Podcast Transcript

Sean: [00:00:00] 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 they can create in the world. I am your host, Sean Steele, and I'm joined today by Esha Oberoi Founder and CEO of, I am going to get the name wrong! Oh my goodness. I have been practicing it in my own mind… is it AFEA? You say it for me to make sure I get it right for the rest of this podcast.

Esha: [00:00:35] I think you were focusing more on getting it wrong rather than right. Maybe that's what's happened,

Sean: [00:00:40] You pronounce it for me.

Esha: [00:00:43] It's AFEA Care Services, we’re aged care and disability providers.

Sean: [00:00:47] Absolutely, yeah. Look, I'll make sure that we give the audience a bit of context in terms of the background, because you are an Australian-based services company, delivering services to people with disabilities under the NDIS scheme, but also to our more mature population under the My Aged Care scheme, and that includes what kind of services actually, because that's in-home care, obviously case management, but what else are you doing? Financial management as well. Is that right?

Esha: [00:01:14] Yeah, we do. So we're predominantly an alternative to long stays in hospitals or nursing homes, the whole premise of the service, and the offerings that we have is we want people to live for as long as possible in their home, independently and integrated in community. So, that means that, yeah, it's pretty much from birth to palliative care. So to know sort of age differentiation, I guess the whole thing from disability to aged care and everything that is supportive services. So personal care, domestic assistance, meals, transport, and then most recently we've started doing financial management and assisting people with disabilities to make decisions around their personal finances.

So that's the form of our second brand that we've launched called Inebura and the services plan management under the national disability insurance.

Sean: [00:02:13] And what does the name ‘Inebura’ come from?

Esha: [00:02:15] Inebura. So, our vision is to be the most trusted and leading provider in the country. And, our purpose is caring for people you love. And our mission is to empower people. And so, Inebura is a Japanese word that means empower and enable, and it all kind of stems in from our vision, mission and purpose, really.

Sean: [00:02:41] And I want to get really stuck into that today because I know that you are this, you know, this is very, a big part of who you around kind of, you know, heart-centred leadership and I know you have a very deep sense of care, not only for the people that your team are caring for, but also for the people in the company, so I'm going to dig right into that today. But just to give people a bit of context as to where the business has come from. So, you founded this in 2008 when you were 24, right? So, this is the 13th year, would that be right?

Esha: [00:03:09] Yeah, we are 13 years now in the business, I don't know what I was thinking at 24. And if you, you know, if I was to have that option again, I'm not sure. Or maybe I'm just saying that. No, it's been an amazing journey. I couldn't find a job. I was moving in and out of different industries, and I just couldn't find something that was meaningful and really purposeful enough or motivating. And then I fell into a role as a carer in a nursing home. And yeah, that's sort of, I think really lightened up my spirit and six months later, which was my longest standing employment, six months. I was an accidental entrepreneur, so, I found myself pretty much incepting this idea of alternate care in the home for people that were aging.

Sean: [00:04:01] And was that a popular thing at that stage? Or was that a sort of new, was that a sort of new, because I understand that Australia was maybe a bit of a laggard behind some other countries that had been doing, had a stronger kind of income in-home care system then waited for some time. Like, what was it like in 2009 when you started it?

Esha: [00:04:18] Well, 98% of the sector even a decade ago was dominated by not-for-profits and charities. So, there were definitely not-for-profits that were doing home care services. But absolutely residential care was the bigger piece in in-care. And also the fact that, yeah, so there weren't a lot of private providers, so it wasn't popular and a lot of the funding was, it was coming straight from the government to charities. So, I guess where I sort of thought, you know, our business would be able to add value as one, it would be a private provider. So, the service offering would be a different level of quality and expertise because it would be privately funded by the individual as well, not just subsidised by government care.

Sean: [00:05:09] Yeah, And the, I'm keen to get into some of the points of differentiation around the way. I mean, because this is a really busy space, right? I mean, you will have seen a lot of change in the last 13 years from, you know, the number of people that I know that have businesses in this space and the number of people who have sort of entered the space, it has been quite significant. So, can you talk to you about the differentiation, but just for the audience's benefit, you know, my understanding is you've now probably got, if you think about the mix of your full-time equivalent staff, which is, I believe about 85 and over 800 carers, which is, if you put that altogether, it's probably about 350 full-time equivalent staff, but that's five times what it was five years ago, right? When it was like 75. Does that sound right?

Esha: [00:05:53] Yeah, that's exactly right.

Sean: [00:05:54] How does it feel when you hear those numbers said out loud?

Esha: [00:05:59] I'll be really honest with you. It sounds small.

Sean: [00:06:02] Does it?

Esha: [00:06:04] So it sounds like, oh, there's still a lot of work to do. There's still a lot of impact we can make and there's still potential. That's what it sounds like when you say those numbers.

Sean: [00:06:15] Got it. Got it. So, what about, tell me about the differentiation and I'm really keen to hear about this because it sounds like you've really taken quite a conscious approach to how you have built a leading brand in this space. And it is absolutely seems to me ultra-competitive at the moment and the number of new entrance and new players, and particularly when, which I certainly saw in the education sector, you know, when there is new funding regime, that can be quite material in saw as like things like the NDIS, you naturally get a clamber of activity and a lot of people thinking it's going to be some kind of shortcut to something wonderful. And then you have people that have actually been in the game, stayed in the game, but have carved out a really strong position. How have you thought about your differentiation? Like what does it look like and how did you decide to carve out those pieces of difference?

Esha: [00:07:10] So just to your first point, you're absolutely right when the NDIS launched these reforms, it's collectively in the next five years, going to translate into a $40 billion industry in Australia, it's huge. The disability services is a huge opportunity, I guess, for someone looking to come in. We had 9,000 providers in New South Wales alone. So, highly competitive. 9,000 providers, and the majority of these providers were incepted when the scheme was launched. They're very new. 60% of them are small or micro providers. So that's sort of just, you know, shows the landscape and the opportunity for consolidation in the future. In terms of our differentiation and with a lot of this activity and competition coming into the market, I know it sounds cliche, but I'm going to go back to culture. I think, you know, we're human services and the potential for humans to whether it’s out performing themselves or being totally unpredictable and stuffing things up, we are in human services. Our differentiation is first and foremost, our culture, and it's something that I've really focused on in the organisation.

It's as long as we look after our people and that's our, like our full-time staff in the office and our carers are really looked after, we know that they'll look after the clients. That's number one. And then I guess that number two differentiator is…

Sean: [00:08:41] Actually, sorry, before you talk about number two, let's go back to culture on number one. What would be some tangible examples of what does that actually look like? So, what is it that you do in your culture? What are some examples of the things that you do that you actually think are really make a big difference into what essentially then flows through to the end customer because you're in a services business, right? So, what are some of those things that you do differently that you think really have some big impact?

Esha: [00:09:06] Yep. Good question. So, zero to eight years in the business, like your first sort of five to eight years of very, very intense as a Founder, entrepreneur, you are highly, highly operational and in the detail, especially in a business like ours, which is very regulated, there's high levels of compliance and you need to have very, very strong levels of quality across the service delivery.

So, I'd say my first zero to eight years was typical of any other entrepreneurial and I was starting to become burnt out. And so, where this whole philosophy around looking after our people really stemmed from was my own experiences of how difficult it was for me to balance growing this fast growth organisation with my own personal self-care. And then, you know, I was getting married. I was having kids. So that just throwing all of that in the mix, that made me look into opportunities to look after myself first.

Sean: [00:10:07] Okay.

Esha: [00:10:08] I started to introduce a lot of things in my life around self-mastery and, you know, principles around self-care, starting from meditation, all the way to nutrition and sort of physical intelligence. And because of the benefits that I was seeing, the clarity that I was bringing into my role as the CEO, the decision-making started to improve, the energy levels, and so of course, that influences the rest of the organisation and the people. I thought, okay, I've got to share some of these with our people because they need to be equally resilient.

You know, if not now I'm starting to get further and further away from service delivery and those carers are still there. They're the ones doing the hardest job, which is looking after people that are vulnerable and very challenging sometimes because of the mental and physical disability they've got. So, I wanted to introduce the whole self-care program. So, our culture. So, to answer your question about the culture, it's all about self-care, it's about mental resilience. It's about really every single person in the organisation having the same tools that I do, that I have, so they can bring in the best version of themselves. And if they apply those very basic sort of tools to look after themselves, they will then continue to look after our clients.

Sean: [00:11:26] And how does that turn up? Is that something that you've designed a program that sort of everybody has to go through, or is it more about you making the resources available and it's a bit of sort of pick and choose and this self-motivation, self-interest to actually take advantage of it. How do you find that balance?

Esha: [00:11:42] Yeah, it's the second, it's close to your second point. It's very much about, you know, it’s not a program, it's really tools. And the other thing is that these tools are evolving. Like, you know, that from a decade ago to five years ago to today, the information and the understanding we have about the capability of our mindset and what we can do for brain intelligence, our gut health, you know, all of that and how it's also interrelated. Well, now we just keep introducing all of those things in, and it's a pick and choose. And I mean, I think in the future, we will start to formalise a lot of this, but I think what it's done so far is that because our people know that they are looked after and they've got the opportunity to focus on these things. It's confident in our culture and our DNA. It helps with retention. It helps with keeping the right people on the bus because the ones that are focused on their stamina, their resilience and then their best self. And then they performing at that level. We want to keep those people anyway.

Sean: [00:12:54] Yeah, and they can turn up and give more.

Esha: [00:12:55] Right...

Sean: [00:12:57] Yeah, I got it. So that's one kind of key element, so that's obviously there's a lot of things that go into culture, but that's a great example is, you know, something that's really unique to the way that you're leading your culture. What was the second point that you were going to talk to in terms of differences?

Esha: [00:13:13] Yeah. The second thing that I was going to talk to was embedding technology across the organisation. I think technology, especially in the healthcare sector is under-rated till probably now with the recent events of COVID. There's definitely an uptake but technology for us has been something that has been a huge focus right from the beginning. So, third year into the business, I think I saved up about $80,000, invested in a purpose-built CRM system, scheduling system, which differentiated us from all of the off the shelf options at that time. And because it was so bespoke, so specific to our business needs, you know, that was the thing that got us to hitting those million dollar revenue points and also the growth. I think in that, when we introduced that system in the first three years of introducing it, we were growing at about 169% year-on-year.

Sean: [00:14:06] Wow. And was that like a system that you, did you custom develop it or was it like a Salesforce backed application that you sort of customised? Like what was the approach technology wise?

Esha: [00:14:16] No. So, what I did was, yeah, I basically observed everything that was happening in the organisation that was mundane and repetitive and just inefficient, created duplication of work, process mapped it out. We worked with a developer and then created our own purpose-built. So ground up system and very, very specific to our business needs. And then in 2017-16 when the NDIS rolled out, we then made some sort of changes to that system for it to be more direct care because we transitioned our business from a B2B to a, B2C.

Sean: [00:14:59] Okay. Can you just explain that? Just give people an example of what did it look like when it was B2B? Like who's the typical customer and how you serving them? What does that look like in the B2C model?

Esha: [00:15:08] Yes, absolutely yes. So just to give you some context, when I first started the business, we were very much focused in aged care because that was my experience as a carer. So, the first eight years of the business looked like private care services, home care services, and then partnering with nursing homes and hospitals to provide them with nurses and carers. So, the system that we developed was a basic scheduling system to be able to manage the logistics of these carers and nurses, traveling geographically to deliver care. But then when the privatisation of this industry was starting to be introduced through the reforms, the NDIS and MYHK in 2016, we basically had to cannibalise every single process and technology and application, including this system to make it suited for delivery of services predominantly for direct care, because we were now competing with all of our partners. With the reforms, there is really no margins and no need to have sub-contracting level of relationships.

Sean: [00:16:21] Yep.

Esha: [00:16:21] Effectively.

Sean: [00:16:22] Yep. Got it. And so, given that sort of evolution, has that also ever been, it's clearly been a big enabler of your ability to scale the organisation. Has it also been, have there been any big problems, you know, sometimes when you end up with custom development, I don't know that you develop a runs off with code or, you know, things break and nobody else knows how to fix it because it's all been customer. Like, have you had any sort of challenges with the technology development that you've done?

Esha: [00:16:50] We've had, yeah, there's been some major challenges. Well, the first time that we hired someone, he pretty much took the money and ran. So, that was a very good lesson for me at the age of, I would have been 26 then, very ignorant and realised that it's good to have good contracts in place where you have sort of payments on delivery as opposed to upfront. So, that was the first experience. But then the second time around, you know, I did a lot of due diligence and we went with the right sort of software application organisation. So, they've been our partners till now, but we are now, again, looking at the right provider for our size of organisation. In that we had a very tragic experience in between. So, when the reforms were being launched and we were doing this major change and upgrade to our system, when they made the changes and they were going live on the day, they accidentally loaded information from three weeks ago. So, all of the information was three weeks old, which meant all of our service information and all of the service-related information that went to carers was three weeks old. So, you can imagine, I think back then we would have had 250 carers, they all went to wrong shifts at wrong time.

Sean: [00:18:08] Wow.

Esha: [00:18:09] And our call centre was just going nuts with complaints. So that took us about a month to figure out what had happened and then fix it, but that was just another issue. So, yeah, problems definitely do stem.

Sean: [00:18:23] What did you take as a lesson from that? What would be the sort of practical lesson for first time Founders who are kind of going through this process, maybe they're developing their own systems or they're engaging a supplier to help them on that journey. What did you learn from that, that you think people could take as a lesson for themselves?

Esha: [00:18:38] I think when with any of these instances, my biggest lesson is getting into the detail. Like you just can't rely. You can't rely on suppliers with your business. You've got to get into the detail. And again, in that mix, like I didn’t confirm that little level of detail. For them, it was fine for them to load up information from three weeks ago, whether that was an intention or not. They didn't realise the impact that was going to have. But if I had asked those questions, I think we wouldn't have experienced that. You know, it's really having those checklists about what is so specific to your business and making sure that you're holding your suppliers accountable.

Sean: [00:19:18] Hmm. Yep. And the sort of testing that goes along with it, right? I always found that, because I've done quite a few technology implementations, particularly in contact centres and so on, and having the people that you know inside the organisation that you can trust to do the testing, who know that thing just inside out, know every field, have built the reports, know how it moves from one place to the next and have them test the hell out of it, can also be a big help.

So obviously, the scheduling of the proprietary technology has been a really scale enabler, your culture has been a sort of scale enabler. What are one or two other things that you think have really helped sort of change the dial, you know, inflection points or decisions that you've made or investments that you've made that have really helped that acceleration?

Esha: [00:20:00] What has helped our acceleration, probably a flat organisation.

Sean: [00:20:06] Okay.

Esha: [00:20:06] I think that's a really big one. I think when you're trying to grow the less layers you have in the company, the better. So, well, we've been pretty flat. And then the points where we had stalled growth was when we had too much middle management

Sean: [00:20:21] Got it.

Esha: [00:20:21] And then again, had to clean it up.

Sean: [00:20:24] So, what do you is through that process? Has there been any learnings around the number of people that somebody can know that obviously the flip side of a flat structure, is that sometimes people can end up with too many people and then those people underneath them don't get enough time or sort of enough guidance? How have you found the balance? Like how, what have you learned through that process? And what's been the right model for you?

Esha: [00:20:47] I think my experience is that seven to eight is a sweet number. Like your seven to eight direct reports and team sizes is great. You can get in. And again, I mean, this might applied differently to different businesses, but our business is highly transactional, highly transactional, and we're dealing with people's lives. So, having too many direct reports or too large of teams, the leadership is not able to get into that level of detail that they need to. So, I think that that's probably sort of the indicator I would use in an organisation, especially, which is very transactional.

Sean: [00:21:27] Yup. Yup. Okay. Anything else that you wanted to share just in terms of the, I guess the sort of the dial changes, big decisions, big investments, big moments?

Esha: [00:21:38] We've made some mistakes in the business. I think, you know, one of them is… so part of our roadmap and our strategic initiative is to have more local footprint for our organisation. And we think we need that because of the level of personalisation that's required in our nature of work, but doing something like that too soon when you're not ready, when you don't have the right culture and foundation. So that's been, probably a mistake in the business where we've, you know, taken on an office too early, but hadn't had the right sort of team and management to be able to drive. So, I think really considering, especially when you're in that sort of first decade of the business, do you need to make certain investments or can you hold them off until you have the right level of resourcing, because it is… I think we get very excited by our own ideas, and sometimes a little bit too optimistic, and then we burned money. So that's probably one thing for sure.

Sean: [00:22:36] And was that when you think about the local presence, so that's about, you know, establishing an office in the local area, you've probably got some kind of a manager, some stuff on the ground, et cetera. How much of that learning was about the people that you had available to you, that you could deploy appropriately to sort of manage that and make it work versus sort of other elements. Like what was it that you took out of that as a learning that went, you know, what, if I'm going to do that again, this is what I've got to get right in this order. How do you think about that now?

Esha: [00:23:07] Always. So, it's always people, you're absolutely right. Every single time it's people, you can have very little resources of every other kind, but if you have the right people, you'll still be successful. And those people by nature, especially in sort of that scaling up organisation need to be resourceful. Like the number one characteristic that I look for when we're hiring. And I still hire, I always do the final interview. Every single person that comes in the business is resourcefulness. Like I look for where have they applied that in the past roles? Yeah, you get people that are too cushioning and too used to the cushion and you know, they're not right for scaling up organisation or a model of that type.

Sean: [00:23:50] I see regularly Founders in that who are doing the best I can to get themselves out of the way and hire some good people, but they often… They hire for elevated titles and elevated status. They're like, oh, I really need a COO. And the person comes in assuming that they're going to have, you know, they're going to be delegating and working on strategy and all the rest, they're like, no, no, no. I like, I need you to do that report and I need you to work that out. I need you to write that job description, I need you do go and do the hiring, and they are like, oh, that's a big mismatch. And so, sometimes I think people go a bit too overboard, or actually, maybe they need a, just a really solid operations manager that I can grow into a future role. Maybe even partner them up with some mentoring externally from someone experienced to make sure that building that internal capability and building that sort of succession with the person. But I often see smaller businesses really going overboard with titles and salary. And then getting incredibly disappointed because the person is not hands-on enough, doesn't want to take any instructional guidance or feed-back, harder to shape. And there's obviously a ton in place in every business to recruit those people. But sometimes, and that sort of sub 10 mil range. People can over bake. Have you found that?

Esha: [00:25:05] Yeah, absolutely. I think at every point in the business, when we're making decisions around the next hire, especially at the, sort of the executive level, the mistakes that I would have made from the, yeah, the south of the 10 mil mark is absolutely hiring people that have, that want the title, they come from very large organisations and they just can't fit into the size of the business that we have. So, at every single point now it's that checking in, you know, what's the right person that I need with that level of experience and yeah, definitely not over sort of compensating that role.

Sean: [00:25:45] And do you look for people who, and this no doubt changes by role, but do you look for people who've been to the next stage and therefore know how to craft a path for that part of the organisation to get there? Or are you more interested in people that you can grow and mentor into that, they're probably cheaper and less experienced, but are not necessarily just going to take the reins on that function, all that sort of area of the business. How do you think about getting that right?

Esha: [00:26:11] We've actually done a combination. So, if I think about where we are in our business now, we've done a combination. So, in our sales management, we've got someone who scaled up or the organisations. And they've come into the business and are doing really, really well. And then on the other side, in our people and culture and ahead of people and people in culture, this person will now grow with the organisation, but then they're very, very talented and exactly there right. So, I think it really depends, but you know, the question that I asked in that interview with this sales leader was, I said, can you really articulate for me why do you want to do it again? You know, why do you want to do it again? And it's that ‘why’, like, they've got to have a very, very, they've got to be really passionate about wanting to do that and knowing upfront, like, I was really clear that you're very much going to be building this and you may not have the resources available to you that you had in your previous organisation. So, it's also having that real transparency and communication. And then…

Sean: [00:27:17] I agree because when you've got a great person in front of, and you think, oh, they've got the talent, I know they can do it. But to your point, if the motivation is misaligned and they're thinking I'm ready for the next challenge. And you're like, no, no, this is like replay of challenge one, but actually it's going to be a lot harder because you're going to be less resourced. You got to really, you've absolutely got to really want to do that. And there's lots of reasons why they might. But yeah, aligning that motivation is key. Can I ask you Esha, you know, what on a personal level makes you come alive in business?

Esha: [00:27:47] I'll give you an example of a friend of mine who was diagnosed with schizophrenia eight years ago. And we, so I found out a couple of years ago and started on the journey with the NDIS. Started to put some supports around her, and she now works in the office two days a week and it's completely transforming her life and her outlook, her mindset. And then three days a week, she's doing a mental health course at TAFE, subsidised through the government. That brings me to life. There were about six years where she was locked up in her bedroom, writing on walls and talking to herself. When I have very difficult days in the business and there's probably more than there needs to be, it's stories like that really wakes me up in the morning.

Sean: [00:28:40] Okay. And so given those natural, they're always going to be really challenging days in the business. Well, who do you lean on? I mean, you know, sometimes you find some incredible, yeah, it's lonely. It really is an incredibly lonely job at the top, right? You know, that you often have a lot less people around you, and I know that both you and I are part of the same network in terms of YPO - Young Presidents Organization, which can offer you some really, you know, access to some amazing peers. But when you think about some of the hard stuff you've had to go through as a Founder, who have been your sort of go tos as a, who do you lean on to make sure that you get through this?

Esha: [00:29:19] Yeah, well, I was going to say YPO Gold members, for sure. So, yeah absolutely anyone who's got 20 to 30 years more experience on me is who I would lean on for very difficult situations. But more than that, and more recently, I think it's actually meditation, it's self-reflection and being alone. I just find that a lot of answers within us, but we're just too clouded, we get too messed up in the chaos and we get too consumed in it. I just step away now. I really step away, and I still lean on my peers and the more senior YPO members to reaffirm my thinking, but many times I've realised I actually know the answer. And I think a lot of the listeners today that are in business or thinking of, you know, getting into business, we all know the answers. It's, if we give ourself the moments of silence, those answers will appear for us.

Sean: [00:30:17] Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's about, if you think about what meditation gives you the opportunity for it's like a safe space with a mirror, right? Like it's allowing those, the questions that if you've got someone in your camp, it doesn't have to be clearly, it doesn't have to be YPO. It could be a mentor, could be a friend. It could be anyone who you can trust to actually ask you really great questions that give you the opportunity to reflect into discussion or equally it could be a meditative practice that allows those questions to emerge and those insights to evolve. Yeah. I love that. And how have you, when you think about some of the advice that you've received, I mean, you will have been through some incredible, you know, highs and lows in the business. And there's probably some pieces of advice that have actually really stayed with you and become sort of part of who you are or how you lead or how you get teams through tough times or celebrate teams with great times. What are some of the key pieces of advice that you've received and who did they come from? Or where did they come from?

Esha: [00:31:14] Okay. I received some advice from a YPO member and he said to me, you should promote yourself every year. I remember, I think I met him, this was about six years ago. He said to me, just promote yourself every year, just go with that outlook. So, if there's nothing else you're focused on in your business, make sure that the next 12 months you're doing something completely different because if you're growing yourself, your business will naturally grow. So I took that very seriously, that piece of advice, and I do that. I really plan out my own promotions. Sounds funny, but it's worked. And then probably the second piece of advice, and Janine Ellis from Boost Juice said this, she said that there's a warrior and there's a worrier that sits on our shoulders and you know, you've got to make the intention to listen to the warrior, which is the one he/she is going to fight through everything that you have in front of you. And you've got to shut off the worrier. That's the negative one. That's the one who's worrying all the time and consumed in the anxiety of what could go wrong. And I often do that. In fact, that's a really nice one because it lightens me up because I actually imagined like little Esha Ninja, you know, on my shoulder, going… yeah, you can do this. So, that's it.

Sean: [00:32:36] Surely in the future, you'll just be able to press a button on your desk and little holograms will appear, right? And you can probably interact with them in real time. That'd be cool. 5G will no doubt make that available to us.

Esha: [00:32:46] Yeah. Yeah. The other thing, the third thing, which is my own experience is, whenever I face a challenge in the business, I look at myself and I reflect on myself, like, where am I the bottleneck, or where am I the constraint in this problem, in this business? I've found that I've got to work on myself as much as the business, you know, as an entrepreneur, as a Founder, we don't necessarily have, we don't have a structure where we've got a board or a manager or anyone giving us some critical or constructive feedback, then that's where, again, it goes back to really looking at those principles around self-mastery and what are we doing to grow? Because wherever we can uncover our own limitations, I find that that's helped the business sort of uncap its limitations.

Sean: [00:33:40] And I like that, because if you think about one of the fundamental human needs is the need to grow. Right? So, you know, one of the things that I see that sometimes a risk in the absence of doing something like you're talking about is owners getting stale and owner is getting bored. Because you know what, they're actually not getting their own professional development needs met. They're not getting their own need for growth. They might be growing financially and they're like, yep, it's great, money is good and so on. But I'm actually losing my mojo, because I'm not actually growing as an individual. And that only comes from actually continuing to tackle stuff that you haven't done before or trying new things and getting that evolution to your point, sort of designing the next job, even when you're the CEO. It's like, what's the next job? Next job just might be me being a better CEO or a more competent CEO in certain areas, but it ensures that personal satisfaction that comes from you growing, not just succeeding financially, which of course only one metric.

Esha: [00:34:33] Correct. Yes.

Sean: [00:34:35] So when you think back on your journey so far, what are you proudest of?

Esha: [00:34:43] Ah, oh, well it was going to, yeah. Look, Rummy and her coming into the workplace now and sort of healing from his schizophrenia. I'm really proud of. I'm proud of all of the impact that we have to our clients. I'm also proud of winning third best place to work in Australia, New Zealand, according to the Australian Financial Review, that's been quite a milestone I think for us and really speaks for what, you know, our people and the energy and what they bring in. And then we're helping a thousand people every single week through our carers. That's huge, you know, that I'm pretty proud of that.

Sean: [00:35:29] I think you should be, I think you should be. And so, now that you have this sort of, you know, everything's very easy in hindsight to go, ah yeah, well, if I had my time again, I would've done this and I wouldn't have done this. Fundamentally, we always make the best decisions that we can. I always have a firm belief, people always have a positive intention at least for themselves, but usually also for others, and they're doing the best they can with the resources they got available, right? So, they're making the best decisions they can at the time, as we all are including Founders and CEOs and the rest of us. But knowing what you know now, as you think back, if you had your time again, what would you do differently?

Esha: [00:36:10] I'd have more breaks. I can honestly say that my first out of office ever was maybe eight or not even eight, it was nine years because I waited until the reforms and we'd settled. So, it was probably nine and a half years into the business was the first time I remember taking a week off and I told my husband and I was like, you've got to look after the kids, this is the first time I just want to be alone, away from any responsibility. And I remember sitting at the airport because I was going to an Ashram in India as it like a meditation retreat. And I remember putting the out of office and I bawled my eyes out for like 30 minutes because I couldn't detach myself from what I was like, that's so irresponsible of me. How can I put an out-of-office? No, I could never do that. And even then my little, you know, that voice was like, no, no, you need to be there for your people. So, I think, yeah, look, I would take more breaks. It's a ridiculous time to wait for a holidays, nine years.

Sean: [00:37:18] It's pretty up there.

Esha: [00:37:19] Yeah, it's crazy. And I would just do that more often because I think what, whilst I did grow the business and yes, there was a lot of success in that first decade. I'm enjoying the journey now more where I'm still having breaks and still bringing that energy back.

Sean: [00:37:37] Yeah, it's regenerative, number one, reflective opportunities, number two, but you know, Founders can run out of energy in the tank, right. You know, and you're the one driving the bus. And so, in the absence of your personal mental and emotional and spiritual health, it's pretty hard to give energy to others, particularly in any organisation where that’s the job of the CEO is to kind of, well, it's a big part of the job is the building of the organisation, which is people and in a services business where it's also about cares, probably multiplied by a few factors, because you probably have quite an emotionally intelligent community. You know, I imagine that their energy transfer in the business given the kind of work I do is very high, and so that's probably a really critical element. Thank you for sharing that. What about if we go out into the future? So, what does the business look like three years from now?

Esha: [00:38:33] Three years from now. So, I think I'm very confident around our vision and it's going to remain. So, we want to be the most leading and trusted provider. I believe in our values and I think every decision is going to be guided by those values. So, we're all about being authentic, understanding, reliable and purposeful. We've got a very clear three-year roadmap from here, and we've got some, I guess, some initiatives that we’re aggressively working on. Our organisation, probably it looks like it's going to dominate the Eastern seaboard in our services, in our care services, which are nonmedical support for aged care and people with disabilities. I'd say that would be turning over anywhere between 80 to 100 million, which is a good three and a half, four times our size today. So, it's really going to be around working on those fundamentals. You know, our culture, our people, improving our presence in the community and having more local footprints, embedding technology, and now really looking at our tech platforms to make sure that they are a lot more robust than where they're sitting at now. And a lot more transparent, actually, I think where technology is helping businesses is it's giving that transparency between a consumer and the business.

Sean: [00:39:58] Yeah.

Esha: [00:39:58] And in our case, our carer as well, so really that transparency. And then finally we want to have a holistic service offering. So, I want to make sure that the services that we've got, including Inebura now, the new service division, those service offerings are providing a holistic experience for our clients so they don't need to have, you know, six providers that they're working with, they can just have us that supports them in those dimensions, in those six dimensions.

Sean: [00:40:33] I love that. And you know, what I love about what you said is that it's not full of, we're going to, you know, it's all about international expansion and acquisitions and you know, all these really cap, it's like, it's more going, no, no, we actually know what our internal opportunities are, and we've got a clear understanding of who our customer is, and we actually just want to be able to create more value within for the customer. I understanding what their problems are, be able to solve more problems in a holistic manner. And I always think that's the most natural place for product development and proposition development to occur because you've already got that customer.

If they already love what you do, why wouldn't you be trying to solve all the problems that make sense in the context of who they already trust you to be in the relationship that you have. I have a final question for you. And this is a little segment that I have for each guest called “above all else”. And so, I want you to imagine now, I mean, you've got quite a road to go. You've got clearly lots of energy for this business, you know, who knows maybe other businesses as well in the future. So, I just want you to imagine that you're now in your yearning years, you know, you look back, you've achieved everything that you wanted.

You started as many businesses, you've been the CEO of as many organisations, whatever that sort of, you'll fulfill them that as an entrepreneur, it looks like, and you have the CEO of the world's largest global community of first-time Founders contact you, and they've got tens of millions of people that are sort of around the world, hungry for information from successful Founders who've learned stuff over their time and she asks you for your three above all else's. So, she asks you to finish this sentence. She says; The three thing above all else, the three things that you must get right as a Founder, if you want to scale, what would be your three above all else?

Esha: [00:42:19] My number one would be, every decision that you make, make sure you can sleep. So, where is that decision coming from and the alignment to values and integrity. Two, every interaction you have with another human being, how do you make an impact to their life so they remember you and you leave a legacy in their heart, through those interactions you allow that person to have the, I guess the energy and the passion to be able to live their best version. And we're in such a lucky space as leaders, as Founders, we can do that for our people. And three, if you're really going to start a business, make sure you're really clear on how it's going to impact community and people, like we don't need another product, we don't need another, you know, piece of cloth or jacket or laptop, you know, where are you going to bring in a service offering that's truly going to change lives for the better. Those are my three.

Sean: [00:43:33] I love that. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing those. I would like to acknowledge you for the way that you have built this organisation and the impact that you're having in the world. Because, I think the fact that you have taken such a heart-centred approach, both to the way that you built your organisation, such that they can actually provide that sort of throughput of your culture ends up in the hands of your customers, is wonderful to watch, and it's so gratifying to see people who have that sort of heart-centred and inspiring approach actually succeed commercially, and that's not necessarily about money, but that's about impact because if you fail to scale and you've got something that's really amazing to offer the world and people out business you, they sort of out scale you, outgrow you, take market share, and they have an inferior product and inferior service, and that's getting into the hands of customer.

That's the thing that, I think that's the thing that upsets me the most in the world when I see great organisations that have the opportunity out of the actually just get out done on business. And I think the fact that you've been able to bring these two together and that's increasing your opportunity to have impact is wonderful to watch. And so thank you very much for sharing your story and some learnings for our first time Founders. It's been incredible. How can people get in contact with you or follow what you're doing or follow the organisation?

Esha: [00:44:51] Yeah, no, thank you for that. It's been a really wonderful chat. I can be contacted, I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, so just Esha Oberoi on LinkedIn. And you'll see me as the Founder of AFEA Care Services and Inebura. Yeah, I try not to get consumed in any other social media, so that's probably the best place. And then, yeah, just go to our website and if you need to know more about our services,

Sean: [00:45:16] Beautiful. AFEA Care Services. thank you so much, Esha for sharing your time with us. Folks, I hope you enjoyed the show today, and please join me in thanking Esha. And couple of things, before you go, if you have got value from today, and I'm sure you have from Esha’s wise words, if you've got some value, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It's the preferred platform, we're doubling down like you are. Pick one platform and go for it. That's the one that tends to be the most used. So, by doing that, you do two things. One, you really give our team a thrill because they’ve worked super hard on producing this whole thing for you. It's not just me, there's a group of other people involved and of course it helps other people find it. If you would like to be the first to know about when new episodes drop or notified when there's sort of tools and resources provided by guests or developed by us, please just go to the website www.scaleupspodcast.com and you can pop your email in there and you'll be a first to know. Of course, if you are a social animal, feel free to find us on the socials.

The handle is @scaleupspodcast, but remember, before you got today, the only thing that can guarantee that you won't scale is actually to give up when it gets hard, it’s giving up. So, you have to stay absolutely unshakable in your faith that you're going to get there, but you have to remain flexible in your approach.

You've been listening to the ScaleUps podcast, I'm Sean Steele, and I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Thanks so much, Esha.

Esha: [00:46:38] Thank you.

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