Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Sean: G’day everyone and welcome to the ScaleUps podcast, where we help first time Founders learn the secrets of scaling, so they can fulfil the potential of their businesses, maximise the value that they can create in the world and make bigger decisions, with greater confidence. I'm your host, Sean Steele and I'm joined today by Glenn Keys of Aspen Medical.

Now, many of our audience will have heard of you before, how are you today Glenn?  

[00:00:29] Glenn: Really well, thanks very much, Sean.

[00:00:31] Sean: Wonderful. Well, we're very pleased to have you here and I can't wait to dig in today and I'm sure the listeners will understand why in a moment. For those who don't know your background, Glenn, you grew up doing training, testing, flying, engineering and logistics support in the ADF, followed by five years at Raytheon which is a big defence capability partner, as the GM of business development and strategy before founding Aspen Medical in 2003, which was almost 18 years ago. Now, does it feel like a long time ago, or does it feel like yesterday?  

[00:01:05] Glenn: It feels like both. Sometimes it feels like a million years ago and other days, it feels like yesterday morning.

[00:01:12] Sean: Yeah, no doubt. And so you are currently Executive Chairman, and you've got Bruce Armstrong in there, running the business as the group CEO. For those who don't know, Aspen Medical, just to give our community, some insight into what it is that you do, you now have a team of over 3000 working across Australasia, the Pacific Rim, middle- east Africa, the U.S and the UK, outsourcing healthcare solutions, which means it could be anything as simple as a single paramedic, all the way up to providing full solutions like ambulances, medical facilities, actual medicines, practitioners, the surgical teams and the aircrafts. The list goes on, I mean, to put it in perspective folks, Aspen Medical is the only commercial organisation globally to be certified by the World Health Organisation as an emergency medical team, capable of deploying specialist surgical and outbreak response times, which I think is just staggering. When you started the company, Glenn, did you have that in your mind, as something even being possible?

[00:02:14] Glenn: No, I had no idea at all. We knew that we wanted to create a business that would do complete health care solutions, and we knew we wanted to create something where people would be better off because of what we did. Of course we wanted to operate globally, but we had no idea where this journey would take us, or the jobs we would do and the good that we would deliver to people around the world, in some of the most challenging environments, you can imagine.

[00:02:45] Sean: I can. You know, when you think about orienting a team or an organisation around a full organisation like yours, that has real impact on people, that becomes even more difficult when you're doing this across multiple continents, multiple disciplinary teams and having to scale up so quickly. Maybe Glenn, you could give us an example of a typical client, or somebody who might engage you, whether it’s a government, or an NGO, or otherwise, who’s the client, what's the problem and how do you develop solutions?

[00:03:24] Glenn: So those problems typically for the clients that you're referring to, fall into two categories, there are those who've got the sort of long-term planning model where they put out a tender. They know they need healthcare, perhaps to a workforce in rural Queensland, or they're a government that wants someone to come in and clear a surgical waiting list.

So, they're all pretty standard. That's a tender, you’ll write a response, it might be open or it might be restricted and then you'll develop a solution and a pricing model and negotiate. So that’s one side, but the other side is where you get a phone call from a customer, it could be a government, or an international NGO, like the U.N. or the WHO, or it could be a corporate, who says, we have a really big problem and we actually have no idea how to fix it. And you say, okay, and typically they will then say, can you fix it? And you have to go, well, I don't know yet. What we're going to do is sit down with you and scope the problem, try to understand it and see if there are any limitations on the sort of people we can deploy? Maybe there are some cultural issues regarding what we can deploy. Maybe there's some gender issues. Maybe we can only be deploying women if it's a maternity wing and we're deploying it into a particular culture. Maybe there are some budgetary constraints. Maybe there are time constraints. We'll then overlay all of those needs and demands, bring them together and then develop a solution. Then we go straight back to the customer and say this can't be delivered within the constraints that you want for the following reasons. For example, maybe it can't be done within the budget, maybe it can't be done within the headcount, within the timeframe, but you try to be clear with people about those things and explain it to them. And that's been really, really helpful because we don't just sit there and say, we can do everything you want. We have to be able to say, I can do what you want, or I can't do it. And if I can't do it, here's why. Or maybe I can recommend someone who can help.  

[00:05:40] Sean: Well, maybe I can do a part of it and maybe there's somebody else.  

[00:05:42] Glenn: Yeah. Maybe there's a different way to do it than what you're thinking about.

[00:05:46] Sean: I'm just imagining some of those conversations, Glenn. Some, of course that are methodical and thought out, because they're long-term planning oriented, as in, they've thought about the budget and so on, but others that are complete crisis mode, like something's really is an incredible emergency, it's crisis oriented.

How do the conversations about budget play out in a circumstance like that, where they're just going, this needs to be solved, like, yesterday?  

[00:06:11] Glenn: Yeah. What we try to do is at least give them then a ROM costing. So, we'll work with them and develop a solution and then we'll develop a ROM, you know, a reasonable order of magnitude, then we'll give them an idea of where it lives within, then and see whether they can live with that. And then we try to define it down.

So, we say, okay, these things, these elements, we know really well. So that's going to cost you this much, this bit is going to cost you this much. Then there might be some that's up to them, you know, can you guys help with maybe moving equipment or people into a location, or do you want us to do that? Can you help with facilities, or do you want us to bring those in? So, we'll go through and then just refine down each one of those to just give them more clarity.

[00:06:57] Sean: Okay.  

[00:06:57] Glenn: Yeah, when I was learning test flying, as you can imagine, one of the things that's always important is no surprises. And that's how we try to be with our customers as well.

We don't want them to be surprised by an unexpected cost or an unexpected delay, or an unexpected timeframe. You want to co-create the solutions with them, so that they are with you every part of the journey and every step of the way. So they understand what is being created to support their needs.

[00:07:30] Sean: There’s some real learnings in that, not just in the co-creation model for many B2B businesses, which I often still see today, you know, they think they've understood a problem, go off and develop a solution and then come back with the thing fully cooked, as opposed to actually co-creating along the way, where there's really sometimes an opportunity to increase the bind.

But often the solution might look a little bit different and it might have saved people a lot of time, because of those expectations of being aligned all the way along.  

[00:07:55] Glenn: Yeah. And I'll just pick up a point you said there, you might be able to grow even more business. There's actually something to be said for looking at it, co-creating it and going, you know, this is not what you want to do. This is more than that and you don't actually need this huge solution.

It could be smaller than that. It could be because you've over- cooked it here, or you've misunderstood the requirements, but you want to say it in a way that's sensitive to them, because they're obviously under a lot of pressure. We've found it's far better to do that because they will come back to you again and again, because you develop that position of trust with that customer and they'll use you for other work.

They'll refer you to other people and say, oh, you know, Aspen came to us and they did all of these things and we trust Aspen Medical, so maybe you should have a chat to them. However, we try to treat every customer as we would want to be treated. We would want someone to be honest with us, we'd want them to be straight up

And tell us if what we've proposed is wrong and try to give us the most cost-effective and value-driven solution and service.

[00:09:02] Sean: Absolutely. If you were to take us back to the genesis of the business and, you know, I guess how you were thinking about it in the first place, tell us about the inception of this business. What were you thinking? What problem were you trying to solve, considering how it's evolved since then?  

[00:09:17] Glenn: They all will come with context and you know, you look at what drove you into those decisions. At that time, I had left the military and I'd actually, uh, in, in my potted history, you gave, you missed a small piece, which was my wife and I have a son with down syndrome. So, I left the military because we needed stability to look after and support him.

Also, there was a really critical piece of work to do, being a start-up at that time, which was there was a lot of work being done by outsourcing companies that were very low level - cleaning, cooking, driving vehicles, that sort of stuff. But governments were starting to realise that there was now another layer of costs that they could outsource that was much higher. For example, engineering, design, test flying, all that sort of stuff. And so, this start-up was to target that bit of the market and I was recruited to start that company and build it. So, that was very exciting. That was the company that got sold to Raytheon, that you mentioned. So, we built that up to about 80 staff in three cities across Australia and were doing quite a lot of work.

It was very exciting and then we went to Raytheon. So I've been a part of understanding that formative stage of government outsourcing higher end activities where they'd say, you know, can you actually not just do the engineering design, but then go and install it in the aircraft. So, we were doing black box recorders and night vision instrumentation, really high-tech interesting work. Anyway, working at Raytheon, I was now able to greater understand a global company and how a global company interacted and leveraged off what it would do in one country to another, which was very exciting.  I was in England with a very, very good friend of mine, having dinner and he said, look, I just want to tell you about what Tony Blair is going to do.

Tony Blair is going to completely revolutionise how healthcare is delivered. And, you know, I have to say in all of the history that you read about Tony Blair, I don't think he's been acknowledged for really what was quite a seminal program in healthcare in the UK. At that time, the NHS was the third largest employer in the world, only the Chinese army and the Indian railways had more staff than the NHS. And so, as you can imagine, a lot of people in the UK health system had grown up in the NHS and their models of engagement and development and thinking came out of the NHS. Even when they went to work at private companies, they took a lot of that NHS thinking with them. Some of it is golden and is copied around the world, but perhaps it needed a bit of a refresh as there were quite significant waiting lists. England was one of the very first countries in the world to try to deal with long waiting lists and how to get people more efficiently through the system.

So, this friend of mine, a wonderful guy in the health system said, you know there's a real opportunity here to bring different thinking into England, into the NHS, to address this and I think it's a business opportunity. So, I went back to Australia, I was still working at Raytheon, chatted to a friend of mine who is a doctor and also ran his own successful business and said to him, you know, here is a real opportunity that you should look at. And he said, well, you know, government tendering and project management, it’s not what I do, mine’s a large, number of retail businesses around Australia, but that was private, not tended out of government.

Then he said, why don't we do it together? So that's where we started. The very first work we bid on was in England with the NHS, initially doing a consultancy on how to take a two-year waiting list down to six months, and then down to six weeks. We then won the contract to implement that and to actually go and do it, so that was exciting. We cleared thousands of hip and knee replacements, minor orthopaedic procedures and thousands of outpatient appointments across all these sites in the north of England and it was an amazing opportunity and a great way to start the company.

[00:13:47] Sean: And was that sort of two guys with a great idea and a response to a tender. And then it was like, okay, you've got it and you're going, wow, we actually have to get a team now. And then you had to sort of scurry and talent pool and find all these people. How did you get the right sort of people to support your first implementation?  

[00:14:03] Glenn: Yeah, funnily, it was as easy as what you just said. It was actually hard too, because we had two projects in different countries, neither of them are Australian and we had to deal with that. Also, we had won this contract in the UK. So there were seven teams across seven sites in the north of England, to clear 5,000 hip and knee replacements, 7,000 minor orthopaedic procedures and 5,000 outpatient appointments. At the same time, we'd won a contract working for the Australian government in the Solomon Islands and had to procure all the material to set up a hospital that would do primary care, pathology, radiology, dental, pharmacy, have a ward, have an emergency department, have surgery, have environmental health, ambulance, ER, medical evacuation and we had to buy all that equipment, ship it to the Solomon Islands and set it up. At the same time as we were starting seven sites in England. And, there was me sitting at my dining table in Canberra and we didn't have any staff.

[00:15:10] Sean: Wow, and obviously you pulled it together.  

[00:15:14] Glenn: We did. It was an incredibly stressful time and we tapped all of our resources, you know, we really bet on ourselves. I remember one day having to come home and we had payroll due and we were not due to get paid by our prime contractor for another 10 days, but we were due to pay salaries the next day.

I came home to my wife and I said, ah, we're short, a hundred thousand dollars in salaries. So, we pulled out all the bank accounts, laid them out on the table and emptied all the accounts. That gave us the one hundred thousand dollars and allowed us to pay salaries and get through to the next week, where we had the next invoice paid and that could be paid back. But it was, you know, I still remember my wife sort of saying, you know, are we there?

Do you have everything? Because I still have the kids supersaver accounts from school if we need to tap into them. And I went, I don't, I want to hang onto those, we may need to eat, so you can see we really bet on ourselves several times to make that happen and pull it together. But what really counted, what really made it work, was just the amazing people that we recruited and who came to the company, many of whom still work for us today. They were just incredible people, incredibly dedicated, really flexible, very agile in their thinking and they took the problem and made it a solution. And that's where our real success was, getting great people, giving them a clear target and letting them get on and get it done.

[00:16:55] Sean: And I want to come back to that thought because, you know, we talked offline about some of the ingredients that have allowed you to scale up and some of the philosophies I suppose, and you know, that level of agility and hiring the right people in sort of inculcating, that kind of culture, where you're able to do that and the business model that allows you to do that has been really pivotal. One of the things that's interesting about that story is it was probably one of the first step changes. And of course, the business has gone through other step changes since then.  If my stats are correct, you guys have won $1.3 b worth of contracts in the last 18 months through to this month, is that right?  

[00:17:34] Glenn: Over a two year period. But that’s been a lot of work we’ve  won in a lot of period of time. In actual fact, we're now sitting at about seven and a half thousand staff worldwide.

[00:17:49] Sean: Seven and a half thousand. Wow. And that's off the back of these contracts primarily?.  

[00:17:53] Glenn: Yeah.

[00:17:54] Sean: Yeah. Wow. So let's come back then to the agility and the talent pooling because maybe we can start with that. I mean, that's a significant amount of pressure on a business and for those people who don't think services businesses can scale, well I guess you're listening to a founder who could probably say that maybe there's different ways to do that. Scaling an organisation in services is often really challenging of course, because it is people. Fundamentally, it is people and it’s capability, quality and what it represents.

Also, it’s your ability to continue to uphold the reputation, represent the reputation that you've built so far that you said is so important to this company, but then to do it at a really rapid scale is incredibly challenging. So, tell me what this experience has been like for you in the ability to scale that quickly?  

[00:18:43] Glenn: I think on top of the ability to scale, the other challenge we've got is working in a COVID environment as we don't get to travel around the world. We’ve been moving some people, but it's hard, as everybody knows and  you've got to really rely on your people on the ground. That could be in New Guinea, it could be in Fiji, the Middle East or America, but it also can be in Western Australia and Queensland because you just can't get there to see them. So, you have to trust them and you've got to have the right people in the job. You need to give them a clear indication and then you need to listen to them.  

So, you know, we were talking only today about an opportunity and I thought it seemed like an absolute monty for us. I had one of my very senior guys say, we just don't don't think we should be doing this right now. It's not a great job and it's not a huge amount of money. We need to keep our eye on the prize and this is what we should do.

You know, I'm always sad when I say that, but he was absolutely right. It was the right thing to do, to not chase that. So, scaling in a COVID world is just like  taking something to the 10th factor. It's hard, but it's got to be done with good people, but in saying that, you also have to listen to them and know what you should and shouldn’t chase.

[00:20:10] Sean: And so, it’s the ability just to still say no, right? I don't think that changes at any size of a company. In a conversation that I had with a Founder yesterday who said that the biggest thing that they've done to get to double the size of that company in last three years, was to start saying no to more stuff and really niche down on that customer and get really clear about the value of what they need to create and who it is they're trying to serve and just be willing to say no to everything else, because the shareholder expectations and everybody wants growth, and everybody's got an opinion and a view and this sort of outside pressure.

And as your building up your fixed costs base and you’re trying to make sure everybody's fully utilised, it can be a really vicious cycle. And so, saying no sometimes gets harder as the company gets bigger, doesn't it?  

[00:20:54] Glenn: It does and as you get bigger, people see what you do and they go, well, if you can do that there, why can’t you do this here? And sometimes the answer is, I could have done that if I hadn't done this one first. But you're right, it is hard to say no, particularly when you're on a roll, you want to be able to keep growing and keep doing that business, but it's got to be good growth, it can’t just be growth of anything.

[00:21:18] Sean: So, coming back to the agility that we talked about before, I can imagine this sort of talent, pooling exercise is a whole orchestration in and of itself, so that you can scale up for these rapid response type opportunities. What do you think about that sort of talent pooling and the culture of agility?

[00:21:40] Glenn: It's fundamental to us and you know, I've gone on about it quite a lot already. So people are really fundamental to who we are, but it's not just the people in your company. I think what a lot of people forget, is that we've had a lot of people cycle through our company. They've come and enjoyed it, have worked in Indigenous or remote communities, or have gone and done surgery, waiting lists programs, or worked in Africa on Ebola.

Then they go back to their normal job, or go onto another job, or get promoted, we've maintained close contact with them and created that alumni so that many of the opportunities that come to us, come from people who have worked for us and reach out and say, oh, I just thought you might be interested in this, or I'm working here and we need a hand, can you help us?

Or you know, I've bumped into people and I'm sure I recognise them from somewhere, and they go, you know, this is my third time working for Aspen Medical. I think a lot of people think that the only people you should pay attention to are the staff that are in your company that day. However, it’s the people who've been in your company who are your advocates. They are out there, they know you and people will actually say, oh, Sean, you've worked for for Aspen Medical in the past, what did you think of them? They are your advocates, they are your alumni and they should be treasured and supported.

[00:23:05] Sean: Hmm. Yeah. A hundred percent. You mentioned to me the way that you actually establish the projects and the resourcing around projects is also something that sort of helps with that agility and the ability to take on additional work, sometimes quite rapidly. Can you talk a bit about that?

[00:23:24] Glenn: Yeah. Sure. So, when we were starting the company, we knew that we would need more people because we wanted to grow. We knew that the sort of work we get is typically short notice work. So, what we did was say, how do we get ready for that? A lot of our customers will pay us to have a project manager run the project and so he or she is usually in the country working on the project and running it. What we then did was fund a deputy project manager, who would sit under them, and that was our cost, but they were there to provide backup, someone for the project manager to talk to, someone who could step up if the project manager was on leave.

If we wanted a new project, we could take that project manager and move them to the new project and then the deputy project manager would step up, and immediately you'd have your most skilled person running your new project. And they're, you know, that person who'd been working in their shadow, their mentor/ mentee behind them who'd been there as their protégé, now taking over that project and that allowed us, and still allows us, the opportunity to scale.

[00:24:33] Sean: What a wonderful career building and professional development opportunity for them knowing that actually there's going to be some opportunities sometimes that you might not feel quite ready for, but you're going to be thrust into the limelight and given the opportunity to leave, but you've had that mentoring opportunity and you've been able to see how it's done.

That's a wonderful way of building capability in the business.  

[00:24:52] Glenn: Yeah, it has just been invaluable for us.

[00:24:58] Sean: In this kind of organisation, one that moves rapidly and has many moving parts and tentacles, systems of course play such an important role. How did the systems evolve over time and how have they enabled the scale?

[00:25:14] Glenn: Look, they have obviously evolved and they started with none. Quite honestly, when we started, our very first systems were those written on the ground for that first project. We wrote those there, we wrote the ones we needed in England, and then we started to backfill, bringing people into executive roles and filling them up within the organisation.

One thing we'd always considered important was accreditation. So, we got ISO 9,000 quite early, which was great because it forced us to make sure that we had all of our policies and procedures. I'd been involved with that in other companies and a lot of people think that, you know, policies and procedures and quality accreditation force you to do business a certain way.

But I said, no, no, no, it's around documenting the way you do business. You know? So don't go and try and change the process, just document what you do well. Now, the joy of documenting a process is that when you do that, you go, wow, that looks quite inefficient. And so, you use it as an opportunity to improve and refine.

And as you grow, you need to change those and amend them, but that quality accreditation has been critical throughout our history, and it has helped us grow systems. Then we've moved on, you know, we've rolled out our ERP program that isn't just here in Australia, but reaches out to every single entity we have around the world.

So, you know, we continue to grow and develop our systems, but you know, such scenarios change, so you bring in new ones, you know, now that all the cyber security has come in, we're moving towards all of that accreditation. We're going through all of the necessary demands of our customers. So, you know, we have a number of oil and gas customers who have very, very high standards, you know, privacy standards that are above those of Australia.

So, we adopt those standards worldwide. If we have to pick it up for one customer in England, then we adopt it for the world, then we know that we're at the highest standard, no matter where we need to be.

[00:27:17] Sean: That's fabulous. I remember Flight Centre has a sort of, you know, one way, our way, which is also one way, the best way. If we find out a best way of doing something, we're all going to do it that way. And then the goal is to iterate that, make it better, but then again, standardise it.

So, I love that sort of taking best practice and taking the high watermark and applying it everywhere. In a business like this, given the need to scale up and large contracts, you know, large customers, who've got, you know, some long-term things and some very large pieces of work, that means you've probably in the past also had challenging periods where you've also had to scale down, when you come off the ends of these large contracts. Can you take me through any of those sorts of challenges?  

[00:28:02] Glenn: So about eight years ago, we won a very large contract, double the size of the company. It was for four years and it was hard to scale up to their requirement. It was a customer with very high standards, justifiably so. And so we met that requirement and it was hard work, but it was good work, and we did really well. I was very, very happy with it. We knew the end date because it was a period contract and that when it came to the end, we knew it was coming, and we scaled down. What was challenging out of that and what I really learned was that there were a number of things that were quite baked in by then.

So, while we thought we were scaling down to where we were previously at the 50% mark, in actual fact, there were things that we thought we were getting rid of, but just seemed to be baked in. That became quite challenging then to do those reviews and go, why are we doing that? Is that the most efficient way to do it?

Do we still need that capability? If we do, can we do something different to make sure we make back that cost? And so, you know, there was a bit of the 80- 20 rule. The first 80% was easy to get rid of, the last 20%, that was 80% of the effort.

[00:29:20] Sean: Yeah. And you know, in a people organisation, that's also incredibly difficult to do because you've probably recruited some wonderful people where you're thinking, I know we need to scale down, but that's talent we don't want to lose, like that's a capability that we might need in the future.

How did you wrestle with that as a board?  

[00:29:38] Glenn: It did come down to a board decision because we got to a position where we had to do one of two things. We either had to dramatically reduce the size of the company, to get those costs under control, or make a decision that we were going to invest in the future. But as you just said, Sean, we didn't want to lose those key staff who were critical to being able to ramp up and deliver on projects.

We don't want to see them go out the door, but we still need to get back to being a profitable business. So how do we do that? Path 1, dramatically reduce overhead and offshore work and get rid of staff. Option 2, actually invest in the future and in ourselves. And that includes more business development, looking hard at all your procedures, working out where all your costs are and seeing am I billing enough?

Am I spending too much? What do I do there? And how do I win new business that's going to support this, or grow the current business to do that? So, it came down to that as a board decision and the board decided on option two. So that was a big deal for the board, but it gave some real clarity around where we wanted to go.

And so that’s the way we focused and it meant that when we had some opportunities start to come up at the beginning of last year, around support for a whole range of those activities at the beginning of COVID, we were ready to go because we kept the staff we needed. We had the right people on board and we'd also worked to refine our procedures to get them to be quite cost efficient, at the same time as rolling out system-wide system-wide ERPs.

[00:31:29] Sean: Well, I love the fact that if you think about the number of bets that you've had to take on the business, you know, on the way up, this was a really challenging bet that, you know, with much higher stakes, more risk, more people involved in the company, more opportunities that are going to be won or lost as a result.

And you said you doubled down, but as a result, you also got access to opportunities that you wouldn't have been able to otherwise get to help people  and to provide a great service to people who needed it.  

[00:31:55] Glenn: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And you know, you look back on it now and you think, that was a big call, but, looking at it logically, balancing all of the pros and cons, because there were pros and cons for each model, that was where we thought we needed to go.

[00:32:14] Sean: Glenn, can I ask you what, what makes you come alive in business and how do you feel that sort of shown up in the way the organisation has evolved to where it is today?  

[00:32:25] Glenn: Well, I love a challenge. I love a complex problem. I love when a customer says, I’ve got a big problem at the moment and I don't know what to do, and then I love working with the team. I don't have the mortgage on knowledge. I don't very often know the answer, but what I think I'm good at is working with our team to develop that answer and really asking those sort of, you know, dummy chairman questions, such as why do we need that and why are we doing that? Could we do this like that? But working with that team as they develop solutions is just, I love that. And then getting those packages, taking them back to a customer, having them sign off and then delivering, that is just

amazing. If I look around, you know, I think about the work we did in Iraq during the war in West Mosul, where we were asked to go in and run trauma and maternity hospitals. At the end of 15 months, we had treated 48,000 civilian casualties and we delivered 3,000 babies and we'd stood up a number of hospitals with Iraqi nationals.

So, we hadn’t just ridden in on a white horse with a bunch of foreigners and set up the hospital and said, aren't we good, then left feeling good about ourselves. We recruited Iraqis, who were just fantastic clinicians, co-designed and created all of the operating procedures and methodologies, we had everything in Arabic and English, and had them invested in owning how it ran and then slowly recruited until we were 100% Iraqi run, then handed the hospitals back to the Iraqi ministry of health to run, and left that asset there. You know, that legacy that we've created, I just love that. When we were in Timor and Ramos Horter, who had done so much as a freedom fighter for the nation, was shot during an attempted assassination, was brought into our operating hospital. Our team operated on him for six hours, removed three high powered bullets to delivery section.

We put 12 units of Australian soldier’s blood through him, and it was our aircraft that flew him back to Darwin and our ambulance that took him around to Royal Darwin Hospital. When he came back to Timor, he presented the Timor solidarity metal to all of our staff who'd been at the hospital, the only civilians to ever be awarded the medal, it's reserved for the military or police, or other uniformed staff.

And, you know, you'd look at, and you think what would have happened to that country he had died? It probably would have descended into infighting. Whereas now, you look at where Timor is, as a burgeoning new country in the world, with a democratically elected government. You know, when I arrived there were  

5,000 people living in plastic tents in the middle of the city, supported by the U.N. By the time I left, there was a Gloria Jean's cafe underneath the 3D motion picture theatre in the centre of town. And you just look around and think, we had a part, a small part, but a part to play in a whole nation getting back on his feet and having a real solid future in the world. Those are the things that keep me passionate. That's what I love doing.

[00:36:04] Sean: Wow, what an incredible legacy to leave and to be able to use business as a vehicle for good to provide those services and you know, for your team to be able to sleep at night and tell those stories to their children about what they got to contribute to. What are we here for if it's not for service to others? What a wonderful way to be able to do that as part of your profession and as part  of the company that you work for.  

[00:36:33] Glenn: Yeah. And look, we're a private company, but we see ourselves as a partner. You know, public health has a critical role that we can never replace. And so, working closely with government, working closely with public health services, other health providers, the community, I think that's when we see the best out of all of us, it is when we're collaborative.

There is no one answer to everything and it's understanding where your role is  and what you're best at that, this is critical. I think this is one of the reasons that we have such a strong group of people who work in the company, they also believe that Aspen has a very strong social purpose at our core.

You know our staff turnover rates are half that of the healthcare industry and when we talk to people about why they stay, it's because they see that the company has a strong social purpose, that we can benefit shareholders and benefit the community. We can make a profit, but we can also make a difference.

And I think that's very powerful.  

[00:37:34] Sean: Yeah and I always think, fundamentally in the absence of profit, what have you got to invest in your ability to scale your impact? And if you're in a business that creates impact, surely you want to be able to create as much positive impact as possible. You need profitability to do that. It's not an ugly or dirty thing, it's fundamentally part and parcel of your capacity to invest in yourself.  

[00:37:53] Glenn: I think the language is changing now and it's right to change, about not for profits. There aren’t really not for profits, they have to make a profit. Not because they need to operate, they just don't distribute it to shareholders. They decide to either save it for another day, to reinvest in a new capability, or to buy an asset, but they're still making a profit.

[00:38:17] Sean: Yep.  

[00:38:17] Glenn: They just decide to redeploy it towards another methodology.

[00:38:21] Sean: Yep, it's not a sustainable model if there's not profitability. Glenn, can you take me into the future? What does Aspen look like three years from now do you think?  

[00:38:31] Glenn: It's a great question. We will still be a health care company. We're not going to diversify into construction, or get into areas that don’t relate. I think we will continue to grow our service offering to our current customers. I think technology is already a big part of what we do, but it's really going to grow.

I think the last 18 months of COVID has supercharged the engagement of technology in just about every business, so I see us being a tech-enabled business, no matter what we do as a healthcare solution provider, I see us being in more geographical regions than we are now. And I see us delivering pretty much anything that you need from a health point of view for our customer base.

That's what we provide. We already provide corporate, occupational and mental health and I think there's going to be an explosion in that area, so we'll continue to grow in that area, as well as all of the normal health services that are wrapped up, but I would like to see us continue to grow and continue to deliver a legacy wherever we are needed.

[00:39:40] Sean: Well, that sounds like an exciting future for you and your team. Glenn, I have one last question for you and that is a segment that I call “Above All Else”, I ask this of every Founder who scaled up an organisation, and that is… I want you to now go out into your yearning years. So, let's imagine a time, or actually, you know, even as the executive chair, you're like, okay, maybe I'm ready to put the tools down for a while.

You've still got heaps of knowledge in your head and you get a call from the global CEO of the world's largest community of first-time Founders, tens of millions in their community, of people still trying to scale their first businesses, looking curious and hungry for ideas and lessons and learnings.

And she gives you a once in a lifetime opportunity to crystalise some of your greatest wisdom for this group. And she says, I'd like you to finish this sentence, Glenn, above all else, the three things you must get right as a Founder if you want to scale are? What would be your three things?

[00:40:35] Glenn: You have to be genuine. You have to be true to yourself, true to all of your staff and true to whatever mission you have. You must have a value set and you must live by them. So, you must do exactly what is required. And the final thing is, you must be prepared to bet on yourself, because if you won't bet on yourself, you can't ask anyone else to do that.

[00:41:04] Sean: Wow, absolutely beautifully said, Glen and thank you for sharing that, I know that is incredibly constructive for Founders, anywhere they might be listening or watching this today. I would really like to acknowledge the way that you built this company. I think, you know, you mentioned to me some words, like, overnight success that might've taken,18 years, everybody gets to see the big shiny balls at the end, in terms of the impact that you might be having, but they don't see the slog and the bets that you had to take and the emptying of the bank accounts around the kitchen table to make payroll and all of the times where you have to sit around at board level and think, you know, are we really willing to back these things because we've got options, right?

You know, we can make different decisions here, but we're going to go all in because we believe in this business and we believe in these people and the impact we can have. I think the heart-centred approach that you've taken to this business and the faith that you've put in yourself and your people, is really a wonderful thing to watch. So, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today. How can people follow along with the company or with yourself?

How can they get in contact or follow up?  

[00:42:08] Glenn: So, well, we are on a lot of social media. We're on the web. We have Aspenmedical.com. We have Facebook, we have Twitter, we're on LinkedIn and we'd love to have them join in our story, see what we're doing and how we contribute, whether it's contributing to a contract, or contributing to the range of philanthropic organisations that either corporately or our staff support, we'd love to have them follow our story on any of those platforms.  

[00:42:44] Sean: Wonderful. Thank you, Glenn. We'll make sure that all of those are available in the show notes for people. Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed the show today. Huge thanks to Glenn Keys from Aspen. Before you go, of course, if you got value from what Glenn had to say today, and I think you’d be pretty hard pressed, not to have, we'd love you to provide a review on Apple Podcasts, that helps people get access to this podcast and gets it into the hands of more people like yourself and of course it gives our team a huge kick at the ones who work so hard at putting this together for you. If you'd like to know when new episodes are going to drop, or you'd like access to free tools, or resources that our guests provide, just jump on the website, scaleupspodcast.com. You can leave your email there, or you can send us an audio message via SpeakPipe on the right- hand side. Feel free to ask us questions or give us a comment that you'd like to get through to myself, or one of our guests, to handle in the future on scaling in your own company.

If you love the socials, you can find us on at @scaleupspodcast on any of your favourite socials. But remember, before you go today, the only thing that can guarantee that you won't be able to scale, is to give up. It's going to get hard and it's not going to be easy, you're going to be faced with stuff like Glenn's faced over and over again, scaling up and scaling down, every one of those growth lines that you see on the chart is full of jagged little ups and downs.  And you can easily get off when the going gets tough but that’s the thing that will guarantee you won’t scale.  So, you have to stay unshakable in your faith that you’re going to get there, but incredibly flexible and adaptive in your approach.

You’ve been listening to the ScaleUps Podcast, I’m Sean Steele, look forward to speaking with you again next week, and thanks so much Glenn.

‍