#92 - Transforming auditing for the modern era

Speaker A: Welcome to the Building and Growing podcast. We're delighted to have Ian Mitchell, co founder of Deep Fathom, with us. Welcome Ian.

Speaker B: Hey, great to be here and thank you for inviting me. Lucas.

Speaker A: You're most welcome. Thanks so much for coming, particularly on such a hot day in London Aircon.

Speaker B: I'm happy.

Speaker A: That's it? That's it. Well, hopefully. Hopefully it stays on. But uh, look Ian, um, you know, thank you so much again for joining me. You've got a fantastic um, you know, history. Um, uh, you know, you've been involved in building and growing and selling a number of different businesses, but one's past always sounds better when they're telling the story themselves. So why don't I hand over to you for an introduction? Sure.

Speaker B: Um, my name is Ian Mitchell and um, I'm co founder of Deep Fathom, um, with some other incredible uh, co founders, Ian, uh, Rossam, uh, Darren Marsh and uh, David Von Bright and Julia Rivett. Um, and we set up Deep Fathom, um, with a view to sort of solving um, some of the major challenges that organizations are facing M. And also uh, management system and compliance and auditing firms, um, and take a new approach to help actually so do the next generation of auditing for them.

Speaker A: Fantastic. That's amazing. And look, we're going to dive into, you know, what Deep Fathom does, um, in great detail, uh, today. So I'm looking forward to that. Um, but what were you doing prior to co founding Deep Fathoms?

Speaker B: Well, um, I came from an entrepreneurial family, so my mother and my father are very entrepreneurial. So I grew up with business, uh, and the highs and lows, uh, that a small business uh, faces, um, as a kid. So I was always spoken around the kitchen table and experienced um, how much fun it is to see something, have a vision and build it, um, and to see it through. Um, so it's just a matter kind of when, I suppose. Um, I would start my own business and uh, actually did it in 2001 and did the classic. Started uh, with uh, three other co founders, started a company called Direct Response in a double garage in East London. Um, and we hardly had any money. And the uh, only employee we had got to have the only window. Uh, and we grew that business to um, a group, uh, with uh, just over a thousand uh, companies, uh, and about one and a half thousand people, 24, 7, 3, 6, 5. Um, and then myself and the uh, my business partners, we were entrepreneurs. And when you get to that many businesses, somebody else loves to take it to the Next stage. So we had the opportunity. We uh, did two trade sales, we uh, done one VC back, uh, sale and we also did one private equity back sale. Um, so it's an amazing journey to go through. Lovely minute.

Speaker A: Yeah, indeed. That's fantastic. And look, you know you've got multiple co founders. Um, you know, in Deep Fathom I've met a couple of them, great people. How did you guys come together and form the thesis for Deep Fathom?

Speaker B: It's a really good question actually. And um, in our earliest iteration, direct uh, response, we had to have 9,001. We knew that to scale we'd have to have a management system which would be able to sustain growth and scale and a lot of people and also a lot of use of technology. Um, but the challenge we had is that every time you wanted to train somebody or to interview someone or to know what's going on, you took them away from fee earning, uh, opportunities. And Ian Rossm had this sort of kernel of an idea that you could actually digitally audit the compliance aspects, but also the secret sauce, which is the culture, the capabilities, the alignment of the culture. And we didn't know any different. We're kind of tech orientated. So we started working with Ian in the earliest iteration and what he came up was incredible. So once I sold uh, uh, Direct Response, in all honesty, um, I didn't really know what to do and I just asked myself what did I find fascinating, what did I love? And ended up having a conversation with Ian Rossam. And we then decided to embark on the journey together and then brought in some incredible people that we've met along uh, the way and some new people along the way to execute on our vision.

Speaker A: Fantastic. That's great. And look, um, you know, you're based um, in West London. You know, we share the same office down in um, uh, in Hammersmith. Um, but you know, you serve clients across a range of different industries in different parts of the world. So I'm wondering whether you can give us a bit of an overview as to what key industries you serve. Um, and perhaps while you're talking about specific industries, highlight specific pain points within them.

Speaker B: Yeah. So the areas that we serve and our whole philosophy is to give people not only better but different tools, um, and so people can um, approach the understanding of the business differently, so people can get evidence around what the business is doing, um, and to measure that differently as well as the fundamentals and to use that. So when you take a step back you go, well, where does that become super powerful? And you've Got basically a multi billion billion pound dinosaur, uh, which is in the auditing market where they still send people on site to do one to one interviews. Um, it's super slow, super expensive. Um, businesses always hate the disruption, hate uh, um, the process which they go through. So we asked ourselves a question going well how can we help auditing firms like certification bodies and accreditation bodies deliver better value and to solve some of the challenges they've got. How do we bring value to their clients and actually make the experience much better for you and actually how do we drive more value through the whole process? So the whole uh, mandatory auditing market is the market that we serve. So there's ISO, it could be financial services. Any organization that's heavily regulated. Yes, anything in that space we focus on. So as a result I think there's just under a thousand NAICS codes. So we tend to do a huge array of organizations. Um, but ultimately if you think about it, any organization is a manifestation of people. So the risk, the capability, the success of the organization ultimately is a result of people and the quality of those interactions and the capability. Um, and that's really what we home in on. Um, so we do that by default. Um, focusing on financial uh, services, um, insurance sector, uh, major um, organizations where risk management um, is super important. We do a lot there. Um, also we help businesses with transformation.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, so for example ESG and the SDGs, um, the amount of political change, economic change, social change, technological change like AI, um, and also environmental change. This is all impacting businesses all the time and it's happening faster with more variety and more volume than ever.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And so actually we need to develop different tools for the market to help on that. Um, and m, as a result what we also doing is we're focusing a lot on helping organizations through their supply chain, which is typically the hardest area to understand risk and to manage risk. But it's probably the largest surface area of where risk is actually manifested for an organization.

Speaker A: Amazing. Yeah, look, I mean you covered a great deal there in terms of uh, you know, I guess the bodies and the certification bodies that you know you're helping, helping uh, you know, work with and then the industries, um, that you know they're I guess regulating or providing certification for um, uh, as well as the suppliers and you've touched briefly upon it in terms of some of the tools that you use. But could we dive into that a little bit more in terms of I guess you know, how you guys are transforming that process?

Speaker B: Sure, Deed. It's um, our tools are Very straightforward in that they have a very simple role, is to make everything more efficient, make the whole auditing process more effective and to give people insights and to be able to report in a totally different way. Um, the tools we provide is two fundamental aspects. The first is ERP systems. So it's the whole end to end process, um, of actually how you approach an audit and how you make a full, complete and effective audit. So if you're a certification body, your entire business is based on the ability to do that and to do it brilliantly. And if you don't do that, you can lose your business overnight. So it's so important to do that. But when you think about the logistics is if you're BSI or SGS or AFNA Group, you have thousands of clients all over the world and you're having to send auditors all over the world. So trying to do that effectively and efficiently is incredibly hard. So it's bringing better tools for them to actually be able to manage the end to end process. Um, the other tool that we do is actually the act of auditing and that is the most analog area in all of auditing. So it doesn't matter if you're an FCA regulated firm, if you're doing ISO or if you're doing health and safety or if it's just like food and safety or something like that, or just supply chain auditing. It's super analog and it's super time consuming and it's super expensive. The worst bit is, is that you interview a statistically insignificant amount of people.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And you tend to just get the box ticking. Are they compliant? But actually if you're spending that amount of money as a CEO, I'm uh, asking myself the question, going, well, I don't just spend all that money just to be compliant. I want to understand how, if I'm spending this, how I can understand performance.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And that's really the key bit. So what we've done is we've digitalized the act of auditing.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So what takes hours and thousands of pounds and weeks or months to even be able to do, we can do minutes.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker B: So literally we can audit 10,000 people, multiple languages, different, different time zones, geographies. Um, and we can literally rip through that. We can do that in 10 days.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: We can produce the report, the analytics the next day.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And the, and then use AI to actually get into the root cause analysis to give you proper signposting and pathways of how to accelerate your progress and build a better business.

Speaker A: Fantastic.

Speaker B: That's the key thing we should do there.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's excellent. And look, I guess, you know, just diving one level deeper then, um, is there you know, a particular um, you know say audit similar to that process you've just described that you guys are particularly proud of? Or could you walk us through what that would really kind of look like?

Speaker B: The Gosh, I could talk for ages on this. There's so many, there's so many uh, uh, interesting uh, uh, things that you unearth. Ah. So I think um, simple ones is let's take ISO because a lot of people understand ISO 9001 is for quality, uh, 14,001 is for environmental management system, you've got 27,001 for information security, 45,001 for health and safety. Um, and so to do all of those at once and then to also understand your core business drivers and also to link it back to your SDGs as well, the uh, that's incredibly hard. And so there's one organization, uh, uh, that does clean energy and they were getting funding. They had to have all these certifications to be properly insured and to actually uh, to continue their funding process. Um, we managed to start the process in five days, we managed to do the audit in 10 days and then um, give them the remedial action the next day. And we managed to do that not just across one standard but all of the standards and to the SDGs and also gone to core business drivers around how they can be more efficient, more effective and long term success drivers and so forth. So that one was fantastic because we actually gave them just under 500% ROI within nine months. Wow. Yeah, we love that one. Absolutely love that one.

Speaker A: That's incredible.

Speaker B: Another one that um, we loved in the supply chain is um, the Stonegate. Uh, they've got about 4,000 restaurants um, and pubs uh, across the UK and they have a huge array of beers and independent um, uh, brewers as well. And they were using traditional auditing uh, to basically make sure that the health and safety of the beers that they were producing was up to standard. They could see the active risk of those audits not being done effectively and huh, they could also see the emergent risk that that was meant to them as an organization but most importantly to their customers. And so they approached us and they said can you help? Um, and we've got a tiny budget, we need to go through this whole supply chain. There's over 150 um, uh, uh, brewers that we need to do. We need to go through all the aspects the Brewing processes, but also the environmental aspect, the social aspect, um, health and safety, we need to understand everything. So we sort. Okay, well to do it properly, um, and at that price, we need to do it all remotely.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So we built a capability to produce all the reports, to understand what's going on, to do all the interviews and to use uh, digitalization methods to do that. What really shocked us is, I won't say here what the failure rate was, but it was uh, let's just be. It was suboptimal. Yes, hugely. And um, it, we, we, for the first time ever, we could measure each brewer where they were with a metric. Um, and actually what that metric meant from a risk point of view. But also we could be absolutely precise what the change and improvement regional actions need to be.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So within nine months we completely transformed that supply chain for them.

Speaker A: That's amazing.

Speaker B: And then the next year the um, the transformation was still in place because for the first time ever they knew exactly what they need to do and they could work to it.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Which then the brews save money. We actually managed to do it at a far more uh, cost effective price point for them all. Um, and also the, the uh, Stonegate could reward the brewers who were performing well and doing the right thing by actually giving them better pricing in the whole process. So. And it mitigated the risk for Stonegate as well. So that worked brilliantly.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's fantastic.

Speaker B: There's one final one in the financial services.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And this favorite industry, this, this was the, and the financial services is really interesting because it's hugely regulated. Um, and you know, if you're the mlro, you go to prison.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, if you get it wrong. And so the consequences of getting this wrong are really, really high. And the FCA have brought in the 12 principles. Um, there's four outcomes that the SCA, ah, are uh, trying to work to. Um, and then there's five principles of supervision which they're trying to work to. Now the challenge is that you can go to the regulations. So let's say you're an electron money institution, you can go to the EMR or the uh, PSR regs. Right. So that's fine. But when you look at the fca, when you look at the good practices and the poor practices, just working to compliance isn't regarded a good practice. They actually regard that as a poor practice when you go through their guidelines.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: But also what they really struggled with is that to actually measure and quantify the 12 principles and to break down the aspects that make up the 12 principles as a system and how they all interrelate, no one had ever been able to do. Yeah, so we got approached by Green Swan and they said, we want to disrupt the market. We really want to help the uh, uh, fintech sector, but also the FSI sector. Um, there's new regulation which is coming through in October 2024, which is app fraud. And again, we also want to work with insurance sector and to help, uh, the fintechs and uh, uh, uh, payment service providers basically, uh, um, to be able to get insurance against this new regulation coming through, uh, or for this new regulation. And we looked at it and we go, no one's ever been able to do this.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it was the most fun, fascinating, challenging thing we did. Uh, we pretty much locked ourselves up in a room for six months. Um, and by the end of it, we could not only report in one audit all the 12 principles on consumer duty is the big one that was talking about at the moment.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: But we could talk about how they all interrelate with one another. We could report on the level to which they were likely to produce the FCA's four desired outcomes. We could meet the five supervision requirements, but we also could report and give a complete breakdown across the entire organization aspects of their management system which create risk around app, uh, scams happening and how they can reduce the risk of that. And lawyers, underwriters loved it. Um, and they actually would reduce the insurance premium by 25% based on the numerical scores that we could do. And what the fintechs loved is because they're super busy always being regulated, we could turn this whole process around in five days.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker B: Which is like, uh, super quick. Four times cheaper than any other audit they could dream of.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we're adding, we love that because we could add value to the fca, to the industry, to the end client, but also to the insurer and actually help them drive a more efficient, effective business.

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. I mean, look, every stakeholder there is winning, um, which is fantastic. And if I go back to a point that you mentioned before, um, uh, in terms of the, um, uh, the restaurant group you were helping out, you said that they got a, uh, 500% ROI on what they spent on the audit. Now, I think traditionally when people approach an audit, they don't necessarily think there's going to be any roi.

Speaker B: Completely.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's kind of what you mentioned with regard to the FCA is people in the past or businesses in the past have done audits in order to be compliant. Um, whereas this is now an opportunity to do an audit and have it not just impact compliance, but also operational performance.

Speaker B: Completely.

Speaker A: Sorry, yeah. No, no, no, that's kind of, uh.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What I wanted to summarize.

Speaker B: Uh, I couldn't agree with you more. I really is. And it's like, as a CEO, if I'm spending that money, I want more than just a report that says I'm compliant.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Because it's like, where do you go after that?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Is like, you know, and is. And actually compliance, when you think about it, is so important. Right. So you gotta have that. But that's your lowest rung on the ladder of business performance and capability. Um, but the challenge is to be able to take that compliance cost, but actually to get the benefit of understanding what is in the gap to business performance. So what you're actually buying and you're getting is complete insights and uh, new insights around the culture, the capabilities, the alignment of people to actually raise the bar into performance. But also through the efficiency and the effectiveness and reduction insurance fees. You're actually making money from your audit.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: So your order's coming from a cost center to profit center and you can link it back to the top line and the bottom line value. And that's our raison d'. Etre. That's our whole thing, is that there's a different way of doing this.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: If you're a surgeon, you won't want to spend a fortune on a black and white photo of your patient and go, go operate. You want to have an MRI scan and to understand the soft tissue and all the nuance around that, that's basically what we're bringing into the auditing market.

Speaker A: Yes, indeed, indeed. And look, I mean, um, you know, we've discussed that before also in I guess the context of one of my clients who's bringing sort of voice to health and safety, um, so that from an operational standpoint, they spend less time filling out papers. Um, uh, doing it via voice is faster. And also the operations and safety team see in real time what the risks are. Um, you know, so we're seeing that, you know, in kind of in the audit space, in the health and safety space. But we're seeing it, I guess, across a number of different industries with different startups, um, uh, and companies that are innovating now. Um, and so I guess a bit of an open question is how do you see professional services changing off the back of companies which are combining kind of that, you know, that human Interface with a lot of sort of gen AI and you know, data driven, um, uh, operations in the background.

Speaker B: Yeah. This is an emoted question, Right. It's because everybody sees innovation, technology as basically taking their jobs in the future, eating their dinner. Where do we go after this? And um, my view is, well, two things. One is happening, so embrace it. Um, and they don't run away from it because the tide's coming in. So, you know, um, uh, learn to work with that. So that's the first thing. Second thing is actually there's nothing new under the sun. So back in the day, uh, when lifts, um, always used to have a lift operator and lift companies go, no, we've designed lifts so you don't need a lift operator.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That was like, no way. This is not safe. This is, you know, it can't possibly now no one even thinks about it at all.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, um, the, um. But also if you look at technology, if when it's used in the right way, it actually can unleash the capabilities of humans more. So if you look at, uh, the impressionists, it was a technological innovation that allowed the impressionists to paint the way they did and where they did because they could put oil paint in a tube rather than have to mix it up in a studio and slowly kind of, uh, bring that through. So technology changed them, which allowed them to do something brilliant. And my view on this is people have unique capabilities. And actually if we can have technology that allows people to use their unique capabilities more and drive more value as human beings, let's say in auditing or business performance, or gives them more time to actually make the changes and improvements.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Rather than just measuring do we need to change or where are we at? So it allows an organization to sort of allows the individual to add more value. But what we need to do is we need to not, um, be binary. It's not one or the other, it's a hybrid.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And it's enhancing the process. And we also need to invest in people so they know how to use these tools better.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: So they can do that. And a lot of auditors are screaming out for better tools. So if you speak to an auditor, they're going, uh, I've got way too much time on my hands. The budget's too big, I have no idea how to spend it. Um, and you know, we keep producing the reports, the insights way too quickly. Um, and the CEO says I'm delivering too much value.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: No auditor and no business or organization has ever said that. So actually we're helping them with that. Um, there's another thing which is happening is the level of complexity.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: That people have to audit now. It's so hard to have that as head. So we do an audit. Some larger firms, we are organizing like circuit 2 million data points.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Across multiple different things. As a human being, you can understand them, but to actually measure them and analyze them and to turn that around in 24 hours, it's just. You can't do it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So actually using a tool to do that so you can then add your value on top and it means you're getting more objective evidence, which actually means you've got more statistical rigor and consistency in how something's working. So our approach is use it, embrace it. It's going to help you. It's not your enemy.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: Uh, no.

Speaker A: I love that. So just in terms of that data point example, I'm wondering if we could go a level deeper just to talk about kind of how you, in all of those different data points. Um, uh, in such a short time, you know, do you have a team of kind of developers that are helping you arrange that data or are you at the point where you've kind of got some AI tool which is finding different API endpoints and then ingesting. Could you tell us more? Only if available.

Speaker B: Um, first of all, um, we can only do what we did because Ian Rosn spent about 25 years of his life analyzing anthropological science, enterprise risk management science system thinking tools.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And then worked out how to bring those into. So there's amazing, um, uh, thinkers like Russell Ackoff bringing in that kind of philosophy and understanding of, of holistic organic systems and then to bring it in and to then be able to design it so it can measure the tangibles and most importantly the intangibles secret sauce we all talk about.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's culture, it's the vibe, it's the quality of the communication, it's the alignment of people. Is. Every successful business will talk about the secret sauce.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: He's actually worked out how you can put that lightning in a jar and actually then measure that and to work it through. So to be able to do everything so quickly and to use neural networks as we use them is because somebody spent quarter of a century designing and building that through the hard yard.

Speaker A: Amazing.

Speaker B: So, so that's. So first of all, respect to Ian Rosenfeldine. I was very lucky to work with him. And the second thing, um, that we do is we have put numerical weighting to all those different aspects. And if you think about an organization, um, your experience, let's say if you're in um, the operation side, let's say I'm in the sales and marketing side. Let's um, say somebody else is in the customer facing side. There's somebody doing finance, you got somebody in it, everybody. Although we're working in the same management system, we're working to the same end goal and the success and the long term success of the organization. We all have different experiences of it. And so the important thing is if you really want to understand that you need to understand and design um, topics when you engage people um, digitally that are relevant to their role, their function and actually the purpose of the audit that you're trying to measure. And then what you then need to do is you then need to give them responses. Which link and this is where the science comes in is that every single word has a meaning to it which has an impact on the weighting and the context for then how we report on that through the organization.

Speaker A: Amazing.

Speaker B: And then that then impacts how we aggregate up through LED linear regression through the neural network to actually then produce a numerical number that is against um, basically a um, we visualize it so it's like a thermostat or a thermometer. So each number means something very specific which then means that we can use the LLMs to go right down into the root cause. And again we're seeing this and the consequence of this number across this amount of people is X, Y and Z from a risk or an opportunity point of view. And we give them really clear signposting pathways actually how to do them because it's so precise, it allows the change, improvement to have such high confidence in actually doing that um, which then in turn accelerates your progress which then in turn increases the performance of your organization. So it simplifies something which is incredibly complex. And the nice thing is that for the end user it's like doing a survey monkey just clicking and responding to stuff you witnessed. You don't even ask them about them, we just ask them about what the witnesses are experience.

Speaker A: Yeah. Fantastic. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when it comes to I guess um, you know, winning business at the moment, you know, is that something which is primarily driven by you know, your team or through the partner networks? How does that look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, we've got a uh, we've got a dual approach. So we love um, we love standing on the shoulders of giants and the, and our vision and our purpose is to help transform sectors and transform organizations. So to try and do that by picking them off one by one. We're not going to create scale or impact fast enough. So we work closely with certification bodies. Um, we're also, um, engaging, uh, organizations like ucas and the IAF because we want to understand their view and for them to have an input in it. But also we want them to understand us and for us to, to be a collaborative change. So it's a whole process there. But we also work with partners, so we go who touches our customer first and if we can add value to our partners in what they do. So we work with a lot of consultancies or, um, auditors, um, or people trying to work across the supply chain. We work with them because we know it's going to have a big impact. So when you do a supply chain, you could win like 100, 200, 3,000 clients in one hit.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: It comes quite big. So, um, yeah, that's pretty much ah, our go to market strategy.

Speaker A: That's fantastic. And Ian, are there any industry trends that we haven't discussed that you think are worth noting? Yeah,

Speaker B: I think we touched on a lot. I think that the big industry trend that I think you're going to see in the next two years is, um, is in auditing. A lot of auditors are old.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the um, and the knowledge you have to have to be a good auditor to truly understand something can take years to uh, uh, just get to. And quite frankly, the pressure that auditing firms or internal auditing, uh, are under to keep their prices low means that actually younger generations are going. Well, I don't want to walk around with a clipboard. I don't want to be speaking to everybody. I want to be doing something different. So there's this called in the industry the gray tsunami. Um, and the gray tsunami is suddenly what happens when all the gray hairs retire.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And this void that's been there. So the big change, I think is because we still need to. Or the regulation is increasing. Regulation is a megatrend.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Environmental impact is a megatrend. Near shoring is a megatrend. But also so is technology. So that void has to be addressed.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And part of that void is it has to attract different talent that actually want to enrich the process. It's not just compliance, it's doing more than that, but also giving them digital tools to accelerate that whole process. So I think that is going to be the big megatrend that is going on there. And I also think, um, and this is kind of my prediction Is I think auditing or quality specialists actually, when given the right tools, should have a voice at the board. And the reason why they should have a voice at the board is actually they will be the drivers of business transformation.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: And organizations of the future will have to have transformation, be learning organizations and iterate faster than they've ever done before if they want to survive and thrive.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: Um, so they have to look for a new role. You just had it. If you went back to the 80s, you know, everyone would almost laugh at you. So there's going to be a board, uh, role now. It's like you don't have a board person. It. What are you. And the. And so the, um. So I think that would be the big shift as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I love that. I mean, you know, certainly back when I was at Revolut, they always spoke about incrementals. Everybody in the organization knew the importance of incrementals and breaking things down and improving little by little. And you know, auditors, at the end of the day they, you know, they, they see a completely different perspective of the business and there's no reason why audit shouldn't, you know, be transformational.

Speaker B: So definitely. And they'll have the tools. And actually the, it's giving them, um, the giving auditors a different voice.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So if they can talk to value, if they can talk to growth, if they can talk to the top line and the bottom line, and if they can talk to stakeholder and shareholder value and long term success, why wouldn't they. Indeed, you know, why wouldn't they have a place at the uh, C suite? Uh, but also if the auditor is coming into uh, that role, um, and can actually guide them through that with a role where the only target is to increase the quality and the capability, it's a different kind of metric to what the rest of the C suite have. And they turn into a supporting role to actually almost be that glue that connective tissue through the board as well.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And to see those interactions. So it stops the siloing of a board as well. So I think. Yeah, it'd be amazing to see, uh, you know, the auditors have that voice.

Speaker A: That's it. Yeah. I mean we should bring you back in a year or two and uh,

Speaker B: yeah, you can grip the hot seat. We see we need to track where we are now and where it's going.

Speaker A: That's it. That's it. Yeah. I mean that's another one for the dashboard, you know.

Speaker B: Love it, Love it.

Speaker A: That's excellent. Look Ian, you know, we've covered a great deal today, um, both in terms of, uh, you know, your personal journey and deep fathom and how you're transforming. You know, that, that approach to audit and the outcomes that organizations should be expecting from aud. Um, I'm just wondering if there are any key takeaways you'd like to leave with the audience.

Speaker B: It's a good question. Um, I actually did a presentation at the cqi, uh, live event, and I broke it down to five things. And so if you want to do something differently, and this is stealing Steve Jobs kind uh, of line is you got to think different. So you need to approach the whole subject differently.

Speaker A: Hm.

Speaker B: Do you respect your roots? That will be based in the past and it's where you'll get energy and strength from. But actually you need to think different to create something differently. The second thing is evidence differently. We have a huge amount of data around us all the time. We've actually got data overload. And actually, um, is that data actually accelerating the business? Is it creating more life? Is it actually adding more value? And if it's not, we need to get different evidence. And our key thing is to get a measure, the traditional things, but evidence differently because that gives you a competitive advantage. So the other one is audit differently. Right. Audit shouldn't be this slow, turgid process is actually auditing should be done in minutes. Um, it should be done, you know, when somebody's on the bus or a break. You should be able to order anywhere, um, and you should be able to get the reports quickly. Because as an organization, if you can measure differently in your organization, have an insight in your organization, that gives you a competitive advantage, you want to be able to do that as frequently as you can because it will allow you to iterate faster. So working at Revolut is all about the speed of iteration.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Hacking growth is how do you iterate more quickly. So actually, if you can audit differently, it allows businesses to do that. Uh, the fourth thing is report differently. So don't just report to the standard. Your management system is your organization. It's your system of management is everywhere. And so actually report differently on your management system. And of course you have to honor the Annex SL clauses and you have to order the different standards and everything else, of course you do in the core process and supporting process. But nowadays you can produce totally different reports. That is again going to give you a different, uh, approach. The final thing, which is the most important thing is act differently.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Because if you don't act differently. You've wasted everything, uh, upstream of that. But when you've got different information that's giving you clear guidance and confidence of what to do next, acting differently becomes so much easier.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: So that would probably be my, uh, my in a nutshell.

Speaker A: Yeah. No, look, absolutely love it. And it's funny, as you were talking about um, you know, like, like iterating quickly and you know, mentioning bringing that back to Revolut, I remember we, we used to get sort of like little surveys on Slack. And this is pre pandemic, um, you know, like every day or every few days and it's, you know, just collecting those data points. Um, uh, there was ah, someone, um, who used to be the um, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Get Here, ah, mra. And when he was on the podcast he mentioned, you know, what is the fastest route to data. And um, it's, you know, the faster your route to data, the faster you can iterate, the faster you can improve. So it's great. Look, Ian, you know, we've spoken a fair bit about, uh, you know, about travel and about life. You know, do you have any other sort of stories that you want to add, um, before we wrap up?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I think, I think you're more of a seasoned traveler than I am, Lucas. Uh, the. It's uh, almost like what continent haven't you been to? Only Antarctica is in a year's time that I conceive you being to Antarctica. Next gen auditing revolution. But the, um, couple of things is, um, the. When I was younger and uh, before kind of settled down, had kids and everything else, um, I love traveling and I love the adventures of the experiences. Um, and uh, I had one opportunity, um, where, you know, I just said casually to a guy who uh, had a boat and he goes on planning on sailing around the world and casually said, well, put me, give me a call, put me down and uh, if you're doing it. And sure enough, he called me out the blue and goes, um, I'm about to sail to uh, uh, to India. Are you in? And um, I had an amazing job, uh, studying indigenous intellectual property rights, um, at the body shop. And it was an amazing time to be working with Anita and Gordon Roddick. And I kind of going, well, this is an even rarer opportunity.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, uh, I hand him on notice and sailed uh, this boat to India. And what's incredible is when you go across the ocean, people talk about commitment a lot in business. And I first had my proper experience of what total commitment was, which is as we were going across the Indian Ocean, um, a huge storm brew up.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And people spoke about sort of bare. Bare poles sort of sailing. And I thought, uh, it's all nonsense. You can't have that much.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Sure enough, in the middle of the night, we had a. Literally about that much of the full sail out, and we're bare poling. It's like. I don't know if anyone skied, but. So I've been on a mountain range. Uh, uh, uh, you know. But it's made out of water.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: And, um, the wind would push the yacht down the huge swell. Yeah. And you would charge down the swell. But then as you were in the swell, you didn't have the wind blowing you because you were covered by the. The waves. Um, so you slow down, and the front of the bow would just tip into the wave in front. So you just have a wall of water in front of you. And then the wave would catch up. So you'd got reversed the same way if you just came down and the wind would catch you and you'd do this on the same wave. Uh, and every so often, you wouldn't have enough when you fall off the back of it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you're going reverse, uh, down the side of it. And I loved it. I was having the time of my life and the. But what I realized was, from a commitment point of view, you can't just stop this.

Speaker A: Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker B: You're in. And the nearest land was about two miles away, which was directly beneath me.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And one was about 500 that way. Um, another one about 500 that way. Y. Um, then I realized what commitment is. And your whole mindset changes when you commit. And I think in business, um, you'll go through intense storms. It gets super hairy sometimes. And the differences in the business, you can throw the towel in and walk away, but actually commit, really commit, because that's where the magic happens. Um, and actually, somebody told me something interesting about, um, doing ultra triathlons.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Is a lot of people quit when their body's only at 60% of what it's capable to. So I always say to myself, I'm going through a tough time. You do? Um, I'm only probably about 60%, and it's incredible. That's when the magic comes out.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That's my first bit from, uh, travel that kind of helped me in business.

Speaker A: That's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, it's hard to see how the second story could ever even live up to that.

Speaker B: It's A bit more dramatic. It was the second day after the, uh, millennia. And, um, we were in Africa, in, um, Namibia, uh, just outside Swakomund. And we were taking a Land Rover, and we were going down to Cape Town. And there's an old diamond town that had been taken over by the desert. Um, we thought it'd be really cool to drive and go on a detour down there.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so we were driving down towards this. We'd been driving in the desert. This is the, um, the aptly named Skeleton Cased. And, uh, we're driving through the desert, and, um, the poor person driving, um, was going up a huge sand dune. And the sun was quite low. Is in her eyes. And, um, she lost control.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the Land Rover rolled.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: About 40 miles an hour down this huge sand dune. Um, all I did is I woke up the car kind of fishtailing, uh, around.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it stood on its toes and went down the. I woke up outside the Land Rover, um, and I couldn't breathe.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and I kind of couldn't move, so I had to grab my hair to, uh, look around. And the Land Rover was like orange peel.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's just everything was ripped up everywhere. And, um, what I didn't realize is I punched my lungs, broke six ribs, broke my collarbone, um, but also broke my back in three places.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Yeah. And we're six hours away in the middle of the desert.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah. And the sun was setting.

Speaker A: Shivers.

Speaker B: Um, so, um, I didn't realize I'd break my back. I just couldn't move. I kept passing out of the pain. Luckily, just for the other two people in the car, they had injuries, but they're okay. So. Which is great. And the, um, the. And I had. I basically thought I had internal bleeding. I thought, well, if I got chronic internal bleeding, I've got about three hours to live anyway.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: So I thought, I'm probably done.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and the. And again, it goes back to commitment, but also kind of, um, taking a positive outlook. I go, if I'm breathing my life. So I just keep breathing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the only way I can describe. It's like being on a running machine where you set. Setting too high.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And you just. You're just like, oh, my gosh. And you're going. But you just got to keep doing it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um.

Speaker A: Because it's that breathing compounded with all the pain, you know, of the fractures and breaks you mentioned as well. Yeah.

Speaker B: It was pretty special, I'm not gonna lie. And, uh, the, um. And My learning was, again, is like, don't quit. You know, really kind of like, you build a simple plan. Don't quit. Mine was literally as simple as don't breathe as you do breathe. Don't stop breathing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Luckily, some people were driving through. Um, and again, this kind of gives a parallel is some people in your business, when you're vulnerable, will use it to exploit you. And, uh, one group of people saw the staff that was around and they just use an opportunity to steal it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And drive away. Um, and another group of people, fathers, two sons, stopped, um, wanted to help.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Luckily, they knew a place where you could use a satellite phone.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: They drove there. Um, they knew because they didn't know medical cover or not.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And they said, we can only send a car. They're like, you can't not just send a car. You've got to send a plane.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: And they said, oh, we, you know, who's going to pick up the bill.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And he said, okay, here's my credit card. If he's not got insurance, I will pay.

Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah.

Speaker B: And so the next bit of a story is never underestimate the generosity of people when you're vulnerable. And so when you're in a business, um, don't be afraid of asking for help, don't be fond of asking for generosity.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It's amazing how many people step up.

Speaker A: Oh, indeed. Yeah.

Speaker B: And that makes all the difference.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.

Speaker B: I owe the stranger who I've never met.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: In my life.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know, then had to do a whole recuperation, which was a learning its own self because, um, everyone thought I was going to walk again. I had like a giant equipment, giant fist sticking out my back.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, um, they had to repatriate me back to the uk, which is a whole story in its own right. And the, the arsenal asked the doctor and just give me one target I can do whilst I'm stuck here.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: He said, you got to be hydrated, drink, um, two liters of water, which you think would be really simple when you're lying on your back.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: It's really hard to drink water. And if you slurp it, you got air inside your body. Yeah. Which means the air's got to get out, which is super painful if you've got a broken back and punching lungs. And I broken the ribs and the. And orthopedic wounds take a long time. And I remember I was lying there on the bed.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I wrote a list of everything I wanted to do in my life.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What blew me away is I'm nothing special. There's way more people with more time I've got and capability. Um, but I've done all of it in five years.

Speaker A: Amazing.

Speaker B: And so it's stripping it back and creating focus, and that really meaning something to you. It's amazing what you can achieve over a period of time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So that's my big learning from that. And that, um, gave me the confidence to start a business going well. Starting a business can't be as bad as that. Oh, yeah, yeah. You just kind of move forward with it.

Speaker A: Yeah. What a story. Thank you for sharing that. I mean, uh, yeah, like, that's incredible, you know, I mean, commitment, you know, to kind of getting through the storm and then commitment to staying alive and I mean, you know, and just kind of pushing through the hairy moments. Especially, you know, if you're lying there, you know, thinking like, you're going to die, and some people are coming and nicking your stuff, but then other people come and immediately you're kind of like, well, are they going to do what the last group did, but that they help save your life? Incredible. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah, I think, uh, yeah, that's probably the deepest story we've had on the podcast.

Speaker B: Oh, God. I'm sure there'll be somebody else with an even more, uh, uh, interesting story.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, uh, that's deep, mate. Yeah. Yeah. Far out. Excellent. Look, Ian, thank you so much for joining me today. Um, it's been a pleasure and we look forward to watching Deep Fathom's progress.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. It's been great fun and some really interesting, uh, topics as you touched on. And, uh, I'm sure you'll be holding my feet in a year's, uh, time see, uh, where the future Audi next Generator auditing has gone. So, uh, yeah. Thank you very much, Lucas.

Speaker A: You're most welcome. Looking forward to it.

Speaker B: Awesome. Cheers.

Speaker A: Thanks, Ian.