Podcast Transcript

Sean: [00:00:08] G’day everyone and welcome to the ScaleUps Podcast where we help first time Founders learn the secrets of scaling so they can fulfill the potential of that business, make bigger decisions with greater confidence and maximise the value they can create in the world. I am your host Sean Steele and I am joined today by Kelly Broderick. The co-founder of Cleanworks. How are you today?

Kelly: [00:00:27] Yeah, I'm great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited. I think you're doing a great job trying to help people scale their companies.

Sean: [00:00:35] Thank you very much. I have been looking forward to this interview for a while is a bit of background for an audience. You and I have known each other actually since 2017, would it have been when you first established your Advisory Board? And so for context for the audience, I was an advisor on your Advisory Board. And I remember very clearly the first meeting, which I remember coming home from that first meeting, thinking these guys are really just out and ambitious and going to kill it. I remember, you know, your clear goals, which was about figuring out the strategy, and the path to double the size of your business from sort of 10 mil to 20 mil over the next three or four years, and I thought this is going to be an awesome … This is a great set of co-founders and they're really going after it, which I just, I loved. And for those who don't know, Cleanworks is a commercial cleaning company based in Queensland, and services clients nationally now at over 450 sites, 300 cleaners, and a strong focus in the office sector, but particularly also in K-12 schools as well as industrial co-founded by yourself and your co-founder Katie back in, was that 2001?

Kelly: [00:01:44] 2001. 2002. So yeah, I think the partnership, when you look at the ABN says 2002 maybe so, yeah.

Sean: [00:01:53] I love that, it's almost 20 years

Kelly: [00:01:55] Yeah, we say 20 years now. So, I think we've been saying 20 years for few years.

Sean: [00:01:58] Any sort of celebration prepared? It will probably align the celebration surely, will align with, you know, borders opening up and people will be able to travel properly.

Kelly: [00:02:08] Hopefully that'd be good. Yeah. Katie will be asking for more time off. Trust me.

Sean: [00:02:12] Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I know you guys love the travel. Well, looking at one of the things that I can't wait to get into questions with you. One of the things I love about your story is that you stayed in this game for 20 years. This is not an overnight success kind of story, and of course, lots of people are looking to really accelerate super-fast and you've had some incredible growth right in the last five years, but a very different growth rate in the first 15.

And I love that it has been a consistent hard work incrementally building the ground up, you know, building a business, I should say from the ground up over time into a strong and sustainable business that it is today. Maybe you could kick off Kelly and just give us a bit of insight into why you started this business. What was the genesis of the business?

Kelly: [00:02:56] I read the cashflow quadrant and cashflow quadrant was all about becoming an investor and business owner, and then you become investor. So that's the bottom line, I wanted to work for myself. I wanted to be in control of my pay-check, money, wealth, independence. That's the reality of why we started Cleanworks. So, yeah, my dad, wasn't happy when I said I was quitting university to become a cleaning contractor. It wasn't fit for his ego, he's deceased now. I'm sure he's happy with where I'm at

Sean: [00:03:37] He's happy to have been wrong.

Kelly: [00:03:38] Yeah, that's right. So, if your parents out there, no expectations.

Sean: [00:03:43] You know, it's a funny thing, the Cashflow Quadrant and the stuff that Kiyosaki did really had some big influences on it. Like that was a game-changing moment actually seeing Kiyosaki live back in Sydney. I think also around maybe 2000, 2001, was just a complete game changer of my entire psychology around business investing, you know, finances and my own personal development. So, can you just, just to give people a bit of a flavour of Cleanworks, could you just give us a walkthrough of the typical customer, like who are they, what problem do they usually have that would suggest that yours is the right business to sort of go about solving it?

Kelly: [00:04:21] Yeah so, obviously we clean across different industries. So, half of our business or revenue is predominantly offices. And so, if I was talking about that customer, usually quality of cleaning is a problem for them, but they are also money conscious as well with the private sectors, and that's where it can be a tough industry because they’re wanting champagne, but on a beer budget. So just trying to communicate with them and find out exactly what their expectations are, verses you know, what they really want and what will work for the hygiene of their office. And also, their budget is our stall when we're working with the customer. And then you have the school market, quite similar, but the school market, schools are large, the clients, you're not just dealing with a facilities manager, you have a business manager, you've got parents as well, that community are your clients too, that are giving you feedback on cleaning and so forth. So, but very similar.

Sean: [00:05:24] I'm sure everybody's got a view when it comes to cleaning.

Kelly: [00:05:25] Yeah. It's very subjective cleaning, but same process, trying to work with the client to find out what their needs are versus what they want. What does the school need for the kids, budget, et cetera. Does that answer your question?

Sean: [00:05:41] It does. Yeah. I'm wondering given, many people who've never given too much thought to the cleaning of the offices that they might work in or the schools that their kids are in, might not understand what differentiates one cleaner from another. They might just think as well, it's just cleaning. Isn't it? It’s all the same. How have you thought about the differentiation of the business? Like how have you tried to set yourself apart from others over the years?

Kelly: [00:06:04] This is a hard one. This has always been a challenge for us to differentiate cleaning and innovate cleaning. And we think, which I won't share with you because it's just recently happened this year. We think we finally got an X-Factor for the first after 20 years. So, yeah, to answer that question, look, we don't have, the new latest innovation, like I said, I think we've got one now, but in the past as has just been purely building relationships with clients, honesty, caring about the cleaners that are on the ground, training, just good old fashioned values in business is what has made our success. That we care, that we care. We don't just want a pay-check from a client. We actually want to deliver a good quality service to them and have long-term clients. So, it's not, like I said, it's not, a tech differentiator or something really strong, but that's what I say is difference about Cleanworks.

Sean: [00:07:09] It's an under-rated principle, right? Like the ability to actually just do an excellent job, have people be heard, ask the right questions, do a great job, show up properly and come back the next time and be consistent and have a consistent brand experience. And the fact that you've been able to continue building for 20 years shows how that has played a role. What would be some metrics that, you know, might help people understand the growth that you've had, whether it's revenue or cleaners or customer numbers or whatever the best way is, but particularly in the context of the change, given you've been doing this for 20 years but you've also had a stronger growth rate in the last sort of five or so. Can you just give us some numbers that would help people?

Kelly: [00:07:52] Yeah. So, for the first 15 years, 6.5 million in revenue was where we were at. So it took us 15 years to get there, and then in the last five years we put Troy on as our General Manager, and Katie and I are able to not work so much in the business and on the business because we wanted to scale. We said, let's do it.  And so we jumped from. Oh, God I've written it down, from 6.5 in three years to 13 million. So nearly double within three years or 6.5 million revenue with 30 full-time staff equivalent, because we do have part-time casuals. In three years we doubled 13 mil with 150 full-timers and then 18 mil thereabouts right now at 240 full-timers, so yeah, the growth rate, well, 300% nearly, so we're pretty happy about it. And now we're talking about building to 50 mil and we'll probably even do that now even more quickly than 15 years to the 6.5. So, it gets easier. I suppose for people listening, as you do grow, the bigger you get, big is not always better, but it gets easier. It does get easier. I even remember back in the day when Katie and I only had a couple of cleaners to choose from like a small, if we needed filling stuff and we only had a small pool of say 10 cleaners, it was harder than choosing from a pool of a hundred cleaners. So, as you grow, it definitely got easier.  

Sean: [00:09:26] Yeah. And I imagine that, you know, if you think about the things that you learned in some of the things that really changed the dial on that growth trajectory that got you from the 6.5m to the 18m, I'd be so interested to know and we'll come back to it, whether do you think it'll be the same set of learnings that actually just carries on to get you from 18 to 50 or actually, you know, is there a new set of learnings that might have to be unlocked or that might sort of change the trajectory to actually get that from 18 to 50? But in the context of the 6.5m to 18m, clearly, there were some key moments and key decisions and key things that you did or thought about that changed that growth because that's a really significant sort of step up in the speed the business was growing. Can you tell us about a couple of those kind of key moments, key decisions, things that really changed the dial on your trajectory?

Kelly: [00:10:15] Yeah, it was quite simple. So, what we were doing before was we were trying to be everything to everyone. So, we're trying to focus too much on maybe five different industries and not really becoming that expert or that brand in that market. So, offices, industrial, age-care and so forth, and we just decided; Hey, why don't we go choose an industry or choose a niche. Let's go deep. Let's really just focus on that industry. Make sure it's got enough market share and grab more of that industry, then I suppose what they say is going wide. So that's been the game changer. That's how we've grown. So, the school market is what we've chosen. We made sure that we did the marketing intel. Made sure it had enough market share. We already had a few schools, so it was easy to, we'd already had a bit of experience. So we were able to leverage on that and then we just got focus. We went right. We want to become one of the leading cleaning companies in the education sector and we got the list, we contacted them, we market to them. We built relationships. We went to conferences within the school market and we've built a good reputation now brands. And so that was only about three years ago, and Troy has been on for five years. That was only about three years ago that we went yes let's get focused on this. Let's do it. And I know I call it you know, now you're not shooting bullets, going where's my clients, where's my clients, hope they'd come to me, hope they come to me. Now, most of the schools in Southeast Queensland, we're still yet to go throughout Australia, but they know of Cleanworks.

If they'd going to tender, they know, okay, I want to invite Cleanworks to the tender list, so that when you're in that position, that's when you know, okay, it's a bit of a game changer now. So, that was it.

Sean: [00:12:05] It takes courage though, right? Like, you know, there's this moment where you're going; we kind of cutting our nose off to spite our face, like we're going to have to start sort of saying no to people, or we're going to have to sort of maybe turn away some opportunity, is there enough? So, it sounds like you were doing some research to really validate that there was enough market sort of size if you could get access to it, but it still takes courage to really kind of focus and niche down. Did you find that in the process?

Kelly: [00:12:28] Yeah. I didn't feel that because we were still saying yes to other offices or other industries that would approach us and we were still doing some marketing, but yeah, I suppose you're hoping, okay, let's make this work, but coming to my mindset, I'm pretty strong in that area with the mindset. So, I don't think I was so fearful. I was like, if there's a market and I always say this to business owners, if there's a market and a need, like that's tick-tick. Like you're going to get clients, it's not a blue ocean strategy. So, for people who don’t know that, new technology, new thing that people don't even know about. Kombucha was one of the stories with no one knew about Kombucha so it was very hard for the founder there now he's I think a billionaire.

Sean: [00:13:20] And you know, like, because I mean, I find this, I’m in conversations with clients about this all the time about niche-ing down and who's the most profitable customer. And if you could get rid of all clients and just have one type of customer that was the most enjoyable to work with because you know, you do a great job, you enjoy the interaction, and they're a profitable customer and they're long-term, or they're the right, you know, who would that customer be? And let's get really clear about it. And the beautiful thing about a B2B business is that you can actually get the list of your customers, to your point, who is the customer, like who's the actual person in the role in the company, you get the list of your customer, if I could get those hundred customers, it would change the dial on this business. That's where you want to get to, from a B2B perspective, right? To your point, if you spread yourself super thin, you just don't have the bandwidth to do that. And you never become an expert in everything and in anything. And you never develop the sort of the depth of insight into that industry and their problems to become seen as the kind of trusted brand in that industry. So, you just become sort of nothing, to no one.

Kelly: [00:14:19] A hundred percent, a hundred percent. That's exactly how we grew clients because our commercial side of the business is still at the same revenue.

Sean: [00:14:27] Yeah.

Kelly: [00:14:28] Exactly. Because of exactly that strategy that we've been able to grow. And now we’ll continue to scale Cleanworks with that methodology, with that mindset and any other business and people that I talk to, it's all about, what's your niche? Can you identify your niche? Can you identify a client, as you're saying, can you find that list?

Sean: [00:14:50] So, what about then some of the other key moments, I guess some of the constraints that you had to unlock, you know, I know from previous conversations, you've talked to me a bit about the way you built your team and the way you sort of created leverage given, you know, when you're building a business as co-founders, you end up of course splitting up responsibilities and you're both kind of managing your patch, but at some point, you need other people involved and you've got to delegate. How did you think about sort of building your team and getting yourself out of way and kind of creating leverage and the opportunity to work on the business?

Kelly: [00:15:23] So, I mean, we've briefly talked about it. Katie and I were always like we want to replace ourselves, we want to keep replacing what we're doing and then eventually, become a Non-Executive Director or Board member of the business. So, it's identifying, I suppose well, what are you currently doing, whether or not you're still involved in, you know, you're doing up the tenders, are you writing because no one else in the business has the tender skills that I have. Well, you need to look at your organisational structure and your people you either need to make some hard decisions of moving people on and that certainly has happened over the years, to find a tender writer within your business. But, I mean, as you know, to identify what's your skill sets, what's your strengths because everyone will always just go back to what they love doing, and then finding people who are good at a suppose, you know, some of the things that you're not so good at and just finding that team. But I mean, every business owner has, some business owners, they don't want to get themselves out of the business. They do want to become the CEO, the General Manager or whatever their desire is. But then sit down and ask yourself one of the things Verne says (Verne Harnish); okay, if you want a 20 million business, if you want a 50 million business, whatever the size is actually work backwards, like look at your org structure and go, well, what does my business look at 20 mil or 50 mil? And what are the people that will be needed. And sometimes it's not as easy, you know, it can take time and things do change. You've got to be sort of flexible as well, and then reverse engineer. So, yeah work backwards and go, okay, if I'm wanting to get to 10 mil, right now I'm at 2 mil. Well, what does that org structure look like and where do I see myself? Okay. Start then moving things or slowly planting the seeds. So, it's not rocket science, as you know, for everyone out there. It's not rocket science. It's just doing, it's doing, just take action.

Sean: [00:17:42] And in the way that you built your team, if I recall correctly, you mentioned to me that you sort of, I mean, you guys had done every job in the business, right? And so, you was almost sort of building up and replacing yourselves role at a time, like I managed to get rid of that role, now what's the next role, like I can almost just by one taking the load off until you got to a point where actually all of those sort of technical day-to-day things were being done. But then the question is that then that tends to get you to a certain point, right? Because that gets you to all of the operational frontline sort of things happening.

And then when you get to the leadership level and you're going, hang on a second, but where do I need to hire leaders? Usually in that process, you're kind of thinking you probably do most things, okay, maybe other, unless you're an accountant, maybe other than things like finance and so on, you can probably do some sales and some customer service and operations and all this sort of thing.

But then how did you think about who do we need as our next key hires, where we need to hire a sort of a higher cost resource that we think is going to be able to drive something or they can bring in a really important capability or are they going to take a really big load off us? How did you think about those kinds of key hire moments?

Kelly: [00:18:47] One of the biggest key hire moments was hiring Troy - our General Manager, because that was like, you wanted that to go right, because essentially, they were going to be managing the day-to-day of the business. So, for us, we wanted someone who liked sales, more than operations. So yes, could do operations, but wanted to make sure they wanted to scale the company. We didn't want to bring someone in that was more operationally focused, and wanted everything right on an operational level. And, you know, you're not growing the company in five years’ time, we're still at 6.5, but you know, QA is at 99.95%, which would be great, but we're not going to grow. So, that was I suppose just going, what sort of GM do we want their skill sets to be, was important to us. And they had to love wanting to close deals, or love the hunt. So, and now we have a General Manager of Operations, so Troy, is the Executive General manager now, we have an operational leader who loves operations and he's managing the people and that side of the business so that we can keep scaling.

Sean: [00:20:05] And what about finances? You know, you on a journey this long, you learn stuff about money, right? Whether it's the way you raise capital or how you fund growth or the way you manage your numbers. Tell me about what you've learned or kind of key moments that have been important in the context of this journey from a financial perspective.

Kelly: [00:20:26] Cash is definitely king. That's one of the things that will keep you up at night, as you know it, and that's one of the stressful things. If you run out of cash, you’re stressed, you don't know what to do. Thank God, there's only been once early on the piece that we were taught, and luckily Katie had done a property deal with her father. She had a bit of money, so she was able to just lend it and then we were able to pay it back. But the biggest learning was that was, know your numbers, especially a cashflow forecast, so we forecast 12 months ahead now, if you can do longer, fantastic. Every decision that we made, yes, you'd put it into a budget P&L, but we plug it into the cashflow that was, can we afford it? That was the biggest thing. Okay, we want to hire someone, can plug it in, and don't be we didn’t inflate sales, we will like so in the cashflow, we went sales of what are they are now, cost of goods, what they are, what expenses, if you're hiring new people, like management, plug it into what it is, don't plug it into; oh, but if we hire that person, we're going to get 2 million. So, let's plug in 2 million, because I've seen business owners go, well, I had a forecast of five mil, that's why I put it on all these people. And then we haven't hit the 5 million, now I’m stressed. And it's like, yeah, no, plug it into reality.

And then, it's the forecasting like forecast out 12 months, and also the big thing is what in your cashflow, like some people only forecast for three months, and I know some businesses it's a bit harder to, whereas the cleaning, you have set contracts. So, you know your contracts, you know your cost to goods.

And I know some with cashflow, it's a bit of here and there sometimes, but your cashflow, if things happen in your business, mainly on a downward trajectory, it won't change in three months, it will change in 12 months. So, if people are only doing three months out, they're like; oh, we're fine. And then they get to 12 months and they go, well, what happened? So, I can't stress to every business owner and people scaling, even future is to do a cash flow forecast, and just keep refining that. I've only just in the last couple of years, I had people entering certain data for me in cash flow on the backend, but I've only even just in the last couple of years relinquished. Troy, I’m allowing him to update, but it's something every week that I still go into that cashflow and I still look at it every week and I will continue to do that.

Sean: [00:23:08] And I think it's, what I love about what you said there is, many people spend time looking at a P&L and you’re thinking about, you stopped doing the management discipline to have, you know, good financial reporting and everybody stops with a P&L and a budget and so on, and then it's like, oh, balance sheets, cashflow. I don't really understand the value of them and don't understand them very well, don't have a good finance person in my corner to kind of help me unpack it or unpick it and understand it. But I love the fact that you'll default was major decision coming up, let's think about cashflow first and then worry about P&L later, like it’s actually about the sustainability and the oxygen and the business to keep going if not everything else goes sort of, you know, how much room if we got that too, I think is a really great way of creating food defence on the way, you're trying to be aggressive, but you can get too aggressive and you can build your fixed costs up way too quickly, to your point in the hope that there's going to be extra revenue to cover. Sometimes it doesn't come in or sometimes it comes in at the wrong margin or the wrong sort of product mix. And all of a sudden, they're getting squeezed because you sort of over-invested.

Kelly: [00:24:08] And you've got a responsibility to people too. So, you didn't want to hire someone that's maybe left another job and go; oh, sorry, I didn't manage my cashflow and I've hired you, and now three months later I've got to let you go. So, there was also for us that responsibility of making sure that we've got our stuff on the backend together and that we feel confident hiring them. So, there's a bit of values there as well.

Sean: [00:24:37] Kelly. When you think about this journey for you, on a personal level, what makes you come alive in business? Like, which part of business just lights you up? Do you have the most fun doing and sort of, how does that turn up in Cleanworks or the way that you build the company or the way you built the culture?

Kelly: [00:24:57] I'm probably more visionary. I love to have fun, because if you're not having fun, if you're not laughing, even when stuff happens, sometimes you just have to laugh at it. So, what at the moment, what lights me up is obviously strategising. I love learning, love, love, love learning, and I think every business owner should hopefully love to learn. There is a saying, the business will only grow as much as the owner grows. And I've always said it to myself. And so, you know, one of the things, I love to learn. I love learning about business like that. You've got to really have a love for it. You've got to want to love learning about a sales and sales team and a sales process or about operations and being the best customer service expectation, or, you know, hiring, doing a course on how to hire an a player. Or, you know, doing a financial forecast, course in Udemy. Like you've got to really want to understand each department of your business. So, you know, I love the cultural stuff in business, you know, I'm the one that brought the ping pong tables in, I love rewarding and recognising people, you know, we give out $50 my gift cards each month to cleaners, you know, I'm the one putting it on a blackboard, writing on the awesome blackboard in the kitchen that you can write to each other saying, well-done mate. I'm an optimist. So that side of that business, that's what I love doing, is bringing I suppose a bit of joy to people, raising them up, and hopefully being motivators for people as well is where I love to spend time, but all day, every day I could just strategise with someone about their business. If you don't take action now, you won't get much more of my time, but all day, like love it, love it, love it. And then coming up with just weird, crazy stuff. It's just like, yeah, go for it. Because that's what people love. I love the theatre and the themes of business, I’m a marketer, it's just great. I mean, Katie and Troy just think I'm crazy half the time, and so is my partner. You know, but, they love it.

Sean: [00:27:18] Yeah, absolutely. Well, so given that and given that you're a clearly a bit of a sort of learning machine, a very dedicated to at that sort of, you know, student of business and of life and of your own personal development, what have been just one or two of the really critical tools, books, authors, or methodologies or frameworks that have actually underpin, I guess on one side, your development as a leader or something that's been really highly impactful, are highly impactful for you personally. And on the other side, something that's actually really helped the business key decisions that you've made or the way you've been able to scale.

Kelly: [00:27:55] I mean on a personal side, obviously Robert Kiyosaki and, the Cashflow Quadrant was a big, big game changer when you first saw that as you saw that. Anthony Robbins, you know, we went to Business Mastery over in Fiji, and that was pretty cool, but on a business side of things, share training. I don't know if you've done any of that. That was pretty cool to see. He studied different businesses over, you know, the different times of their business and, I'm trying to think of his name now, he's a UK guy, but he talks about like a black hole at 17 million, and if you can't sort of see how you get out of this black hole and, you know, some people when they're sort of just stuck at that, they then just, oh, we'll just go to a new area, like a different demographic, which is what we were sort of looking at, because we were sort of in that black hole and I was aware of this black hole. So, whether it manifests to the black hole, who knows, but we were sort of in this black hole. And you were just going to go to a different demographic, but you'd still get to seven, eight mil in there. You doubled your business, but you're still in a black hole. So, trying to work out how you get out of it, anyway, we figured that out. We're pretty confident we figured that, but Scaling Up, obviously Verne Harnish. They are two of my probably different business courses and just the book Scaling Up has been great. So, not everything, like I've implemented things and some things worked and some things didn't, but.

Sean: [00:29:39] I always think of Scaling Up as a sort of, you know, it's like a launching off point, isn't it? You know, you've got to customise everything to your business when it comes to frameworks that make sense for your culture, your style and you know, the opportunity to make it your own. You know, you never have to take it off the shelf and use it exactly as it was intended. You’ve got to shape it in a way that works for you and become sort of uniquely part of your business and your culture. Can you talk to me about personal boundaries? What I mean by that is when you're a Founder and you've got your own business and you're running really hard, there's often not a lot of separation and there's some stressful periods, right? Like some periods where you're just working like crazy, just trying to get things to happen. And you're responsible for everybody and the weights on your shoulders, and of course, when the business and personal life is just completely sort of intertwined, it can impact relationships, it can impact health, it can impact all sorts of things. What sort of personal boundaries have you sort of installed or implemented over time to make sure that you've got a balance between working hard and having impact in business, but also actually getting to have, you know, some semblance of a life outside with kind of friends and loved ones and family.

Kelly: [00:30:53] I don't have children. So, I do think it makes it a little bit easier, that Katie and I both were younger when we started growing the business. I couldn't imagine probably honestly, having children and doing what we did back in the day with Cleanworks because we were up at 3AM, cleaning at night and then working all day.

So, I don't know how much insight I can sort of say to that, because back then it was just like, it took precedent. Troy has been on since I was 34 years of age, which I sort of say, like, I've been retired since 34. So, you know with that, it there's not; okay, well, I'm going to… whilst I still had a personal life, your business obviously takes precedent that time. But just things like, I suppose, when you're in your twenties, early twenties, people were still going out Sunday night, and they still are. And just things that I didn't do that because I knew Monday, I wanted to hit the ground running, and I wanted to be present for my business. What else I suppose, there was one time where, and I suppose this is more about leverage and just that next step in business is that, if cleaners called in sick, you'd have to go out and clean because you didn't want to let down the client. And then there's that time when you've got so many clients and you didn't have enough cleaners. And I just said to Katie, no, I said, I'm not going out there to clean. I will need to ring the client the next day and explain that the cleaner has had an accident. This is what's happened. And, you know, you'll get your clean the next time, if it obviously wasn't urgent. So, that was a bit of, okay, no we're putting, and she still reminded me of this just a couple of days ago, because one of her friends has a domestic cleaning business. And she's asking for a bit of help is that she's like Kelly, you said, no, we need to, you know, step into that sort of that management mindset. But yeah, I don't know how well to answer that. It was get the job done. I wanted to set up the business and I had certain goals and people around me, I suppose if they knew what I wanted and they did, they respected that.

Sean: [00:33:08] Well, speaking of people around you, what was, if you think on advice that you received over time, whether it was instructed from a book or whether it was from a mentor or a peer or a family member or staff member or whoever, what was the advice that you received that really mattered, you know, that sort of stuck with you that stayed in there and it was formative in your own sort of instructive in the way that you built the business?

Kelly: [00:33:33] You mentioned this at the start about, wow, you've been in this business for 20 years. I haven't grass-hopped. It's a long time. So back in the day when we were cleaning, we're cleaning one of our houses for a gentlemen, he had the contract for about 20 years, invested well into property.

And one of the lessons he said to us was, “I've seen so many people in life, whether it be from business, relationships or careers, they grasshop. And what I've seen from that is they usually don't make as much success as people who don't grasshop.” And Katie and I both at the time said wow, that really just sat with me. And so, with Cleanworks, I mean, there's many times that you want to get out, many times that you want to sell, but for some reason that grasshopping message lesson that he said to me, it just stuck with me that I was like, no, I know that if I stick at this, as long as things keep moving, I get it that people change for a reason and don't stay in something if you feel like it's going to head to a dead end, because that can be disastrous for you. But if you feel that, you know that it's still moving and it's still going to give you what outcome you want then, stick through the emotional hard times because there's a lot of times that you want to give up, there's a lot of times that you want to quit. So, grasshopping, I'll probably write a book on it because I see it happen. I’ve seen it happen these days with the young ones so much that they are grasshopping in their careers.

Sean: [00:35:06] it’s not popular is it? I just imagine you as being like the most unpopular judge at some sort of accelerator competition or something, it's like, okay, let me tell you the most important thing. You're not, if you don't make you know, 10 million in the next two years, I'd actually suggest you stick at it!

Kelly: [00:35:21] Yeah,

Sean: [00:35:22] And keep going to the next idea.

Kelly: [00:35:25] That's right. Or jump onto the next vehicle. You know, if business isn’t working, they'll go to property or they'll go to shares or so forth. So, like for 20 years in business, it takes you a long time to even really just start to get, grow and develop in it. So that was one. And then the other one was, my ex-partner’s father at the time, he was just exiting out of his business, build a big business. He sold it. He was quite wealthy and he knew I had just started the cleaning business. And he said to me, at 19, he said to me, it's going to take you 20 years to really start to feel like you've got a business and at 19 you're like “good on you old man”. You know, I'm going to do it in 10, you know, by 29, a millionaire, you know, and honestly, 20 years. If it's your first business, obviously now my second or third, you'd do it a lot quicker because you know, but if first time business, I say to people “20 years”” and they sort of look at me and are like huh? but that has been true for me is those two lessons. It's probably been good lessons for me.

Sean: [00:36:41] I love it. If you had your time over and knowing what you now know about the business that you've built, the industry leadership and all the other stuff that sort of, that you've learned over time. If you had your time over again, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?

Kelly: [00:36:59] Look all good in hindsight, but I'd probably want to grow quicker than the 6.5 mill that took sort of 15 years. So, I'd probably, I mean, I should have chosen a niche a lot quicker to focus on, and then leverage Katie and ourselves, probably put on a GM, maybe a little bit sooner. They're probably the two things. Um, just to grow more quickly

Sean: [00:37:28] We've always got 20-20 vision in hindsight oh, it's amazing to be insightful and wise

Kelly: [00:37:33] Yeah, that's right when … So, but right time, right. The right time when you're ready and when the business owner is ready. So, it was time.

Sean: [00:37:44] So tell me about, okay, take me out into the future now. Three years from now, you dropped a number in there earlier on, which was 50 mil. And I was like, wow, okay, this is the same ambition that I heard in 2017 when we were at 10. And now what you've almost cracked 20, you’re so close to that goal.

And now you're saying, hang on, I'm thinking now, 50. What does this business look like? What would that mean to you?

Kelly: [00:38:06] Look, five years. We've put a BHAG on five years. So, BHAG is, well, let's just go for it. Let's just have some fun. We're piloting something at the moment, which obviously I don't want to tell, but yeah, we're pretty excited about it. We feel like we've got to get another game changer, another X factor, so it would be, five years’ time, 50 million and more in Australia. We're predominantly a lot in south east Queensland, but definitely we'd be going to Sydney, Melbourne and expanding, and more senior people within Cleanworks. So, CFO and Katie and I would definitely have more of that board presence. So, at the moment we're still strategising, which we love and so forth, but it would probably be the CEO strategising, CFO with the financials just bigger. So that's where we see ourselves at this stage in five years’ time. So we'll see what happens.

Sean: [00:39:11] Very exciting. Very exciting.

Kelly: [00:39:13] It is.

Sean: [00:39:13] Well, I have, I mean, I have got millions of questions and you and I could just talk for hours and hours, but I ask every guest this question, I'm always fascinated by the answer. I want you to imagine… this segment's called ‘Above all Else’. Okay. So, I want you to imagine you go right out into the future, into your yearning years for want of a better word. You know, you've achieved what you wanted. You started as many businesses you've wanted, you've created heaps of value in the world for you, for customers and for your staff and for yourselves and the CEO of the world's largest global community of first-time Founders, tens of millions of first time Founders hungry for information, trying to figure out how the hell do I scale this thing, I’m stuck and I'm stuck and they're looking for wisdom and you've got this great opportunity. This huge global platform, but a kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to give them your three above all else's, you know, to finish this sentence, the CEO asks you to finish this sentence. “The three things you must get right as a Founder, if you want to scale are…””What would be your three above all else?

Kelly: [00:40:18] Oh, big, big question. What are the three things? Don’t over analyse, honestly, just get on with that, take action, take action. I know this is more than, I’ll summarise each three things, but it's the fear that people just, they're so fearful. And so imagine when you're 70, you're going to be going to yourself or 80, what the hell was I so scared about? So, picture yourself at that 80. Because the fear at 80 we'll just go, I feel like people's fear at 80, like when they died and go, how ridiculous. So just what did I say three things were don’t over analyse, basically get on with it, stop being so fearful and have plan, have a plan, work the plan is probably a big thing. You've got to have a plan. You can shoot a bit from the hip but I'm a planner… plan, plan, plan. So, tweak the plan. There's honestly, there's probably more things than three, but you know, I plan, plan, plan. People say to me all the time, I mean, I go over and over things.

I drive my partner crazy. I drive Katie crazy because I just all repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. And it's like, oh, okay we've got it. I'm like, well, I need to go over it again. But just go and do it, people. So, what is the alternative? That's what I say to people. What else are you going to do?

Sean: [00:41:54] that’s right, what if you don't find out, what if you don't find out whether you can achieve that, or can go after it. You actually just don't know. Well, Kelly, I have absolutely loved our time today and I would really like to acknowledge you. You know, one of the things that was so exciting for me about this is, you know, the business is not a wiz-bang widget. You know, it's a service-based business. It's doing things that people have been doing for a long time. It's not reliant on some incredible technological innovation, but it just shows that actually sticking to your guns, the way that you guys have just hussled, you know, 15 years to get your first 6.5, and then this sort of rocket, but, you know, to your point, you could have given up numerous times along the way, but you stayed firm, you felt responsible for your people. You wanted to keep working at it. And you'd had these fantastic, you really sort of latched on to some really key principles that guided you through that period. So, I just really like to acknowledge the way you and Katie have really sort of hustled, stayed firm and I'm so excited for you to be enjoying the fruits of your labour. And I love that you are now elevating your, you could easily be going, okay, like, that's us, like we're done now, but you're like, you know what? I got plenty left in the tank. Let's go for something that's fun and exciting…

Kelly: [00:43:05] Yeah, exactly.

Sean: [00:43:06] So, that's beautiful. How can people get in touch with you or follow what you're doing? How would they find you?

Kelly: [00:43:15] LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, and I'll think about whether or not maybe giving my email address.

Sean: [00:43:23] Well, we can put it in the show notes if you want to, but LinkedIn's fine. And the Cleanworks website as well.

Kelly: [00:43:27] Cleanworks, so www.Cleanworks.com.au, really simple. But yeah, kind of connect with me on LinkedIn. Send me a message if you want to chat to me more than happy to help people out, as long as you take action.

Sean: [00:43:43] I'm with you on that.

Kelly: [00:43:44] I'm a big one for action. Don't waste my time.

Sean: [00:43:47] I'm with you on that.

Kelly: [00:43:47] And no victim thinking either.

Sean: [00:43:51] That's it. That's it. Well, thank you.

Kelly: [00:43:54] I’ve had a great time. Thank you, Sean.

Sean: [00:43:55] I'm so glad and I really enjoyed it. Folks, I hope you've enjoyed the show with Kelly. Huge thanks to you, Kelly from Cleanworks. A couple of things before you go, if you got value from the podcast today, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It really gives a great kick along to our team who work hard to put it all together for you and also helps other people find the podcast, which is appreciated. If you'd like to be the first to know when new episodes drop, just go to the website www.scaleupspodcast.com, drop your email in there. You'll get notified when new things drop, but you also get notified when free tools and resources, which are under development drop. If you're a social animal, just find us on any social platform @scaleupspodcast. And remember, the only thing, and Kelly is a perfect example, the only thing they can guarantee that you won't scale is actually giving up. So, you have to stay unshakable in your faith that you're going to get there, but you remain flexible in your approach. You've been listening to the ScaleUps Podcasts. I'm Sean Steele, and I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Thanks so much, Kelly.

Kelly: [00:45:00] Thanks, Sean. Thank you. See ya. Bye.