9. SiF 31 - Daniel Pembroke - Pricing Specialist

Intro hi daniel thanks for joining me on success in finals today how are you uh i'm i'm good jenny um thanks thanks for the invite um i hope i hope you're well too yeah really good and a pleasure to have you and so without further ado do you want to uh kick starters with a quick summary and uh and then we can deep dive into your career um a quick summary well as you and i have been discussing i've been um i've been in working in the legal industry in some of the finance side of things for the last 30 years i jumped straight out of school into into my first job um with um a firm called mcfarland's which are a high quality law firm in charleston lane um it wasn't really by design it was a bit of luck really um left school and my auntie was working for a recruitment agency in the city and sent me for three interviews and i pretty much took the one that paid the most um which was um uh back in the day was a whopping figure of six and a half thousand pounds um a year not a month um and that was a real um um fantastic opportunity actually to join them as a as an accounts junior in what was um a kind of an apprentice rule and there's not there's not so many of them about right now um but i was working very closely and i was very fortunate to work very closely with the fd um in in a time when um the accountancy side of things was changing um computers had just come in um i was lucky enough to have one of the first ibm computers not too many of them around right now um and was able to kind of get ahead of the game from a technology perspective um it was also the time when spreadsheets came in and being the kind of the youngster in the team i was sort of hands-on this is how we're going to get these to work and it was very lucky to benefit from um the experience of those around me qualified accountants who were able to um train me up on the accountancy side of things understand balance sheets p l that sort of stuff um but also you know look at the the more fun type stuff the kind of the commercial accounting as it were um so yeah but finals was great it was it was it was there actually where i had my first kind of change of change of role when um it was after a pretty hefty recession and law firms had just started uh realizing that cash was probably a bit more important than they they've given it credit for in the past and there was this newfangled thing which was called credit control um it seems ridiculous now that um some businesses back in the day didn't really have to worry too much about collecting their money but but now this um new approach of asking their clients to pay as well as just expecting it is where i got my first kind of change in in career and um it was a bit old-fashioned to start with a lot of letters being um dictated and sent out the door and then slowly the kind of thick processes catch up and um it was my first opportunity to actually start speaking with clients and having conversations around um you know sometimes they had issues you know it was as i said it was coming out of recession and some people weren't always in a position to pay um and being a private client firm as well as a commercial firm sometimes you were talking to individuals and sometimes you're talking to businesses um and i've been there about eight years when i was got a phone call from an agent so would i be interested in in a credit control job another law firm in another industry in another sector and that was holmen fennec and william um that was a change of scene and it was it was quite interesting that when i i landed there it's very nice people around me but it was pretty quick to see that um to identify that that partnerships law firms have different torches and it was um i haven't come from a very warm place like mcfarland's where they treated everyone as an equal and they they they love to work hard but also play hard it was it was similar homophobic william but just with a slight it's like tilt as it were um and you kind of picked that up and it's quite interesting to see but that's why i was quite happy when the fd uh the old fd from from mcfarland's had moved to ins in the interim and then gave me a call and said you want to come across here and i figured um not for the first time in my career that a quick jump is probably better than a prolonged prolonged stay um and this is where i spent the majority of my 30 years i spent 19 years at instant co with i suppose three different roles um i came in looking at credit control um and that anyone who specializes in a particular area and they start looking at the process of i mean in this instance credit control you quickly realize that some of your impediment to getting paid is actually a bit earlier in the process and then you start looking at the billing process you start looking at problems like why isn't this being addressed to the right person um there's a whole lot of regulation from a tax perspective um um you have to get right um and then you you kind of look at that too and then if once you've started looking at that you then realize actually it was time recording that was the problem um and i think uh you were in practice danny you know that time recording isn't isn't always uh the first thing you want to do um that's the same in legal it wasn't the highlight of the job but uh yeah so you've got to get people into good practice you've got to start looking at behaviors um that was a how we actually managed to pull that together in something called you know working capital management and again that was a um kind of a new approach for law firms looking at that operational aspect of um order to cash and there are so many things you can improve really quite quickly um once you look into the process and once you look at that design piece um and all of this you know over a a period where technology has started to come into law firms really starting to help not just the practice management systems these bmoths of data um with you know millions of lines of time entry and on the other side the client account management etc and some of these bolt-on technologies actually you know really did make a difference um and some of my big successes were actually there at ins where we managed to really get a handle on the working capital and reduce the lock-up days the amount of time it takes to from when you do your work to actually getting paid um very satisfying time actually um that part of my career um before we go any further dan can i just Why did you go straight into work rewind um a couple of questions on uh the early stages pre-ins because i think we'll probably spend a lot of time talking about ins and so because obviously you went straight out of school um into into mcfarland i know it wasn't um by design as you said but was there a reason why you wanted to go straight into work or was it just that the path you fell into or i'm yeah i mean i've never really been that academic um i mean at school you know i've got a bunch of gcses that i pretty much coasted through i didn't do so well at a levels you can take your time and some of my friends will take the time and take an extra year and reset a levels and then go to university but there was never a massive burning ambition of mine to go to university it struck me that those sort of three or four years where um future graduates are kind of honing their skills and and taking exams etc i was then out gaining experience um the disadvantage of course is it kind of cuts out the opportunity to um go straight into a grad scheme or qualify as a solicitor or an accountant or any other professional like that where you have to go through quite structured um but it doesn't really matter completely because of course you can take um qualifications like acca you could do a sema you could do sort of on the job learning and even qualifications so my options were still open but i kind of felt yeah no i mean for me the the benefit of going to university was probably i don't know if i'd have been able to hack work at 18 and so that three years sort of let me do a bit more growing up but having gone into into practice as you say um because they do do school either programs now i don't know if they did by then but some of the school leavers are the best people because they decide they want to go straight into work they they haven't i don't know messed around at uni for a few years they're just very focused and driven and they're some of the best people that i worked with um in practice and and like you say you can't there are still other routes that you have to go down i think by the time your counterparts come out of uni for three four years down the line you're quite cemented in what you're doing you're on the on track and yeah you even things like going into your first job at 21 you don't know how to use i know that these things might not be around them but like certain technologies but you you've been there for years and you know what you're doing so now i was just interested in that and then um yeah the other thing was just again interested in that transition into technology were you seeing a sort of the young techy guy that they knew how to use these computers and that sort of thing completely yeah i mean my dad had a business um and um so when i was a teenager i was helping him do his well i was doing the payroll on an amstrad computer so i you know i was given i was lucky enough to to have a go with technology as soon as it came out and um that does put you ahead of the game i think and it's one of the themes that i would always come back to you know over 30 years technology has played a massive role in changing what we're doing um lawyers for instance would have not had a computer on their desk 30 years ago and they would just dictate and that would either be with the secretary in the room or with their dictaphone and it takes time to evolve um the advent of email for instance and i remember when email came into mcfarland they only gave it to the lawyers to start with and then they quickly realized actually it was probably the secretaries you're gonna be sending the messages um and then they kind of opened it up um but yeah i'm always fascinated by that change um but also just going back a step to the point about you know whether to go to university or whether to go straight into work um i really didn't have a clue about what i wanted to do and i think that's why it was really good for me to go into an environment where there was uh so much to learn but there were people that were so generous with their time and wanting to teach me um and that that's something that i've been fortunate enough to benefit from the experience of so many different people not not just on you know how to um how to operate but also on a technical level um i remember being taught how to write a letter i mean that's not something they teach you at school um you know you go through it business writing and then i found out i was actually pretty good at it it wasn't something i'd ever been interested in but it's now something that i delighted yeah i love writing copy for for sort of pricing pictures trying to really get a used communication written the written word to actually um achieve what you're trying to do Transition into credit control yeah and now the other thing as well that we touched upon on that earlier part of your career was the transition into credit control and asking clients to to pay you the money that they owe you and i'm very interested in how that as an art changed from as you said it was sending a letter um to presumably then picking up the phone and i don't know from maybe demanding to working together to to work something out um yeah did you did you find that that was a bit of a bit experimental for you going into that role uh very much so um there weren't a lot of people to learn from um there is an industry body called the institute credit management which was quite useful um there was also the the the butterworth's um guide to credit management which was a loose leaf um publication that they would send you an update every a few months and you'd go through and replace the pages it's absolutely brilliant looking back on it now when we have the internet and how quickly we can find the information we need um but the sources back they were limited um we had to hone and revise the process as we went through um it taught me a lot about having processes that are that are fit for purpose for for instance um individual clients as opposed to businesses or where the debt might have been around a dispute or it might be around a commercial transaction and in different pieces of work of course you've got different points at which the cash might materialize in a dispute you may not get your money until you've been successful and maybe in a transaction you may not money might not materialize until the deal has been done and the finance trickles through so as well as learning a lot about credit control it was also learning a huge amount around the type of law that was being practiced and the services that were being provided i don't know if it's the same in in big accountants but if you ask any lawyer if they're busy they will say yes whether they are or not but then if you ask them what are they busy on they will probably tell you and they'll probably spend a good half an hour explaining why and and so it's a really good um ability to have is to ask the right questions so you're very good at danny you know you've just got to ask those questions and before you know it you get a massive or a really good comprehensive um exploration and you start to build up your your bank of knowledge um for that uh industry Empathy yeah yeah and i can imagine you sort of alluded to it there but the empathy side of things and just the willingness to ask a question then listen to the response would have gone very far um and well does go very far to this day i imagine is that fair to say yeah and this is free advice this is i'm you know i was getting of advice and education from some of the biggest and best lawyers in the country or the world or whatever it is these are right at the top of their game um and you know time is money in that industry or certainly that's how it always used to used to be um expressed um and so anyone giving up their time for me like that was just an absolute bonus um yeah and then and then as you know once you are once you're given that knowledge you then start to start talking the same language as those people and that that that lends the credibility that you need in order to you know bring your ideas to the table um to start challenging the status quo and making improvements Disputes yeah absolutely and and another question that i had as well and and then we can jump back into ends i might be getting a bit too much down a rabbit hole but i just like to to go with the things that interest me you mentioned the time sheets um were there instances where you'd be speaking to clients chasing cash where it shouldn't really be due because people haven't done timesheets correctly or the work they've said they've done isn't what the clients perceived to have been done and i can imagine that could have caused like when when these things started to come in um quite a lot of confusion and contention maybe yeah i mean uh disputes would arise in relation to any debt um on a number of different angles um some might be that they weren't happy with the outcome um but then you have to go back and say well hang on a second we were selling you a service we weren't selling you an outcome um unless you were actually setting an outcome and then they might be quite right and um you got to look at whatever the the challenge might be um and from my perspective um my role was there to facilitate a decent resolution um because the last thing you want to do is to get into a a genuine conflict where you're you're having to go to court which did happen um yeah you'd have some people that just were um belligerent just didn't want to pay yeah it's uh that's a genuine business uh tactic uh you i think it was a ge that said the money is better off in our account than it is in yours i'm just gonna hold on to it for a while um you just need to wait a little bit longer but then yeah sometimes there were mistakes and you'd go and unpick them and and you'd remedy them and then you'd come to a decent decent outcome is the um is the goal yeah great um yeah so back to instant i think where we got to was you were you were really honing that that revenue management piece and maybe extending beyond purely the credit control side of things now but uh yeah you you tell me a bit more about what you were doing so you're in that role for quite some time yeah i mean this was um kind of my first opportunity to kind of um look outside of what i was doing operationally um and start to look at the various different components that fit into that that jigsaw and then if you can wrap up the right components then you can you can really look at the process and look at the opportunities uh for synergies um at the same time as you're sort of um interfacing with all the people you need to talk to uh you've got to make sure that um the job's still being done but you can um improve it if you look at it holistically and that was a fantastic thing and i think once we had you know made considerable improvements in the overall outcome i.e having freed up a load of working capital you know reduced that liability on the balance sheet um then i was kind of i mean this is when i started um i suppose feeling like i'd almost finished it that that was done which i was quite lucky at that point because you know my options then would have been just to do the same thing in a bigger firm yeah or to take it to a different industry um but i was very lucky because in some decided to it was you know the the market they operated in was was tough they operated in the the global shipping industry and the insurance industries um the insurance industry becoming more commoditized meant there was a lot of pressure on on price back then price was pretty much always the hourly rate and so it's a question of just keeping a lid on it pushing it down very difficult to put prices up um and it's saw the advice of a of a consultant a pricing consultant um uh who had operated as a he was a managing partner as a as a lawyer in a firm in new zealand um and then decided to step into this kind of pricing commercial space in the uk and he came in and really opened my eyes to the um i suppose the behavioral economic side of the commercials of any deal um and i should add actually that when he did come along and he did his original workshops and then he was on hand to start setting up the pricing infrastructure i was actually asked to kind of babysit him during that process um and again not for the first time i was incredibly lucky because i then had access to someone who really knew his stuff and was able to witness how this operates in practice um i then started working on pricing opportunities myself at um after a while i think i can't remember exactly how long maybe a year or so this consultant then stepped away i was then um thinking well okay this is the area that i want to operate in and i benefited from a chap called mark clark hope he doesn't mind me mentioning his name he was um or operates as a consultant but i think at the time he was a pwc and then came to to work for him permanently in the change management program and he gave me a really decent piece of advice when i um said that i wanted to move into this pricing space he said consider when you when you look at what you're doing in your career consider it to break it down into into projects or assignments and the work that you were doing in working capital and it did take you quite a long time that's done that's complete you've handed that over to to the next person or team or whatever it's going to deal with it and you should look at your your future now in terms of pricing um as the next phase as it were and i think that really helped me get my head around um the change process yeah and i was able to and supported by some people in the business draw up a plan and take it to the senior partner um to to move into a pricing and bd role within the bd a marketing team so moving out of finance at that point into intermediate marketing which is an interesting point really because pricing sits in different functions in different businesses it's um in itself pricing is just one lever of the one of the drivers for profitability and functions within within businesses i'm not always set up just to support that one that one driver uh surprising as i suppose struggle to find a home um more usually it will sit in finance um and and taking it to bd at that point was just showing that it wasn't um working capital management because it had my face on it it was actually something different yeah so yeah that was a very interesting time Support Network yeah and in terms of so that transition into um into the the pricing space i mean lots of law firms are still building out their pricing functions now so what was the support network like for you then i know you initially had the that managing partner that you mentioned that you learned from for a year or so but outside of that was it pretty much finding your own way or were there other professionals that you could sort of sound bored with so there was a few um opportunities started to arise for a networking perspective um a lot of it actually is through um software companies who are trying to sell their thing their tool that deals with pricing and uh legal project management the delivery side of things the kind of the budget to actual type reporting and through a number of these sort of events and there's there wasn't a huge amount but i was able to meet other people in in the industry um and you're right lots of firms are still trying to build it out um some firms have have accountants who are doing uh pricing um from a sort of an fp a perspective and and others had actually gone out of uh the industry and recruited pricing people into it some people from um the airline business or telecoms you know all industries have pricing people and some are i suppose more suited to to professional services than others um but very eye opening and and literally at every turn you'd learn something new um yeah very not a phone yeah very good stuff and just on that point what what industries do you Legal Industry transition best into the legal space from what you've seen well one of one of the keys to uh pricing is that you know you are actually dealing with even if it is a business you're selling to you're pitching to you're dealing with individuals and and this is tends to be where it's outside of a procurement driven process where it's numbers based and scorecard etc where it's more opportunistic you know you've got to use pricing psychology to actually uh get that individual to buy into what you're trying to sell them and one of the biggest ways to do that is choice um if you provide someone with choice they're really likely to take ownership of their choice once they've made it um but one of the tricks is that you don't always know what they're going to be interested in and so the power of three comes into play you might have heard of it as referred to as goldilocks pricing um where's where goldilocks goes in and then there's three moles of porridge and the three bears house and one is too cold one is too hot and one is just right but you don't really know what goldilocks is going to go for first yeah so you try and differentiate your services and you attach different price points and that's something that's straight out of retail that's that's b2c stuff and so in terms of industries i mentioned airlines you can you can uh if you look at ryanair and easyjet their pricing you know they can sell you a seat for 20 quid but it'll cost you 100 because of everything else that's kind of bolted onto it um you know if you want it reserved if you want to uh have some locker space if you want some food whatever it might be they'll differentiate um and so yeah so i think people who have had experience of b2c type pricing are often very um adept in in this environment Head of Pricing cool and so so then you sort of transitioned into head of pricing i imagine that was you sort of spent that year and a half proving that that you could do it and you were good at it got the recognition and is that when other firms started to think oh who's this damn pembroke he looks decent and and came knocking uh yeah pretty much i mean you know i was doing as i mentioned i was doing a bit of business development as well and that was really eye-opening yeah um when you're working in business development in a law firm you are really close to the coalface because um you know partners are relatively independent when it comes to selling their services um and it really matters to them so you've got to get that right and that is the priority and um from from looking for working in revenue sort of working capital management where the deadlines are your own to working with in sales you're then working to the client's deadlines and and that can actually generate conflicts and pressure etc and that didn't fit quite so well with trying to do pricing at the same time and albeit a very very good education a good experience and taught me a huge amount around around the sales piece um i i wanted to focus on on pricing and and yes um yeah you're a recruiter danny what do you look for when you're you know you look for titles or you know people in particular industries uh yeah and that that's what happened and that's when i got a call to um have a chat with the people at simmons and simmons cool and Why Simmons and Simmons what appealed about simmons and simmons initially or was it just the tenure in cinco you were ready for a change yeah uh yeah exactly that i've been there a long time um and you know i'm quite quite a loyal person um i i knew i know a lot of people at hints um grown up with a lot of them they're 19 years um i got married in that time had children at that time um had some very good friends there um but you know one thing about having a a young family is some people become a bit more risk at first as i did because you want to provide um for your family and that kind of cut me off a bit in terms of looking career-wise so so when this came along simmons and simmers is a great brand um you know it's it's very well respected um and uh it was a jump up in terms of um access to a different type of work that they're doing more finance banking etc and i was there a short period of time and i you know i i really would have stayed as a lovely place i got to work with a champ called eddie bowman who was the new bd director there who was starting an initiative to look at all of their key client relationships and i was heavily involved in that um which was um yeah really good fun um and then i i had another call um this is a little telephone calls yeah yeah um yeah i mean the yeah normalized for right is a massive global firm and um i walked into the shoes of um a chap who who had been there um a while chuckled adrian avenzata who set up the the pricing function there adrian's well-known in the legal pricing community and he had set up a team there in a function with governance and processes in place backed up by decent data um but i joined there at a time when normal right had moved over to uh moved its um practice management system over to sap yeah and when they do that they have to turn the kind of the lights off for a bit and you get data darkness and so that was uh more of a recreation at that time recreating the team and recreating the processes and you know getting access to some very complex large pieces of work um servicing the pricing requirements on some very big panel opportunities as well at the same time of course is focusing on on the lawyer teams in their different different areas um yeah it really was uh you know that a massive opportunity to learn um again going back to that point about uh talking to the lawyers trying to understand what they do but also operating an environment where technology was being harnessed massively and still is and the biggest law firms out there are really taking advantage of um a people processing technology approach that has been in industry for forever and applying it to legal services and then you can you can really um uh you know you can build some pretty decent models they're going to be able to very accurately tell you what this is going to cost but but also what you might then realize in terms of a fee at the end of the day um yeah yeah cool um What did you learn atNRF yeah i mean what what were the key things that that you did learn at nrf then that that maybe you didn't pick up it in so it wouldn't have had the opportunity to i know you mentioned or the stuff around the new sort of pricing systems um was there anything specific um yeah i mean what they did do is they managed to pull a lot of people who are working in that people process and technology space together so so where we had uh traditional divisions in a in the business services side of a law firm and i suspect of the big accountants too um you will have um you know a finance department which will start up because you needed someone to prepare the accounts and file the accounts and then maybe look at tax and then maybe looking at things like billing and collections and that sort of stuff and and that's sort of all here uh and then you've got sort of uh you know law firms would have said i think we need someone to organize an event so let's get a marketing team and then then they start looking at bd and then they build it but it goes into these pillars and what what um nrf did was they actually kind of sliced it so all of those which are facing those components from those divisions which which are sort of um client-facing as it were meeting client needs um designing um solutions for the clients etc wrapping it all up in a commercial piece that was taken out and put into a sort of a sub brand called transform nrf transform so it could really focus on on areas of innovation that were going to drive efficiencies for clients but also maximize returns because there's no point in continuing to to drive efficiencies if you're not going to benefit from it too i mean in in in the legal industry what we have seen is um globalization and the internet have made it a lot easier for clients to be more informed um you know that's led to with with a succession of um economic change on a macro level has has led to margins coming down in the legal industry um there are other businesses out there other consultancies are able to challenge for work as well so you've got to get better at it and you've got to look at it in a different way um and i think i think that's where where nrf had some real success um and something i really benefited from cool um well look before we start to wrap up Key changes in the legal space just a few uh a few additional questions so um i mean we've touched on it to an extent but what are the key things in the legal space that have changed um during your time in that space i mean the biggest one for me was actually email yeah so where you know where a lawyer would um receive a letter from from the other side on a dispute or whatever it might be they'll read the letter they'll have a cup of coffee they'll go for lunch they will think about it they will come back and they will um dictate their initial message the secretary will draft your typewriter and then bring it back in and then they'll redraft it and then it gets done again and then it gets sent out that night and then a couple of days later the other side get the response and and that could be a strategic tool actually using time to your to your benefit as well yeah and then and then watching client watching partners in the new world you know the next generation of partners who've only known email an email comes in from the client they respond immediately with their advice that's it it's got bang bang bang and there are questions always asked about how you can um um take commercial advantage from tech the application of technology no one considered back then where their email should be charged for they were charging for letters but they wouldn't charge for email no one really understood how that was gonna how it was gonna happen yeah and so you had a lot of people just working harder just doing more things and focusing um well not i suppose not really focusing as much on the value on the app on the outcomes i was taught a great lesson uh by a chat called paul rd's sadly passed away but he was a a dispute he was a litigator in the insurance market and he had this multi-million pound case that was really important for the industry and he was saying to me you know the time recording thing is a waste of time blah blah blah because we've spent five years on this dispute and the only value the only real value i added was 20 minutes in a shower one morning when i came up with a strategy and that was it you know you kind of got it right what are we selling are we selling outcomes are we selling selling time we're selling pieces of paper interesting on that point though would it be commercially viable to only charge the client for his 20 minutes in the shower well or is it just the total value of that five years worth of work that's come down to that 20 minutes or is that the point well the point is that the 20 minutes is worth five million pounds uh the the the the time you spent on it you can use any calculation you like and yes there are costs to pay along that line but it's really the whole value was in that moment that's what you've got to try and you know you've got to have better conversations with your clients to understand what it is that they think is most valuable and people will generally put a price on it and once they've put a price on it they're happy and happy to pay okay so with that in mind is there a movement away Movement away from hourly rates from the time side of things now what is that slowly there's a lot of talk about it but the um when procurement are involved um they they need to be able to count something and um hourly rates are something that they can it's tangible they can see it they can compare or at least think they can compare um apples with apples although frequently it's it's not um but what we are seeing is is um certainly this side of the atlantic less so in the states um clients challenging law firms to come up with something that really does demonstrate the value i don't want to sit there with with you just um spending hours and hours on something when that's not really what i wanted i actually wanted an outcome yeah and and you know if we can agree on the value of the outcome then we don't have to worry about how much time you spend on it then that's kind of down to you yeah um that's not to say that hourly rates is wrong because you know that may be really appropriate that maybe some advisory stuff where it is you know absolutely back on but but likewise you you probably should be attaching um or having that conversation with your client that says you know what what is really important to you here is it about um cost certainty you know is there a budget we've got to work to is it about that communication piece so maybe project legal project management is the really important thing for you here or is it solely about um dismissing a piece of litigation against you or maybe there's a time um timeline that you have to achieve that by and all of these things you can actually write down you know this is the important stuff why don't we try um commercialize that and then theoretically you you're focusing on the right thing and you don't have people spending hours and hours and hours reading time entries yeah How did pricing become more prominent yeah absolutely and and then another question i mean i i guess to an extent it's quite obvious would be good to get your your specific answer how how and why his pricing started to become more prominent in the legal space i think well that goes again to the point of um you know back in the day cash becoming involved when the kind of macroeconomic climate changed uh so so they they look to credit control and then um you know price becoming important because it hadn't really been addressed so what was in place for you know 100 years as a mechanism wasn't you know isn't entirely fit for purpose so let's have a focus on you know that key lever you know if you're looking at profitability you've got you know your price minus your cost times volume so sales is being focused on so um you've got bd teams you've got client uh relationship programs uh there's a whole piece of law firms with you know quite a big resource requirement getting that right and then we talked about people process and technology from a cost perspective uh and again that can actually you know from a delivery perspective that's not just your employing your workforce but it might be questions around um where your workforce is you know there are um other locations that are a bit cheaper or a micro level when you're looking at the opportunity how we're going to do this as efficient as possible both those areas actually take demand quite a lot of resource whereas pricing is a strategic thing so once you get your strategy right then you can design processes and operations around that probably with a piece of governance attached to it uh to then um ensure you are operating um effectively i mean in the past you know without any governance in place or without any attention to pricing you'll have lawyers in the same firm you know pricing something completely different and maybe even competing with each other accidentally so you know a bit of discipline around it um a bit of um attention to whether it's fit for purpose you know what are we doing is this right what we're doing shouldn't it should lead to better outcomes yeah that's that's interesting um Advice for aspiring pricing professionals and then on to you personally and daniel advice that you would give for aspiring pricing professionals um we've talked about network already but i think it's really important to develop your network and i think that goes for kind of um any industry and don't just focus on um those people that you think are gonna immediately assist you yeah there will be people who um have deep knowledge in other parts of business other sectors um that that will um help you on the periphery um but you also never know where you're gonna be in the future and so you've got to really um have your eyes open and be willing to have conversations and be proactive about it can be difficult but you know definitely improve um your network and then the other point about pricing specifically is that it's uh i don't sound pretentious here but it is an art it sits on a bed of science but the um behavioral economics component is the art component and understanding that is just as important as understanding um you know how to build a model although if you're like me you quite enjoy doing that as well yeah and cool and then and then finally the three key attributes that have enabled you the Key attributes of success success you've had daniel open to opportunities that's that's really important um you know we we work for um a long time you know before we get to retire don't um and this is something i'm considering now don't believe you have to have one career um it could evolve it could change there may be complete changes um there is a shift for some people now to have portfolio careers sort of looking at uh operating in different sectors at the same time doing smaller chunks of work considering that point again around um assignments you know viewing your your your career as a bunch of different assignments is really important um yeah so keep an eye open for opportunities i've heard some of your previous um guests talk about this as well but i think it's really important which is to work on your resilience yeah it you know we can't control the actions of everyone else around us so we have to be able to write write those interactions when they're not quite so good but just as important is recognize that we are not going to succeed at everything we do we may um we may up occasionally if i could say that we may have um you know some stuff that we're not that proud of we need to work through those because we can't you know we're not always going to be right up here sometimes we might miss that by a bit and we have to forgive ourselves for that and know what we can achieve and then the last one for me is to treat everyone as an equal it's uh pretty simple but you know i've had a i've benefited from um the experience of a large number of people you know over my kind of my 30 years in law and i think there are some very generous people out there and it's really important to be generous back to them as well um for a whole host of different reasons but one is just being a good human being yeah no those are three really good ones uh daniel um really like them um yeah could couldn't agree more about being open to opportunities resilience is something everyone needs at some point um it just is you're not going to sail through like you say 50 years of your career without any problems and treating everyone equally love that um you just you just scared me i've got another 20 years left is that what you're saying yeah as i was doing the math in my head i was like maybe i've overcooked that that's uh you did start young to be fair daniel but yeah no it's been great to have you really enjoyed the conversation so so thanks very much well thanks for having me danny absolutely pleasure cheers cheers thanks you