about 10 kilos on, we get about five reps a week dropping off samples that they is for us to try, they want us to put on tap, someone's got to drink them...

Brendan Le Grange 16:37

So with that excitement in your voice, I think I know the answer, but have we lost you from the world of credit risk for good now?

Oli Thomson 16:44

It's been interesting. I don't know the answer.

I mean, it is still an option for me. And certainly over the last few months, I've had a few of contacts from the corporate world asking me if I'd be interested in in coming back. Hospo doesn't pay well. And the hours are rubbish. It's not all about money, you know, but thinking of a retirement plan, I'm 45 now and it would be nice to retire by 55/ 54 but I don't think I'll be able to do it on a bar manager's role. So having seven months off this year really proved to me how well I am suited to early retirement. It was fantastic.

Brendan Le Grange 17:16

So much to explore. And it's a country right? Well, my wife's listening, she'll be very jealous, because she's long wanted us to have emigrated there. And the points these days are very hard to, to get through. But a fantastic country to live in, I think certainly being

Oli Thomson 17:29

the credit risk space. I mean, every time I walked into a meeting, there'd be 123. But at least you know, homies that have moved over because of the opportunities because they didn't go through the financial crisis here, when we did in the UK and Europe and America had been in growth mode. So you know, lots of career opportunities. And, you know, palm seem to do well when they come over here because you know, the Aussies invented the eight hour day, the eight hour working day. So a lot of the problems that move over, are used to working in London and doing, you know, eight plus a few extra hours. So those that kind of show that their work hard tend to do quite well, a lot of the chief risk officers and senior managers have come from Europe and Asia into this market. So yeah, lots of opportunities. And we're crying out for skilled workers at the moment.

Brendan Le Grange 18:15

We'll see you spent a lot of time late last year getting era up and running to launch in November. That's now and as we're recording it sort of three months ago, I guess you're sort of finding your stride there, you've had some travel some time to think, what are your plans for the rest of this year?

Oli Thomson 18:31

Really, for me, it's now we've got the basics done. We've got a menu, we've got the bar open, it's now how do we build on that. So looking at membership programmes, loyalty schemes, offers, there's a lot that I'd like to start making in house and selling, you know, just doing things a little bit differently. Everyone seems to have a dog here in Australia. Without boss owning a brewery, we can make dog biscuits out of spent beer grain, and people pay a lot of money for for organic dog treats. It gets dog walkers into the bar, it gets dogs into the bar, it grows our social media presence because everyone's taking pictures on on Instagram with their doggy in bare bones. So growing that looking at the membership, and this is where I use my experience and data analytics, you know, I love data, I'm a bit of a geek. So trying to understand some of those insights around spend data booking data preference data. I mean, I run our social media campaign and despite never working in marketing, I can understand a spreadsheet and dataset so trying to look at those but now actually having the capacity now we've got the doors open and the beers pouring. How do we elevate that their growth and, and data and analytics really does help us do that shape the offers that we make to the drinkers also, you know, my career experience, whatever role I was in our selling, whether it was selling people services, products, data analytics, I'm now on the other side so I'm buying so you know when these companies come to me Coca Cola Oh, we've got this great offer, you know, blah blah, blah. Well, that's not that's not great. offer. So this is where, you know, almost those, those horrible conversations with procurement managers back in the day I've actually I learned a lot from and now I turn the tables. So it's not all about, you know, driving down cost, it's about getting better value. So, you know, a lot of the conversations I have with some of these smaller breweries that want to put a put a cap on um, well, what's in it for me? I'm, I'm How about advertise your brand. And some of them are about oh, this is a bit weird. No one's asked this, this is normally yes or no, you want to actually talk about it? I might well, yeah, you know, you want a partnership, I want a partner of a supplier that's going to turn up and deliver and one of the best relationships I grow here it was, without wine importer, when I had the pavilion, I'd worked with him for a few years small family run business in Brisbane. But when COVID hit, I had quite a lot of stock. So I ran David, I said, Look, you know, don't suppose you buy back a couple of these cases of wine because because this stock is going to be tied up while I'm closed for three 612 months, no one knew at the time. And he said, not only will I buy those cases, I'll buy every single bottle of wine you've got in the building. Now. I said make no I don't want to put you in the spot. And his response was, Well, I'll look after you now. And hopefully in the future, you'll look after me. So when I took over running era, who was the first wine, you know, it was the first person I ran to talk about wine was was David wine tradition. And he's now my sole wine supplier, and he will break forever forward.

Brendan Le Grange 21:22

Yeah, I guess the restaurant business is one of those ones that are really real businesses, you know, how many people are in Yeah, and eating and drinking.

Oli Thomson 21:29

It's a tough business, you know, one in three restaurants fail within the first 12 months, you know, it's often a business that people think is romantic connotations. Oh, I'd love to own a restaurant or be so nice just floating around talking to customers, drinking wine tasting food. It's not a romantic role. Certainly fun. And it has its ups and downs, it would be so much better without social media because you know, the Karen's rule the world and make the most noise. And sadly, we do spend a little bit of time having to deal with those and it distracts and it puts a bit of a damper on it because suddenly they are you know, less than 1% they require a lot of your time and energy should be in this. Put the call out to to your to your viewers, there should be a way to review customers, you know, this would be a lot better.

Brendan Le Grange 22:15

There's an opportunity to join old old life and new life and credit bureau of customers use some ID verification and some social scoring. But I mean, as I said, I've done this once before with hidden who who left the field to pursue a dream of writing a computer game. And I think it's great to remind people that these these dreams like childhood dream, okay, I want to own a restaurant one day is something that is achievable. And it's something that it's not necessarily easy. But those things are still possible. And we can step away from the corporate world, obviously COVID helped a lot of people think that way. So I stepped out of the corporate midway through lock downs. But I think it's great to hear these examples. And to hear some of these real life lessons translated way the credit world we can sometimes be talking about 10 million customers and the average to this or 5% of them do that and you kind of forget the human story. And yeah, there's not a luxury you have when you're dealing with customers as he was in the restaurant face to face. So yeah, if we come up to Brisbane, I will definitely see where you are and come for a beer.

Oli Thomson 23:17

There's some great deals on flights now that the roots are starting to open back up. So ya know, keep keep me posted. Thanks for having me on.

Brendan Le Grange 23:24

This show is written and recorded by myself Brendan Le Grange in Brighton England, and edited by Fina Charleson of FC Productions. Show music is by Iam_Wake and you can find show notes and written transcripts at www.HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.show

And I'll see you again next Thursday.