Dan, this was your first time judging in Cannes, so w- was it what you expected, and, and how was Sarah as the j- jury president?

Sarah was annoying as well.

No. Sarah was very good.

No, amazing ability, the depth of understanding of the cases, and able to not only orchestrate and coordinate the room but make us see the work in different lights was, was amazing.

To do those two things at once is, like, completely ambidextrous in terms of thinking.

One is basically crazy project management, and one is a strategic ability and, like, education really.

Um, my other observation would be that the best strategists are, um, they're persuasive, you know? They're not just smart, uh, or creative.

Is that the one you came away thinking, "I wish I'd worked on that," w- or, or what stood out?

I've been thinking about this a lot, trying to implement it in my business in as many ways as possible, but I'm keen to get your thoughts on it and see where you're going with

this.

Well, because I thought it was a bit left field, it's actually one of my topics as well.

So yeah, AI takeover, without a doubt.

My thoughts are, I've gone through three sort of mindsets for this.

Initially, I thought this is just going to be the next dot-com boom.

It's the next fad.

I mean, what do you think?

Now I could be missing this, you know, I don't have eyes every single way in the ADI world, but I don't think I'm seeing it anywhere other than you hanging the drone about this.

yeah i think that's i think firstly that's because business and financial management and that aside of an instructor's business is quite rarely talked about in this industry there's a lot of talk about how annoying the dvsa are and how you know effective or ineffective this or that trainer is and you know a lot of information you know about about students booking tests so So there's a lot of talk about that side of it and the tuition side of the business.

There's not so much talk about how people can run their businesses effectively and what they can do.

So I think that's probably why there aren't many voices like mine out there that are banging this drum compared to the voices that are talking about CPD or talking about DVSA and test booking and things like that.

Which is understandable because the vast majority of people who come into this industry don't come from a business background.

So it's not really something that they're used to hearing.

It's not really something that they seek out, you know, training on being a better business.

So what would you suggest would be someone's first thing they do? So someone listening to this now that has buried their head in the sand for whatever reason, what's the

Yes.

Um, when I was, when I was a young, married dad I had a couple little kids, and I remember going back and reading a quote from when I was a teenager from President Benson about the Book of Mormon.

And, uh, w- he just essentially said if he, "I feel certain that if in our homes parents will read from the Book of Mormon prayerfully and regularly, both by themselves and with their children, the spirit of the gre- of that great book will come to permeate our homes and all who dwell therein.

You will find greater power to resist the temptation.

You will find power to avoid deception.

You will find the power to stay on the straight and narrow path."

What else?

And in that line, as parents, um, just, just to finish with a final story, uh, in November 2024, we were down in St. George, and we got a phone call saying that our daughter Natalie and our son Adam had been in a car accident on the way down to meet up with us.