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The Mastering Podcast
In a world obsessed with instant gratification and overnight success, Mastering… offers a refreshing antidote. We go beyond the surface-level stories and delve into the nitty-gritty of what it truly takes to master a craft.
Mastering is a podcast that delves into the secrets of mastery by interviewing experts at the top of their game. Each episode features an in-depth conversation with a master from a different field, from artists and athletes to entrepreneurs and scientists. We'll explore their journeys, their mindsets, and the unique skills and strategies they've developed to achieve excellence.
The Mastering Podcast
Cleaning Up With Franchising, Debt to 150+ locations, and Master Franchising | Damien Boehm
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Franchising sounds like a shortcut until you hear what it actually takes to build one. Our hosts Magnus, Don Sanka, and Lucas talk with Damien Boehm, founder of Urban Clean, about the hard pivot from operator to franchisor and why that shift can mean earning less before you earn more. His story runs from early jobs and a winding education to property development, then a brutal reset that forces him to start again and rebuild through commercial cleaning.
We dig into what makes commercial cleaning a scalable business model: contracts, scope and frequency, fixed monthly pricing, and the “subscription” nature of recurring services. Damien breaks down how he learned to win work through door knocking, telemarketing, SEO and tighter proposal systems, plus the moment he realised cleaning contracts behave like assets. That insight becomes the spark for franchising, because people didn’t just want to buy contracts; they wanted the systems, training and support that made those contracts reliable.
From there, we unpack master franchising and why local ownership beats a purely corporate rollout when you need customer service, accountability and market knowledge in each region. We also get practical about technology in service businesses, building tools that improve transparency, and where AI can genuinely help if you already have years of operational data. If you’re weighing up buying a franchise, franchising your own business, or scaling in a regulated industry, you’ll walk away with clearer due diligence questions and fewer myths.
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Passive Income Myth In Franchising
DamienThat's probably the biggest mistake I see. A lot of people who enter franchising think uh get into franchising, franchising is like passive income and become rich. You know, there's nothing further from the truth. Just remember you're not in the cleaning industry anymore. And like, what I'm in the franchising business, and it is. You will stop being an NDLS provider and become a franchise or and that is a completely different business. The economy has always been disrupted since the industrial revolution. The economy has been getting disrupted. And the cleaning I often call the original subscription business. It's a very solid and predictable. Now the fun starts.
RyanYeah.
First Jobs And Early Life Lessons
MagnusRight, welcome to the Mastering Podcast. Today I'm joined by my co-host, Lucas Meadowcroft, Don Small, and our special guest today is Damien Boham. Welcome to the podcast, guys.
DonDamien, how do you pronounce that uh surname?
DamienIs that uh Bolum? Yeah, you can pronounce it Bolum. Bone Bone Bane. I've heard uh five, seven different pronunciations, so yeah, any way you like really. So I'm not precious about it. All right, I'm gonna kick off.
MagnusWhat was your first ever job?
DamienMy first ever job uh was working at a servo, so doing night shift. And uh I remember getting paid about ten dollars an hour doing that, and uh, and even the manager said it's a bit low the wage, and I was excited to take it. I was very happy to get that first job.
MagnusTen bucks an hour. Uh I started my full-time occupation as an apprentice carpenter, and I was getting paid 20 bucks a day.
DamienYeah. Maybe a little bit older.
MagnusMight be just uh just a fraction. And so you're born in Adelaide?
DamienUh I wasn't born in Adelaide, I was born in Germany, but I grew up in Adelaide. Grew up, yep. Yeah.
MagnusSo just give us a quick snapshot of what that looked like growing up.
DamienUh it's well, uh, it was I don't know, is that there's a lot to say about Adelaide. So uh yeah, sorry for anyone from the show. Adelaide, yeah.
DonAdelaide as my disagree, but uh I'm not one, but yeah.
DamienWell, well, my one of my daughters is named Adelaide now, so Adelaide's very fine. Uh it's a fond name uh for me. But uh yeah, look, it was it it had its challenges. So uh I was growing up uh with uh my mum and my sister. My mum was a single mum at the time, and uh I had an interesting childhood, and then when I was about 14 or 15, I had to sort of look after myself. Uh, and uh that again one of those good learning experiences when you're young. Uh but I learned a lot of lessons from that, and then uh I spent some time away from school, and then I came back to school in the end and and did my matric, went on to university. I tried engineering, I wasn't very good at it. Uh, ended up doing classics and Latin and Greek, and uh and finally uh you know I got to a stage where I was well I probably need a a real job rather than not to say that working in a survey is not a real job, but you know, a career. And so I thought, well, there's not too many options for a uh a Latin and Greek scholar. So I thought I would uh do an English teaching course, and I did that, and that's when I started traveling. I went to Korea, I went to Indonesia, and uh yeah, had a couple adventures doing that before I came back to Australia.
MagnusDid you work over in those regions or was that purely just uh traveling entertainment?
DamienNo, I worked there. So I worked in Korea, I worked in Indonesia. So yeah, it's an interesting time.
MagnusAll right, and then back in Australia, how did your entrepreneurial journey start?
Arts Degree To Teaching Overseas
DamienWell, my entrepreneurial uh journey started not intentionally. So it it I I think this is one of those things where uh if if if you have if you studied law or you study engineering or something, like your career path is uh laid out for you. But if you do a general degree or an arts degree for that matter, there's like there's level what what am I supposed to do with this, you know? So yeah, uh and uh that's where I started uh first time but a labouring job when I first came back because I got very sick actually. It's the reason I returned back to Australia is because I was very, very sick. I was in hospital for uh a couple months over in Indonesia, so I had to return for health reasons and uh decided what am I supposed to do? And I started a job as a landscape gardener. I was working as you know, digging holes, put trees in it, and and uh then I picked up a a squidgy and started window cleaning and uh did whatever I needed to do to to make a living. And then I thought, well, I I've always sort of wanted to get into property, so I started uh going thinking, oh look, I'll go back to uni, I'd do some town planning courses, and maybe I can get into uh you know property development of some kind, and and that's what I eventually did. So I moved up to Queensland, I got married, and uh I uh worked uh for a property developer for a while and then branched off on my own and started doing some property development too, building townhouses and units.
DonDamien, before um before we go to the next phase, um education's my thing, right? So I I'm always curious uh why people do a certain type of study. Um why did you do an arts degree? Um it seems very um don't take this the wrong way, weird choice for for someone like yourself.
Property Development And Starting Over
DonSo arts.
DamienYeah, well, I asked myself that many times too. Uh I look, I it it was what I was good, so I found that I was very good at uh languages, particularly ancient languages. So uh it was something that I was like a duck to water. It's like I started uh I I had no trouble with ancient Greek, uh with Latin. And so uh and I did try engineering, uh, but I just wasn't wired that way. I uh realized, no, this is not for me. Uh I'm better off sleeping in at 10 o'clock in the morning, going to a lect one lecture a day rather than spending a full anyway. So there was definitely those sorts of things going through my mind, but I was just happened to be very good uh at ancient languages. I enjoyed uh studying, so I was really doing something that I enjoyed first and foremost. Uh and I wasn't looking so much at a career at the end of it, and maybe that was a mistake. Uh in the end, it turned out very well for me because uh I it opened me up to a lot of different possibilities and options because uh I wasn't pigeonholed into a certain career, into accounting or law or something like that.
DonSome of the um principles that you've adopted in in your new business, we'll talk about that um in a little bit, seems to be uh a lot around education and training, right? And um why did you do a formal degree? Why did you even go down that path, especially if you weren't wired that way? Why did you decide to do it? And um, yeah, how does how does that now sort of transform the way you think? Um, especially when it comes to setting up your franchises and helping your friend franchisees out of the good questions.
DamienUh look, I think learning skills uh and i is like the most important part of operating sort of any business or being good at anything. So you can't really, you know, have a franchise system and not develop people. So people need to be developed, they need to understand the principles of how to operate a business, uh, they need to understand about customer service, about lead generation, and uh it's franchising in particular is a good school for entrepreneurs. So if you and I recommend anyone who's looking at getting into entrepreneurship is to join a franchise. Uh, there's obviously a lot of things to look at before deciding which franchise is right for you. But a franchise will educate you on the whole spectrum of running a business. So a good franchise will teach you about sales and marketing, good franchise will teach you uh about customer service, it'll be teach you about operations, it'll teach you about systems, about people, and about uh uh upskilling your people and uh developing market channels. So they're all things that uh definitely a franchise can do for you, and a franchise should be offering that, and that's something that we try to do in our business too.
LucasEssentially, with a franchise, you're skipping that first three-year startup phase, right? Because you're joining a company that has systems and structure and processes in place, and then you're that whole learning that you're talking about allows you to skip that, let's call it the startup phase of it of when you start your own business, skip that pain, let's call it, and jump straight into a business that has that structure in place.
DamienYeah, we've been very optimistic about three years, because it certainly took me a lot longer than three years. Uh yeah, you know, look, I think uh you're right. Uh a franchise will let you leapfrog uh a few steps in front of now. Uh some people who even with decades and decades of experience in business will still buy a franchise. I mean, Coca-Cola is a franchise. Uh in Australia, it's a franchise. So uh it's Well, we didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. So it's even though they're listed on the stock market, yeah, Coca-Cola, Amadill's a franchise. So uh there are you know, just because it's a franchise doesn't mean you are an unsophisticated operator owning it. Uh because you get obviously brand power, you get all those systems, you get uh but it just allows you to accelerate your growth that much more and you can leverage you know decades of experience uh and know-how and resources that you typically can't do if you're starting from from nothing. Uh so uh even though fran a lot of people look down on franchising and say, oh, why why would I buy a franchise and start my own business? Uh yeah, you you know, it's not all franchises are the same.
LucasWhat I love about the franchise network is that um, like when you do start your own business, you feel like you're on your own, then you've got to build up your own network around you to get that other expertise to help you guide you through that first three years, five years, ten years startup process. Joining a franchise group, you already had that network. And all the other business, you know, semi-business owners, but business owners in their own right and in the franchise network, all helping each other out.
DonYeah, definitely. Sorry. Before we go into that, right? Like for the average person, uh, they don't really understand what franchising is, right? Like we go to McDonald's, we go to Hungry Jacks, or you you you go to you know any of these um uh franchised stores. How does what is franchising, first of all, and how does it work? And what's a franchise saw and who's a franchisee for for the layman's person who have no idea how how these things work?
DamienWhat's okay? Uh so so franchise I'm gonna gosh on sound like a lecturer or something. Go ahead. Uh so so uh a franchise uh is basically all business format franchising. Uh it is essentially you've got a business system, you've got a method of going to market, of acquiring customers and doing business, and then you've got a brand uh that you and you've got sort of the support behind you. So a franchise or will have a own the intellectual property, uh provide the intellectual property use to a franchisee, so they can obviously leverage the brand, the logos, uh, but intellectual property obviously goes beyond just uh a logo and a trademark. It goes into uh know-how, business systems, processes, uh, and then as a the franchise will provide then training and support so you can actually implement that business. And Lucas, uh your point earlier is true that uh one of the advantages of becoming a franchisee is you've got that network immediately. So we encourage our franchisees to speak to uh the other franchisees because there's so much knowledge uh
What Franchising Really Means
Damienand that from the network, uh they don't need to get all from the franchise or so uh and the it people on the ground are going to be learning things that you know sometimes we we we can't know because we're not at the coal face or every day like they
Getting Into Commercial Cleaning
Damienare.
MagnusLet's circle back for a minute. So before you got into franchising, you physically started up your cleaning business. Is that right?
DamienYeah.
MagnusSo how did that come about?
DamienUh yeah, so no one wait no one wakes up in the morning and says, I'm gonna start a cleaning business. Uh well, I've not met them. Uh people kind of stump stumble uh across cleaning and commercial cleaning, and that's what happened to me. So I was doing property development, uh, as I said before, and uh I had uh got a little bit over ambitious. I was young, uh, got into probably too much debt uh and uh chewed off too many projects. And one of uh the business partners that I had was a builder, they ended up going into liquidation, and that took me with them. And this wasn't uh you've got a background in uh property development and uh building, so you know that these things don't happen overnight. You can kind of see where everything is headed, and I could see where it all was all headed, and I had about uh you know a year or two runway, and I could see this slow train wreck happening in front of me, and I thought I've got to look at other options. I had a young family, and I did start a like as I said to you before, I was doing all sorts of things. I was picking up uh you know, squidgy and doing some window cleaning. And when I first moved to Queensland, I thought, look, I'll just put some notices uh out on a supermarket and see if I can get some some jobs. I did some handyman work and then I did some clean and then having a cleaning round and then I sold the cleaning round. And when I did that cleaning round, uh I picked up a couple offices and I thought this is so easy, it's just what's a clean what's a cleaning round? Oh, it's like a lawnmowering round. So you know, you've got so many houses. So people I just put an ad up and people started calling me and I said, Well, yeah, I'll clean your house, you know, once a week or once a fortnight.
LucasRegular customers. Yeah, regular customers, yeah. Was this that a necessary necessity because of you needed the cash because of the debt you're going through?
DamienOh no, well, this is before this is before. This is this is me just I was moving to Queensland from Adelaide, and uh I just needed some money to to come in, and so I thought, well, I'll do this. Again, this is a problem that arts students have, arts graduates, you know. Too much right brain. Yeah. Uh so yeah, you know, with that the arts degree. Yeah, yeah. This is what happens when you have an arts degree, and uh, you know, you I can't I couldn't have just said, oh, I was gonna become an accountant or I'm gonna get this job, or that's uh I just said, Oh, I'll start cleaning people's houses or doing handyman work, and that's what I did. I was putting blinds to people's uh you know, windows and air task before air task there existed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so uh you heard it first here.
DonThe initial arts degree, guaranteed cleaning jumps.
DamienIt's done well for me, so I'm not complaining. Um so yeah, I I realized uh that hate commercial was something good because I sold that because very quickly as soon as I got into some I got into property, um, and so I got rid of that. But then when all this was happening, I realized uh that wasn't that bad a gig if I knew what I was doing and I was doing it systematically, because my thinking was um if I can get some cleaning contracts, I can find some cleaners, some subcontractors, uh, and then I make a margin out of it. And the great thing about commercial cleaning is that it's uh it's regular, so you're cleaning an office, uh business every single day or once a week. And I thought, look, if I can get that, I can at least start subsidizing my income. And and that's one of the things, particularly about uh property development, uh, which is what I was doing, is uh I I didn't have a lot of ho uh didn't have any holding real estate, so I wasn't like tenanting out buildings or doing things like that. So there was no rental income coming in. So what I I I was working from project to project, so basically uh I'd get the the funds, put a deposit in, get the loan, start building. Uh I had to do a lot of off-the-plan sales, which I did, and then I'd sell down, and then you've got a lot of transaction costs, you've got you know GST fees and stuff like that, and and then sometimes I made money and sometimes I didn't, and sometimes and then I really didn't at the end. Uh so that's what got me into cleaning. And so when it again got you into cleaning again for the second time, for the sec for the second time in a more serious way. Right.
MagnusTalk us through the growth process. So you kicked it off and then you scaled pretty quickly.
DamienNo, no, so that's the thing. So when I uh kicked it off, it it was still part-time for me. So I was just doing this on the side.
MagnusFull-time developer and part-time cleaner, essentially, yeah.
DamienRight. Yeah, and I wasn't cleaning to begin with, so I'd I contracted it out fairly quickly. Uh, it wasn't something that I was interested in doing, but then when the proverbial really hit the fan, I had no money. I was basically started, you know, there's nothing more demoralizing than going to the bank to give them money to actually settle a property, you know. So, and that's what it that's where I uh ended up being, where basically all of my last remaining funds was just to make a sale so I could get out of the situation I was in. And so I was left with nothing. I had to start all over again. Uh and I had this little how old were you then? Oh, I was 30, I think for 30, 32, 33, yeah.
LucasYep.
MagnusStarting from scratch.
DamienYeah.
LucasDid you start at zero or did you start at like minus a hundred, minus a million? It was minus a lot. Yeah, minus a lot.
DonThere's varying degrees, right? Like if you ask Donald Trump, yeah. He started at the bottom and probably millions. So that's uh not quite that much.
MagnusSo you're ground zero, your early 30s, um, you've got that cleaning business, it's underway. So how did you grow and how did you scale?
Door Knocking And Winning Proposals
DamienSo what I was doing is I was uh to to make it because it wasn't quite enough for me to make ends meet. So I was during the day, I was knocking on doors, uh setting appointments for a roof restoration company and uh trying to get this cleaning business uh going. Uh doing door-to-door sales. Door-to-door, yeah, well, I was doing not quite door-to-door sales, door-to-door set appointments. Uh, and then I ended up doing the sales part of it as well. So I ended up selling, you know, people repainting their roofs and doing that sort of stuff. So that was your marketing strategy? It ended up being my marketing strategy. It wasn't initially. So I uh I was actually doing a lot of sort of inbound marketing and I wasn't getting a lot of traction with that. And uh then someone suggested to me, it's like, well, you're doing this during the day, uh, why don't you do that for offices? It's like, and I was like, oh my gosh, you know, probably a good idea. So that's what I started doing, and uh, I wasn't uh it actually didn't work as well as I thought it was going to work. It did end up once we refined it a few years later, it became phenomenal. So the success rate uh doing at that method. Uh, but it did give me some a bit of early traction and I have a few successes. I've got some referrals and I started building uh a a uh a business. And one of I guess one of the the moments that was sort of groundbreaking for me, to be honest, was when uh when I actually started from zero again, because I had subcontractors doing these cleans for me, and uh I actually had to ring them all up and say, look, I'm actually going to do the cleaning now, so you know I won't need you anymore. And one thing I found was like, well, there's a lot of money in this. I didn't think there was that much money. I was paying them too much, and so that was an eye-opener for me. I thought, well, there's if you know what you're doing, uh, there's actually plenty of margin in commercial cleaning. Uh, there's a lot of efficiencies that you can find, there's a lot of ways to upsell clients and there's a lot of stickiness if you know what you're
Upsells And Cleaning As Subscription
Damiendoing.
MagnusWhat's a what's an upsell? How do you upsell cleaning?
DamienYeah, good question. So uh upsell or cleaning is like well. Do you like fries with that? Essentially, yeah. So, well, we're cleaning. And so, well, uh how about your toilet paper, your paper towels, you're doing that. So that again, that's another one. And it's like, oh, how about mats? Uh before you know it, you're putting coffee machines in people's places, you're uh you know, you're doing organizing their pest control, you're doing their landscaping. Uh so yeah, you can easily double or triple a client, and uh especially if you're targeting the right market, uh, there's a lot of flexibility with their budget. They just want the problem solved and they're happy saying, look, if you can deal with it, you're already there. You're already there, you've got keys and alarm codes. And that comes with a lot of trust.
DonI guess the difference between cleaning and a business is uh how you create that, right? Sounds like convenience. So you're uh you're practically selling convenience to these businesses.
DamienUh yeah, that's right. So you're basic we're we're solving problems for people. So that's uh and the cleaning I often call the original subscription business. So, you know, people sign contracts, uh people will uh uh often uh stay with you for indefinitely. For years and years and years. So this is a very uh it's a very solid and predictable, it's not like property development of all.
LucasSo your first into a company doing them as a client is cleaning. Then you have all these offshoot products and services that you offer, they add on top. But do you don't promote those offshoot services to get clients? You only sell the cleaning part as the as the initial in?
DamienSometimes we do. It might be an offer, like we'll offer like uh coffee like for a month, you know, in a as an office. But what we found is that there were there's six things that customers were
Customer Research That Lifted Prices
Damienlooking for. And this would this was sort of a few of the breakthroughs when we were growing the business. We realized uh that probably the best way to find out uh well actually to design our service was just go to the market and ask them what mattered to them. And that's what I did. I just ended up going to uh what what I call my A-grade customers and I interviewed them and I said, if you had an a perfect cleaning service, what would it look like to you? And then I compared all the answers and I found out there was uh some commonalities. In fact, there were six things that they were all kind of saying. And uh the interesting thing was price was not on that list. So I expected that price or budget, you know, best you know, value for money service, and no one ever said that to me. What were some of those top things on the list? Uh transparency, communication, security, so uh and also specific items. So one of the things you find about again, uh the topic of this podcast is mastering things, is that you think cleaning is just cleaning, right? So it's just like vacuuming floors and bin liners. But what we soon discovered was every office manager or business owner had certain pet peeves, things that have really, really bugged them. So if you didn't address them, if you didn't know what they were, then you know they they weren't gonna come across. They weren't gonna they wanted and they wanted you to demonstrate that you were going to be able to address this in every single clean. And so I went to work and started developing systems of process. We build an app, we'd created new auditing systems and your training programs around these things. Was that before you started the franchise or this this was in your business? No, this was before we started the franchise. So this was me sort of I started getting a bit of traction, I started winning. And one thing I noticed is that then my alley rates just shot through the roof. So I started to experimenting. So uh just so someone who doesn't understand commercial cleaning is probably a good idea. So when you do commercial cleaning, you do yeah, so you give them a quote, normally a quote for a monthly clean office, and then you've got a what's called scope and frequency. So there's things that need to be done, and then you've got a fixed price normally of what what that needs to be uh cleaned for. So uh and the way that you then charge is you don't normally say, Oh look, I work on you know 30 or 50 or $100 an hour. You basically say uh, you know, this will be your fixed price per month. And then what you to calculate that price, so you do what you call like you work out your production rates and the hourly rates that you want to work on. So uh when I initially started, and this was like what 13, 13 plus years ago, I was like $35 an hour, which back then was pretty good. But I started experimenting. So, well, what if I did 45? What did I do? 55, what if I do 65? And what if I went right up to 150 and I was still winning work, and I was like, this is crazy, this is cleaning. Like, what's what's going on?
LucasYou you weren't doing cleaning, you were offering cleaning as an A service, but you're offering convenience of everything else, yeah, which is a different value add right. I absolutely love that.
MagnusIt's results focused at the end of the day. So they had the tasks that needed to be met and you were meeting those.
DamienYeah, that's right. And and they they look it and you if you think about it logically, it makes sense. So if you're like a legal firm, you've got 20 desks there, and someone uh you're you're paying like say $2,000 a month for a cleaning service that's constantly causing you dramas, you might have lost a client because someone came in and there's like a dead cockroach sitting at the boardroom table. They just don't want to deal with that or unlock doors and all that sort of stuff. So if you come in and you say, Well, I'll do it for $3,000, but you never think about any of those things. And I've not only that, I can actually show you the systems, the tools, and the processes and the guarantees so that won't happen to you. You're like, Well, okay, what's that to them? I mean, it means a lot to us in terms of the margins and the profitability of our business, but it doesn't, you know, mean anything to them, an extra thousand dollars of cleaning. So that's like an example that you would use. Again, this is it's different in different market segments. So once you get to the big end of town, we're talking about airports and shopping centres and stuff like that, there is uh there's a lot more price pressure. So you've got to be very uh you've got to sharpen your pencil as it were because there's a lot of competition. There's quite a few good operators in that level, and it's uh it's a large, it's volume and low margins with that sort of stuff. But where we sit in the mid-market, there is a lot of price flexibility because people are looking first and foremost for outcomes.
LucasYeah, you're 100% right. Like if I use this as a perfect example, as a business owner, we've moved office like I can tell you 15 times in 10 years. Didn't you just move again? We just moved again. And and cleaning is one of those things that no one wants to do, and but you want a really good job done. And we literally moved out of our previous office uh only a few months ago. One of the main reasons was we wanted our desk clean. And I went to the uh we're in a co-working space, went to the um reception, said, you know, can we get our desk clean? They said, No, it's not a part of the contract. You have to clean your own desk. I'm like, but there's dust and there's dirt, and there's sorry, where the cleaners are not allowed to touch your desk. I was like, like, that's counterintuitive of what we as business owners want for our staff.
DonYeah. So how does your process work, Damien? Do you go and try to understand what the problems are in a business? Um, or do you just tick a box off what they ask from you?
DamienUh so look, there's a I was we'll start going to the weeds now. I'm not sure how interested people are in actually learning our quoting processes and stuff like that. But there is a like there's a there's a fairly formulaic process we go through in terms of uh acquiring what we call you know the information from a client, so we know we can put a uh a proposal together, uh, and then we from that we also then have a look at say what we call the big three, which is important, which would be those desks, uh, inclusions and exclusions, and then we put that into a pricing calculator, uh, and then we put it into a proposal. And we can do that about a minute, two minutes, yeah, the whole process. But it's just about uncovering those needs and questions and sometimes uh larger, larger, uh obviously um larger proposals. There's a bit more in-depth, you know, sort of data you know, gathering than and uh asking questions than there is with, they say, smaller offices.
When Contracts Became Franchise Assets
MagnusWhat about challenges? I'd imagine that you've got a lot of staff is would be one, but what would be your biggest challenges that you faced as you went through that growth phase focus prior to starting franchising?
DamienYeah, that's a great question. So one of the challenges was the way I was marketing. And I think you asked before, like I I think Lucas, you said before, uh that was oh going door to door, you're doing well. I tried it and I wasn't very good at it. All right. So I did get a bit of business and got me going. Uh so I was door-to-door sales. No one, yeah. So uh unless you know what you're doing. Uh so uh so what I did is I started sort of focusing on uh you know AdWords and focusing on SEO and doing that sort of stuff. And uh the problem with that form of marketing uh is that for for at least a service uh-based business like that's on site is that the jobs were coming from all different places. And so that became a real challenge for my business.
MagnusYou mean geographically?
DamienYes, right, geographically. So uh I ended up having not clusters of work, I had like a site here, a site there, and then so I I think it's a lot of people. And a lot of times you kept saying yes and yes and yes. That's right, exactly right. And so uh and then it got to a point where it's like well, half of my salary is just spent on travel time, it feels like, because I'm sending cleaning crews out and paying. I said, and I remember that this was a pivotal point for and this is actually how I got into franchising because I never intended to franchise the business, is uh out um because you know I started in Brisbane, uh we're national now, but uh I had a bunch of work uh around uh Kapala Bar, but most of my business was around uh the Brisbane city fringe, and so that's like an hour away. And I remember I had a bunch of sites down there, and I thought, just I'll just put them up for sale, like uh, and uh I'll sell the contracts. So that's what I did. I just put it out up on Gumtree and my phone didn't stop ringing. And I wasn't giving away these cleaning contracts, like I was asking reasonable dollars for them. I thought there's all these people interested in buying these contracts, what's going on? Uh but then when I spoke to them, they'll ask me these really basic questions. I say, What gear do I need? It's like, well, I'm not here to train you, I'm just here to sell some contracts. What it why are you asking me these questions? And they're like, Oh, can you get me more? It's like, no, I'm just selling the contracts. And that's when the penny dropped for me. I said, wait a moment, here's an opportunity. There's uh obviously what I've got is a valuable commodity, and then that's where my thinking started changing about what I had is in fact cleaning contracts were assets, so they were no different from houses and and cars, and that's where sort of my uh property background came into, and I thought, I'm selling houses, but they just happened to bits of papers, and so yeah, yeah, and that's the same the value of uh commercial property is actually the value of the the the lease. Yeah, so really when you look at the asset, is a bunch of signed leases, and I was thinking, well, I've got the same thing here, but in and that's where I started thinking, wait a moment, if I franchise, and this was the only time I so seriously looking at franchising, is that I could actually draw people in by saying, I'll get you some cleaning contracts and you had to do that, and then I'll support you with your setup, and then I'll support you running the business, and then I'll be able to get a I guess a portion of ongoing fees, they'd be happy as well. And some of the and and I ended up not selling those cleaning contracts, partly for that reason, but the other reason as well is I'd created a fairly unique system of uh uh transparency with clients, our communication books, the app that I developed, and over it just realized that I couldn't give any of that stuff to the new buyers of these contracts. Because, and that's the reason why these clients were willing to pay me these this extra amount of money, is that these systems I had developed was the reason they wanted to stay with me. And I thought, oh, I'm in a bit of a blind here. Um, and that got me on the franchising journey.
LucasFrom a timeline perspective, 13 years ago you started cleaning yourself, yeah. And doing doing everything yourself and then contracting out. At what point was that gum tree ad went up and you had that mime, that light bulb mode.
DonYeah, and how important is timing too? Oh, it was about 18 months, two years into doing it. Yeah.
LucasOkay, so pretty early on.
DonYeah. Um, before we go into urban clean, like that is the big differentiator between um entrepreneurial mindset and people just starting a small business, right? How much did the transferable skills play a pivotal role in in this whole process, right? From your arts degree, I don't know how much that one got you into the uh I kept going back to it because I it's I'm still stumped. But then But then you've got um your property development business. It seems like there's there's a lot of transferable skills. And the reason I asked the question before, it's like sales and marketing seems to be a huge part of what you do and what you need to do in a cleaning business.
DamienUm yeah, definitely. Uh I mean one of the things I first did when I was working for a property developer was uh sourcing sites. And so rather than going for real estate agents, I would actually we would target geographic areas and say we want to put aged care facilities, say, in an area, uh rather than you know, going for a real estate agent, I'd just go directly to the market and approach uh people and say, Are you looking to sell? And so well and uh you would think that would be easy, and it is relatively easy, but you you you can't uh take for granted that interaction. And so in order to actually engage people, I wrote I was putting like bottles of wine, sending them bottles of wine and you know, sending them like handwritten notes and things like that, just to start a conversation to see if they were interested in selling sometime in the future. And so these sorts of things, um, as you say, they are transferable skills. You start looking at things, you realise you can't take everything for granted, that you actually need to uh lubricate interactions, and um essentially that's what marketing and sales is is drawing people's attention. Hey, I've got something, or we could do something. Uh, how do we start this conversation? And is it something that you want to do? Uh and you know, even you know, knocking on doors uh was something that uh sort of got me thinking as well, and and and looking at probably if I hadn't had that experience with property, I it wouldn't have occurred to me though clean contract was an affet. I wouldn't have thought about that as well. Sounds a bit relationship focused as well.
MagnusOh, did you have it? Yeah, oh well, business is all about relationship.
LucasIt has to be, yeah, yeah. Definitely a sales-driven process that you had developed without realizing you had developed it.
DamienWell, our breakthrough happened when we started recruiting a lot of franchisees. So uh and I I one of the things I recommend people do, but it's a very scary thing to do, is to give guarantees that you're scared to give. And that's what I did. So I gave money back guarantees in my franchises to begin with, and I had a very short timeline. So uh, because I I wasn't a brand, no one knew who we were. Uh with the new definitely new kids on blocks with uh cleaning franchise, and so I would say, look, we'll get you uh five thousand dollars of cleaning contracts within three months, where I'll give all of your money back. Oh boy, did that put a lot of pressure on me. And I did I did have to give a few back back then, and that's what uh really uh that put so much pressure on us, we needed to perform. So one of the things I discovered was doing telemarketing. Telemarketing does work with commercial cleaning, and so I was doing a lot of that just to get set appointments on top of our online activities. But um one of the things we thought was let's revisit this door knocking thing because we weren't doing very well, would knock on like maybe 40 doors and get one person say yes, and that probably just felt sorry for us, or they just sacked their cleaner, and so they said, Yeah, yeah, you came perfect timing. Uh so uh I thought there's I thought, wait a moment, it's free, right? So giving a proposal is free, it doesn't cost anything. So it shouldn't be that hard to give something away for free. So why is it so hard to do this? And so we did a couple experiments and we trialed a few things and we ended up re-jigging a script in a process where we could actually get about seven or eight people to say yes to a proposal at the door. So out of ten. So there's a wow, yes. So we would go down a street and then in suddenly it became instead of there'd be maybe 40 officers there and uh passed in a past, there'd just be one proposal. This is not even closing the deal.
DonThis is just getting a proposal.
DamienWell, you gotta do a proposal before you can close the deal. Yeah, yeah. So that's yeah, there's an offer to do business with a price. So you need a scope, you need a uh, hey, this is what we do, and this is the price, and here's a signature. So I'd send them a proposal with something they could sign so I could do do business with them. And so we changed that from you know, 40 we'd have 40 doors. In the past, we'd only get one proposal, and that's a proposal, not a closed deal. Yeah, and then we turned that into like 35 proposals out of the three, and then we would just had to work on our conversion rates, and that ended up being about you know one in twelve.
MagnusSo your whole focus was still in that office sector? You didn't ever morph into the residential sector?
DamienNo, it's it they're two different uh animals. So residential cleaning and commercial cleaning uh two different things all together. Yeah, so yeah.
DonHow do you differentiate that? How do you say no? Like volume-wise, you would have had more business doing residential cleaning, right? How do you differentiate and make that call? Um, and that's a very important part. Lots of people would say yes to everything to make money, um, especially when you're going down that path of that first phase.
DamienUh yeah, look, it wasn't that hard for me, to be honest. So uh when you look at it at for a residential cleaning business, okay, if you're doing a million dollars a year in revenue, that's a big residential cleaning business. If you're doing a million dollars in revenue and commercial cleaning businesses, who are you? You're nothing. It's a tiny uh speck of a business. So in terms of market size, a commercial cleaning is uh the much bigger market. Like in Australia, it's like about I think the estimate, current estimates about eight or nine billion dollars a year get spent on commercial cleaning. Uh so it it's a way bigger market. Um and also the contract sizes are bigger. So a cleaning uh cleaning a house, like a a big house. You're looking, I don't know, maybe someone would spend a weekly or twice weekly clean kind of thing. And and you might be looking at, you know, a few hundred dollars a week, whereas cleaning contracts, we've got one set of like a million dollars a year, just one contract, you know.
LucasSo I think that's the key the key point is you you keep using the word contract in the residential space, they don't have contracts. No, they're hiring a a person to a service. You're talking about con you you've mentioned it so many times contract, contract, contract. Published. I think that's that's the answer.
DamienYeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's a discretionary spent. It's like when you so when uh you know the you know partners are they're both busy, they need a cleaner or stuff like that, but one and one of them is staying at home and so I don't worry about the cleaning service. So it's just not nice to have. It's a luxury item people have, not a necessity. Whereas for a business, they need to get cleaners. You know, so I mean, yeah, how many uh at the end of the day at a doctor's you know, uh surgery or like a medical centre, you don't expect the doctors to go and start cleaning toilets and then they're not gonna do it.
Master Franchising And Local Ownership
MagnusSo run us through the principles behind the master franchising model. Like I know you've written about it.
DonYeah, what is it? What is master franchising, first of all? Uh what does that mean?
DamienUh so master franchising is essentially you're working as a sub-franchisor of the the master franchise or, as it were. So and what it is is uh with our uh some sometimes some franchise models are very flat franchise models where uh you know you you would have let's say one franchise ore and they train people and they set up locations and then uh everyone does their own thing. There's just basically a uh one level, I guess, of the franchise. Uh so and you can still master franchise under that model. I mean, Subway for many years had a master uh franchise model where to get into sometimes they call it an area developer where you uh sell a territory and then they had the responsibility to open up so many stores, etc. Uh, and so it would be under that would be a master franchisee. So basically you get to use all the systems and tools and the brand, and then you're basically setting up franchisees under you using that model. Uh for us it was a little bit different because it uh because it's very much location specific. Like you had, you know, our master franchisees, we call them regionals in our business, they they're recruiting a sales team, they're going out winning cleaning contracts, and they're supporting their franchisees with training and support. Uh so it's it's location specific. And so basically, that model that we had developed in Brisbane was said, well, working for us, it'll work for other people as well. And so we basically opened up that model of uh franchising where you'd have a team, you win cleaning contracts, you set up franchisees, and we have franchisees as well who win their own cleaning contracts as well. But it's part of the offer is that we set them up with initial a lot of business, and we can continue we can work as their outsource sales team as well, acquiring uh new cleaning contracts or accounts for them.
LucasOne of the main purposes for doing that is that because you they understand their region better than you understand the region? So you know setting up like say out of Brisbane, you kind of know the culture, right? But going down to a different city or suburb in some area you haven't been to before, it's a totally different demographic, different culture. Does that fight masters franchise help to so they understand that local region so they can do the better sales marketing and build up their own franchisees in that situation, or does it matter either way?
DamienI I think the key is a sense of i is really ownership. So when you own something, you care about it deeply. You want to make sure that it's well I mean, uh you guys probably also landlords, you know. So like you you can and I used to know this when I knocked on doors for a roof restoration. I would walk past buildings, uh g uh houses where the lawn was unkempt and you know no one was doing the wedding because it's like, oh, that's a renter, you know. So and then the houses was well the lawn was well manicured and everything's like okay, they own that place, right? So that's a that's kind of what you get with France. That's one of the biggest benefits, in fact, that you get from franchising as opposed to a corporate model, is that you have people who are truly invested in the sense that they own this business, they care about the business, and so their level of customer service, their level of results are going to be dramatically different compared to someone who doesn't have that sense of ownership. And then there's just that idea of a scale, too. So uh for us, it's really about setting up and training someone in how to use our systems or operations. We can open up in New Zealand, or we can open up in the US, the UK, just by basically saying, hey, this is a this is all of our systems, these are all our tools, this is how to recruit a franchise, this is how to win cleaning contracts, this is how to support a franchisee to grow and to develop their business. This is all the br the brand collateral um come uh come over, we'll train you, we'll get you set up, bang, they're off to the race. And you get a good if you get a good operator with that sort of those that arsenal of tools, uh, that's where amazing things happen, you know. So and a good operator that has an ownership stake and you know, live and breathe the brand. And it's very hard to get that from employees.
DonAnd and obviously, um, you know, franchising, you've got to have the brand, you've got to have the recognition, you've got to have the tools, right? So start with how did you come up with uh Urban Clean, the brand, and what role did technology and the tools play for you in building this franchise and then scaling it? Uh they're good
Technology Tools And Writing The Book
Donquestions.
DamienSo technology and tools, you would uh I have a very utilitarian approach to all of that. So I just see them as what they are, they're just tools. So I think first it all comes from what do customers want? What do franchisees want? How do I make it easier for them to get what they want? And if there are tools of their technology that I can use to make that happen, I'll use it. If I put technology in that complicates things and just gives it like a really shiny veneer, then I'll eradicate it. And so we were one of the first cleaning companies, I think in Australia, maybe the world, probably not the world, but I know in Australia, um, to have an app that was giving real-time notifications of when cleaners arrived, when they left, uh, what they did, photos and all that sort of stuff. So but I made it very, very simple. Uh and it's uh even today, it's a very simple tool because they didn't clients didn't care about bells and whistles. They weren't interested in that, they just needed basic things answered every time the cleaners came in. Uh, and so I think if the technology is actually meeting that in demand, then you know it does amazing things. Now, obviously, there's you've got geniuses like Steve Jobs and stuff like that who create technology that then everybody decides that they need afterwards. Uh, but I think for uh for for people like myself, that's probably a bit uh beyond me uh to think of it that way. I I'd rather start with what are people's current needs and how do I address them, and if there's technology and tools available, I'll definitely use them.
MagnusWhat about your book, Cleanup with Franchising? What was the inspiration behind writing that? Oh, I just didn't want to repeat myself all the time.
DamienUh no, I look uh the cleanup with franchising, uh, I really uh it I was communicating uh a lot of the same things to a lot of prospective franchisees. So, you know, how I got started, you know, what what got the brand going, uh, and uh you know, why commercial cleaning is different, how franchising works, uh, and why you would want to get into franchising and how does it relate to commercial cleaning. And so I set out with that book to really answer all those questions and to use it as a tool. So, you know, we give them out to you know, franchisees who are you know looking at the business. I'll give them a copy. Obviously, people buy it as well because they're interested in um having a look at you know the a different perspective around franchising and master franchising in particular. Uh, but yeah, I I thought, why don't I uh put this all down in paper uh and actually you know communicate the story and and what we've done and you know why you would want to get into franchising and commercial cleaning franchising at that.
MagnusHow many franchisees do you have? Uh over 150, yeah. 150, yeah. And you got plans to go scale internationally?
DamienUh yes. So uh we have we're we're over in the UK in April doing an expo. We're we've definitely got the markets open at the moment. So we've got a New Zealand, we're looking for a master franchise in New Zealand, we're looking for regionals and masters in the UK, uh, and we have plans at the the end of the year to go into the US. You know, we're always always in discussions with people who are looking at, you know, maybe opening up uh an urban clean somewhere else in the world, but it's just a matter of time.
AI Data And Smarter Tendering
MagnusWhat about AI? Might be a question for for Lucas. How's uh what impact has AI had on your business and on franchising?
DamienUh that's yeah, I not much, like let's be honest. Like uh look, it in terms of the guys in the office, obviously Chat VT is a bit of a tool. We are looking at implementing AI into our learning platform because we've got huge, you know, it's like literally thousands of pages of resources that we've developed over the years in terms of uh operating a commercial cleaning business and the aspects. And so one of the the challenges behind that is like you would say, uh how do you mine through certain information and get it uh questions quickly answered? And so that's something that we are I I know right now looking at implementing AI into to make some of those things a little bit easier for our franchisees to say have a question and then fr rather than from the whole internet is actually from our system. So oh well this is you know what happens if that happens, and that's you know You don't have the little robot vacuum cleaners that run around? Uh no, but that is some of the some of the bigger clients do look for those sorts of things. Uh so yeah, we we're not in airports and maybe big schools and stuff like that. Uh they they are introducing that sort of stuff in. And AI definitely is going to be uh introduced if not it's already actively been introduced in the commercial cleaning market, particularly around scoping. Um and also what's uh uh like uh one of the things is with this is one of the challenges, especially with very large sites, is that you've got a lot of building, but not a lot of that building is used all the time. So, but when you do a tender or a quote, you have to assume that the whole building is used the same way. And so this is something that definitely I can see uh you know AI being uh definitely beneficial for procurement managers to actually uh massage scopes and frequencies uh of large tenders where they can say, Oh, well, look, that room is only gonna is only used once a week, so why do we need to have someone come into that those rooms like five days a week? And so definitely there's efficiencies that can happen out of it from that.
MagnusCan you see any efficiencies, Lucas?
LucasOne of the things about AI, it's such a buzzword, right? And so there was a bit of a hesitation around how do you answer that question because, like, where do we start? And then and one thing that you've got right that you probably don't even not even aware of yet is data. You've been using this application that you you most likely built internally, sounds like 10 years ago. You've got um uh both cleaners and franchises out on the road asking questions, collecting information, and this is all being stored within your data set, and that's where AI is powerful. It's it's it's it's all about how do we take that data you've already got and have some meaningful outcome with that data. So, for some examples, is like if you've already got that data set coming in and you go, well, I want to do this tender. Well, actually, we can go back and look at all the previous tenders we've done. We can do a matchmaking criteria and go, well, this tender that we've just received in, because let's say it's a word document or an email, however, however you're receiving the tender, we put it into that system, it will go back and look through all your previous tenders, the ones that we won, the ones that we lost, the ones that we like to work with, like you put a bit of a criteria around it, and then it will automatically pre-populate that tender ready to go out based on what you've already done previously, because you've already got the data. Most people love that idea, but they don't have the data. You're sitting on a goldbine, you don't even realize. And so that's like one example from a tendering point of view. But think about a customer matching point of view. If you've got, no doubt today, you've got an ideal customer, when you're going out and doing your sales process, your door knocking if you're still doing it, whatever that sales process looks like, we can easily match using the AI data set that you've already got, who is our ideal customer and who is not our ideal customer. That's very important, the not part. And so then that cry that quoting process becomes very streamlined. And so you it sounds like you're already winning 35 out of 40 anyway. But something like that. Oh no, no, we're not winning that many. We're getting that many proposals. So there's this is a qualification conversation, right? So rather than doing 35 out of 40 proposals now, we might only have to do 10 out of 40 because we're going to have nine, we'll win nine of those because we're very, you know, we're narrowing down that focus.
DonThat also gives you efficiencies of scale, right? Like if you're looking at launching into a new market rather than taking even if you if you're a multi-site owner, someone who owns a few sites and looking at going into franchising, would that give a would that make that process easier? In the in the in the old days, you would have had to hire a consultancy firm and and spend thousands of dollars, um, whether you want to go from a multi-site to a franchise or go from a um one geographical franchise model to a multi-geographical franchise model. Is that does that make that easier? Does that disrupt the market?
LucasAbsolutely, it could be a disruptor. I'm not sure if it's being done in your industry. It's not being done in many industries, so I doubt it's being done in your industry yet. It means you can scale faster. And if your business is ready for scale and you've got the data, then you could definitely adapt. Like for your exact point there, Dawn, is take your learnings from the last 13 years, build a model. We call it an AI model in this case, build a model that then replicates what we've already done in different regions. Say, say we want to go set up in Perth, I'm not sure if you're in Perth or Northern Territory, probably in Australia, wherever we're not, we take our learnings. Oh, New Zealand, let's talk about New Zealand, right? Different culture, different ways of working. We can take the data set of what we've already learned, we take a data set that already exists in New Zealand, because we can get access through open open uh Lights Linguage models, do a comparison, tweak our data set to match the New Zealand culture, and then when you're launching in with a master franchise that you bring on board, then you can do a sales and marketing campaign throughout New Zealand that's very, very targeted of who our ideal customer is.
MagnusWell, where's where's Australia at in the franchising spectrum globally?
DamienUh Australia is a very franchised economy. There's no question about it. So uh there's I think 1,200, 1,300 franchises in Australia, uh, the US I think has close to 3,000, and yet it's 14 times the size of the Australian market. So when you look at Australia in terms of per population sort of uh level, like we're very franchise, and franchise is a normal way of operating. And believe it or not, even though it seems like Australia has such an anti-franchise vibe about it. A lot of people, especially because we've had a couple rogue operators over the you know last decade, um, we tend to like to buy franchises and operate franchises.
Franchising Pitfalls And NDIS Questions
DonIt's one of those things, right? Like it's a really good model, but it's very legislated and and regulated. So what's the best way to do it? When do you work how you go from a multi-side business owner, it's a really good idea to franchise? Like what's what's the advice that you would give to a young entrepreneur um, you know, to go into franchising and what are the pitfalls? Um, there's a few in your book, but I'd I'd love to hear from you what those pitfalls are. And and before I do that, I'm actually I'm I'm gonna tap out, right? We've got one of our panelists in our in our mastering panel who's right now looking at franchising. So um we've got uh good old Ryan here, and and and mate, you can you can advise him, you can tell him because he's looking at this very thing at this right moment. So now you come in. I'm I'm I'm welcome to be you. Yeah, likewise. That was a mistake.
RyanNow we're in trouble.
DamienNow the fun starts.
RyanYeah, no. Well, first of all, awesome just hearing the um background of franchising, looking looking at it myself um from you know a local business that that's grown very, very rapidly, um, specifically in the NDIS space, which everyone uh everyone knows about now, it's like the most talked-about thing in Australia. And I think one-third of the Australian um population is actually working in it. So, from my perspective, um growing my NDIS company to the point where I want to take it nationally, but how do I do that from a franchise perspective? Like what are what are the ways of doing this? I talk to you know, different people all the time, and there's different ways. Some person saying payroll, some person saying licensing this, you everyone needs to be employees. So looking at it, what are the things I need to consider first and foremost that that work for me? Um as a as a someone that wants to be um, you know, a master master franchise? Am I using that? Master franchise or terminology. I like that terminology. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep that one. Master franchise.
LucasYou just want to be a master. I do.
RyanThat's exactly what I want. But yeah, no. So like what are the first things I need to consider? Um, especially in in my space where it is highly, highly regulated and legislated. Like it's it's very nerve-wracking for me to hand the keys to the kingdom over to someone where I'm like, hey, do the right thing by people.
MagnusSo so you're trying to find a model to be able to franchise your NDIS or franchise the NDIS. Is that what your question is?
RyanYeah, well, I'm I'm currently building out like uh our systems. Like that's that's one thing that I've noticed with a lot of businesses in the NDIS is um there's not a huge systematic approach from start to finish, from acquisitions to operations to you know, training, all these little parts of it. And that's what we've essentially started doing is laying the foundation of going, all right, well, let's streamline our system so I can say, hey Magnus, do you want an NDI to the state? So you can sell cell process. Exactly.
LucasSo But you've already answered your own question, but let's let's hear it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
DamienI was gonna say Well, like first of all, I'll say I don't have a lot of experience with NDIS, so I don't I'm not about it. Uh I don't um know uh a lot s of specific industry information about what what you do. But uh this would be more sort of general uh advice and and that is that uh I always say if someone's looking at only opening sort of 10 locations and don't franchise. All right. So it's franchising is really for someone who wants to do 100 plus. Uh and the reason I say that is uh you won't make money uh with just a number of franchises. It's actually a lot of that's probably the biggest mistake I see. A lot of people who enter franchising think I get into franchising, franchising is like passive income and become rich, you know. There's nothing further from the truth.
LucasSounds like building an app.
DamienYeah, it ain't that way, so it is definitely not a quick uh pathway to riches. And in fact, uh this was uh I guess not not embarrassing, but it was just the fact of the matter, it was humbling. It's like I when I I was making money before I franchised, and then I franchised and I stopped making money. And so I was uh my franchisees were making more money than I was I was at that time. So uh it really you there's a lot of the there's a lot of things you you you don't know that that can't be told to you until you start doing it. And that's what I remember uh someone gave me a piece of advice that definitely became true just before I started franchising. That was just remember you're not in the cleaning industry anymore. And I'm like, Well, I'm in the franchising business, and it is, and you are in a different industry. Well said, yeah, yeah. So you will stop being an NDLS provider and become a franchise all, and that is a completely different business.
RyanI think that's actually that's that's one thing. Um, you know, sitting here as as the business grows, and I'm sure everyone's experienced this. The more the business grows, the more you're operating the business, more of sales, more, you know, getting those data sets, leading the business as much as doing the thing that you're originally doing.
LucasSo um I think either on the tools doing what you love doing as a trade, or you're running a company, or in this case, you're neither of those, you're now running a franchise business, which is a business, but it's a franchise business, which is different to the one in the industry.
RyanYeah, well that that that's answered my question. That's given me a lot of time.
LucasI'll double-click and ask one more though.
RyanYeah.
LucasHave you seen that line and when was that line crossed when you went from making great money, now losing money because not losing, not making great money anymore because you're now a franchise or 20 franchises, 50 franchises, 100 franchises. When was the uh that tipping point did you find? Because it is a good point for a younger generation to go, well, your first target should be 20, your first target should be 50 before you can go over that crossing note.
DamienUh it's too I I couldn't say an exact number because it just depends on your fee model. And I guess that's something that I would also emphasize is that franchising is really only viable if there's heaps of margin. And what I mean is that you've got to be able to, a franchisee has got to be able to make a bucket load of money. And if your franchisees can make money, then you've got a viable franchise system. A lot of people sort of looking to, especially when you first and it's good advice, then is, and that is like you've got to have your systems, you've got to have your processes, you've got to have a, you know, this franchise community, you've got to have your conferences, etc. And yeah, all those things are true, but none of it matters if your franchisees can't make money. So it's really the and it will get messy because that's that's the thing, is in the first few years for us were messy. Uh, we made a lot of mistakes. We recruited people we shouldn't have recruited, and so it's really being prepared to go through that process, um, and it is a learning process. Uh I I feel like it's worthwhile. Like, I wouldn't be here if I didn't think it was worthwhile. It was worthwhile, but I won't say that it was easy, it was like very hard. Uh, and uh yeah, it wasn't until about five years into the business we started making real money. So for the you know, you see those franchise fees fees come in and you know they seem substantial. I mean, we we do sales and millions now, like if for a franchise, like someone wants to buy a master franchise territory, they're not they're not cheap anymore. They were once, uh, but uh but you know, those first few years, you're basically investing all of that money back into the business. So that's all we were doing. So we'd get a franchise fee and you say, Oh wow, this is someone just paid you 50,000 or whatever for a unit franchise, uh, like in our business. But when we started, it's like, well, they all went very quick, you know.
MagnusWho's who's done it the best? Who's been the world leader in franchising?
DamienOh, that's without doubt, like McDonald's is like seen as the pinnacle of uh business uh for franchising. Uh and uh and I think they still see I I I think they've lost a little bit of the luster that they used to have. So it used to be a ticket to riches, you buy some McDonald's franchise, you'll be rich, but it's maybe not so much anymore. Uh but having said that, in terms of their model of you know, the in terms of the ingredients of a franchise model, they are often seen as the gold standard, and I'll treat them as a gold standard franchise.
LucasWell, if you can get a 16-year-old manager to run a company, then you've got something right.
RyanWell, yeah, I think I think I have to tap out and take some notes now and and and start implementing some things because uh the big thing for me was and what really resonated is moving away from my traditional business and becoming like a full franchising becoming my business. That was a huge takeaway and a bit of an eye-opener because for me um I know how to run an NDIS business. That's that that's what I know how to run. But moving away from that and actually becoming a franchise business, now it's it's giving me something to reconsider because now it's it's a different kalefish, it's a different business model from what I've been operating, even if I have a business model over here. And I think, yeah, thank you, thank you so much for that information. And I'm gonna be taking that into consideration moving forward before I do anything.
Due Diligence And Flexibility Rules
MagnusThanks for dropping in, Ryan.
RyanYeah, no problem. Thank you, fellas.
DonThanks, mate. Yeah, so is it still a good time for um people to get into a franchise? We know there's lots of uh you know financial pressures, the the world's in a very bit of a flux at the moment, right? Like and all the disruptions. That are coming from even from technological disruption, there's a lot of uncertainty. Is it still a good time to get into franchising?
MagnusGood question.
DamienIs it a good time to get in business? Like there's there's every time is a good time and every time is a bad time. So it's really it's I think if I think if you want to do it, you should do it. And you can make your own economy. I think that's something that you can often use like to stop you doing things and say, oh, the economy is like this or people are doing this, or gosh, the thing, the economy has always been disrupted. Since the industrial revolution, the economy has been getting disrupted.
DonThat's true.
DamienSo it's one of those things is like, yes, the world is changing. Uh but look, uh you know, there there's no better time, I think, than getting it.
DonWhy would I join a franchise rather than, you know, starting my own cleaning business? Or why would I um start up a instead of starting my own restaurant, why wouldn't I why won't I why would I go and talk to Ben and start a Nockey Nockey Brothers franchise, join a Nockey Nockey Brothers franchise?
DamienOh well, I think that's just uh it's franchising is leverage. So you're leveraging other people's uh experience, expertise, and brand to get faster and more profitable results. Uh and that's really what your due diligence needs to be when you're looking at different franchise opportunities, you've got to say, is this gonna give me leverage? Uh is this gonna make me uh profitable faster? How much know-how do I have here that uh it's gonna take me years to find out on my own? And that's really the value of a franchise, and that's why some franchises are more valuable than others. So if you've got if you're looking at just entering into a franchise and it's got a small market and uh they don't have a lot of systems or a lot of experience, then obviously it doesn't mean it's a bad franchise, it's just not worth as much as, say, a McDonald's that has decades of experience as a proven formula uh and has uh as uh a a history of success and successful franchisees. So, but obviously the the investment in a price point is going to be reflective of that. So yeah, I think there's uh a great future for franchising like there is in business.
DonWhat you're saying is that when there's uncertainty, it's probably a better option, right? Because you've got a whole team behind you, you've got a network of people that are doing exactly the same thing as your you're doing, and you've also got all these systems that are in place, probably have better, you know, bargaining agreements that you've done with suppliers as well. So it might am I right in the back of the state?
DamienYeah, absolutely. Everything you said is right. Look, franchising doesn't work though, uh if you want to do your own thing. So if you're like, uh look, I want my own brand, I want to find it out on my set uh how to do things on my own, and I want to do it my own way. And do not look at a franchise. Okay, you're gonna drive yourself crazy, you're gonna drive the franchise all crazy, you're gonna just get it get everyone upset. So don't buy them.
DonHold on. How much flexibility do I get? Like, uh can I change my colours from blue to red if I want to in urban clean branding?
DamienNo, no, not in ours. Uh but it that's uh look, some that's something that you have to do when you're investigating opportunities and doing your due diligence. Uh and so some and that's one thing I would say about anyone who has is looking at investing in a franchise, a vast franchise, whatever, is that you do have to have a set of rules that you're happy to live with and happy not to live with. So when you're buying the business, so and that's part of your due diligence process is saying, well, look, I want this type of flexibility. Uh will that franchise allow me to have that flexibility? Um, and you've just got to ask. Some will, some won't. So that's part of the due diligence, is finding out because they're all different. And that's I guess one big I was very anti-franchise until I started franchising. And the turnaround for me was realizing that franchising was anything you can you you wanted it to be, because that's something uh you can often get fixated about. It's like, okay, you see McDonald's, or you see in Australia, for instance, gyms is really big. So you think, okay, if you're doing a service industry, it's got to be like gyms. If you're doing a restaurant, it's got to be something like McDonald's. Well, there is an uh a multitude and almost an infinite variety of uh ways to operate a franchise, uh, and they're all different. And so that's just part of your due diligence when you're selecting one. That's right for you.
Lessons Stickability And Long Horizons
MagnusAll right, as we get close to wrapping up, let's just talk about lessons. Now, you've obviously learned an absolute crap load through your entire journey um through franchising, through your business ownership. What would just be to summarize just your top three lessons?
DamienOh. Okay, yeah. I should have a ready response, shouldn't I? Uh look your book. I I look, I think uh top three lessons. I certainly think that uh if you're gonna do well in business, you need to have a speakability. I think that's really it's just staying through problems, determination and determination, but not just determination. You you've got to stay with problems until you find solutions. And I think that's something that as entrepreneurs we tend to have that shiny object syndrome problem where oh, this is really hard, I'm gonna go to something else and find something easier. Well, actually, everything you go to is gotta be hard at some point. Resilient being able to be resilient and then finally get through to the other side. Now there are points where you just gotta give up is a dead end. Uh but having that resilience, as you say, stickability.
DonI like stickability, yeah. You're right. That's one of the biggest problems with most entrepreneurs. You got so many distractions, and once you succeed in one thing, you think you can succeed in everything. So every opportunity that comes along. Yeah. Yeah.
DamienAnd that would be probably a second lesson is learn to say no to a lot of things. Yeah. So that's how I say say yes to a few things and say no to everything else. And what else? Last thing is um yeah, just make sure you you uh enjoy enjoy the process. How about consistency?
DonI I love that one because lots of people can't stick to it. They don't do this guy's the champion of because he did a consistent thing. No, no, no, three hundred and sixty-five days of a podcast with a video blog. Ridiculous.
LucasYou can do a video blog every day for a whole year.
DonYeah, yeah, yeah.
LucasUm one of the one of the key things I've learned in my uh business career is boring is profitable. Yeah. Which really relates to what you just said, right? Say no to everything else and focus on what just focus on one thing, do it really well. And but as entrepreneurs, it's hard to do that because our brain's going one way, and from a business point of view, she should do exactly what you just said. And anyone listening in um 100% agree uh from everything I've learned over the last uh 10-15 years. My question to you is if you were to do it again, tell your younger self, go back previously when you first started, what would you do the same and what would you do differently?
DamienIt's hard to answer that because uh I would do things a lot differently than what I would do back then, but then I don't think I would know what I knew unless I made all the mistakes that I made. So that that's really hard to to uh answer. But one thing I would say to my younger self is just like give yourself some slack and give yourself some time. You don't need to be in such a mad rush, it's what good, you know.
LucasSo don't want to conquer the world in three years, you want to do it in 10 or 15.
DamienWell, I that that that I think is a really important mindset to have as an entrepreneur. Often we're always trying to look at, oh, what am I going to achieve in one year, three years, five years? And I find that if you can start thinking about 10 years or 20 years, uh you make way better decisions. Way, way better decisions. We're in such a mad rush, we want to achieve these targets or make this amount of money here. And that's like that's where I've made most of my mistakes was actually trying to make a lot of money in a quick period of time doing things. Even, and when I say quick period of time, I'm talking about you know, 12 months to 36 months.
MagnusThat's so well said, great advice. That's the Elon Musk, isn't it? Yeah, he's so futuristic rather than trying to worry about trying to make a heap of money next year.
DonUm one of the things I'm uh seeing more and more is you know, entrepreneurship hasn't become this buzzword. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, um, whether it's on TikTok or wherever it is, everyone's an entrepreneur. And you see, when when the Education Institute starts implementing entrepreneurship as a subject, that's when you start thinking. It's catching, right? Um you know, one of the big things that I call from your book is that that education piece and the financial acumen, all of that stuff. You you're from what I understand, you're trying to build like some little business school within your own business, right? What's the advice that you would give to an aspiring entrepreneur? And what do you want to teach in this business school if you had to run it?
DamienLook, I think uh I think business should be seen as a craft. So there is like you and it takes time to develop and it takes time to become good at it. And so there's no magic bullets in business. It's just a lot of things you need to get a few things right, well many things right, and it does take time to develop that understanding. And as a as a business owner or an entrepreneur, you do need to be a bit of a generalist. So you need to know a little bit about marketing sales and a little bit about operations, you know. Uh, but yeah, yeah, look, uh the way I see uh our franchisees being educated in our system is particularly our unit franchisees. Most of our master franchisees are already very sophisticated business owners. So these guys are already, a lot of them come in, they're already millionaires, like they're just looking at their next venture. But for a unit franchise, uh they're looking at uh they're looking at, say, they may this may be their first business. So I want to teach them all aspects of the business. I want them at the end of it to say, wow, I know how a business operates, how to make a business profitable, why customer services are so important. And really that's all that business is, is just about solving problems for people that people are willing to pay for. That's it. That's yeah, but you need to, there's a lot that goes into that, obviously.
Quick Fire And Final Takeaways
MagnusAll right, let's wrap it up with a quick fire questions. Are you ready?
DamienLet's go.
LucasSo I put a timer on.
MagnusWhat's the biggest misconception people have about the cleaning industry?
DamienUh the biggest misconception is that uh there's you can only have a small business when you have a cleaning business. I do that all the time. You know, people often I tell them that I've got a cleaning business and they say, What's it like mopping floors? And I'm like, it's been a while since I've done that. But yeah, it's fun. Beach on mountains. Uh I live out in the country and in the mountains, so I'll say mountains. The strangest thing you've ever had to clean up before Urban Clean. I had a I cleaned a house that was infested with cockroaches and had cockroaches falling from the ceiling. So that was probably the strangest thing I ever did.
MagnusOh, that's awful. Yeah, and that's why one of the reasons I've done your residential cleaning. One piece of advice you'd give 18-year-old Damien.
DamienUh you've got plenty of time.
MagnusIf you could have one superpower, what would it be? I'd say radical humility. Your favorite cleaning product? Uh Magic Sponge. The most used app on your phone.
DamienUh Pikmin Bloom. What? Yeah. Well, what's that?
LucasWell, you have to double-click on that one. What Pikmin?
DamienWhat did you say? Pikmin Bloom. So my daughter got me into this. So here we go. So there's these little little uh creatures who go around and they have to attack mushrooms and they collect postcards, and then you have to scatter flowers around. And so this is something that my daughter and I, we often exch we're exchanging postcards, we're finding mushrooms here, and you could do this all around the world. So whenever I'm doing travel overseas, she's like, Oh, make sure you get some postcards for me. Make sure you said that's I try to actually I I I'm trying to get as much out of, I don't want to be on the phone as much as so um. This is a connection with your daughter reason.
MagnusYeah. So I know we share a passion for aviation and you're a pilot. What's your dream aircraft?
DamienOh, I think there's dream aircrafts because there's no single aircraft that does everything. Uh so yeah, I would uh probably a Pilatus would I would love one of those, but uh but um oh gosh.
LucasIs that small or big for a non-aircraft person?
DamienYeah, as big as a turboprop uh thing. But I would uh but then maybe probably some aerobatic planes as probably.
DonI know this is a quick fire on, but I want to ask this question, couldn't you? What got into your flying? Like uh was that the arts degree or you love this arts degree, don't you?
DamienWould be all the languages in arts again. It was actually COVID, so yeah, in 2020, everyone was stuck on a couch and they're like, Well, I'm gonna learn how to fly. So that's what I did.
MagnusI absolutely love that. So if you're prime minister for a day, what's the one thing you'd change?
DamienWell, uh let's pretend I was a dictorial dictator. What is that? A dictator. Prime Minister. Yeah. Uh so you know, I didn't have to go through the Senate or something like that, but I would just do a uh flat taxation system. Um, and uh it's like a 15%. And then if you can't make things work out of that, then it should be done.
MagnusRight, your go-to productivity hack. Uh not doing something. One thing you can't live without. Oh god. Best book you've ever read. Bible, that'll be a follow-up for that one. Podcast you're currently listening to.
DamienUm listening to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Jumping.
MagnusWhat's your favorite way to unwind after a tough day?
DamienUh a bike ride.
MagnusIf you weren't running urban clean, what would you be doing?
DamienUh probably writing or doing documentaries.
MagnusPrediction. What's the biggest change we're gonna see in 2025 in Australia?
DamienUh I think we're gonna see I think I think the uh just going sort of macro political and economic. I think uh I think the US election was a bit of a watershed. And I think that's gonna I'm not sure we'll ever have a change of government uh this year, but I certainly see that there's gonna be a trend away from sort of the the woke uh sort of a uh economy and uh cultural milieu. Yep.
MagnusSingle most important attribute that you need for success.
DamienUh persistence.
MagnusWhere are you five years from now?
DamienUh hopefully doing what I'm doing, but I'm much better than what I'm doing it right now.
MagnusWhat a good way to finish. Thank you so much for your time. You're an inspiration. Love what you're doing. Thank you.
DamienIt's a pleasure. Thank you very much. Thanks, boys.
MagnusThank you. Hope you enjoyed this exciting episode of the Mastering Podcast. If you got value from today's conversation, hit that subscribe button now and share this episode with a friend. Until next time.