How Jarrad Goulding Built The Local Guys Into a 200+ Franchise Empire Across Australia & NZ — Serving The Market, Flat Fees, & AI Tools That Transformed Their Business Journey (Plus Why He Turned Down Big VC Offers!). (Episode 695 - Jarrad Goulding)

Congratulations on the growth. Starting out on your own is doing electrical tests and tagging. Then bought a Boost Juice franchise and a restaurant franchise. Decided to get rid of those and do it. Become a franchisor in 2019. Launching now you've got four services, electrical, test and tag house and commercial cleaning, carpet cleaning, pest control division about to hit 100. Franchisees across Australia and New Zealand grew from 1 FCE yourself to 14. And congratulations to you and Stacy and the team on the growth over the last six years.

Phenomenal. You've got to realize it's not about you, it's about serving the market. And you've got to have a habit in place every single day on getting that 1% better at how do I serve the market?

G' day and welcome to the Grow a Small Business podcast. I'm your host, Troy Truan. Each week we speak with an owner who has grown a business with five to 30 team members to something bigger. Diving into their numbers and unearthing the pain they've experienced, we explore what they did to overcome each barrier and what they would do differently from day one. Let's get into it. Welcome everyone. Today I'm interviewing Jared Goulding from the local guys based in Adelaide, Australia. Thanks for your time today, Jared.

Yeah, not a problem at all, Troy. Thanks for jumping on with me.

Let's start with how we know each other. Lisa on your team reached out because you guys are doing a bit of an extra marketing push at the moment because you're celebrating a very big milestone.

Yeah, that's right. So we're about to tick over to 100 franchise partners and I've got a business coach and he is always saying to me, great that you get the milestone, but how are you leveraging off of it? So I had him in my, in my ear, sort of saying, great that we're hitting a milestone, how you're leveraging off of it. So that's essentially, yeah, the reason for Lisa reaching out and yeah, tell our.

Audience a bit about your business, what it does and how it makes money.

Sure. So we're a service based franchise. We have four divisions currently. So started off originally out in the electrical test and tagging. That's my background. I've been in that space for 13 years and myself and my wife Stacy, we'd had that business for a number of years. I'd been man on the tools and we eventually were looking at what we could do as our next sort of step and we decided that we wanted to get into a franchise. So opened up a boost Juice saw some amazing things there in the Boost Juice. Only one store out regional. It wasn't really enough for us. We wanted to grow something a little bit bigger. We brought on a second store, still wanted to go a little bit bigger than that. So we decided to get rid of those and take on a restaurant franchise. Had a great experience with the Boost Juices and not so great experience with the restaurant franchise, but loved the idea of franchising. And we knew that we had a model in the service industry that was highly profitable and it serviced us with work, life balance and all the rest of it. That was fantastic. So we thought maybe we can take the learnings that we've taken over here, the good stuff from the Boost Juice and the bad stuff from the not so great franchise or in our experience anyway, and apply it to what we knew in the service industry. And I guess that's how the local life started. We now have a pest control division, a cleaning division and a carpet cleaning division. So we're just about to pick over 100 franchise partners on top of the test and tag. Yes, four divisions total. Yeah.

And so just going back to you said you had a bad experience with the restaurant franchise but a good one with the Boost. Was that mainly because of the franchisors or just the industry is tougher in restaurants?

I would say both. Yeah, both levels really. So great. Franchisor in Boost fantastic. But not a great experience with restaurant franchise. A lot of broken promises, a lot of. We had 100 seater restaurant that the build blew out by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Three or four hundred thousand dollars it blew out and a lot of broken promises and just not much support or anything like that. So that being doubled with as you sort of say, a very tough industry. It was. Yeah, just all compounded on top of each other.

And so your franchisees, where are they located? Just around Australia. Born international.

Yeah, so we have gone International. Late 2023 we expanded out to New Zealand and that's been really successful. We currently have all of our divisions over there. Bar, carpet cleaning. Carpet cleaning is our newest division's only been out for the last couple of months now but yeah we and experiencing some really good strong growth over there and the local guys brand seems to be really well accepted in the market. So yeah, every state and territory in Australia and in New Zealand as well.

Yeah. Fantastic. How did you start out? So what year did you decide to drop the other franchises that you're a part of and go all in on the local?

Yeah, 2019, which was amazing timing. Right before COVID hit, I think we just onboarded our first franchise partner and the whole world came to a grinding halt. We had our second franchise partner that was desperate to jump on board but was in full time employment. And we're sort of trying to tell him, pump the brakes, you know, you're in full time employment, just keep the paycheck going where you are currently until the world works out what it's doing. We went through, yeah, probably about three months of testing tags, the last thing that people are thinking about when everything's, you know, going sideways. So. But then the, the work started to come back and, you know, normality started to kick in to a certain degree anyway, as you know. And then it was okay for him to come on and yeah, it's been full on and flat out since.

Do you operate any of those services yourselves or you just franchise them?

Yeah, no, we don't. We went in the very early days when we were still. Because I was still on the tools from the very early days and still running a test and tag business. I remember we had one employee who was helping me out as a technician and my wife Stacy was actually in the middle of giving labor in the middle of birth and we got a text message from him saying that he's decided to move on to another job, effective immediately. No, won't give you any notice or anything like that. And we went, great. Perfect timing. I think we're about three hours out from our second being born. So we decided we can either rehire and continue on as a test and tag business or we can just see this as a sign and just throw the hat over the fence and just become a full blown franchise business. So that's what we did. And we sold off our work to some of our earliest franchise partners and just been full franchising ever since.

So you started 2019. So how old were you six years ago when you started?

Oh God, I'm 42 now, so 36. 36. Thanks.

And you have some key numbers you can share to illustrate the growth of the business over the last six years. Obviously almost hitting 100 franchisees is phenomenal growth. But anything else you'd happy to share?

We've got a, I mean our retention rate with our franchise partners. We're very lucky that we've got a very low drop off rate. So we sit at around about a 90% success rate, which is great. So we're always trying to keep that as close to that as possible. I would say our typical franchise partner comes in and they tend to sit around about Anywhere from like 100 to 150k is generally where most people will sort of sit. What we find outside of those numbers is that money becomes less of a motivator and work life balance becomes more of a motivator. We have some franchise partners that come in and want to take over the world and half a million dollars plus turnover and that's great, we support them in that. Other ones, as I said, we're just one man. Bands like to sit around that mark and prefer to be able to take a Friday off to play golf or pick up the kids from school or whatever. Don't want to work weekends and stuff like that. We're a flat feed model so we don't make any extra money either way. So that's a really, I think it's a really good element from our side because we can then base the goals of the business on whatever the franchise partners goals are. Where if we take a lick of everything called 10, 15% or whatever it is of everything, we're motivated to be pushing everyone as hard as they can possibly go. And sometimes that's not people's motivation. Especially say with test and tag, for example, we get a lot of guys that are semi retired, they don't want to come in and work as hard as they potentially were previously and money might be the most important thing to them, but they still want to earn a buck and they, they still want to keep themselves busy. So yeah, it's, it's great to be able to set whatever the franchise partner's goals are as the core goals and then we just work around that.

That's quite rare in the franchising space, isn't it? Because normally it's maybe a monthly fee plus a percentage of their sales which you then to help support the costs of admin and marketing.

It's more profitable for a franchisor to do a percentage. Absolutely, yeah. Because as those businesses grow and get, you know, it might be better for the franchise partner in the first six to 12 months because the turnover is still building. But anytime after that first six to 12 months and now they've built this business that's turning over good amount, having to turn over 15% or 10% or whatever the number is at that point becomes. Yeah, it hurts a lot more. Where I started off with that model originally my very first franchise partner, we started off that model because I thought, oh, more money, that sounds good, I'm down for more money. So we started off with that and then after understanding this franchising thing a little bit more and understanding service based branches a little bit more. I knew the best franchise partners were the guys and girls that wanted that flat feed model and I wanted to work with the best people and they didn't want to give away as much. So we thought for the brand it actually makes a lot more sense to recruit the best people and then we've got less headaches and all the rest of it and then we'll get more people on board and stuff like that. So I think it was a really positive decision. We put it out to our first franchise partner who was on that percentage model and just basically said, here's what you're on, here's what we're offering. You can pick either way because you've got a commitment to this one. And he ran the numbers and said, I'll take the flat fee model.

And with that flat fee, what services do you take off their hands? I'm assuming marketing.

Yep. Yeah, so we, yeah, so we do marketing. We do the lion's share of that. We still do train our franchise partners on local area marketing and we like to see them sitting around the 20 to 30% mark of work that they're bringing in for themselves and we train them and guide them on, give them all the tools and resources on how to do that. But we like to encourage our franchise partners that you're not here as a subcontractor, it is your own business and you do want to be out there networking, pushing your own businesses and stuff like that, especially in that first year. But yep, certainly a large chunk of the marketing we do, we do a lot of the administration. So the client call through to us originally, we'll put it into the CRM. We send them a text message with the client's information and that side of things. We do some reporting and stuff like that as well. So. And then the top down sort of coaching. So we have franchise partner meetings every six weeks, we have scorecard meetings with them every quarter and then we have boot camps and a bunch of other things that we do to try and support our franchise partners.

All right, just finishing up on the numbers. How many full time equivalent team members did you start with and where at now? Just your team?

Yep. So started off just me on the couch. Eventually ended up taking one of my best staff members from our restaurant and she came over to work for us in the office. So it was just me and her basically, plus my wife Stacy. Been helping out since day one. She's been, she's a co founder and heavily involved in the business. But yeah, yeah. So just one basically in a serviced office it would have been probably 4x4 tiny. And now we're at a team of 14, I think in the support center and couple off site and stuff like that.

That's great. Wonderful growth.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's. We ticked over six years a week or two ago now. So yeah, it's been, it's been fantastic and it's been a wild ride and we've got, it's, you know, it's great. We're very lucky to have a team of very passionate young team members. We just hired a video videographer which is a whole another side of things. I have to be a lot more in front of the camera and now where I used to get to hide behind and just be a drive behind the business, now after the position of the business has changed, I have to be a lot more on camera. You know, as you know with social media and everything these days, people want to know the founder and the story behind it and stuff like that. So yeah, I'm spending a bit more time of mine now in front of the camera and trying to push the business as much as possible.

When was the moment you felt like you had succeeded?

I'll tell you when I get there. Yeah, it's. I think I heard a quote. I'll butcher it but I think they said. I can't remember who said it but if you're not paranoid all the time, that's. You're gonna struggle straight after that. And I still live that way now. I'm still obsessed with the business. Probably too obsessed with the business to be fair. I've got a family of three under five so I've got to be able to turn that off sometimes. But yeah, it's a passion and I just live and breathe at 24 7, basically. So yeah, it's always threats. There's always threats out there and you're always going to be putting out fires and stuff like that. So it just. You just keep going with them.

And what does success look like to you?

It doesn't look like. I think most people think it looks like where before you get there. I think that driving down in the. The BMW or the Mercedes or whatever, having everyone look at you, it's probably the complete opposite of that. We like to live humbly. I think success looks to me like having three young kids that are smiling and happy. My brother said an amazing quote once that said your happiness level only ever rises to the happiness level of your kids. I think that's very true. So I don't think that success in business or anything like that defines me. I think that I'm living my purpose and I'm living my passion and I do whatever I have to do to help my franchise partners grow their businesses. I think having happy, successful franchise partners, that makes me feel successful. But yeah, nothing internally or nothing for myself.

Number one thing you'd recommend to marketing a fast growing business.

Marketing is a funny one. It really is. I love marketing. I think it's like the quarterback of the business and I really enjoy it. We've got a good marketing team there. I just had the marketing meeting yesterday where it's so funny, just walking out and all the different areas of marketing. We've got a specialist in every sort of area. A lot of IT stuff, a lot of digital marketing, social media marketing. It's a different world. I'm 42. We have to be on TikTok, we have to be on all these different platforms. I'm constantly learning about marketing but I love it. So yeah, I think that you've just got to go out there and have fun with it and we're in a very low focused world so you need to grab attention very, very quickly. And also I think the other thing is when the Internet came along, which has obviously been along for around a long time, all of a sudden people couldn't hide behind marketing. People could really see who people were, especially social media, and the curtain got lifted up. Online, reviews, all these different sorts of things. You couldn't just be this company that could go out and do whatever you want but on the face of it look like a great company all of a sudden with the Internet and social media and everything. Had to live and breathe it to your core and if you didn't, you'd get caught out. So I think you have to have strong values and then just put those values out there.

How did you fund the business?

Yep. So just bootstrapped it. Basically. There was. We've had multiple offers on the business, we've had multiple venture capitalists coming to us on the business. Numbers keep getting bigger every time and I think that it's an interesting one because again, if you didn't live and breathe it and you didn't have it to your core that you're actually doing what you're meant to be doing, you just would have sold out. I remember on the last one my dad's like, you're nuts. You're absolutely nuts. And maybe we are. I guess time will tell. But it took myself And Stacy, about five minutes not even to reject the offer. And it was significant.

So no other investors? Yes, for sure.

And Stacy, I've had business partners in the past. The only business partner I'll ever do business with it again is my wife. Yeah, I've learned the hard way.

If you were to start up today with plenty of funding, would you go into your industry?

Definitely. No question. And I think that's probably been why there has been interest from venture capitalists and stuff like that. Because I mean, look at SaaS right now with AI. There's some amazing things happening in AI. I'm deep into it. I think it's incredible, so exciting where it's all going. A lot of these SaaS businesses, a lot of these SEO businesses. We're only talking about AI with SEO yesterday and some of the amazing stuff that you can do now. It is, there is going to be a massive, and it already started being a massive shift with AI on changing things and I think a lot of industries are going to disappear, but a lot of other industries are going to be born out of that, as it always does. But I think that being in a service based business where you still need the cleaner to come out, you still need the pest controller to come out, you still need the test and tag got to come out and I think that we'll be the last to go. They, I think originally they were saying with AI, all the blue collar workers are going to be gone first and all the rest of it. And I think what they've discovered is actually working the opposite way. A lot of the white collar workers are lawyers. Oh my God. Chat GDP is my favorite friend when it comes to law and so helpful accounting, same thing. So it's so interesting how it's happening the opposite way. So yes, I think in 2025 were positioned really strongly.

You know, I heard recently one of the CEOs of one of the big AI platforms saying that he believes 50 of entry level white collar roles will be gone within five years. So there's a lot more to come.

That's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, it's every single week. It's a whole nother thing. I brought a subscription to Chat GDP for all of my staff members and I push them every single day to what are they discovering on it, what are they using more, how could they integrate it more into the business or their role? Because there's a big shift right now. It's very similar to when the Internet came and you can either understand it and adapt to it and Leverage off of it or you'll be one of the dinosaurs left behind.

Yeah. Do you listen to any of Alex Mosey's podcasts or his books?

I do follow him on social media and on YouTube. I'm a big YouTube guy, so I've seen plenty of his content. I haven't read any of the books yet, though.

Yeah. What I found interesting is they started acquisition.com. yep. A year or so later, they changed their thesis again to now they only invest in bricks and mortar businesses. One is that big point of the protection of AI. You know, those industries are going to be a long time probably before AI and robots really disrupt. You say hairdressers and dentists and things like that?

Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's. It's an exciting time. It really is. I'm. I love it. I've been building out tools. I've just built out a tool for our test and tag franchise partners to be able to do all of their reporting on their phones while they're out at site, print out a report, can take photos of failed items, do all this amazing stuff. I built the tool. I've got no coding experience whatsoever. It was a gap in our business. We were doing everything by handwriting and with codes and clipboards and all the rest of it. And everyone would always say to me, why are we doing this? Is so far behind. And I said simply because it works. It is fast and it's efficient. And I've tried all the tools and all the rest of it in the past and they weren't fast and efficient. So. So just having an iPad for the sake of having an iPad doesn't make sense. It actually has to be more efficient. But that being said, when AI came out, we were able to build out our own tools and I sat there and locked myself away for like a week. I would say probably not even that long. And we came up with this amazing tool and now we're about to release it to all of our franchise partners and it's going to make their job so much easier.

You outlined the most stressful point in your small business growth journey.

So audience can learn from. Never gets easier. It never gets easier. It's like you're dealing with problems at that level of the game and you think, as soon as I get past these problems, then all. Everything will be sweet and everything will be easy and I'll get to the other side of it and. And Stacy, my wife, is. She is the best person to explain this to me. And she goes, there's always going to be Another problem on the other side. So you just have to get comfortable with that fact that, that that's the case. And here we are six years later, and it's still problems. Like, there's still problems, might be different problems and sometimes more complicated problems, and sometimes I've got more momentum or more leverage to deal with those problems, but it's still problems. So I would say building up that resilience and that grit, just to know that you are always going to have problems and you just need to build the scar tissue. And if you could build that scar tissue on that grit, then it's a lot, lot easier.

But there's not one incident or part of all your businesses that you'd say was the most stressful point?

Not really. I mean, it's different for every day is a different thing. We've had all sorts of different challenges across the board. I couldn't say there's been one in particular. I think that when you do get growth, it does put a target on your back a little bit more. So sometimes that can be challenging. When you get a target in your back when no one knows who you are, it doesn't put a target on your back. You're the one chasing rather than being chased. When you do get good growth and all the rest of it and you get a lot of people coming out and copying what you're doing and all that sort of stuff, then you've got to keep innovating, keep innovating, keep innovating to stay fast than them. And I guess that's the whole point of me saying that you have to still constantly, you know, tell me when success comes and I'll let you know. You have to be constantly paranoid because if you're not, you will be left behind. And I think that's the problem that a lot of people do when they get a successful business. They go, I can sit back and relax now and rest on my laurels, and you can't. That's when you just have to say, we're still. We're just warming up and we've just got to keep going and pushing and pushing and pushing. And a lot of people don't have the bandwidth to do that because they just. They just get tired.

What area in business do you feel you've had to work on the most to add the greatest value?

Finances was an interesting one. I'm the sort of person, some of my staff members have told me that I've got, definitely got add. Other ones have told me I've got other stuff I believe I'm dyslexic. So when I get into something I throw myself. I'm not the sort of person that when I get into something I just do it 15 or 20. I wish sometimes I was, but I don't do things that way. Whenever I get into something I'm a thousand percent into it. I went through a thing recently where I got into coffee and I'm sitting there grinding beans and understanding every aspect of it and getting this new Clash machine and, and making sure I've got the best being quality. And so I think that going into understanding finances. But now I sit there and I'll challenge our accountants or our lawyers or business structures. So I think that's how you just have to constantly be green and if you're constantly green and learning all the time. And that's why I love chat gdp because I just sit there all day long asking it questions and then it gets to know me as well. And then I'm just going back and forth with chat gdp just constantly learning all this sort of stuff that I would have been paying an expert a fortune to ask them or paying a lawyer a fortune to ask them these questions. And I'm just learning so much. So yeah, I mean, I guess in short, probably finance side was, I mean it was handy marrying an accountant so that probably sped that side of things up a little bit. Marketing is another thing. But again like if, if there's a weakness in whatever part of the business I'm in, I just become, I just lock myself away and I just learn about it, learn about it, learn about it so I can at least know the language of it. We were talking about, you know, deep level SEO yesterday and page speed optimization and now I can hold my own in those conversations where I think a lot of new staff members that come in the probably don't realize that I, I like to be generalist in everything and I might not know everything to the nth degree, but I know it pretty well.

What have you enjoyed the least about managing fast growth?

Oh, people are always your biggest challenge, definitely the biggest asset and the, the biggest challenge for sure. There's some amazing things about franchising. There's some downsides to franchising. When someone buys into the business, it's different to coming on as, as an employee obviously that have purchased the right to have more of a say into things. They have skin in the game. So that's always a challenging thing for me. I mean a perfect example that we're going through right now is I'M constantly thinking about what we can do to continue on in our marketing and in our pest control division. We're working on our. Our. Where we rank in Google and where we rank in our Google my business pages and all the rest of it. And we've got ways that we've been working on to try and assist in continuing that growth and having everyone help each other out to grow their pages as much as they possibly can. But then we've got. I want to have a meeting about that, and they want to have a vote on it and all the rest of it. And I've come to realize that when it was just me at the beginning and we didn't have, you know, 100 franchise partners and all the rest of it, I could quickly make decisions very, very quickly, and I could do this, do this, and do this, because I could see it six or seven steps ahead and know that this is how we get to market a lot faster and grow compared to Meadows a lot faster. And then when you get a lot more people in, especially people are brought into the business, a lot more opinions and everything like that, we've got to go at a slower rate. And sometimes there might be. People have got their heart into. You know, we want to be able to put it out as our own business and our own brand and have our own touch on there and all the rest of it, even if it's counterproductive to being able to get as many leads in as possible for our franchise partners. So balancing getting that human side versus just being efficient and effective sides and trying to work that balance, that's something I'm still working on. And sometimes I'll, you know, and just recently, as I said, in that scenario, I just wanted to move 100 miles an hour. And then we had a little bit of blowback in it. So, you know, and I think the biggest, biggest way to fix that is. Is communication. So that is why we meet every six weeks and we. We meet with all of our franchise partners. So I'm attending that. That meeting with our pest control franchise partners so that we can talk through it and all the rest of it. And then in that scenario, we probably will just put it to a vote. And sometimes it'll go, okay, cool. There's that human element that sometimes me just being the numbers guy and just being able to see it all in my head of how I'm gonna get here and get everyone way more work, sometimes that needs to come down a little bit and the human side needs to come up a little bit.

What do you love most about growing a small business?

I love watching people who have never owned a business before or it's had the dream of owning a business and then they come in and I still do the training, I'm still there for, for training. We've got other people do it. I do all of the New Zealand training so I fly over there every six weeks and I run the whole thing over there. I do a section of it here in Australia and we get people coming in who are absolutely crapping themselves and they've had had zero business experience in their whole lives and we have to spoon feed them and hold their hand and then also be, you know, their emotional support as well because they might have gone from a 60, 70, 80,000, a hundred thousand dollar job where they had security and all the rest of it and now they're going out there and trying to do it all themselves. Seeing that and then fast forwarding 12 months time and they've got this thriving business and you know, they've added on a staff member or they've done whatever. That's a KPI from success for me because if we put enough of those guys or girls out there then the local guys brands in a really strong position.

What has been the biggest mindset you feel in your small business growth journey?

I think there's been a lot, I think that I can't do everything was a hard one. I think that I'm a lot better at it now that we've got, you know, a team of 14 where a lot of them are much better than me at what they do, all of them are much better than me at what they do. So be able to relinquish some control. If people were calling through for a franchise inquiry, doing one of our discovery calls, I was the person they spoke to for a number of years only because I knew I was able to actually tell the story well enough that people would want to join us. And I'd tried to give that off in the past and it hadn't quite worked. So getting good at hiring and hiring the right people, incentivizing them well so that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, you incentivize them, get the buy in from them and then allow them the freedom to go off and do what they, they want to do and just be there for support for them and then all of a sudden you've got all of these people working the business that actually have passion. You know, I'm not in the office today, Thursdays I'm home and with Stacy and I know that there's a massive amount of passion and amazing staff members in that office right now that can handle 99% of occasions that pop up.

Yeah, that's great. And Australia is the large, the biggest number of franchises per capita in the world.

I think I heard that once before. So it's amazing, isn't it? Like, it's obviously that entrepreneurial spirit in, in Aussies that we all want to get out there and, and have a crack at that. And I think that franchising is a great platform for that. I think that that's why I hate seeing franchises like, you know, we had the retail food group situation and stuff like that where they had tarnished the name of franchising and it's still recovering from that many years ago. So I think people just want to go out there, they want to crack and they want to be able to create something for myself. Just like you have. Just like I have. Have. You know, I know I read your, your website and your parents had a petrol station, was that right?

Yeah, yeah. Look up to a fuel distributor selling about 100 million liters a year. BP. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. So there you go. You know, my parents, they were small business owners. Dad just recently sold his health food store that he had for 35 years. My mum was a natural therapist for herself for many, many years. So that was. The entrepreneurial spirit in Australia is strong. And I think that, yeah, it's a great, great thing. Like, it's. I could never go back. I know Stacy, after being on the production line of being an accountant and then coming and working with myself into business, she said she could never go back ever again.

The number one habit you think a small business owner needs to develop and maintain.

I think that you've got to realize it's not about you, it's about serving the market. And you've got to have a habit in place every single day on getting that 1% better at how do I serve the market? If you think that this is about you and we live in a culture where everyone thinks everything's about them, no one cares about you. They care about what you can contribute. And if you can every single day add one extra element of how you do your business that serves the market a little bit better and forget about yourself completely forget about yourself. How can I just serve the market a little bit better? And I just make this my call when I pick up the phone. Just that little bit better just helps the client a little bit better. Can I add a little bit of extra Value. Buy a cleaner house and I leave a few minutes behind or whatever. And it's not about me, it's about me serving the market. If you could build that in every single day, you'll be extremely successful at whatever you do.

Want specific advice to help you get your business through its number one growth challenge book? A free 20 minute growth chat with me, Troy, the founder of Growl Small Business. I'll recommend some resources which will help you grow your business with ease so you can live the lifestyle style you've signed up for. Go to growsmallbusiness.com and click on Growth Chat. Can you talk how you've added people to the team, some wins, mistakes and advice for those listening.

Yep. So get really good at your recruitment process, really good at it. So be very diligent about it and whatever you're thinking in your head at hiring people, just double it. And if you get a gut feel, trust that gut feel straight away because whenever you get that first red flag, the second and third are very quickly behind it. If you see any sort of thing like that, you know, it's the whole high slowly fire quickly. And we've had hundreds of staff members throughout all of the businesses and restaurants and all the rest of it. And you want to spend a lot of people don't spend enough time on the recruitment stage like the energy on it, but then they spend can quadruple 10 times the energy on the pain of the backside stage later by dealing with, with team members that have and weren't the right fit and then they should have never hired them in the first place. So just front load that effort and energy and just be really, really confident when you're going to hire someone. You'll feel it in your gut straight away and then just double check it, double check it and get a few other people's opinions because that's probably my biggest thing is I get a gut feeling and then I've had, you know, it might be experience days or whatever and then my team said, oh, we don't know, we don't know, we don't know. I'm sitting there thinking I know better, not a problem at all. And then it goes and bites me in the back on the backside. So just you've asked for their feedback for a reason, like take it and just, yeah, front load that work at the beginning so you don't have to deal with it later.

Yeah. We believe recruitment's the most important thing a manager does because if you get a B or a C player or a toxic asshole on the bus, then you pay for it. As you well know down the track we're floored with how little small business owners and their managers invest time to one, learn how to become a better recruiter and then put a solid procedure in place. Which is why we put together our two week ultimate recruitment toolkit online course to help business owners first and their managers so you know, save all that pain. Because it can cost between 1 and 27 times an annual salary from some surveys of a mis hire. So it's huge cost and distraction.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think it's one of the most important things you can possibly do. And the thing is, is thoroughbreds like working with other thoroughbreds. They don't like working with donkeys and you're going to donkey into the team and they'll bring three other donkeys with them. So it's really, you have to protect that vigorously.

What are some of the things you recommend to building a sustainable and kick ass culture to help with the growth?

It's funny because I've had a number of businesses and I would dare say that with all of them we've actually be, I think all of them. Surely it can't be all of them but for all the ones I can think of, we've had an amazing culture. I don't know what it is that like we create there because I don't feel like, I feel like we give our friends or sorry our team members a lot of rope. I think that a lot of rope and a lot of trust. I've had business partners in the past with hospitality businesses and stuff like that where it's been the complete opposite and they've micromanaged every single detail and it was so not me and Stacy at all. We just showed everyone what the end goal was that we were trying to achieve and then just tried to hire right as you say and then just, just allowed them to do it and just encourage them to do it and, and seeing. And we, we probably didn't even know we were doing that. But then having that business partner did it the other way and then there was all sorts of, you know, as soon as the boss is gone we all just do whatever we want and blah blah, blah, blah. But yeah, we've got an amazing culture in our support center team. I think maybe it, they see the passion in us and that oozes through to them as well. I think maybe, you know, like attracts like. I don't know. But yeah, we're very, very blessed that we've got an amazing team and there's great culture there. They all hang out together, have a great time together and they bring in other friends that are great as well, which helps out with our recruitment.

Tell our audience how you've handled balance.

I don't know if balance is the thing, to be honest with you. I think that I don't have balance. I'm just exceeding passionate about what do I do. And I throw myself into a thousand percent. That being said, I would probably say, I mean, when we first started up the business, I remember Stacy saying that she thought that she was a single person because I was literally on my laptop just non stop the whole time. So that has eased back a lot, especially having kids, especially having a team now where, you know, as I said, I'm at the point now where Thursdays, I'm at home, I still do stuff like this and I still do a little bit of work, but it's a lighter day that would have never taken place in the past. So I think balance is attainable to a degree. But you've also just got to be ruthless or just about constantly grinding because if you're not, no one else is.

How much professional development have you invested in yourself?

Yeah, quite a bit and I've seen good results out of it. I'm not currently with a business coach right now, but I have been in the past and I've had really great experience out of that. I've also did. I did an action coach, which one in the past as well. There was good results out of that as well. So our franchise partners, we still have an offering for them to work with my ex business coach which we've got like a discounted thing and they do group coaching and we get a good buy in from that. And we probably had 25, 30 of our franchise partners go through that process and it's been really successful. Some of my leadership team have gone through and have had our business coach in there as well. So I think it helps considerably point out the blind spots. And sometimes it's just nice to have someone to bounce off. Being a business owner. Sometimes there's not a lot of people that you can bounce off of, someone completely independent who is just there to sort of listen about it. It's kind of like therapy sometimes and sometimes it's just nice to get it off your chest. So yeah, no, I'm all for it.

And have you had mentors or coaches along the way? You mentioned you had a coach. They have mentors.

I've had a couple. We had our accountant that was strong. Mentor. I've probably had a lot of mentors that I don't actually know, like online mentors in regards to YouTube and we talked about Alex Simozi. I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan, personal finance guy in America, huge. I don't know if you've seen him but highly recommend him. Does a lot of business stuff in there that's really good as well. So there's a few on. I'm a big YouTube guy so a few on YouTube but not a massive amount I would say. Or not one particular person that I've had in person but I've. My father in law has been a small business owner broker and had multiple businesses in his life. My dad and mom has been small business owners themselves so they've always had that mentorship and guided me along on the process as well.

Do you have a board of directors or advisors?

No. No. So we've looked at it and we've contemplated it and I don't know if that's potentially something in the future for the local guys possibly, but at this stage my board of directors is I. I ask a lot of questions. I ask my staff a lot of questions. I bounce a lot of stuff off my staff. I don't bounce a lot of stuff off of Stacy as well. Sean runs our pest control division. I bounce a lot of stuff off of him. So I'm constantly asking questions. But no, we don't have anything like that yet. And they kind of work. So yeah, I think that it probably works for us. I think I see the value in it but I think for where we're at, I think yeah, it's. It works. Works.

You know, wrote a couple years ago Two LinkedIn articles on putting a board together with their advisory board or formal directors. And plus the second article is about choosing a chairperson. That's the first thing you should do. I'll shoot those video, have a read.

That'd be great. Please. No, I appreciate that. That'd be awesome.

All right, Jared, one of the final five questions. What do you think's the hardest thing in growing a small business?

Realizing it's no one's coming to save you. I've got some sister in laws who got big on Tik Tok. They got a million followers. Hondrew twins and they ended up. They were reviewing tans and they came up this thing of using the glove instead of a M or something like that. And then they ended up creating their own brand and now they've got their own brand called out. Ego and they send, they sell it off globally. It's been this big, big success and they're doing amazing, but they're still young girls. And it's funny like they still think that, you know, if you have something off to the accountant, it's going to get done or if you get given this person to this, this task, this person, they'll just do it. And I think that you would know better than anyone when you're in the driver's seat as a small business owner you have to just keep pushing every single thing and then double checking and rechecking that everything's sort of done and if it doesn't work, it's your fault. And I think that as soon as you realize that basically everything sure fault, it's like terrifying but it's also empowering at the same time. And then you've just got to be on everyone about everything because if it doesn't work, it's your business that falls over. So you know an experience that they had where they got a bunch of tan that was peeled from their supply and it had put the wrong person's can in there and they got it out and they were got. Got it here and a couple, it went out to a couple of people and it was the completely wrong color and the wrong tan. It was a completely different brands tan. So they ended up, you know, getting that sent back and now they've put it in checks and measures so that they have to get a bottle from Ella breed batch that's created every pallet created one's been sent to them or a video I think of it being put on so they can visually see or 1, 1 sample being sent to them so they can actually double check it's theirs. So little things like that where it's just like you have to. Even the finest detail you need to make sure that you're getting every aspect of it right. And if it doesn't work, it's always your fault.

Favorite business book would just help you the most.

I've got a lot. I'm an audible guy, I think with the dyslexia. I read slowly and I read the same line over and over. So I love Audible. I can. My vehicle is my university on wheels. Yeah. I must have hundreds of books. So I know I've got hundreds of books in my audible account. I love Shoe Dog, the Nike story.

Yeah, that's Phil.

That's a great book. Y. Yeah, yeah. Probably one of my favorites. Absolutely incredible. Is it the. The Millionaires Fast Lane? I've forgotten the guy. But that was a big eye opening book for me at the time. But I would say Shoe Dog is probably the one that I just I can reread every year. I Ray Crock's book on how he started McDonald's, the Golden Arches is fantastic as well. Talks a lot about the drive behind it and the passion behind it and all the rest of it. So I reread that every year, every two years. So yeah, anything business wise Biographies I love love business biographies.

Any great podcasts online learning tools used for your own professional development?

The Dave Ramsey one is good. He also has a second one which is called Entree Leadership which is just for small business people and his advice is pure wisdom so that would definitely be my favorite. Other ones Business wise, the diary of the CEO I really enjoy. I think he's got a really cool interview style so I've got a bunch that I to listen to, but there are a couple that I listen to on repeat, particularly the Dave Ramsey one.

Yeah, one tool you'd recommend help grow.

A small business if you're looking at service based business, because that's my wheelhouse. Make sure you've got a CRM. The days are gone of doing everything on pen and paper or just giving verbal quotes or text message quotes or whatever. You need a CRM like it's 2025, there's a million out there. They're so cost effective. Now make sure that you're sending all your quotes through in via a professional quote by email. You can do text message follow ups. It can link to your accounting packages as it works actually schedule. If you're not doing a CRM, you're really because getting the client for the first job is great. It's the repeat clients that what build businesses. It's great. You can go out and make $1,000 doing one job. I don't really care about getting $1,000 to do one job. I want to make sure I get that thousand dollars every single year for the next 20 years plus because then on everything I got in year one comes into year two plus all my new clients. Everything I get into year two then goes over to year three plus my year one client. And then that's how you grow a big business. And you can only do that if you're constantly touching base with your clients. You're constantly reminding them that it's that time of the year they're due again. Doesn't matter what service it is, they should at least need it done on an annual basis and you can manage that yourself. In a diary with up to 10, 15, 20 clients. Clients outside of that you get to 100 plus clients. You're just never going to be able to do it. So definitely a CRM I think is the first thing you'd want to have.

Finally, my favorite question. What would you tell yourself on day one of starting out?

Run. No, no, don't run. It's not about you think it's going to be about what you're going to get out of this. I'm going to do this because I want to get a bunch of money out of it. I want to buy a car, I want to do all this sort of stuff. Stuff. And it won't be what you're going to get out of it. That's going to be the real reward. It's going to be who you become. I my 5 year old son, he's already decided from the age of he told me could talk that he's going to take over the local guys. That's all he wants to do. And I think part of the reason why we haven't even considered, you know, some of these venture capitalist offers and like that is because if that's where it ended up going and I've got three kids and you know, if they decide that they want to join the local guys or whatever, that's great. But it's not the fact of what they're going to get out of it that excites me. It's who they'll become. Because going through that humbling experience and looking after, you know, clients and looking after franchise partners and people entrusting in you and helping them to grow and all the rest of it, I think who that's going to turn my kids into if they decide that that's the path for them. That's what what really excites myself. And Stacy, thanks so much for your time today.

J really enjoyed our chat. Congratulations on the growth. Starting out on your own is doing electrical tests and tagging. Then bought a boost juice franchise and a restaurant franchise. Decided to get rid of those and do it become a franchisor in 2019. Launching now you've got four services, electrical test and tag house and commercial cleaning, carpet cleaning, pest control division about to hit 100 franchisees across Australia and New Zealand on proof from 1 FCE yourself to 14. And congratulations to you and Stacy and the team on the growth over the last six years.

Phenomenal. Thanks so much for having me, Troy. I really appreciate it.

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