Podcast Transcript

Sean: [00:00:10] 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 their businesses, make bigger decisions with greater confidence and maximise the value that can create in the world. I'm your host Sean Steele, and I'm joined today by Owen Firth, the Chief Employability Officer at Readygrad which puts a smile on my face every time I say it…and the co-Founder of Gradability. How are you today?
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Owen: [00:00:34] Very well, thanks Sean.
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Sean: [00:00:36] Excellent. Well, look, I can't wait to dig in together. We've obviously known each other for a little while and we probably first met seven or eight years ago. It feels like a while ago. I'm conscious that not everybody's going to know the brand, but you have multiple brands going on in your group from Performance Education, Gradability, and Readygrad.
And I wondering just in terms of us kicking off today, whether you could give the audience a bit of an overview of the timeline of how the brands came to be from your start back in 2005. And what sort of problem does each brand solve and who's their customer, just to give us a bit of a sense of the businesses, that'd be great.
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Owen: [00:01:12] Yeah, a brand journey is always quite an interesting reflection of evolution of businesses, I think over a long period of time it certainly was for us. So, actually, we were all about solving I guess graduate employability challenges and we initially identified that in international students who were studying in Australia who were trying to break into the workforce in Australia and it was a huge thing.  We used to say we were solving the overqualified cab drivers. And then everyone went; ah, now I know what you're doing. And we initially focused in… I'm going to answer your question…  we initially focused in on that communication skills were the number one challenge, but in a business context. And so, the very first name for the business was actually called Performance English.
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Sean: [00:02:02] Oh right.
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Owen: [00:02:03] And it was designed to be a business focused, sort of corporate focused English language training business, and it very quickly we identified that there were a bunch of other things in addition to communication skills that were needed, and so that brand then evolved into Performance Education as a broadening of that remit, which then evolved eventually into Gradability as we sort of grew up and knew who we were.  Gradability was obviously a combination of graduate and employability, and as we figured out, actually, what problem are we really trying to solve? And it's a broader problem, not just for international students, not just communication.  It needed to be broader workplace readiness, job search skills and internships and work experience programs to really get graduates job ready, and the last brand was Readygrad. So, it sort of evolved into Gradability as a group name. We still had Performance Education as our international student focused brand, and that had some resonance in that space. And then the Readygrad brand actually came about through an acquisition, so we acquired a business that another guy had started that was more focused on working with universities and supporting them in helping their graduates and their students become more job ready.
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Sean: [00:03:41] I guess, so that was covering domestic students as well from the university.
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Owen: [00:03:45] Yeah.
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Sean: [00:03:46] Got it. And you do hear a lot about thatover the last few years, there's been a fair bit of attention at the same time on universities and graduate outcomes. I know having a year 10 myself, and he's just getting to that stage where they're talking about their subject choices and what comes after and just if you think go back sort of 15-20 years, and you think about the sort of default position of most parents to go, university is a ticket to a better job and all the rest. And at the same, this is a big question mark, for a lot of parents these days, because the question is, well how much do you spend?
And is there an outcome and how employable are you and does it make a difference. That’s an interesting journey.
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Owen: [00:04:21] Yep. There are the alternatives now. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. I think, you know, when we started there wasn't a kind of terminology around graduate employability.  There wasn't really a conversation. We saw it, and I saw it from the perspective of being in recruitment and seeing the young people coming through and failing, particularly those international students that come here, great talent, great raw talent, you know, great capabilities, great characteristics, but just not breaking through the traditional channels and not having a broad enough kind of skillset. But you know, I remember knocking on the door of university. I thought, we don't necessarily have to sell to students directly because we know that's going to be challenging. We can just go and approach the universities and sign-up contracts with them, or at least get referred to them. And honestly, I knocked on doors and was like, sorry, what? Do they have a problem when they leave university? I don't know because we sort of waved them goodbye at the gate and we actually don't know. I had a few enlightened ones who said, yes, I'm really concerned about this, but at the time it wasn't sort of a strategic priority for universities.
It is very much now. And I'd say probably the last five years, it's evolved quite rapidly. I'm not sure that strategy has equated to dollars invested or resources invested yet. But it's certainly in the top five strategy, you know, strategic directions or strategic imperatives for most universities.
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Sean: [00:06:01] Correct me if I'm wrong but in the last changes in higher education funding hasn't that been a key indicator as well, that had them prioritise and increased funding or decrease funding for certain kinds of degrees because of the employability.
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Owen: [00:06:19] Yeah. And that really happened for the first time. I think it was a couple of years ago and it was an extra round of funding that the government offered universities and tied it specifically to graduate outcomes. And the other thing is I think the regulator, particularly in the higher ed space has really focused on, you know, what are your outcomes? What are you doing to create more employable graduates? Because I think the numbers, you know, 80 something percent of students are actually doing a higher ed course to get a job. So, it should be very natural that we're having that conversation about measuring graduate outcomes and what steps are you taking to generate those? But that was not the traditional mindset of most universities and most people within universities, but that has changed.
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Sean: [00:07:09] Got it. And so given these three brands… are all three of these brands still market facing brands?
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Owen: [00:07:17] The only really the Performance Education and the Readygrad are … if you like… product or service based brands. Gradability was an overarching brand.
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Sean: [00:07:29] The sort of umbrella company?
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Owen: [00:07:30] And I should add that more recently, the Readygrad brand has split out from under the Gradability entity, and I actually acquired that out from my other shareholders, but might be for later discussion.
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Sean: [00:07:47] Okay. No worries. Well, if you consider, the key audience for this podcast of course is Founders many whom are first time Founders or still sub 10 million in revenue and they're trying to scale and they don't necessarily always know what's coming, but they're also really interested to get a sense of what other people have been able to achieve, and some of the challenges and some of the key decisions that you’ve gone through. Can you just give us a sense of the numbers? Sense of scale you've been able to achieve through a numbers perspective over that last 16 years or so.
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Owen: [00:08:19] I love your comment about that. Like, they won't know what's coming up and either way, they won't.
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Sean: [00:08:25] Yeah.
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Owen: [00:08:25] But the opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes, particularly I think, and experiences and at least have a bit of a heads up on what might happen. I think it's really valuable. So, we started as a sort of a concept in 2005. I think we probably got going in about 2007, and really getting things moving. And we raised capital in about 2008. Once we'd sort of proven a pilot, I suppose we wanted to raise capital off the back of a pilot. So, by about 2012, I think we were doing about 4 million. So, sort of from 8 to 12, we were sort of finding our feet, 4 million revenue. We probably had 20 staff or something like that. And that would have been, I think we just opened Melbourne. So, we started in Sydney, opened Melbourne, I think around 2011, something like that. And then by about 2016. So, we went from about four. Our real fast growth was 2012 to 16 from about 4 million to 28 million. So that was like just crazy time, but then we went again, we had another big growth spurt from 28 to about 50mil over the next three years. So that was a bit of a rocket ride.
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Sean: [00:10:13] When you were at 4 mil, did you expect that you were going to get to 50, were you even thinking about 50 mil when you were at 4, or like what was your sort of mindset when you were at 4 in that context? So just evolved very quickly where things came together and you scaled up.
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Owen: [00:10:27] Yeah. A bit of a combination. So, just taking a slight step back, my co-Founder ran the business for those first four years. And got us to 4 million. So, you know, got things off the ground. He sort of tapped out at that point. I stepped in. I stepped into run as CEO at that point. And I think all along, I had a bigger belief in the business. It was actually my business concept. So, I wrote the business plan and then found him as a co-Founder because I just didn't have the bandwidth. I was running my recruitment business. I had my arms full, you know, we were going pretty well in that business. And he was a guy who I knew from Uni. Knew something about training, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, I won't credit the timing to me, but what it was to answer your question is, I saw this as a big deal. I saw this as, you know, we can really change the game here. So, I think I believed it definitely could be way bigger and you have to think big. And I think my co-Founder thought relatively small. He saw this I think as a small business.
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Sean: [00:11:48] Got it. And so then can you tell me about the differentiation. So, you know, I've noticed that some Founders seem to, you know, sort of serial entrepreneurs or those who've built multiple businesses sometimes have a way of building the company that sort of encapsulates the their differentiation and they sort of almost replicate that each time they start a new business or buy another business and others just take a very product-centric approach to differentiation, and really look at that value proposition of value propositions in the market. How did you think about it given these three different businesses? How did you find a way to carve out something differentiated that enabled you to scale?
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Owen: [00:12:32] That's a really interesting question. I mean on one level, I look at that and say, okay, is there always given me the entrepreneurs DNA in the business and is that part of a success factor? And very much only part of it right. Because a whole bunch of other things got to happen, there’s big team that helps you get there. But I think you do, you know, you put your natural stamp on it for better or worse and there's good and bad bits to that. For instance, you know, I drive pretty hard to achieve stuff, I don't do it in an aggressive way, but I am dogged and persistent and desperate to get to when I can see something, I want to be the first there. I want to get there. I want to solve it, and I really push hard and push myself hard, and I push up us hard, but, you know, kind of encouraging way more carrot than stick. It's like, we've got this thing that we can achieve and get other people on that bus. So, I think that's something that I bring to the table because I can't help myself, and it comes with like an enthusiasm and a passion and a genuine desire to fix something. And I think that's some of the DNA that I come with, and I think that just differentiates us in terms of just, you know, the culture that, that creates and then how much you can actually achieve with that. Look, I think in terms of the business / product set, that sort of stuff. I mean, I'm always thinking about that. I mean, there was something I learned really well in my MBA. You know, that whole notion of product differentiation. And so, I'm really quite obsessed with that. I'm always thinking about and looking at what others are doing and actually more so generally at the start, knowing what it is you're trying to do differently. You know, you must be in there trying to do something differently or better. If you don't have that notion, that's a dangerous place to be, I think.
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Sean: [00:14:53] Yep. I agree. It's very easy to end up with just competing on if there's sort of nine features offered by every product or service, and if everybody's competing on the same nine, just trying to eke out a bit of differentiation on one of them. It's pretty, it's a sort of modular eroding kind of model number one, because you're just saying yes to everything and customers are asking from all you keep giving more. And it's not a very sustainable model, you know sometimes you really have to just choose not to compete on some things and massively out-compete on others, and it sounds like you really been thinking about the problem, you know, I've heard you say the word numerous times. I like solving the problems. I'm thinking about how do I solve this as a problem, as opposed to just, how do I look at what competitors are doing and do something different? How do I actually solve the problem in a way that's compelling to the customers, is that right?
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Owen: [00:15:43] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But I also think there's another element to that I think if you're solving a problem that bugs you, that you're passionate about, that you're almost obsessed about that's what gets you through the hard times. It's too hard. It is really, really difficult being an entrepreneur and building a business from scratch and growing it, like all of the time. I love it. I wouldn't do anything different, but it's bloody hard. Like there, there were elements of taking a pay-cheque away that, whilst those jobs can be really difficult and challenging and consuming. There's another layer above that when you are thinking of, always thinking about payroll or always thinking about where the next sales have coming from, you've just sort of got a void in front of you. So, I think when you're driven by a passion, I'm not the first person to say this either. You know, this is a classic thing, but certainly it's been my experience. That's the thing that just can get you up in the morning when you're just getting punched around by the world. It's a huge part of that then I think naturally leads you to differentiation because you trying to do something that's not being done as opposed to okay…. I want to get into post-it notes. How can I do post-it notes better? Well, what problem are you trying to solve? Are post-it notes not working for you, do you wish they weren't yellow? Well someone's done that. Do you know what I mean?
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Sean: [00:17:19] Yep. Absolutely. Well, speaking of some of those, you know, sort of alluded to some of those periods that are challenging, I'm interested in really unpacking some of those key moments with you, you know, the things that really changed the trajectory on your growth. I know offline, we talked about a few of those things and sort of sales first approach, some of those challenging step changes, you know, 10 to 50 people or 50 to 100 people, a 100 to 200, almost 200 people, and stepping back from the business. So maybe can we start with the sales first approach? What did you mean by that?
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Owen: [00:17:53] Yeah. So, I've always had this mentality and I started life as an accountant, right. I knew nothing about sales. I read the One-Minute Sales Person book, which is a hundred years old, and it was super simple and it changed my view of sales, that it's not something that you do to someone, which is this scary and negative aspect of view of sales. It was how do you help someone get what they need? And if they don't need it, move on and find someone who does. So, since I started my own business in recruitment, back in the late nineties, I've always had to have, and have had a sales first mentality, which is if it's not for sales, everything else, everything else is academic. It doesn't mean it's the only thing, but it should be the first thing that you're thinking about in the morning, particularly when you're growing the business because you take your eye off that spinning plate for five seconds and suddenly you don't have enough sales coming in the door. And of course, there's time to build the pipeline and you know, you're going to need team, new prospects to get one or whatever your numbers are. So, that's just what I constantly think about. I know what the numbers are in my head, what we're doing daily, weekly, monthly and even when we were big, that was the one set of numbers that I stayed across. I'd probably, there were other numbers that I didn't stay across as I probably should've. So, that's what it is. Just getting up and thinking about that first thing in the morning, which means then you're going to ask questions, then you're going to talk to your sales manager first. You're going to track metrics first. You're just not going to let that ball slip.
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Sean: [00:19:42] And you're also going to have to be caring about what's going on with the customers, because if there's something going on with the sales, all of a sudden, you're noticing a variation, you go; hey, is something changing in the market that we're not talking about? If something happening with our customers, there's somebody new in the market? There's the problem being solved in another way. Like, what's going on with the problem. That's all of a sudden, if we haven't changed, maybe something on the other side.
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Owen: [00:20:01] Yeah, absolutely. Those things naturally flow and it's not sales at all costs. But it’s, if you're not attending to those things, like the quality of what you're doing, then it's not sustainable sales anyway. So, you know, we were very focused on going back to your differentiation question, we wanted to make sure that it was training, it was education with genuine outcomes, we wanted to get these kids jobs. We wanted to get them absolutely job ready and make a difference. So, we started measuring those outcomes. We started measuring everything, measuring NPS scores before well, there were a lot of people doing it globally, but it probably wasn't that prominent here in Australia. Certainly not for a little company. We started measuring NPS scores very early on in the place, because we wanted to know exactly what was going on. And of course, they're awesome to use in marketing if they're going well for you. So, we were kind of know monitoring the quality around sales very early in the pace.
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Sean: [00:20:59] And for anyone at home who doesn't know what an NPS or just hasn't heard of the NPS before that's a Net Promoter Score. So relatively… to your point, probably much bigger in the States than it is in Australia, but certainly has gained a lot of ground in the last sort of 15 and 20 years. Net promoter scores give you essentially a rating from the people who promote your brand versus those who are neutral versus those who are sort of detractors from the brand and you come up with a score and it really helps you understand how things are going. And you can measure. that, of course, that same…you can do that same survey at multiple points along the journey. So, you can see if it's changing, you know, from the time they're first engaging to parts of delivery to the parts afterwards. Okay.
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Owen: [00:21:40] It's a punishing measure.
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Sean: [00:21:42] It is, yeah. It can swing pretty fast if something's going wrong. So, from a sales first approach, you know, if I think about some of the takeaways from some of the Founders, particularly who maybe aren't from a sales, you know the people who have come out of a technical background or an operational background. And they may still have those beliefs around sales being a bit dirty or a bit sort of, you know, I'm pushing something onto somebody else. So not only do you really have to get over that and understand that sales is about serving, but then to your point, if you're going to have a model, particularly a model that has a high fixed cost structure, you want to make sure that you're on top of that sales pipeline every single day because if that thing falters and your fixed costs are going up in the background… great and wonderful if you've got some incredible variable cost model and it just goes up and down with revenue, but if that's not the case in many services businesses, that's not the case. Yeah, that can be pretty problematic. What about some of the stage changes because you've grown from a business that had 20 people some time ago and then you hit somewhere around 190 FTE or something. So, you went through some real, there's some big step changes in there in terms of management structure, how you build culture and leadership. Can you tell me about some of those sort of key inflection points and maybe what some of the challenges were and things that you learned in those stages?
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Owen: [00:23:05] Yeah. We also went to five locations across Australia, so I'm not international, so we didn't have that level of complexity. But, you know that always adds a couple of dimensions as well. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's hard to reflect, because it it's such a rollercoaster and whirlwind. It's like a roller coaster in a whirlwind that things just, just kind of evolved and happened and we responded. But I guess where you naturally respond is you just, you need enough people to start to support the growth and then you need some structure to go with that because naturally you can't have everyone reporting to you at the outset. So, structure starts to form. So, you know, despite the tools that the MBA gave me, I'm not sure I applied any science to it. It was more around, okay so now we've got five people in sales, we probably need to make one of them a sales manager, because I'm not managing five people.
So that's kind of how that went. And then you look and say, well, can I promote one of the five people? Or do I need to bring somebody in? And that's kind of how the structures form, actually that's it. I did, there was one deliberate change, which was when I took over the running of the business, we were a brand structure. So, there was a sort of a branch manager in Sydney, a branch manager in Melbourne, and then sales in Sydney and Melbourne. So, there was sort of duplicated
Sean: [00:24:48] Reporting through to the branch managers.
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Owen: [00:24:50] Yeah.
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Sean: [00:24:51] Yeah. So, there are like mini sort of GM's with their own P and L?
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Owen: [00:24:55] That was the view of the world. And that probably was okay with two locations, but, you know, we were starting to look at a third location and again, viewing it as a bigger business, I flipped it to a national model and national functional model. So, we had national sales, national sort of functions. So again, I think that's a natural evolution, but I saw that as something that helped me to kind of control the growth, I suppose, better. And also to remove duplication, which I saw was going to happen every time we opened a location.
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Sean: [00:25:34] And you really end up with a… you know this is an evolution that many Founders will find themselves going through where they’re going…  do we keep… we like the fact that we get all this accountability with a localised model, if we've got multiple locations, a localised P and L owner but you also lose functional expertise. So now you don't have a national marketing manager guiding all the marketing people, the national sales manager guiding all, setting best practice, making sure everybody's achieving best practice and perhaps some relationship between the local manager and the functional leader to ensure that the functional expertise is being transferred. The processes are being standardised, the technical development of those peoples happening from the centralised expert, but there's still a local relationship that's there. And did you find that difficult to find that balance in terms of, as you were sort of growing the relationship between the local person and the functional sort of individual?
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Owen: [00:26:31] Yup. It seemed really logical at the time to do this national structure. And I think it was inevitably the right way to go. But over time, you end up creating this head office thing, and god forbid I wouldn't use those terms again if I guess we did use them. I can't remember what we officially call it, but that kind of arose over time. And then you get a bit of push and pull between the local, you know, [Cross Talk] if you like, and what head office wants. And I thought, god, I never wanted that business. Like that was so against my view of the world and the culture that I wanted. So, yeah, that was a battle. So we've left some localised pieces. So, sales was localised in most states, except in particularly smaller operations, at least until they were big enough to establish their own, because that was a lot of relationship selling. We were working with a lot of agents, and seeing students on the ground, all that sort of stuff. Sort of campus management, if you like, or facility management was localised and they gave their own spin to it. So do we find it hard to keep the balance? Yes. Was it sort of a constant mission to figure out, you know, what do I want versus what's happening? That was on reflection. I think it was one of the biggest challenges in the growth when I look back is I said early on too, the small team of people as we grow this thing, I'm so passionate about culture.
We've got a great culture right now. And I don't want to lose that as we grow. I said, I've read lots of books and heard lots of speakers and stuff. And it's a classic problem that as you grow, you lose the culture, but I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to stay focused on our culture and I'm going to retain all the good things.
And obviously it will evolve over time, but I make sure that we retain those really important things, because I know that is absolutely a secret to growth and great things. Right. All of the books around that stuff, you know, Jim Collins, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I was a real subscriber to that. Did I succeed? No. Despite being really conscious and really focused in investing time and effort in values, creating values, recreating values. We redeveloped our values three times over the course of 15 years. We did stuff around them. We were active in it. It wasn't just a thing on the wall. You know, we had a purpose statement, which also evolved two or three times through that period. People were involved in creation of those. I think we did try to do all the right things, but at a point I found that, and it goes back to the sort of the head office thing. I found these things creeping in and when I saw them, I was surprised and appalled. It was very personal, sort of personally pissed off that we've become this, or I'm seeing signs of us becoming this, and I actually on reflection, I actually put that down to one main thing. So, we did all these other things, but the one thing I think I got wrong and I would do differently and I am doing differently as we grow the Readygrad business independently, is being much more-bloody-minded about tying hiring to cultural fit.
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Sean: [00:30:14] Right. Okay. So, how does that show up? So, let's talk about that for a minute. So, what does that look like in practice for someone who's heard about the concept? It's really important and you've got to hire people that are a good culture fit. How do you do that, how do you know if somebody is a good cultural fit or not? Are there any tools or frameworks that you've used that have helped sort of elicit, you know, might be some of the snakes in the grass or, you know, smoking gun somewhere that you think, oh, there's something going on here. That's not going to be a good fit.
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Owen: [00:30:42] Yeah. And yes, you're right. It's a bit of a fussy topic, I think. so, for me, and just for me, the way that distils down and what I've anchored it to, I suppose, is identifying a set of behaviours that either you want in your business, if you're not there or you want to preserve and propagate in your business if you are there. So, the team I've got at Readygrad right now, I think were absolutely handpicked and nailing an incredible culture where there's a whole raft of things in there that I'm super happy with. It's amazing. So, I'm back at that point with 15 people where I'm like, aha, lesson learned, right? And so, we went through a process of distilling a series of behaviours, and they're actually up on the wall there behind me that formed. So, there's a value and then there's some simple behaviours that sit under it, we took those down to really common words. Not grandiose management statements or whatever. Just really common words that say these are the things that we want to see and we want to continue to see in the business. So, those behaviours can then be mapped to in the recruitment process. So, you know, do I see evidence in this person that I'm interviewing that they are proactive, if that's one of your behaviours that you expect to and want to see that they take accountability? All right. So, they're the things on my interview check list. So, Sean, tell me about a time when, you know, you've had to be proactive, or, you know, resilient or whatever the thing is. So, that actually forms the guts of your behavioural interviewing. You can use assessment tools to validate some of it as well. And I will be actually way more focused on assessing that and not hiring if I'm not confident.  I hired too many people…. not too many… I hired quite a number of people and approved the hiring of a number of people who I wouldn't have hired if I, I just needed someone in the role and it had taken time. And again, this kind of pace that I have, and I want to get there. I want to get there. I want to get there. And I'm like, I talk myself into it despite maybe having some misgivings.
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Sean: [00:33:15] It's so interesting too, isn't it? Almost the difference between am I hiring for cultural fit or am I hiring for cultural contribution? Like, do I expect that culture to stay exactly locked down and therefore you are in our out, or am I looking for somebody who fits, but we'll also help add something out, a flavour that we like, add something that we'd love to see in our culture. It's an interesting challenge.
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Owen: [00:33:40] And I definitely say propergating, you know, I talk about propagating the culture, which in my mind means, fostering what we have, but definitely it evolves with all the things you bring to the table. But I think if you define those behavioural traits, and you're hiring to those. That doesn't mean everybody's the same. It's certainly doesn't mean, you know, I think that's one of the misnomers about cultural fit. Right? I need people that look like me or act like me or come from the school I went to, you know, all that nonsense. That's not getting you a diversity of experiences and capabilities and styles. And I think you can still actually get and all of that, but you're gunning for a core of critical behavioural traits that you want. And that can come from a raft of backgrounds.
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Sean: [00:34:33] Can I ask you one more question just on the stage changes, you know, one of the things that's really challenging sometimes for Founders is… and subject to whether you have run a bigger business yourself… and what your passions are and what your strengths are and what your interests are.
How does that influence, which leaders you bring on and which leaders you bring on first and, you know, are you bringing on people to plug in your weaknesses or are you trying to… how did you think about, what did you learn about yourself slowly getting yourself out of the way. And eventually, stepping back from the management of the business, how did you think about your role and your strengths and your weaknesses in the building of the roles and who you hired first and second and third?
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Owen: [00:35:14] Yeah. You learn a ton about yourself when you're stretched through that growth and it was my first time of building a business of that scale. So you’re just figuring stuff out as you get along and you're putting every damn thing you've got into it, and through a lot of that, I was doing coaching as well.
So, I got, you know, executive / business / life coaching (they’re probably all one and the same), but external coaches who could really help me in a safe place, learn about what I was doing and unpack what I was doing or what I wasn't doing. And that was really, really helpful. Particularly at those kind of moments where I felt like the business had outgrown me or my capabilities or what I actually knew was supposed to happen next. So, you know, you have these almost crises of confidence at various points. Absolutely like the, what the hell am I doing or what I'm doing? You can't say that to your team. Well actually, to be fair, I did say that to the team. I was happy to share my kind of stuff I didn't know, but I wasn't happy to share how concerned I was about not knowing. So, that was where coaching was really helpful. Now I've forgotten what the original question was.
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Sean: [00:36:47] That's okay. I've got so many other questions I'm going to, rather than backtrack, I'm going to move you forward.
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Owen: [00:36:52] I get it.
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Sean: [00:36:53] When you reflect on this journey and all the challenges, and all the wonderful times that you faced, what are you proud of?
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Owen: [00:37:06] I mean, there is nothing better than knowing you hatched a plan, a business plan around a concept and an idea, and then seeing it become something significant with a whole bunch of people with onboarding to that idea and what you're doing. And as part of that, same people that are super passionate about it and saying things that were your phrases, like things become vernacular based on stuff that you say.
So, you know, that sounds fairly egotistical, but it actually just gives you a buzz. It just gives you an absolute thrill to sit back… I can remember sitting back at our 10-year anniversary. And you know, we were probably sitting at 25 mil or something and we'd done amazingly well. And we had this big anniversary too.
And one of the things… I was super proud just to sit back and reflect and hear from other people and, and all this sort of stuff and see what we've done, but you know, one of the things that made me super proud was we, at that point, I think we had a really awesome culture. We lost our way a couple of times, and the team just decided… when I say the wider team, someone spearheaded it unbeknownst to me… so we created a couple of graphic presentation things and stuff. Unbeknownst to me, the team went ahead and created and did a call out for videos, for people to create their own videos about the organisation and what it meant to you and their journey. And they put it together into this video that was a surprise to me.
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Sean: [00:38:45] Cool.
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Owen: [00:38:46] Yeah, I don't know about this. And it was people singing songs, doing dances, doing group skits. And it was all around the business and their experience and kind of stupid things and meaningful things. And it was absolutely, you know, I desperately tried not to tear up when that was on because they took it upon themselves. There was a heap of passion, a heap of life, it was just amazing. So, to this day, I still remember that and how powerful that was. I guess the only other thing I would add is just, again, just key milestones. So I was always adamant about celebrating key milestones. I remember we celebrated, I mean, this was a sales-orientated one, but with everyone we set celebrated million dollar a month. We had a million dollars in sales for a month. That was like…it was unthinkable. When we hit certain targets on how many students lives that we've changed. We did a bunch of different things around that. So, I think, just ensuring that you, you know, you are stopping and celebrating those moments and reflecting back the other things that they can just charge you up and charge other people up to soldier on and genuinely make you proud of looking back. The only other one I would add is testimonials from students. Like we would get these, and I pushed everyone. If you get something good from a student, send it to everyone. Send it to everyone. Because someone randomly in the business would like, thanks, Jane, for really helping me out. I got this great. I ended up getting this great job with, and then Jane would keep it to herself. I’m like Jane, you know, there wasn't a Jane, but you know what I mean, share it with everyone because everybody wants to feel this love because everybody's played a part.
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Sean: [00:40:32] Yep. They don't have to be the one talking to the student, everybody else's making that whole thing come alive. And did you keep a copy of the video that the team made?
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Owen: [00:40:44] I do. I have it on my computer.
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Sean: [00:40:47] You did better than I would. There's no way I would've got through that without tears, that's very impressive. Can I ask you, through that journey and you mentioned coaching on that journey, one of the things of course that’s challenging when you're a Founder is who to get advice from… where is there a space, where do I get to be vulnerable and sit around and go, I have … to your point… I have no idea what I'm doing right now. Like I'm just making this up. I hope I'm right. I could be absolutely wrong. I've been trusting my gut for the last X years, but this could be a complete mess up. Who did you get advice from or what's a piece of advice that you received and from who and how did it impact you?
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Owen: [00:41:25] Yeah. I'm a sponge for advice, so it's just advice and information. So, I would smashed through audio books. Everything I could get my hands on in the car, on the bus, going to the gym, go for a walk, whatever. I would try to nourish the body and brain, right. Big cliche but people say, oh, I don't have time for, but I read fiction books before bed because I go to sleep in five minutes. So, I'm so exhausted. So, I can't read business books like that. And so I do that, I did lots of networking with other peers. When I was in recruitment, I had a lot of buddies who ran recruitment businesses and lots of stuff. I joined EO (Entrepreneurs Organisation) about six years ago. That's been amazing in terms of entrepreneurial peers. It's like, you know, a safe place and therapy for entrepreneurs. I call it. It's not, but it is. So it's actually really hard… and coaches, of course, I've had maybe three or four coaches over the course of my starting businesses and running businesses. Look at couple spring to mind that have helped, but there's just a gazillion of them. If I go with, particularly the coaches are the ones that have helped kind of nail a few things, particularly behaviourally like they, because you're stretching yourself. I guess it's like, I don't know, an athlete having to really push themselves to get those extra seconds or whatever. It's the coach that helps you do that, but it's actually yourself and your own mind that get in the way when you're being pushed it to that level. So, one great one was, “you can only control what you do, think and say”. What you can do, think and say they are the three, that is the sum total of stuff that you can control in this world. And it really liberated me from feeling like I needed to control what other people do and how other people react to things I'm doing and even goes to your own children and kind of owning their stuff. And you just can't afford to own this stuff when you're moving at a million miles an hour and yes, you'd be empathetic. Of course, you listen and you understand lots of stuff. But people have the same three choices, right? Their choices are what they're going to say, do and think, you can influence them and you need to influence them to be on the same journey. But that was a big one, something around an all or nothing mindset. So, that was another one that, where I was diagnosed with, and it's like…
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Sean: [00:44:24] And what does that mean?
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Owen: [00:44:25] It's sort of win or lose. it's got to be perfect or don't do it at all kind of thing. And that might've been my original accounting background, I don't know. But, you know, now I operate on a spectrum, not the spectrum, but a spectrum, so, you know, I'm comfortable at… if 80% is the right call to get started, then I'm happy to move at 80% or 70% or just get started, just give on with the journey, let's get this ball rolling. And that was something that I couldn't have grown the business the way I did or the way we did without being willing to do that.
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Sean: [00:45:09] Fundamentally as a Founder, it's a journey of growing a business. Yes. But it's fundamentally a journey of growing yourself. Then, as you said to you as were growing through these stages when you haven't done the stages before. You don't know what's coming and somebody can tell you they blue in the face what's coming, but you're going to run into it at some point anyway. And it's how to your point, you can't control that event, you can't control the experience that occurs, but you can absolutely control just what you make it mean to you, to your point, what you think, say or do about it. And it's very easy to fall into that trap of wanting to take on everybody else's stuff when you're the Founder because you're trying to make sure that you do the best possible outcome for absolutely everybody, but that weight is just incredible. And it sounds like you've got some really sage advice in that space. I wonder, what does this business look like in three years? So, as you sort of take us out of the past and think forward into the future, what do you hope this business looks like in three years’ time? Have you got a view on what it should look like?
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Owen: [00:46:11] Yeah. Well, I mean, it's an interesting time to ask that right now. Right? So mid-covid…[Cross Talk] I haven't just jinxed that. So, deep still in COVID lockdowns, all that sort of stuff. So gosh, you know, who knows with that macro environment, but yeah we've really got now two separate businesses, the Gradability and Performance Education business, which I'm still a shareholder in, but not involved in the day-to-day running and then the Readygrad business. You know, I took over a year ago to run again as a small and grow a small business. So, you know, I could probably talk more to the Readygrad business, I think for the Gradibility business it's around, what do you do while the world is recovering and an international student based business, anyone in that space knows that it's super challenging right now. So it's, how do you sort of reinvent, obviously you have to do things like cutting costs and all that sort of stuff to adjust to changing revenues, but really looking at what do you do to survive? And that's certainly something I learned when I had a recruitment business through the GFC, it's like live to play another day and do whatever it takes to come out the other end of a period, because guess what? There was always an upswing at some point, knowing how long that lasts, you know, I don’t know. So that's that game, I think for the Readygrad business that’s still fairly fledgling in many ways and for that business, it's very much about diversifying customers and revenue streams to sort of weather the short-term storm, but, you know, be able to weather numerous storms as time goes on because they'll always be various things happening. So, at a time when, the kind of the education space we sell to universities, they're a bit challenged budget wise at the moment. So, we're still doing a lot of work with them. They do know that employability is really, really key to them, but they still have budget constraints. So, we're starting to do a lot more in the corporate sector. So, working with corporates about how to attract and connect with young talent, because we're sort of sitting between them and universities and working very much in that space. So, definitely it's a big diversification drive and we're kicking some goals in that department. So, we're probably going wider earlier than I had anticipated. But that's a direct response to our core market softening.
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Sean: [00:49:06] Makes a lot of sense. And as you said, really tricky time in the education sector globally, you know, some parts of education, at least some have got a massive tailwind. Some are just getting smashed into your point. If you stay in the game long enough, you're going to end up in positions where you're getting smashed. And so the question is, how do you do make sure that you come out of the side. Come out the other side stronger and into a market that's probably a little less crowded so there'll be a few less players at the table and the best ones will come out the other side. Well, I have a bajillion more questions and in an ideal world that I would love to ask you, but we are starting to run a little short on time. So, I have a segment that I ask all of our scaling experts and it's called ‘Above All Else’. So, I want you to imagine, take yourself out into the future.
Imagine you're in your yearning years, you know, you've achieved everything you've wanted, you've started and run as many businesses, you've created the impact that you want it to have in the world. And the CEO of the world's largest global community of first-time Founders, you know, most of them are still in that sub 10 mil range. They're all super hungry. They're curious to know like, how do I need to do this? What do I need to learn? And she asks you, gives you an opportunity to share your wisdom. She says, I'm going to ask you for your three above all else's. So, I want you to finish this sentence. The three things that you must get right as a Founder if you want to achieve scale are? That's the question she asks you to finish. So, what would be your three things? The three things you must get, right as a Founder if you want to scale, what would they be?
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Owen: [00:50:38] I will start with that sales first. Sales focus, because it's going to fail without it. I'm going to go with, create the culture you want, and create and foster and nurture the culture that you want in a really bloody-minded way because that is a great place to be, but it also gets great results. And I'm going to say as a catch-all, never expect it to be there tomorrow. And if you can harness the positive side of that, not the anxiety side of that. I think the anxiety side of that is paralysing. So, you can't let yourself think about that. When you think about though is on the positive side, if I can't be guaranteed that it's there tomorrow, what do I have to do differently today? And again, I think the COVID has proven that truism for, for many people.
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Sean: [00:51:55] Gives you a real opportunity to sort of stay on your game. Doesn't it? Never get complacent, never lose focus because things can change and you learn that over time. Right? So, it’s great when the times are good, but they don't always last. And so you got to be ready for the next one.
Well, I'd love to acknowledge you today on for the way that you build this business. I mean, number one, there's not many…it's hard enough to build a services business to 50 million, and to do it also as a first-time Founder, who hasn't built a business to that size before. You know, you are learning so much through that journey and you've been really generous with us today in your vulnerability about stuff that you've learned about yourself along the way, and that it wasn't always smooth sailing and you got plenty of things wrong along the way, but you're also managed to create some really exciting and proud moments and real service to students and really impact in the world.  It's something that's actually incredibly important, particularly for students who are coming from another country, taking a huge amount of responsibility usually and a lot of the family’s money to come to another country, skill up in the hope that they're going to create some livelihood and prosperity that perhaps may help themselves and their families in the future, being able to, to connect them with that opportunity to create the livelihood is actually a very high impact space to be in. So, whilst it's not a charity, it's great to say businesses succeeding who are doing such good in the world. So, I really thank you for that. And I thank you for your vulnerability and your wisdom that you shared with us today. How can people get in touch or, or follow what you're doing as you go forward?
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Owen: [00:53:24] Can I just add, acknowledge all the hundreds of people that helped us get there as well, because we are the sum of what everybody's done on different parts of the journey. So big thank you to all the people who've been involved along the way. I just kind of steered them a bit.
How can we get in touch? So, www.readygrad.com.au is the business that I'm running right now. And www.gradability.com.au will get you there and on LinkedIn and all the usual places.
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Sean: [00:53:59] Beautiful. Thank you very much. Well, we'll make sure those links go into the show notes. Folks. I hope you enjoyed the show. Huge thanks to Owen Firth. And thanks again so much Owen for sharing your time with us today. Folks a couple of things before you go. Of course, if you got value from the podcast, we really are grateful if you can leave reviews on Apple Podcast tends to be the main platform, helps other people find it, but also it gives a huge kick to our team like Owen said, there are many people that get involved in the production there's podcasts. It's certainly not just me. And of course, they love to know that they've helped create something that's been a value to you.
If you'd like to know when episodes are about to drop before others or you'd like to be notified when we have free tools and resources offered by our guests or experts, just pop to the website, www.scaleupspodcast.com. You can register your email there, or if you're more of a social animal, you can just find us on @scaleupspodcast on your favourite social platform. We're pretty much everywhere.
But remember, when you're thinking about scaling, the only thing that's going to guarantee that you won't scale, absolutely guaranteed, is giving up when it gets hard and it's going to get hard. As you heard from Owen today, it's going to get hard. And so, you have to stay unshakable in your faith that you're going to get there and you have to remain flexible in your approach. Both of them are required.
You’ve been listening to the ScaleUps Podcast. I'm Sean Steele. Look forward to speaking with you again next week. Thanks so much, Owen.