← The Side Hustle Show
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- [00:01]
Nick Loper
From a side hustle to an eight figure business, Today's guest took a common chore and with a little creativity and a lot of tenacity, turned it into Australia's number one mobile laundry service. She started as a part time solo operator and is now expanding internationally. Along the way, she scored a record setting million dollar investment on Shark tank Australia. From laundrylady.com Susan Toft. Welcome to the side Hustle show.
- [00:30]
Susan Toft
Thank you for having me.
- [00:32]
Nick Loper
I am excited for this one. Yours is one of the larger businesses that we've featured on the show, but like anything, it didn't necessarily start that way. Tell me where the idea for the laundry lady came from and how you got this thing started.
- [00:47]
Susan Toft
Yeah, so I was a new mom and I was working in a corporate career and I always sort of had this vision that I would one day start my own business, but I didn't really know what that would be or when that would be. And one day I was literally walking past my spare room and looking at the clothes piled high in my spare room and thinking about as a busy working mum, how much I needed a service like this. And so I had this idea that maybe I could start doing laundry for other people. And which is kind of hilarious in hindsight because I'm one of the least domestic people. I'm not good at all of my domestic home services, but I just, you know, really wanted to be able to create something where I could, you know, have some flexibility to work from home and be there with my kids when they were really young, but also start building an income for myself and, and eventually maybe start to, you know, build it in a way that it could bring that offer to other people and other women in particular and mums who were trying to juggle and have that back to work career. And so I jumped right in and began the laundry lady.
- [01:52]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I want to highlight that personal pain point of almost the dread of like knowing that this work has to get done, but using that as this epiphany moment. Like, look, if it's a pain point for me, it's probably a pain point for other parents too. And on the other side of pain, on the other side of irritation is often innovation, was a line that I heard recently. And so it's like, on the other side of this pain, maybe there's a business opportunity even though you're like, look, I'm not the most domestic person and this is quite a pivot from a high flying corporate career yet maybe there's something to it. So what happens next in terms of going out and getting your first customers here.
- [02:28]
Susan Toft
Yeah, I mean, crazy pivot. But I got a website up and running, which I had a friend create for me and turned it on and got my first customer and went out and picked it up. And it was such a big change for me coming from this corporate career. But I absolutely loved it because I loved the freedom that it gave me being a business owner and being able to work to my own schedule and all of those kinds of things. So it started to build quite quickly. I started to get a lot of customers. And, you know, it was a very different business back then to what it is now because it was just me. It was just me going out and picking up the laundry and learning what would work, learning what customers wanted, learning what a schedule would look like and
- [03:11]
Nick Loper
just running it on your own machine, your own washer and dryer at home.
- [03:14]
Susan Toft
Had my washer and dryer at home and my van, and I'd put my baby in the car and we'd go out and do the pickups and go home and wash or iron it and then bring it back to the customers the next day. And I felt very frustrated in those first few years because I always kind of had this vision about how I might start to scale the business. But I was very much stuck in the business as well at that point in time because I needed to work, I needed income.
- [03:40]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I've been there. It's call it the too busy chopping down trees to sharpen the saw kind of moment where it's like, if I take my foot off the gas, then everything's going to come to a stop and it's really kind of a challenging place to be. I was curious, was anybody else doing this? Were. Were there other competitors when you started? Because now there's a handful of startups that try to do something like this, or even Laundromats might offer like a pickup and delivery type of service, depending on where you're at. But was there anything like that at the time?
- [04:12]
Susan Toft
Yeah, look, I think there's lots of different ways you can get your laundry done, and there always has been because laundry has been around forever, since the dawn of clothes. And so, you know, there's people who will will it in all different kinds of ways. But a lot of them were very commercially focused in terms of having a premise where they would take the laundry and focusing more on. On business types of customers. So having something where people could just book online and come and pick up the laundry and do it from their own homes. Was something that was quite new. And really when I started, which was when I very first started was 13 years ago, it was, you know, Google AdWords would cost 20 cents a click if you turned that on. So it was really, really simple to get customers. And even though I was just doing it on my own in my little local area, there were certainly other people who were doing laundry, but just not in that same way. But I didn't start to scale and have multiple laundry ladies and lads until about five years after I first started. So I think this is a really important thing to, you know, recognize in your journey of business that it's not this straight line from I'm going to go from here to here. And unfortunately I got divorced and I had to go back to work full time. And that was when the business really became, you know, this sole trader went into a very much true side hustle format. But it was also the same time that I started to scale. So that was the time when I, when I put on my first contractors and started the online booking system. And you know, that was another sort of three, three or four years of just how am I going to go back to this business full time? How am I going to grow and scale this while working, while managing all of these things and being a mum? And it was, you know, I was really unsure about how that was ever going to play out.
- [05:58]
Nick Loper
Isn't that so interesting that it was almost like the bringing on outside help
- [06:02]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
was almost forced upon you.
- [06:04]
Nick Loper
Like I had this body of existing customers and had to go back to work full time. I couldn't, like I physically couldn't do it. There weren't enough hours in the day so I had to bring on help to do it. I think that's so interesting. You kind of get comfortable in the routines and say, this is just what I do. It's what I've always done. And it's like there's almost a forcing function to say, well now something is going to break and I've got to make a change here. But going back, you mentioned the Google Ads early on and this was something that people were seeking out maybe in not huge numbers but like, look, is there, is there a laundry service near me? That's something that people were typing in and you could step in front of that traffic with, with the Google Ads
- [06:43]
Susan Toft
early on there was no shortage of customers. It was really easy to get customers because it was just me doing the services at that point. Like I could only do a certain amount before I, you know, got to the reach My limit of how much my washing machine could handle and all of those things. And so that was really the limit of, of where I could grow. And so I really wanted to bring in contractors and, and have a contractor model, which is what we've, we've built into now. But to do that I needed a booking system. And you know, I couldn't just take all of those bookings on my mobile phone. I wanted to have an online booking system on the website. And you know, I remember going along and getting a grant through Australian government to help me get that booking system. And I went off to my designer and developer and said, this is what I want. I want this Uber style booking platform and my budget is $5,000. And he laughed at me and said, for $5,000 you are not going to get what you want. You need to go and find an off the shelf system.
- [07:41]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Do you, do you recognize how much money Uber has raised to build out their tech platform?
- [07:46]
Susan Toft
Exactly.
- [07:46]
Nick Loper
Okay. I was wondering if there was an off the shelf solution for something like that or if you'd have to build it.
- [07:51]
Susan Toft
Yeah, well, so I went and found, I researched and researched and this is going back, you know, 10 years ago, so there wasn't a lot of off the shelf systems that could have done what we needed to do then. But I found a system that had online booking, had payments, did somewhat of what I needed to do, and my developer friend integrated that into the website, built some extra features around that, you know, particularly around having multiple locations and got it off the ground. And it wasn't perfect, it wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it did a fair chunk of what we needed it to do. And it was certainly enough to be able to start taking bookings and start having multiple contractors set up. That was kind of the starting point of the 2.0 of the business where it moved from being a sole trader business to moving into a scalable contractor model.
- [08:40]
Nick Loper
And it's all got to be hyper localized. If you're offering pickup and delivery and it's like, well, I, I only want to drive maybe 20 minutes away to pick up this kind of really narrow. Until you add a team member over there who could service that other neighborhood. And trying to grow each of those in tandem is pretty challenging. So it sounds like you get the kind of the back end, maybe minimum viable product booking system in place and then you got to go find. You said, well, there's no problem finding customers. Which I think is interesting and telling because a lot of people are like, if I could Only find more leads, if I could only get more customers would be great. But it's like, that's not the bottleneck here. The bottleneck sounds like one was tech, and then two, now I gotta find other people who want to get paid to do laundry.
- [09:28]
Susan Toft
Yes, absolutely. And so that was the point in time when I, when I began to do that. And at the time it was, you know, putting out ads on what we call Gumtree here, which would be similar to Craigslist for you back. Back then, and going out and chatting to people's friends. And I think my first laundry lady was a friend of a friend's sister and then her sister. It was very much in the beginning, just, you know, people that we knew and, you know, word of mouth through our network that found other people who wanted to join. And I think it was really looking for people who were like me in terms of, you know, I'd been in this busy career and I'd been struggling with that work life balance about around being a new mum. And so looking for other people who were in that same kind of situation is what helped us to find those first few contractors and first few laundry ladies who wanted to join and be part of the team. And so I went out and got, I think, the first eight, eight to 10 laundry ladies. And that was all just in the kind of region where I live in southeast Queensland, and got them up and running, started getting them bookings through their website, getting the locations set up, and increasing the adwords to try and get them customers in each of those areas. And that was really how it grew in those first couple of years.
- [10:50]
Nick Loper
It seems like a compelling side hustle from the contractor standpoint. I'm in charge of the laundry in our house. This is kind of like a satisfying task despite it never truly being done. But it's just something to pop in a podcast, fold some laundry. This is totally fine. But there's also this rising trend of families, especially affluent households, kind of outsourcing this chore to. To services like the laundry lady. I don't want to deal with this anymore. Somebody else can handle it. And kind of playing at that intersection of relatively simple service, not a ton of specialized skills required. And I believe the market pie has grown, especially over the last five, 10, 15 years, as more and more people kind of just take stock of their available hours in the week and say, is this really what I want to be spending my time on? And say, no, maybe somebody else could take this off my plate?
- [11:43]
Susan Toft
Yeah, absolutely. As people get busy, they need more Help at home. If they're valuing their time, then outsourcing it to something like getting your laundry done can be, add a lot more time into your week and all of those things.
- [11:56]
Nick Loper
And is it primarily residential customers or have you gone after a commercial business at this point to uniforms and stuff like that?
- [12:03]
Susan Toft
We have a big mix of the type of customers we have. So about 40% are business customers and about 60% are residential. And the business customers will be, people pay places like beauty salons or medical clinics or Airbnbs and you know, particular locations that have that like low to mid volume of laundry because the big commercial operators don't want to touch that. It's too small for them, you know, it's not worth their time. So. And that really works well for our contractors in that low to mid volume space. And then the residential side can be anyone from busy families through to people who just physically can't do their own laundry. Might be people living with a disability, elder, elderly, busy professionals, all of those kinds of things. Everyone has laundry in some way, shape or forms.
- [12:51]
Nick Loper
Are you comfortable talking through the like unit economics of a load of laundry or like a customer job? I don't have a concept of how much it would cost to have somebody come pick up a load of laundry and how much of that goes to the contractor, how much of that goes to the bottom line, how much of that goes to like utilities on the washing machine or you know, how do you kind of think about slicing it up?
- [13:13]
Susan Toft
Our average customer will spend $100 per service and most of them will have a weekly or a fortnightly recurring service. So it's a very repeat customer model.
- [13:24]
Nick Loper
Yeah, clothes are going to keep getting dirty.
- [13:27]
Susan Toft
Yes, they just are never ending. And then our contractors earn 80% of their total services that they do. And so our average contractors are earning, they can be earning anywhere between 300 and $3,000 per week very consistently. So it's a very good business mod for them to be part of. They can earn a lot more than driving for Uber or those types of things. So it's, it's a very recurring repeat model for them. They have a very routine schedule. They know that customer is going to have a pickup every Monday. So they sort of start to know what their week looks like. And our average contractors are earning, you know, probably around 1500 to $2000 per week. So it's a really great business model for them. And per week.
- [14:11]
Nick Loper
Dang.
- [14:11]
Susan Toft
A week. Yeah.
- [14:12]
Nick Loper
Now I'm like, shoot, I gotta start a laundry business.
- [14:16]
Susan Toft
Well, look I mean, there's a lot of our contractors who are doing this as their side hustle because they might be building something else or maybe they're, you know, going back to study and we have a lot who like go back and study nursing or they're building their own business or they're also doing other side hustles like Uber driving. And then they do this as something extra to earn some extra money. And once they start doing it and realize the flexibility of it and the earning potential of it, some of them go. So I'm just going to do this full time and let go of all my other side hustles and focus on this.
- [14:49]
Nick Loper
More with Susan in just a moment,
- [14:51]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
including her non franchise model for scaling
- [14:54]
Nick Loper
to new locations, plus her experience on Shark Tank coming up right after this.
- [15:00]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [17:09]
Nick Loper
yeah, and they're in charge of the pickup and delivery of that as well. It sounds like probably a pretty sticky service. Like you said, the clothes are going to keep getting dirty and I kind of have this mapped out. Okay, Monday I'm picking up from here and I'm dropping off over here. And so you can kind of build a consistent routine around it. Is that accurate?
- [17:26]
Susan Toft
Yeah, that's right. And you know, particularly because a lot of them are women or mums or parents who, you know, are juggling looking after their kids or looking after elderly parents like to be able to work from home and have that flexibility so that they can get to school pickup or school drop off or don't have to have extra daycare for their kids. They can have their young kids with them if they want to while they're doing the laundry. So it gives them a huge amount of flexibility. They can be just doing a few hundred dollars, you know, a couple of pickups a week if they want to, or they can expand their service offering to be full time and be doing that, you know, $3,000 mark if that's what they want to do, if they want to work in it full time.
- [18:09]
Nick Loper
One thing that stands out is that 80% split is quite generous among the service based or agency based entrepreneurs that I've talked to. Where other people might say, well, I want to, you have a 2x or even 3x kind of gross margin on the fulfillment labor. And so it's kind of surprising to hear like, no, it's pretty thin, like the bulk of it is going to the contractor in this point. Was that. Has it always been that way?
- [18:36]
Susan Toft
Yeah, it has always been that way. And we really drive a lot of the marketing as well from that 20% that we keep. It all goes back into marketing and growth of the business. So we drive all of the customers to the contractors through our digital marketing. We invest heavily in our online booking system. So we've moved well away from that off the shelf system now. And we do have that custom system behind the business that operates and is helping us to scale. And within that, we've Got an app for both the customers and an app for the contractors and an extensive amount of work within that. So they are getting part of a really great system and model to be part of, but also excellent marketing and brand recognition, which is something we've really focused very heavily for our contractors and helping drive their business to get them to their targets and whatever those targets might be and look like for them.
- [19:37]
Nick Loper
What comes first for you? A new contractor sign up in a new city that you haven't previously served before or like search demand from that city. You're like, well, now I know I need to plug somebody in there, so I gotta go join the Facebook moms group for whatever this town or neighborhood is. And now trying to recruit somebody. How are we balancing both the supply and demand side?
- [20:00]
Susan Toft
Yeah, it's a constant challenge for us. We like to call it our chicken and egg. You get the contractor and then you get them customers. And you keep repeating that. And that sounds very simple when you talk about it like that, but it's actually very complex because we want to make sure that the contractors are getting customers at the right speed. We don't want to put 500 on in one particular area and then they can't get any customers or it takes them a long time to get customers. So we're constantly working through that as a team and how we do that. And in Australia, we have around 450 laundry ladies and lads now right throughout Australia, and we have about 30 in New Zealand, and we just launched into Canada at the start of the year. So we've got our first 10 contractors there up and running.
- [20:46]
Nick Loper
Okay, nice.
- [20:47]
Susan Toft
Yes, we've had a huge number of applications in Canada, but we don't want to put them all on at once and then not be able to get them customers. So we're constantly looking at all of the different aspects of the population and demographics in those locations as to whether how quickly we think those customers can grow in those areas. We don't want to start marketing in those areas until the contractor is up and running because customers want to be able to book as soon as they see that. So, you know, we're constantly, you know, working through that and adjusting our marketing efforts around all of those different locations.
- [21:19]
Nick Loper
And the contractors aren't having to go out and knock on doors and try and drum up business or run their own digital social campaigns. That's all coming from corporate. We can play puppet master and play search advertising or social advertising to generate demand.
- [21:35]
Susan Toft
Yeah. So all of that digital marketing is very much delivered through our Head office. But the local on the ground marketing. Absolutely. The laundry ladies and lads can go out and support that. When they start with us, they get marketing materials like brochures and things like that. And they can go out and they can mail drop in their area, they can go and talk to businesses in their area. And certainly if they go out and do that and support that on the ground local, face to face kind of marketing, then it will really help drive the business and help them get customers faster. So we certainly have some areas where it grows really fast and then some areas where it might grow a little bit slower, particularly areas that are a bit more regional or, or outside of the big city metropolitan areas or a brand new area where we haven't been before. And so it certainly helps if they can go out and do those things as well.
- [22:28]
Nick Loper
Okay. And then the way it's structured is they're not on payroll. I guess you're not committed to paying them anything until you have laundry for them to wash. Until you've got income revenue coming in from customers.
- [22:41]
Susan Toft
Yeah, that's right. So they're just getting their commission paid from the services that they've actually delivered for those customers. And sometimes it can be a bit of a wait for them to get those first customers and feel like that's taking forever. But because the customers are so sticky and become very repeat customers, even if you're just getting one new customer each week, it really starts to build very quickly with that repeat recurring service. So before they know it, they've got a full time schedule and turning themselves off for any new bookings because that grows. So it usually can take them three to six months to kind of build that up. But in some, in some areas that might be a lot faster. In some areas it might be a little bit slower. So it can vary a lot.
- [23:24]
Nick Loper
Is it operating kind of like a franchise where if I'm in Canada and I want to sign up, like assign me this territory or I want exclusive rights to this territory or how is that structured?
- [23:37]
Susan Toft
So we've stayed away from a franchise model because we really wanted to be able to, you know, give this opportunity to lots of different people who want to be able to work under our model. So, you know, and that might be mums who don't have a lot of money and just want to start earning some money and, and doing a few jobs. And so having, you know, territories wouldn't make sense for us because they just wouldn't be able to, you know, do that kind of volume in those areas. So we Followed a lot more similar to a, to an Uber style model where they are independent contractors, they decide where and when they want to work and you know how big that area is that they want to open up, what days they want to do those pickups. And all of that is then automated within the booking system. So there might be multiple people in an area doing those services and that really helps to drive business to both of those laundry ladies or lads that are in that area. And that's how it will grow from there. So like in Australia and some of the areas where we been for quite a long time, you know, we're seeing maybe 10 to 20 contractors in a, in a suburb that might be servicing that area and that just grows from there.
- [24:45]
Nick Loper
Okay. And so most of that is recurring. And unless there's a reason to switch contractors, like that's going to be your customer for the duration. And then when somebody new comes on, okay, we'll sprinkle those out as there's availability in people's schedules. But I think I saw. So not, not quite a franchise fee, but you are charging kind of a nominal startup or onboarding fee for new laundry ladies and lads. Yes.
- [25:06]
Susan Toft
Yeah. So our startup cost is basically designed just to get those contractors on board and trained up and ready to take those bookings when they are ready to. And it also gives them some of the products that they need. So things like branded bags, branded laundry bags that they'll give to the customers to use for their pickups and deliveries and things like hangers and magnets for their cars and brochures that they can go and hand out locally. So just some of those supplies that they need to get started in their local area. And we really work with them to work out exactly what that location, you know, what their onboarding will look like in terms of do they want to open a really big area and service a lot of different customers, or do they just want to focus on an area that's around where they are doing their school drop offs or all of those kinds of things. And do they want to be able to do multiple pickups a day or do they want to be able to just do it all within certain time slots? And so they're all the things that we work through with them in the onboarding and training to help get them set up?
- [26:10]
Nick Loper
Okay, so that's one of the revenue streams, obviously the percentage, the 20% cut on the laundry itself. What else is ringing the cash register for you?
- [26:21]
Susan Toft
The main driver of business is the services that we offer to customers and Then obviously we do have some product that we sell to the contractors around the laundry bags and things like that. But the main driver of our revenue comes from those services to customers. And that 20% just all goes straight back into growth and marketing of the business.
- [26:42]
Nick Loper
Tell me about Shark Tank and preparing to go on the show and the deal that you eventually cut.
- [26:48]
Susan Toft
Yeah, so it was almost two years ago now, or a bit over two years ago that we went on Shark Tank. So I am sure in the US this is the same. But I think when you own a business and you're an entrepreneur and in this space, you know about Shark Tank and you get excited about it and it's always a bit of a dream that you might go on it one day. And one of those sharks is Robert Herzhavik, who's also on Shark Tank, US and Dragons Den in Canada. Before I thought about it too much, I put an application in to apply and go on the show, which was kind of a good thing that I hadn't thought about it too much because I think the more I'd thought about it, the more I would have thought, oh my gosh, this is crazy, what am I doing? But our application got accepted and before I knew it, I was rushing off to Sydney and filming for the show. And it was the most nerve wracking experience of my life. I'd never pitched the business before to investors. I'd never been on TV before. You know, the business had grown a lot at that stage. We were a $3.8 million revenue business and we had about 200 contractors, but it was absolutely terrifying.
- [27:54]
Nick Loper
Well, I watched your clip and you presented yourself very well. If you were nervous, you couldn't really tell. And didn't one of the sharks say like, oh, I know your brand or my, I'm a friend of mine is a customer of yours who's like, people kind of knew, knew about it.
- [28:07]
Susan Toft
Yeah, that was so cool. So David from Oodie, he sells Oodies, which I don't know if you have those in the U.S. but they're, you know, big blanket hoodies that you wear at home and it's very, very popular brand, very well known brand. And he's a young entrepreneur and was on there and he said, yes, I've got friends who use your service and they absolutely rave about it. And I was like, oh my God.
- [28:28]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that's like, phew. Like, oh, yeah. I was worried he was going to say something like, oh no, they had a crappy experience.
- [28:34]
Susan Toft
I mean, and this is the thing in hindsight, it's like if they had said negative things about the brand, that could be quite damaging because we were probably a little bit further along than a lot of the businesses that go on Shark Tank Australia, which are very, very early on. All I would had been thinking about in the lead up to it was just getting that three minute pitch remembered and delivering it correctly. And I couldn't remember it all morning, but then when I had to deliver it in front of the camera and it went perfectly and then you suddenly have all these sharks just screaming questions at you, which is completely terrifying. But actually that was the point when I relaxed because I know my business, I know my business really well and it was exciting to get those questions and be able to answer them in that format. And since then I've done a lot of pitching and a lot of Q&As with investors and have learned a lot about that process. This. But I think, you know, considering that was my very first time, I did okay, totally.
- [29:31]
Nick Loper
And eventually Robert says, I'm in, I want in and makes this million dollar investment. What'd you use those funds for?
- [29:38]
Susan Toft
I think the main benefit of going on Shark Tank was really that it just gave us so much marketing exposure. You know, it was just like marketing gold for us. And that's something that we've really, you know, been able to use extensively since then.
- [29:53]
Nick Loper
Do you see a big rush of customer signups after that? They're like, oh shoot, I could use that kind of service.
- [29:58]
Susan Toft
Where we saw the biggest impact was on the contractor signups. So, you know, we started to go from maybe 100 new applications to like over 500 in a week. It was, it was kind of insane. Our website definitely crashed, which was kind of pretty crazy. But we still now, even a few years later, whenever we're doing one on one interviews with potential new contractors, which we're constantly doing, a good percentage of them are mentioning, I saw you on Shark Tank or I've watched you on Shark Tank since. And so that's really been a great exposure for us in terms of our recruitment. And now going into a new market like Canada and starting from scratch and starting from a brand new business again, it's really been able to give us kind of that first credibility and first exposure going into that market, especially because the Canadians recognize Robert. And so we're able to use that through, through all of our marketing, which has been really, really, you know, helpful in our brand and as we, you know, expand, start to expand globally.
- [31:00]
Nick Loper
Okay, so it sounds like some of the Funds went well. Some of the recruiting kind of happened naturally, organically just from by virtue of being on TV and people being like that sounds like a cool side hustle. I want to sign up to be a contractor, but then investing some more of the funds in kind of recruiting and attracting new contractors, new laundry ladies and lands to sign up and then new customers as well.
- [31:21]
Susan Toft
Yeah, we are always focused on growing our customers and contractors and have been doing that with our own funds for a very, very long time. We took on our first investment raise just last year in the last six months actually from a group of investors in Queensland in Australia and that's really been helping us to to start to drive internationally and build our brand internationally and get Canada up and running and be soon going to the UK as well and coming to the US as well eventually.
- [31:53]
Nick Loper
Yeah, come on in. I think people would definitely be interested in getting paid to do other people's laundry. Like it sounds like pretty easy and so maybe enjoyable side gig for me if I like doing that kind of thing.
- [32:05]
Susan Toft
So we could sign you up for that for sure.
- [32:07]
Nick Loper
Well you're telling me 1500 bucks a week folding laundry like okay, that's sounds pretty good gig. More with Susan in just a moment. Including where her time goes today.
- [32:16]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [32:28]
Nick Loper
But I did have a lot of what ifs.
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- [33:45]
Nick Loper
Quo for today's episode.
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- [34:40]
Nick Loper
So you mentioned kind of building your booking platform. I was curious what other tools and tech that you swear by to run this thing at a pretty serious scale at this point?
- [34:51]
Susan Toft
Yeah, I mean, we got such a long way with using that off the shelf system, but we did eventually really outgrow that and it became very challenging as we, you know, probably after we got to about 200 different locations, that's when it started to really not be able to meet our needs anymore. And so we had to go back and start completely from scratch and build our own platform. But even then, you know, building tech is just never ending and very expensive and resource heavy. And at the moment we're focusing a lot more on our customer side and our app. Whereas, you know, early on we were focused much more on building the contractor side and the things that they needed to be able to do their job and expand with in our head office kind of space and what we do, you know, we're starting to definitely use a lot of AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini to be able to just really help with our customer support and the way that we deliver that, our contractor support and training, all of those kinds of things. I definitely use it just for my daily kind of organizational types of things and in marketing, it's. It's amazing the things that you can do in that. I wish that those tools had been around when I first started, you know, 13 years ago. It would have been a very different growth model for the business.
- [36:09]
Nick Loper
Sure. Curious what a day in the life looks like for you at this point as the CEO operator overseeing hundreds and hundreds of contractors and lots of loads of laundry every week.
- [36:20]
Susan Toft
My days vary greatly and can be pretty crazy. You know, from doing podcasts like this and doing our own podcast. We have a podcast called the Spin out which is very much for entrepreneurs, women particularly, also for our contractors to hear what's more of what's going on and to connect with us. Today I've got a day full of meetings that'll be back to back meetings non stop with mostly with my team and going through those processes. I am not so involved in the day to day operations of customer support anymore because that was really only until about two years ago that I was still very much at the center of that. But you get to a point where you have to be, you know, very conscious of your time and how much that takes up. I certainly travel a lot as well, you know, and go to a lot of events, a lot of speaking. I'm very involved on the marketing growth side of the business because that's, that's my background. That's where the things that I enjoy the most and then recording messages for contractors and new training materials and all of that, those kinds of things as well. So there's a lot of different things. It's, it varies greatly. And then, you know, I'm also a mum, mum of two boys. And so that kind of grounds me in reality of, you know, I've got to drive my son to his education provider at the moment, which is a really long way away. And so I spend a lot of time in the car at the moment. So that's a lot of phone calls in the car while I'm driving.
- [37:44]
Nick Loper
Are they getting involved in the business in any way, your son's?
- [37:47]
Susan Toft
No, not really. They think that mum is very cringe. So they like to comment on any marketing that we do and how cringe that is.
- [37:56]
Nick Loper
You're like, look, you're not our target customer, don't worry about it.
- [38:00]
Susan Toft
Exactly. My oldest son is 16 and so he does come and help us in the warehouse sometimes now with our, you know, when we have suppliers come and packing orders and things like that. And my youngest will sometimes star in the, in the social media but at the moment he just likes to send his laundry to get done. He thinks that that's pretty cool to have it put it in the bag and it comes back the next day
- [38:23]
Nick Loper
all folded and yeah, that's a nice perk. Sure.
- [38:25]
Susan Toft
Yes. So he's enjoying that part of it at the moment.
- [38:30]
Nick Loper
Yeah. There's some benefits of having an entrepreneur mom. Okay, I was going to ask. So now you're 12 years into the business, it's seen quite a bit of evolution. What's surprised you the most along the way?
- [38:41]
Susan Toft
You know, I think a lot of things take a long time and I think you get frustrated when you're stuck in that and thinking, oh, I'm not making any progress, I'm not getting anywhere. And, you know, it's really good and important, I think, to every year stop and reflect in some way on how much you really have grown in the past year and how much you really have achieved. And looking at that, because I think when you don't do that, it's like watching paint dry. You think you're making no progress, even though you really, really are.
- [39:13]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Day to day, hour to hour, it's hard to feel it. But then totally zoom out six or 12 months and say, oh. A friend of mine put it this way, like, look, if I'm still dealing with the same problems 12 months from now, I'm not growing. And I thought that was really kind of forward thinking. Another friend put it, my job as the CEO is to live a year in the future and kind of project out where the business is going to be. But I'm with you. Things are always slower than you'd like.
- [39:38]
Susan Toft
Absolutely. We're suddenly at 12 million in revenue. And when, you know, we talk about Shark Tank, we were at 3 million. So, you know, we've grown so much.
- [39:47]
Nick Loper
Yeah, just a couple years ago.
- [39:48]
Susan Toft
Yeah. You still feel, you know, in the day to day grind, like, you know, that's very slow and happening very slowly, but you know, that's only kind of two or three years and we're four times the business. And that's why it is really important, I think, to stop and really reflect on that and appreciate that and show your team that as well, because they're even more in the grind than you are. And so making sure that they're really seeing that and seeing the impact of how that's progressing.
- [40:13]
Nick Loper
Totally. No, I'm with you there. What's next for you? You mentioned expanding into Canada, expanding into the uk, bringing on this recent investment. What's got you excited going into the rest of this year?
- [40:25]
Susan Toft
Yeah, so it's been a really big year. We're really investing a lot in our tech, which is exciting to get that to the next stage and just growth, you know, we're really so focused on growth all of the time. Australia is a very different market for us now to new countries. New countries. It's like a startup and starting all over again and going back to the beginning and what worked. And, you know, looking at those kinds of things, which is really exciting, I think, gives me a fresh perspective every time of looking at a new country and thinking, thinking, how are we going to tackle this? How are we going to get faster and grow this faster? And then in Australia, it's, you know, really moving into a very different space of we've had a lot of growth, we still have a lot of growth to go, but it's much more of an established market. And how do we maintain that? How do we grow that at speed? How do we get better at that as well? So, you know, we're constantly trying to balance those different perspectives. Coming into Canada has been very, very exciting. We've been really welcomed there so far. We've had so many applications from contractors wanting to join the team already. And, you know, and now we're, you know, really pushing customers hard to get up to the levels where they want to be with that. And then we've only just focused on two provinces so far as our starting point. And then we'll be expanding into more provinces throughout Canada and then, yeah, looking at new markets. So UK will be our next. Next one. That will likely be later this year.
- [41:50]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
Why not the States?
- [41:51]
Susan Toft
Likely the states will be after that. So we just wanted to get a little bit more backing behind us because the States is much bigger beast for us to kind of tackle. But we certainly will be looking at specifically some states within the US that we'll focus on initially. And so that will be the next one after the UK that we'll be looking at. So we're really excited to get there.
- [42:13]
Nick Loper
All right, well, keep us posted on that.
- [42:15]
Susan Toft
Yes, absolutely.
- [42:17]
Nick Loper
Very good. Laundrylady.com you can find Susan and her team over there and check out their services. Susan, really appreciate you joining me. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.
- [42:30]
Susan Toft
I would say if you are just starting out in business, go and be part of some kind of accelerator type of program because, you know, I wish I'd had the opportunity to do those kinds of things in the beginning. And if I had, I think it would have really pushed me a lot faster and a lot harder in the business instead of sort of, you know, going through all these different phases that I went through. And it's also just a Great way to build network and cheerleaders along with you. So, you know, I would definitely say go and be part of one of those types of programs, you know, if you can.
- [43:02]
Nick Loper
Yeah, some kind of accountability group, mastermind group, access to kind of your network's network. Well, who do you know? I think that could be really powerful. And it's something I kind of witnessed because I was kind of the same person, heads down, doing my own thing for a lot of years and not really taking the time to look up and be like, well, what's working for other people or what else might be worth exploring here. And as soon as I found an outside mastermind group, all of a sudden all my deadlines are self imposed. But now I told this group of peers like, oh, I'm going to have this done by Sunday. All of a sudden I got to get this done by Sunday. It's still self imposed. Nothing's going to happen if I don't. But it's like, like, oh, I don't want to let everybody else down. They don't really care. But it was interesting, like just that little mental flip that you could switch. So a couple takeaways from me. Number one, we talked at the very top of the show about pain points. Right? What is annoying to you? What are friends, peers, co workers, family complaining to you about? Those might be the little seedlings of a business idea. Right. What is irritating and how can that lead to innovation? And, and what has you saying, I wish there was a better way or I wish somebody else could handle this for me, maybe you could be the person to handle it for other people. And if you want recurring revenue, solve a recurring problem. This laundry problem is never going away. Yet the tam, the total addressable market is huge. Everybody's wearing clothes and they all keep getting dirty. So I think it's a great market to be in. And what Susan has done really well is kind of pairing the demand for that type of service with the supply for contractors. And so that's kind of the game that you got to play in really any agency or service business type of model. And I like to recall to create the systems as you go almost this perfection is the enemy of good enough. At the early onset. It's like, yeah, it's not exactly what we want, but it's going to get the job done. Let's keep moving forward. We'll figure it out as we go. I think that's kind of of indicative of a lot of successful entrepreneurs. Now, if you're new to the show, welcome in as a free bonus for you, something that thousands of listeners have already taken advantage of, have already downloaded, have already claimed for themselves, is your own free personalized playlist. We've got hundreds of episodes to choose from, but there's a little quiz if you go to Hustle show to help you narrow down which of those episodes might be most relevant to you. So hit up Hustle show, you answer a few short multiple choice questions and then you can add the resulting playlist to your device. Call it an 8 to 10 episode sampler platter of some of our greatest hits based on your answer. So again, Hustle that show for that. Big thanks to Susan for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. Sidehustlenation.com deals is where to go to find all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Place.
- [45:48]
Podcast Sponsor/Ad Voice
That is it for me.
- [45:49]
Nick Loper
Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the side Hustle Show. Hustle on the.