Why Happiness Is the KPI That Matters - Dr. Dorian von Freyhold

Redefining Success with Dr. Dorian von Freyhold: From Global Upbringing to Consulting & Private Equity

In this episode of The Quest for Success Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Dorian von Freyhold to unpack success beyond titles and trophies. Dorian shares how an international upbringing, a PhD in consumer psychology, and a career spanning consulting and private equity shaped a people-first view of success rooted in happiness, relationships, and real-world experiences.

We explore the transition from academia to industry, why organic networking beats transactional connections, and how hard work, openness to experience, and adventure accelerate personal growth. If you’re navigating career choices, building authentic relationships, or seeking a broader definition of success, this conversation will resonate.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
 • Why happiness is a practical foundation for success
 • How a global childhood builds adaptability and openness
 • What a PhD can (and can’t) teach you about real-world impact
 • The difference between genuine networking and collecting contacts
 • How life outside work compounds professional development
 • Why hard work and humility are still unbeatable character builders
 • How education can better bridge academia and industry
 • Why openness to experience drives innovation adoption
 • Practical ways to cultivate relationships that last
 • How to embrace adventure and growth at any career stage

Connect with Dorian:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-dorian-von-freyhold-20716479/
B8N: https://www.b8n.com/

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Transcript

Dylan Pathirana (02:12.942)
All right. Welcome back to the quest for success podcast. And thanks for tuning in once again. For those who are tuning in on video, you'll notice that jams not with us today. Unfortunately, I had to buzz off to Sri Lanka, but the show must go on. And so I was thinking who's someone who I know fairly well, but I'd want to know a bit more about this story and kind of dive a bit deeper.

And so that's why today we've got with us, Dr. Dorian von Freyhold. We work together and he seems to have endless amounts of stories and a man I've got a lot of respect for. So Dorian, thanks for sitting down with me today. It's a pleasure. Obviously Dylan has run out of candidates. So I was the closest guy. Not at all. at all. So Dorian, this podcast is all about success. And so we need to start something pretty fundamental. And that is what does success mean to you?

that's an interesting one. sort of, every time I see a shooting star, and I'm sort of faced with the challenge of making a wish. Ever since I was a little kid, I always made the same wish. Yeah. That wish has been that I'm happy. For me, happiness is success. Some mates might say money makes life easier. And

I'm sure it does. And I think it's an ingredient. Career, think is important. Purpose in life is important. Family, very important. But the mix of all of those and getting that right, I think that's where happiness lies. And I suppose for our listeners who don't know you, what's the kind of introduction to Dorian? What's the kind of one liner to who Dorian is? That question always scares me. I've always had...

a short attention span and have always done a lot of a lot of random things. at least see that there's a bit of a method to the madness. But and I can give you bit of an overview of quick quick life story. Yeah, it might be helpful. Is that Yeah, let's maybe let's just dive into your story. And then at the end, we'll kind of have a bit more of a holistic understanding. Yeah, I suppose for us to kind of understand how you got to where you are today, we need to go back a little bit. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (04:34.988)
So can you take us through your early childhood? I want to understand how you were shaped, how your parents influenced your values and you growing up. That's a long way back. I guess, important to note here, I had a pretty international childhood. broadly early childhood was between Australia and Germany and then later the UK.

Obviously, expat parents, it sort of does that to people. broadly, if I think of what shaped me as a child, I was initially spent the first six years of my life on a little hobby farm, which was, in hindsight, just the biggest gift to have as a child. I I'd wake up in the morning and my sister and I would go and light a little fire.

and diddle around in the garden and these sort of things that were just natural to us, climb the mulberry tree, come out purple, were just our world, right? Go and play with the neighbor's kids. It's only now that I have children myself and we live in the city where I realized that was really quite an idyllic kind of childhood. And that changed pretty abruptly when I was six years old and we moved to Germany.

to Cologne, so central Germany, Australia to a big city. Kindergarten and year one there. I sort of have memories of cold winters and trudging off to school, my little yellow bicycle, which I was deeply in love with and good times. Then I came back to Australia in year two. And then, yeah, that sort of rhythm though of between the continents.

was something that continued most of my high school years were back in Germany, which I really enjoyed. I think just being a young man growing up on a small island called Australia, or distant island called Australia would have been a different life for me, but it was very enriching to have both worlds of the calm and quiet and safety of Australia, but then at the same time there.

Dylan Pathirana (06:56.878)
the excitement of Europe. And I finished school in Germany, then still had to do military service. So that was about a year of my life in a helicopter battalion. Wow. And then studied engineering and business in Germany and the UK. Love that experience came out the other end pretty sure I didn't want to be an engineer.

But it left me with an inability to spell and tell lies. I guess the draw of coming back to Australia was pretty strong at that time. was mid GFC, came out my studies thinking, okay, I want to start a career here in Europe and I might not make it back out again. I remember sitting there with a...

an offer letter from Ernst & Young thinking, is this going to be me or is going back to a home that sort of childhood memories are going to me, me. And I made the choice to come back to Australia and never regretted it, I should say. Worked as a consultant for a year, enjoyed that, but always had a bit of the...

the desire to do a PhD. figured I don't want to be an old man doing that. So I put a few proposals out there, ended up being rather randomly taken by a top professor at the University of Queensland in 2012, whose discipline I didn't know what I was getting myself into was consumer psychology. So that's sort of the place where

statistics meets the business world with an influence of psychology. He liked me because I was good with numbers. And wait, so did you just fall into that? Like you were just putting kind of I pretty much fell into it. Yeah, it was funny story. I had a good friend who was applying as well at that time. We were actually work colleagues. He had just finished his degree in psychology. And I found what he was doing fascinating, found more interesting than my stuff.

Dylan Pathirana (09:15.058)
And he lived up in the Blue Mountains. We were having a conversation broadly about what are cool topics. Yeah, this proposal to then send to the universities. And I was kind of fascinated by the topic of why do startups fail? I wanted to have a look at this dark side of startups. Yeah. You plenty of articles that basically say there's a reason why most

Most founders live in their mom's basement and don't make it out. So I was really keen on doing an in-depth statistical analysis of why that is. So I wrote this cute little paper, which was broadly around having a look at startup failure as a function of networks, network externalities and critical momentum. And yeah, that professor, he...

I think read my paper, thought that's fascinating. However, that was the last I ever heard of that topic. So he took me on, I must have been sufficiently intrigued. you into a different direction. Steered me into a different direction. He was US trained. Typically, the course for a PhD is five years. Two years of that coursework, hardcore coursework.

And I think he saw me as clever enough, but undercooked. So he put me into every statistics and econometrics course that he could find on campus, which was horrendous. Only in hindsight, he once admit to me that he didn't think I'd make it. He kind of thought I'm surprised you stuck around, I was torturing you. And it was torturous. Yeah. You know, one of the other...

PhD students were probably coming around and having fun. I was actually quarantined in his office for two years. Wow. Grinding away. Grinding away, which was great in hindsight. yes, broadly, that was then the next four years of my life, completing the PhD. And the topic there became one of

Dylan Pathirana (11:38.412)
the discovery of how the big five personality traits, so there's general consensus that personalities fall into five traits and we're all somewhere on the spectrum on all of those traits. One of those traits that's really important is openness to experience and kind of pretty easy hypothesis initially, the higher somebody is in openness to experience.

the more likely they are to adopt innovations. So I did get to keep a little bit of the startup feel, right? However, the question then was how do we have to be cynical manipulate people who are low in openness to experience to be more open, right? So you're trying to bridge that gap between initial adoption of an innovation to how do I get the message on that hump? And how can you do that through psychology?

Cross the chasm. Cross the chasm and there's some really cool kind of mechanisms that broadly tap into construal level, construal level theory and how you can shift people's time horizons. It did work. A lot of that was using people as guinea pigs and experimenting and running the stats on it, which I really enjoyed. We did a lot of consumer panel work, lot of field studies. And yes, that was...

That was a great chapter of my life. really enjoyed it. University of Queensland, probably the most beautiful campus in the world. We got to the end of that and well, actually I hadn't finished yet. A colleague in the business school or an academic got cancer. And so they were kind of thinking about what's a stopgap solution.

I had this weird colorful PhD student floating around who wasn't quite finished but for some reason was on the shortlist for a lecturing position. And so was given basically her position initially. wow. I remember the conversation was, Dorian, could you lecture one or two courses? said, yeah, sure. said, would you like lecturing position instead? Otherwise it will get too expensive. I said, okay, fine. I I was winding it up from finishing.

Dylan Pathirana (14:03.118)
So I fell into lecturing at that stage and enjoyed that. I really hated the marking. I really loved the students. And I did that for about two years during that time. I guess I'd always, I'd quickly recognized at the end of my undergrad, I didn't want to be an engineer. I quickly recognized at end of my PhD, I didn't want to be career academic. But I...

I really, and I still feel that there's a lot of research conducted at universities, which never makes it into the real world. And that's probably an even more unique Australian problem. In the US, there's alumni programs, a lot of industry engagement, you a lot of that in Europe as well, Australia, there seem to be two silos. And so part of my...

kind of provocative posture in the business school was one of we should get more industry speakers in. Then the next step was we should start doing free consulting projects for partners of the university and build essentially a bit of an alumni program. And I was just always surprised at the uptake. I could pretty much call any top exec

or as many as there are in Brisbane, I couldn't call any of them and say, hey, would you be prepared to come on campus and give a lecturer a guest lecture here? And they were all more than happy to, and I would take them out for lunch afterwards. It was just a really great experience for the students. Quite a few of them got internships, later jobs through that bit of contact. You so really rewarding. And this sort of extension of that, and there was a bit of a push internally at the time as well.

was to engage in the consulting capacity of the industry. And so myself and a colleague started doing that more intensely. We were sort of one-eyed amongst the blind. And then all of a sudden, when I heard the of the blue, we got an introduction to the CEO, CEO of the Australian newspaper, so part of News Corp. And he said, I've had a conversation with a guy in private equity.

Dylan Pathirana (16:26.606)
And I understand that you're doing kind of research that I'm interested in. We positioned ourselves broadly as people that were optimizing pricing. And was this in like an offshoot? Was this like your own startup at this point? It wasn't at that stage. We quickly scrambled, set up a... Formalized it a bit. Yeah, set up a company.

But broadly, my colleague had a very strong background in a discipline called choice modeling. And choice modeling essentially aims to elicit the utility that people derive out of certain features of a product and price is obviously one of those.

And what you're able to do with choice modeling is, at the end of a large experiment, model the price curve. So you can have a look where is current pricing, which in many cases in Australia is below the optimal price. So you could actually push up price without sacrificing much demand until you get to the revenue optimizing price. And beyond that, there'd be dragons. You need to figure out by how much can you increase that price.

And we were also doing some competitive mapping, at that stage, mainly pricing. And we somehow managed to convince that CEO that we were the right people for the job and conducted our work there. the joke still remains. And I remember him still chuckling about it. said, we did this little pilot in New South Wales.

with your new pricing schema and just a two week pilot with 0.5 % of our subscribership. So I looked at this, the project's already paid for itself. You're in. That's right, that's right. And the next line of ours was KFC, know, there's similar stuff and they joked that the project paid for itself before lunch, which was even more insulting.

Dylan Pathirana (18:32.918)
And so we rolled from there, but it turned out that you to do your pricing analysis on your own. So still haven't got that right. So it turned out to be an interesting entry into that market. And of course, once you're in these large organizations as a data guy, they come to you with other problems. And we we sort of rolled through the large corporates and then also

Just by virtue of essentially ability to improve profits and revenues for companies ended up with private equity firms who wanted to either assess whether companies they're thinking of buying can increase their prices and the first hundred days of ownership they can look.

sensational because they've significantly increased revenue and pricing still remains the most powerful profit lever you have. Or on the other hand look at portfolio companies without like to optimize and so we've done work across Australia's largest private equity firms from PEP quadrant partners group at a mountain you name it looking at child everything from child care centers gyms.

horse food, burgers. So yeah, that's been a fascinating journey. And I guess now sort of the next chapter has been eating our own lunch to an extent. So myself and my business partner, Marcus and Dylan, you're part of this journey as well, have set up a small private equity fund.

where we're looking at the small end of town for exciting, exciting for us deals, boring for others. And that we're looking at, at companies that just, you know, have steady cash flows and operate in industries that most people would not know of or uninterested in. 100%. Well, there's so much to unpack there. But I suppose when you were kind of setting up your, your own kind of business and you were getting those clients in.

Dylan Pathirana (20:46.673)
Where did those relationships come from? Like you mentioned, you know, the Australian KFC, like these are some big companies. How did you manage to prove to them that or get that introduction and prove prove your value? Yeah, that's that's a really interesting question. And yeah, in hindsight, probably most one of the most important components of actually making it to where I am now. So

I guess sort of rewinding a tad, I I'd been out of Australia for 10 years. I came back, I hadn't studied here initially, I didn't know anyone, mean, so I'm not a guy who's come from the in crowd and has just, you know.

followed on from daddy's contacts. I was a new guy in the country. It was home. I was always an Australian abroad as well. I guess, just to make the general point, I started at zero for my contact space.

I guess the credibility through going to an institution like the University of Queensland, which does have very good national international standing, was a springboard. And by virtue of studying at that university and getting a couple of acronyms behind my name from that university, I at least didn't have to have to prove that I have a brain.

So that helped, but that's only a catalyst. And I guess sort of far more importantly, I lucked out in the people that I met along the way. I I have to say, I was very lucky to meet the professor that I did. He didn't open many doors, but he sure trained me hard. I've still got whip marks. But that stuck with me. I didn't forget those lessons.

Dylan Pathirana (22:50.075)
Then my colleague who I started the consultancy with, was just a junior academic, he was a senior academic. I floated on his credibility and rode his coattail. No doubt about that. And then I guess as we got traction, in particular one individual in the private equity world, founder of one of Australia's leading ones, we became rather close and

He acted as a patron in many ways. that still kind of baffles me how I ended up in that situation. But he, think, at some stage decided that he liked the cut of my jib, or at least could tolerate it. And he opened a lot of doors for me. So I guess what I'm saying is, you can do your own, you can study, you can do your very best.

at university that may or may not open doors. I've also seen plenty of folks who don't make it past go despite the best of grades. I've also seen many who despite terrible grades have done just fine. But then it really comes down to the people you meet along the way. And I've always had a bit of an attitude of you jump into opportunities. A good friend of mine, Gareth,

I remember we're walking down the street and he said, Dorian, if a van pulled up right beside us here, and a guy popped his head out and said, Hey, would you be out for an adventure? I said, Oh, what's the adventure? The guy says, Look, it's gonna be fun. But I don't know what the adventure is. can't tell you. It's a secret. Yeah. Would you jump in? And I've always been the kind of guy. Yeah, I'm up for it. 100 % So, you know,

Plenty of the, I guess in hindsight, looking at my journey, I'm 40 now, so I'm not a young player anymore, but plenty of the opportunities and doors that have opened along the way were because I...

Dylan Pathirana (25:02.285)
had that attitude of jumping into that van and wanting a bit of adventure. Yeah, you got to put yourself in the situations to get those opportunities. But then you've also got to take those opportunities with both hands and run with them. Sometimes you land in some pretty funny vans. I suppose like one one part of kind of this how you got to where you are today is relationships you touched on it. And it's something I definitely admire about you is how you go about

maintaining and creating new relationships. Like we'll walk around the office or we'll be walking around the street and Dorian will just bump into people that he knows and it's fascinating and it's something that I'd love to be one day. What's kind of your secret source to building and maintaining strong relationships? I enjoy people and that's probably one important prerequisite if you don't like people faking it at all.

I enjoy people. find people's stories very interesting, much like you as well. So I'll often listen. And I've had some sensational chats with Uber drivers. I'm not a shy guy, so I'll happily do that. I try to help.

I'm generous with my time. And if I can see an opportunity where somebody's struggling, I'll jump in and I'll be the first one to roll up my sleeves and give it a crack and see whether I can get them out of the situation they're in. And yeah, as to the people one bumps into on the street, stick around for long enough, you'll meet a fair few people. So it's also one of being in the same place for while.

And as a guy who went to many different schools, I know what it feels like to be the new kid at school. there's no friend like the guy who comes after you at school and you're sort of like an old guy by then. But I've always maintained that openness, I guess, of empathy for people that are trying to their way into a new network and trying to figure out which side is up and look for somebody who will talk to

Dylan Pathirana (27:24.241)
plenty of places you have an in crowd and they don't really talk to you because their social slots are already occupied. Independent of how my social slots are, I'm always more than happy to have a chat with a new guy. And often enough, that's where the opportunities lie. Figuring out what they're trying to do and what they're up to. And I've found...

Many of the friendships I've forged, there were fellow travelers in a way that were trying to figure out, know, new person in a new place trying to figure out which way is up and how to get a foothold. So I'm not to say that I don't talk to people who aren't new. That's the other one. Relationships in many ways are compounding. So, you know, much like interest in the bank. And again, that's where it's important to be persistent, stick around.

Be that guy for that purpose so that you can also meet other people along the way. And I've never been a guy who's gone to many networking events. To be honest, you know.

kind of avoid them. I don't put myself out there. It's the organic. It's the organic relationships and also as you as you do business with people, know, enough to meet some fascinating people along that journey as well. build reputation as well. Yeah, it's like people in your network will go

I met this guy today, I think he'd be really good to speak with Dorian and they probably introduce you and so you get that kind of exponential network effects. Absolutely. And they sort of broadly have to feel that that person introducing somebody to is not going to leave a bad impression. That's important. Sometimes I've been in the sensational position where some people

Dylan Pathirana (29:24.547)
have kind of used me or what I do as a talking point. And then I ended up being on the receiving end of plenty of networking opportunities through that, which has been great at the same time whenever I look at a problem and I enjoy problems. That's a persistent theme. I enjoy it. It's a nut to crack. I always try to think about who would know about this? Who can I pull into this? often...

still pull experts in from different areas and generously, whether it's generous or not, but I'm helping myself in a way, but pulling the best people I can find to projects because then the client experience is going to be better as well. But yeah, yeah, and that's, it's never a deliberate attempt on my behalf to build a network, you know, which.

And again, I always find a bit creepy, know, sort of the guys that hover in a crowd and sort of move strategically from one person to the next. And I've always been the guy who finds some quirky guy at the back of the room and has a chat for half an hour and really enjoys the weird and wonderful stories that they tell. It's all about just having that first conversation. And if the person's not right for you, then that's all right, but at least you know.

But if you never have those conversations, you never know, right? And I feel like it's a dying art at the moment. People are so scared to talk to other people that you meet on the street or in an Uber or whatever. Absolutely, absolutely. And then sometimes there's the wonderful situation where you don't even have to do the work. know, else comes and you're the quirky colorful guy in the back of the room that you haven't talked to. Being a intro and again.

I've found that some of the best relationships I've developed were through introductions. I think that people have just already dropped their guard a bit. If they're introduced through somebody they respect, you've already passed the first hurdle in many ways. And it's the same for me if I'm to meet somebody who's been introduced through somebody who I trust, admire, of course. it's credibility. Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (31:39.069)
try to do my very best to open open doors. And you mentioned that kind of how your

upbringing in multiple different locations has kind of shaped how you kind of live your life now being never kind of being at home kind of always moving around. I want to understand, you know, what impact that's had on you, but also the times where you weren't focused on, let's say work, like your your military experience. I know you did some time as a lumberjack as well. Like, how important how important do you think those those periods where you're not really

focused on, let's say, career progression, were to who you are now? Yeah, yeah. I guess in part one of that question, how has moving around shaped me?

Dylan Pathirana (32:33.953)
It's a great one. I remember I had a girlfriend for a while who was a psychologist and she ran every battery past me and came to the conclusion that I'm rather vanilla. So I think I'm all right. I think I got through it all without too many blemishes. I guess you develop a degree of plasticity. And I grew up with two languages, English and German, so I can switch between the two very fluently.

would have made a great spy other than being six foot seven. No, no, no. No hiding in that corner. And that sort of sets you up. And I think especially if you're bilingual, you have this beautiful situation where you can blend into a foreign place seamlessly. They don't pick it. Especially if you're, and for me it was being an Australian in Germany.

without an accent. They wouldn't know until I sort of said, hey, I'm not from here. I think what probably had quite a profound impact was changing schools a fair amount, and the to and fro. Which, on the one hand, I think I was fortunate in that I have a high openness to experience. I enjoy people.

Dylan Pathirana (33:59.057)
I always kind of appreciated the nuances of different countries I was in, enjoyed the new friends. At the same time, you leave a lot of friends behind. And that's probably one of those sort of shaping things that in hindsight, I'd say that it's left me with an ability to quickly mingle and...

and find my way in new social settings. With the downside of if I move on, I set up a new kind of identity and you roll on, right? So it's always balancing that one a little bit. think every expat kid has that a little bit. They've become a bit of a shape-shifter. A bit of a chameleon. And especially that sort of...

those first few weeks at a new school. mean, let's face it, you're at the bottom of the pecking order and you have to work your way up. Yeah, they don't know what kind of person you are. They've often got long friendships, know, known people since the sandpit. You know, it's that new guy. I that. So that's,

That's an interesting one. On the other hand, just the richness of my own personal experience through having exposure on one hand to Australia and all its beauty, and then also Europe and, you know, as a young man growing up in Europe, being able to jump on a plane and be in France or Spain or Italy.

for a weekend or I remember, you know, uni holidays would come around and you'd have some mates in the Mabeya or Granada and you'll jump onto a plane and stay with them and have an absolutely great time. You know, the seas, even seasons, I love the I love a nice autumn, I love a nice spring. Even a couple of days of winter. But no, I love that. I love the full experience and

Dylan Pathirana (36:06.701)
It's something that I've sought to recreate in my professional life as well. So bringing together Australia with Europe. So that's part one, right? Now part two was more on the sort of how did these, I guess semi-unpaid or lowly paid experiences influence my life. Look, I think they were super important.

You mentioned the lumberjack experience. That was probably other than a little bit of lawn mowing as a kid and putting pamphlets into letterboxes, all of which were rather short lived. The lumberjack thing was fantastic. So was in the hearts mountains. I I started out as a 15 year old boy in summer holidays and I was super skinny, twig of a guy. Probably saw me and thought he...

Is he going to be able to shape him into a man? well, the heart's mountains are, you know, they're steep, they're rugged, there's snow, it's lots of pine plantations. And, you know, we're literally just day after day and have a jerry can of fuel in one hand, that's about 20 kilos and a big chainsaw in the other and you'll just be heading heading up the mountains to

cut down some trees and that was, as a young guy, just sensational. And here were a whole bunch of older guys, had cars and stuff, know, children's, oh, they were big hairy men. I kind of admired some of them, they were real guys. And they sort of, on the one hand, there was a degree of initiation, here's this young fellow, on the other hand,

It was really important.

Dylan Pathirana (38:02.673)
and go through the experience of what hard physical labor is. So I went from a skinny 15 year old, at 16 I was six foot seven, I think I weighed something like 75 kilos or something. I was skinny. Then I'd always go there for my summer holidays and do that. And then by the time I was 17, was 95 kilos.

know, quite the physical transformation. Much of that was, I mean, it was just hard work. But you're great, great to mingle with, you know, essentially, you know, hard working guys who showed me the ropes and I sort of always look at that experience. You you're freezing in winter, your hands are numb, you've got sawdust all through your face.

You you've got another three, four hours of work until you can finally have a bit of lunch. And it's character building. really, really is. That one is a kind of key experience that I still relish every time I see a chainsaw. I still rejoice in the smell of two-stroke fuel. The inner mountain man comes out. That's right. A little bit of that.

But yeah, then the military was great. And in Germany, the schooling system is one of streaming. So I was here for primary school, just in a small public school, nothing special. Then went over to Germany and I think somewhat fortunately ended up in the highest stream. So in year five, they...

essentially start the assessments and by year seven, you'll then put into either the stream for lower trades, so painters, brickies. So then there's a stream that ends at year 10, which is for standard trades. And then only about 30 % go into the stream where you can then complete your HSC. And so you end up with a rather select group of people.

Dylan Pathirana (40:24.497)
throughout your education journey and high school is often where it's at, just from a sort of finding your own identity and perspective. so I'd sort of, I guess that stage only mingled with a certain class of people. Not saying that in a nasty way, but often enough they had parents who had nice jobs and private schools, by the way, not really a thing in Germany, it's all state schools.

but heavily streamed. So I guess I got to the end of high school having had extensive exposure to a certain group of people. Yeah, a little bubble. And you could, I'm still very sensitive to accents. And there's a lot you can figure out from an accent, as horrible as it sounds, especially over there. And there were certain accents where you would know, okay, they went to that stream or that stream and certain stereotypes that came with it.

And then here I was, I'd just turned 18. In the army, everyone had the same green stuff on, everyone had the same haircut, everyone had only slept three hours last night. Yet there was no way for you to tell from how they dressed, or you could tell it a bit from how they, but they were all buddies by the end of that. You had all been...

thoroughly terrorized. Flattens the class system out of it. Oh, absolutely. It would only be then, because we're then on the weekends get time off, get into their normal civilian clover and jump into their car and drive off to their girlfriend and he's Oh, you're one of them. Actually a nice guy. So I guess I sort of went through a recalibration during that time in the army where I sort of

I guess realized that everybody's pretty similar. pretty similar. And you know that some of my perceptions just do play. And that you know, that that was that was great. I enjoyed the military, you get to play around with a whole bunch of toys with with your mates and do cool things. We were heavily involved in training up the troops for the cause of that stage. So I spent about five months of my life

Dylan Pathirana (42:50.948)
ambushing, trips in training. And about one month of that was actually playing a driver who had an arm ripped off and I had this little blood pump on my chest under my uniform as they tried to pull me out of the wreckage. had to spray them and scream. And the rest of the time myself.

And one of my buddies would race around the airfield thrashing this little G-Class Mercedes battle weapon that we had. But they were great times. I remember at the time thinking, man, this is a bit of a waste of my energy and time. But then in hindsight, I still looked at when that was actually really important. I've had that year of, I guess, for others, it might be a gap year.

I've had that year of just figuring out what I want to do. I got to mingle with a lot of the officers, again, when you're 18 and there's somebody who's 25 or 28 or 35, godlike, especially if they have rank sleeves, god, that'd be fantastic. They have that much heft in the world. Anyway, so you get to mingle with those folks. And I remember

One of them in particular, he was our squadron leader and he had studied engineering and I at the time didn't really know what I wanted to study. I kind of enjoyed playing Lego as a kid. Nobody in our family had been an engineer. We had plenty of doctors and lawyers.

Anyway, he sort of said, I think you'd be a good engineer, you've got a good brain for it. I enjoying maths at school and science and thought, maybe I'll give it a go. I guess just because I admired him as a man, thought, okay, if I end up a bit like that, fantastic, I'll do engineering. And I think it's always good to bolt a bit of business onto anything.

Dylan Pathirana (45:04.925)
so that's, that's how that happened again, a contact in a way, Definitely. think that that's kind of the point I was going to as, you know, as ambitious as you can be, like a lot of people just like rushing to things and they're just like, so focused on like hustle, hustle, hustle. Like that's why I wanted to understand like how important these kind of.

outside of the usual career trajectory were for you because for me it's like a good reset and it again you meet people who you would never even expect and can steer your journey in different ways so I'm glad that you thought it was as useful as it was for you. Absolutely, absolutely and I think often enough the most important influences in your life in hindsight are people that have randomly come into your life through relative coincidence.

or their extended family members. And often it's a little steer from the side that puts you onto a trajectory where you then in hindsight go, they were the reason why this happened. They'll probably never know. But they were the reason, and it was really important for me that they were there at that point in time. And if it had been somebody else, I might be in a very, very different place right now. Exactly.

everything happens for a reason. I suppose kind of turning back to your career and what you're doing now. I want to understand, given that you've worked across a lot of different industries, and you've done a lot of analytical and consumer research for a lot of different companies, a lot of our listeners, business owners or entrepreneurs, what are some of the key lessons which you think span across all industries that our listeners could put into play?

Yeah, I guess one thing and it'll have any businesses cringe, but also not business owners.

Dylan Pathirana (47:04.431)
reflecting on the many different industries I worked across and on the surface really disparate businesses, you find some really common themes throughout. So it's really easy to think that you're Robinson Crusoe in your kind of journey with your company. Often enough though,

once you lift the hood and you know see what's under this chassis or that chassis or whatever. old, same old. It's similar you know it certainly rhymes and so you know what are those common themes and on the one hand if I just go through what I've peddled for a long time as a consultancy, pricing. Pricing is one of the disciplines that have

across the board done badly. There's not a lot of sophistication. People tend to experiment and just think, I'll give it a crack. Over the years, often enough, they don't move their price as much. And part of that, terrible to say, but it's fear. It's fear of your price dropping off a cliff and demand, your price being too high, demand dropping off a cliff and...

losing a whole bunch of business than losing your job, right? And that's really understandable. So a lot of what we do is give executives the confidence to increase their prices by applying sophisticated science and giving them the feeling that the weight of public...

value perception is behind them and they can do it. And again, often enough pricing is set as a function of what you feel you could charge above your cost price, cost plus analysis. The far better way to look at that proposition though is what are people prepared to pay for this? Sounds very intuitive, but it's rather rare that we see that in practice.

Dylan Pathirana (49:12.913)
So that is a value lever, super important. And if we just go through a quick little mental example, let's say that you're selling your product for a dollar and you have a 10 % margin on that. So do the math, 10 cents in profit. Let's say you increase your price to $1.10, doubled your profit. It's all top line growth.

Often enough, we found that you can increase the prices by 50, 60 % without losing much demand at all. Sometimes we find that dropping prices will be the best choice. It's much rarer. So if you had to flip a coin, know, we're also able to, in our experiments, simulate prices that are well beyond what you feel comfortable with experimenting with.

real life and then model what demand would look like at those price points and that's rather unique. The other one is competitive positioning. We do a lot of competitive positioning work and often enough you find that the competitive set is not that huge and you can get a good understanding using the right methods what drives value.

for customers and why they go with certain competitors of yours. And if you can reverse engineer that and have a look at how you can essentially provide what customers see as particularly valuable, change public perception that you're actually the outfitted line with that value driver, you can rob out their profit pools without them even noticing. So that's another beautiful lever to be deployed, of course.

You nuance that for each business, the strategies and techniques and methodologies we deploy are the same. And then there's of broadly and this, every business only can relate to it, keeping your customers happy. We do plenty of Net Promoter Score programs and...

Dylan Pathirana (51:24.601)
and customer satisfaction programs. You really can't do enough there. And the payback is more long term, but the old adage, it's a lot easier to keep a customer than it is to a new one. A lot cheaper to keep them as well. So putting those programs in place, very important. But I guess sort of as a key kind of takeaway, think often enough business owners have stopped working.

in the business, not on the business. they're hustling, they're worrying about where the next order is going to come from. there's some blow up in HR. They're of firefighting on all sorts of fronts. And so it's often helpful to get outsiders in who can sort of reassess the situation independently within these expertise.

help you see the look more strategically. Exactly. Exactly. See, see the trees. And I suppose like with AI developing a lot and there's a big push for for data. Where do you kind of see the future going? What's something you're excited about? Yeah, I think as you can see by the redundancies from all the top four consultancies.

Yeah, I think that a lot of professional services could become redundant in future, no doubt there. And I think the biggest risk is for young folks coming out of universities now. if I reflect on, we use a lot of AI within the business.

to great effect and it's essentially an efficiency optimizer. What would have taken an analyst two, three days, the right chat GPT prompts can get you well on the way. You still need an expert eye, but can get you well on the way. So the problem I see is for kids coming out of university.

Dylan Pathirana (53:32.401)
It's back to that disconnect between university and industry. think that they're still learning things at university, which are now eminently judgeable. So they're then being thrown into this sort of new world that they're in touch with, but they've just spent four years of their life diddling around in circles, writing essays.

which is now in many ways are a done-it skill. They haven't been trained on the tools. They have been trained on the tools. I think, it's our ethos as well within the company, just embrace those tools and see it as kind of armour and weaponry that you can put on. Just fill your boots, use whatever you can get there because it is definitely the way of the future and it is a huge efficiency booster.

I think for a lot of companies initially they were unsure and worried about privacy. Now you can see more of them lifting down and at the same time you see a lot of redundancy. So on the one hand a lot of grad programs are stalling and I think that's a

a problem, especially for the grads, maybe less for the companies because they now have AI, Then you can also on the other end see a lot of senior, expensive senior management being booted out. So if we just have a look at the recent ANZ clean out, know, 10 % of the workforce gone.

Telstra went through that and PwC sacked a good 10 % of their partners. We can see it, it's underway. Now as little guys though, they're in lines the opportunity because you can disrupt. It's going to be very hard for the big players to shift their whole business model to something different. So if we just take a big four consultancy, their whole business model is focused on finding young bright graduates, working them hard for four or five years.

Dylan Pathirana (55:28.561)
slowly trickling them a little bit more money in a trip fee. They're in the sausage factory. They're looking to build their CB, which is fantastic. then you know, provide some up to senior consultant and all the way up to manager with great attrition. But now the problem is that broadly they're never really getting a look in as the grad programs are stalling.

They're struggling to reinvent themselves in this space. They have these overheads. They still have layers of bureaucracy and layers of management, expensive management, which they need to keep going. And they're reticent to move away from their business model of essentially arbitrage on young grads, selling that time. It's a labor arbitrage. It's a labor arbitrage, exactly.

So I think that the opportunity, if we're just thinking about consulting, obviously lies in building technology that does what analysts did. And that's something that we've really focused on. We build a lot of technology. We don't hire a lot of analysts.

And it goes back to your earlier question of are there learnings that you can make within businesses or common themes? And if you have common themes, pretty quickly you can always solve the same sort of problems in the same sort of way. And you get to a stage where you can essentially routinize large swathes of a consulting project. And that's a really exciting space. Again, as a small consultancy, you can quickly adapt.

and adopt new technologies.

Dylan Pathirana (57:17.551)
Yeah, I think the consulting space, that's a bit of the way of the future. A few smart guys with strategy and methods knowledge. A bit of good machinery, you can do a lot of damage. Yeah, 100%. I suppose we've talked a lot about your kind of career and the work you do.

but I know you're also quite a family man as well. And that kind of links into your definition of success. I want to understand how you balance the two, you being, you know, obviously a business owner and operator and then still finding time to go kayaking and look after your kids and all that. Yeah, really important. And I try not to fail too much. I have a seven year old boy, a two year old girl and a third little boy on the way.

And it does recalibrate how you think about the world in many ways. I think on the one hand, you look at the world in a far more engaged way and you really think, oh, this is a world that I'm leaving behind and how in this small window of opportunity that I have, how can I shape the world to be as good as it could possibly be for my kids?

Now there are some things that are within your control and some things that are outside of your control. I think it's really important to draw that line. So by watching more of the news and getting angry about it, I don't think that's how you're actively getting to shape life for your kids. Yeah, I think one of the most valuable things you can give to your kids is

good in education as you can possibly afford. And that for me has unlocked a lot of opportunities. And even though I've harped on about the disconnect between universities and the real world, I think that giving them a good education...

Dylan Pathirana (59:19.497)
And again, within good education, I think it's really important that it's an education that adopts new technologies. And we're constantly with our kids looking, especially the older one, looking at ways to have him engage with AI. And there's great courses out there that basically help kids understand the world in a better way. Musk has done a great job of...

creating curriculums that really gel with kids because they break down information in different way. If we think about the discipline of mathematics, it's one that's taught in a very abstract way at school, often by a somewhat burnt-out teacher. But, you know, those courses are just fantastic and I can see just leaps and bounds in the way that he's absorbing the information. Besides school, I think that school is very important.

social perspective. Again, no proponent of just homeschooling. Now as to hobbies, I think for me as a guy who at least spent his early childhood in the country, I'd like to enable them as kids who grew up in the city to see a bit of the country and to get out there and know what it feels like to dig a worm out of the ground and it on a hook and you know, scorch yourself on a

on a fire and I think they're things that are close to my heart and I'd like to pass that on and depending on the kids, some love it, some don't. Some like horse riding, some don't. I think that within your own sphere of influence, you can try to do things that you enjoy and impart that old gel with them and impart it doesn't and if it doesn't, you just.

I'm not one for pushing on there certain sports I enjoy and you can sort of introduce them to them and hope that they like it. But if they say dad, I really don't like it. I mean, I'm about exposure. That's right. you you then you sort of, think, have to let go and not follow your own ambitions there, but really look for things that they enjoy. And often enough, that can come. And as I was saying earlier on, you know, influences and

Dylan Pathirana (01:01:42.065)
direction often comes from places other than parents. It's a wonderful coincidence if he enjoys what I enjoy, she enjoys what I enjoy. But at the same time introducing them to plenty of opportunities to experience things outside of your direct sphere of perception, I think is really important. So we often try to encourage and...

especially with our boy, him to go to extracurriculars that we may not have really enjoyed as kids. I interesting example for our boy, he loves chess. So we've got him in a chess club and he's absolutely, mean, I kind of enjoyed playing chess with my sister, she usually won, I cried. But he loves it. He loves speech and drama. Yeah, he really enjoys riding his bicycle, he really enjoys swimming.

Um, yeah, I enjoyed swimming so I can sort of relate to that one. enjoyed bicycles, but the other two would have never even thought of it. I would say, yeah, man, why do you want to do that? I, I, I don't know. Leave yourself out of it. What I typically say to my wife is look, if he wants to, if he wants to go to the ballet, I have to be fine with that. Yeah. He goes to the ballet. I really don't want my stereotypes to carry across. Um, or, you know, just

if he expresses interest in something, let's try to encourage that. The other other day, he he wants to play water polo. Let's throw him in there. See whether he likes being scratched underwater. It probably goes back to your kind of whole ethos around just like putting yourself in different opportunities and different experiences and seeing what comes up. And the nice. This is actually from a

a wonderful American academic I met at a conference once and he said, look, it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall. Some things will stick, most of it will flake off, and then you just focus on what sticks. And so we've taken the approach of, you know, just try stuff, go for it.

Dylan Pathirana (01:03:51.749)
Figuring out what you don't like is just as important as figuring out what you do like. And that contrast between figuring out, yeah, this is great, the sun is shining here for me. I'm just naturally good at this. And you'll just naturally gravitate towards that. But to have that contrast, you'll certainly have experienced a bunch of stuff that you don't like. Absolutely. And I find that often enough, there's an idea, I want to do this or I want to do that. Well, everybody says, do it, we'll sign you up.

You're gonna have to go there for the whole duration of the course, right? You're gonna have to rub your nose in it. If you're gonna give it a crack, you gotta give it a good crack. That's right. There's no getting out of this easily. And yeah, I think that's a really important part. 100%. And so I try to enable, I try to enable. There's this old family saying, my mum would always say when we were kids as well, that kids are a lot like a bow and arrow. All you can do is draw the bow and let go.

And then once you let go, it's going to fly where you pointed it to. Maybe it might, might be deflected, but it's out of your hands. That stage you have to let go. Focus on the things you can control. Yeah. And I suppose, you know, as a, as a dad and as a, a leader in your field, what's kind of your, what's your legacy? What do you, how do you want to be remembered?

Dylan Pathirana (01:05:15.665)
That's an interesting one. mean, I don't at all have ambitions to have a building named after myself or, you know, if I think about my gravestone, you know, something hidden. I don't want anything polished in, just a little rock somewhere and under an old oak tree on the hill. That's right, that's right. So I don't...

I don't have broader societal ambitions for my legacy. What I'd like to be able to tell myself is I'd lie on my deathbed. And this is something I often tell myself as well. I'd like to be able to tell myself that I did my very best. And that very best in some instances might not be enough, might not be good enough. People might look at it in hindsight and go, geez.

what was he about? But if I can tell myself I did my best, that's hugely valuable to me. If I can look at my kids and independent of what they've done in their life, know that given what I had then at that point in time when I was trying to go through the millions of decisions you make on the regular, if I can tell myself I did my best, that to me is winning. And so, as to how would I like to be remembered,

I'd like people to go, Dorian, nice guy. He did his very best. I love that. That's such a wholesome legacy. And I suppose throughout this conversation, looking back on your journey and what you just mentioned, and your definition of success being all about happiness, do you feel successful? I feel happy. I do. I genuinely feel happy.

That's good. Dorian, thank you so much for this. It's been such a cool conversation. I I felt like I know you but you know, this is taken to a whole nother level. And there's definitely been a lot of takeaways. But I've tried to jot down what I think are like the key traits which have led you to what I would say is a pretty successful life and build your happy life. The first one is you very much follow your your interests, kind of just like, put yourself out there and see where the opportunities arise. And I think

Dylan Pathirana (01:07:27.631)
you know, not overthinking too much and just like putting yourself in those situations is super valuable. Sometimes you have to jump into that van. Exactly. You've got to jump into the van and you know, jumping at those opportunities. So not just putting yourself in the right place for those opportunities to arise, but but you know, jumping on that ball and grabbing it by the horns and going all in on those things, you know, you're

when you got introduced to the guy, the Australian, he only reached out because you had started to build somewhat of credibility at the university and trying to connect with industry. You put yourself in that situation and then you went out and took on that opportunity. And then the last one I've got is you're very relationship driven. You're incredible at building relationships and maintaining them and curating them as well.

you know, there's a Stephen Covey quote that I like a lot. And it's all about the emotional bank account. And, you know, relationships are very much like a bank account where you've got to invest time and invest, which is something I think you do exceptionally well as, you mentioned, you're very generous with your time. We've had plenty of sessions here in the office where you've been giving me advice. And I really, really appreciate that. And it's something where a simple one there is always try to give more than you take. Yeah, if you stick to that.

And yeah, that's the kind of core essence of the emotional bank account is it's you want to invest as much as you can. So the balance goes up so that when the time comes and you need something as you know, you've got a little bit of leeway there, but you always want it to be in the green. So, you know, there's a kind of core traits, which I think led to your successful life. And I'm really glad that we got to sit down and have this chat. No, thank you, Dylan, I guess.

Thanks for the lovely interview. You really enjoyed it. I love watching your podcasts. On the other hand, you're a bright young man who, when I pulled over on the side of the road in my van, said, Hey, you want to get in? There was no sense of stranger dancer. I jumped in. You jumped in. But no, no, thanks a lot. And I think it's really exciting what you're doing here. Keep it up.

Dylan Pathirana (01:09:42.713)
Love it. Thanks, Dorian. And for those who have listened today, if you've gotten something out of today's episode, it would mean the world if you could like and subscribe to our YouTube channel helps us spread the message with other listeners. And you can see all of our inspirational content over on our website, the quest for success podcast.com. And with that, we'll catch you guys in the next episode. Thanks for listening. Brilliant.