Dom Harvey

Telecom was a big company.

I actually had one of your former employees, Chris Quinn, who's CEO of Foodstuffs now, in for a podcast last week.

He told me when he started there was like 25,000 staff or something.

No, that's a great yarn.

Wow.

So he went to work one morning and then caught a 12-hour... He left that one out.

I must have asked the wrong question.

You've got to ask the right questions to get the right answer.

You've got to ask the right questions, yeah.

But is it weird being in that role?

Are you aware that people are sucking up to you when you're in that role?

But how do you know if someone's telling you what you want to hear versus truth tellers?

That's such a good answer.

And what's it like leaving after nine years?

I had Sir Rod Drury on the podcast at the beginning of the year.

So he founded Xero and he talked about the day in quite a poignant way.

The day that he left and he packed up his box of trinkets and walked out on the street and suddenly he realised he didn't know who he was.

All his friends were his co-workers and he had to sort of rebuild his identity.

Yeah, it's still that period.

After the telecom gig for so many years, were you quite financially secure?