Startups, Innovation and Turning an Idea Into a Real Business | Isabelle Charter

Cold open

Isabelle: Created this concept that will give you all the information that you need to keep your plants alive.

Kane: Now we're up like 10% profit because we're just focusing on what we know best.

Isabelle: Honestly, like it's not necessarily true.

Introduction

Kane: Hey, I'm Kane Tyler Smith, the founder and CEO of Smartfix and Hypotential. This is Unlocking Business, where we have real conversations around business, leadership, mindset, and personal growth. If you've been getting value from these conversations, please take a second to like, subscribe, and follow our channels. It helps us reach more people, bring on more guests, and share more stories. Now, let's get into this episode. Today, I'm joined by Isabelle Charter. Isabelle has spent nearly two decades building, scaling, investing in, and supporting startups. She's a head of venture studios at Better Labs and CEO of Towns Square and previously built and exited Drip, Australia's first investing app for under 18s. Today we're talking about startups, innovation, entrepreneurship, and what it takes to turn an idea into a successful business. How did you first get into startups?

Isabelle’s first startup and early lessons

Isabelle: It was actually trying to solve a problem that I had. So, when you're 19 in Rio in Brazil, where I'm from, going to the right nightclub is a massive, massive issue. So I decided that for my final project at uni, I would build an app to help me find the right place to go at any point in Rio. And that was my first journey. I basically did everything wrong and then I realized that I had to learn a little bit more but I completely fell in love with the startup and innovation world.

Kane: So was that the right clubs as in from a safety perspective?

Isabelle: No, it was the right club as in which ones were pumping and which ones were empty. So, in you know in Rio there are too many different options of nightclubs. And sometimes you're just doing pre-drinks at a friend's house and it's already 11 p. M. And you don't know which one to go. So we thought that was a pretty big issue that we should solve. So together with two mates, we started to build something. We built this business plan that had like a 10-year forecast of how we would all become millionaires and everything that we would have to build. And we actually, you know, we put a lot of effort into the actual plan. We only started developing maybe six months later and we only had an app live over a year after the first idea. Came out, we put so much effort, so much time into it. And then we realized that when you're innovating, you can't really plan that much. You need to start doing and you have to learn as you go. So that ended up being a really, really interesting experience. We launched the app. We had about 6,000 users at the time. We got invited to join an accelerator program in Rio. But at the time I started doing some I was I was also doing some work with social impact and I was building some projects in Amazonia and I decided that I wanted to do that more than I wanted to solve the problem of the right nightclub. So we ended up not pursuing and we just yeah closed the app and shut that down.

Isabelle: But that was my first connection with startups and entrepreneurship and again I learned so much from everything that we did.

Kane: Yeah. Right. So did you have to get funding for an app like that?

Isabelle: We self-funded for that one. Because it was also mostly me and you know my two friends just coding and basically doing everything that needed to be done. So I don't think there was a lot of money in there was a little bit of money in the marketing side of things but it was mostly just us getting hands-on and yeah working overnight and weekends and just making it happen.

Kane: So do you have a background in coding?

Isabelle: I'm an engineer.

Kane: Yeah.

Isabelle: I usually don't get into the code myself except now with AI you can vibe code a little bit. Not sure if that counts. But we did have one of our friends who was a software developer. So he was the main the main one in charge of the code. I was helping more with the build the strategy how the app looked. And yeah just working together on that.

Kane: The reason I asked that because we've been building an app for smart fix for like probably about two years but we don't have any coding or people that can do that in house. So it's cost a lot of money.

Isabelle: Oh yeah.

Kane: Getting external people to actually Do the technical stuff. So that's thought I'd ask that question.

AI-assisted coding and validating before building

Isabelle: Yeah, I think definitely having someone from your team who knows how to code really helps. That said, I think right now with AI, there's a lot of vibe coding that can get you yeah, that can get you very far.

Kane: Do you think there's a risk with that though? Because like I know like friends of mine are trying to make their own apps and stuff, but if you actually launch one and it takes off and there's issues with it, is AI good enough to be able to fix things ongoing?

Isabelle: I definitely don't think AI is there for you to launch I don't think it's at a point where you can fully launch an app without having someone who actually goes through the code and debug and understands what happening. I think it's really good to get you 70 or 80% there. It's really good for quick prototyping, testing, learning what needs to be done because often I think a lot of a lot of the mistakes that we do in the startup world is we overbuild before validating the idea. So as a founder, you're so certain about the problem. You're so certain that you know the solution and then you get excited and then you build before going and talking to the customer or before going and actually testing and seeing what are the edge cases and what's happening. So I think right now it's a very interesting stage for startups because we have the ability to build the first prototype that allows us to test and define what is that we need to build very quickly. But then there's definitely a second stage that comes with the assurance that everything is working with the compliance especially if you're getting you know sensitive information of your clients. If you if you need something that is reliable and predictable and it won't have bugs, then you definitely will need someone to help you.

Kane: Humans.

Isabelle: Yeah, I think we still need humans to do that part of the job.

Kane: That's an interesting point. It just sounds so familiar about just going full ham into the idea and it's something that Daniel Priestley talks about a lot is just test it first. Try and get the customers feedback before you go too deep with spending because Yeah like you said sometimes you get excited and you spend a bit of too much time or too much money

Isabelle: Oh yeah

Kane: Inventing this thing and then it might not be anywhere near as good as what you'd hoped.

Isabelle: Starting a company like having a startup is such a humbling exercise And you have to acknowledge how much you don't know and you have to be so open to listening to literally everyone around you. Customers, your teammates, your adviserss, like you just have to listen because you are likely more wrong than you are right. M So I think the first idea is literally a starting point and I like I like when people have sort of like a vision of what needs to be or especially a very good and clear connection with what the problem is but the flexibility around the solution I think that is definitely one of the indicators of success.

Kane: So, do you think people need to have like five-year business plans when they do make a startup?

Five-year visions, pivots and opportunity

Isabelle: No, I think they need to have five year visions. I think they need to have a scenario where things work well. You know, like if you're getting into a market, you need to know is your market big enough that if you're successful in 5 years that will give you the results that you want, Right? Like you need to have an idea of what is what is a potential pathway where you achieve success but you also need to be open to the fact that this is just a plan things will change so how do you adapt and yeah would you be happy with other ways to make that dream happen

Kane: Yeah 100% agree with that one I'd always say I've never I never really had any plans at the start it was like you get your idea and you like do that then you pivot that way and you go that way and it changes 400 times. Like we've We're rebranding at the moment currently and We're like 9 years in and we're still trying to work out exactly like what's the best way or make those like 1% things that going to make it a little bit more efficient each time.

Isabelle: Yeah. And to be honest, I don't think that's only startups. I think I think that's just life and general careers. You don't need to be a founder or an entrepreneur. If I look at like my professional career in general, so many things happened that you could say it was by chance or it was just because I was doing something at the time and I just planted the seeds For an opportunity to come in the future. So I just really believe like do your best and be open to opportunities And be flexible to what that could look like.

Kane: Yeah, the opportunity one is crucial and I think timing as well. Sometimes timing is everything especially when there like something AI is coming out that can throw off your five-year plan overnight depending on What changes overnight.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: So you're currently explain what Better Labs is.

How Better Labs works

Isabelle: Okay. So Better Labs is RAC's strategic innovation function. So 10 years ago RAC was just rethinking their strategy for the future understanding that there's a lot of disruption coming. So when most of the revenue and the member value is coming from roadside assistance and car insurance, what will happen when we have a lot more autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles? You know, there's a lot of disruption coming. So how can RAC make sure that in 30 years we'll still be offering great value to the members? You know, we are for the better. We are for the better of Western Australia. How do we make sure that this is still happening? So within this context, they decided to create better labs. So Better Labs is a corporate venture fund and a venture studio. So within the fund, we have $23 million that we already fully invested in external startups. So how does a fund work? We have founders that come to us and they say, "I have this startup. It's really growing. This is the traction. This is my business plan and I need this amount of money and I'll give you a percentage of my company." So that's usually, you know, we may have 5% 10% of the company and then we'll give them a check and that check will help them grow, right? And when they grow, our part of the investment also grows. So that's one part of Better Labs. The other part is our venture studio. So within the studio, we build new startups that are 100% owned by RAC from concept to scale.

Isabelle: So we analyze the market, we find new opportunities and then we have what we call our innovation funnel which is a stagegate approach that we consistently test validate new ideas and the more we validate the more we invest and build these companies. So as an example we have a company called Plant with Willow. So I think about 3 or 4 years ago when we started to explore this space, I don't know if you knew this, but Australians kill 82 million plants every year. So everyone knows a serial plant killer. Keep your plants alive is hard. Are you looking at yours?

Kane: I know. We got a fake one there.

Plant with Willow and Kickstarter validation

Isabelle: Yeah. So if you don't want fake plants, keeping your plants alive can be very hard. And we thought there was an opportunity to help people solve this problem. So we initially we did a lot of market research. We talked to a lot of people asking is it a problem for you to keep your plants alive? And consistently we got yes I'm consistently killing my plants. I do need help. So after doing a lot of research talking to a lot of customers we created this concept of this hardware super cool that you put in your pot plant and it actually analyzes everything that you need together with an app that understands what is the type of plant and then it will tell you know you need more water or you need to change your soil, you need more nutrients and that will give you all the information that you need to keep your plants alive. We again showed this concept to a lot of people, got a lot of positive feedback. So, we started to do pre-orders and a Kickstarter campaign. So, we launched the Kickstarter with just a video of what it would be and we also started to actually play around with the hardware and make sure that we could develop the technology.

Isabelle: It was a very successful campaign of on Kickstarter and we sold thousands of sensors as a pre-order and with that we went back to a board and say hey there's a clear demand we can develop the technology you know here's the hardware this is the software and then we got further investment to go and actually deploy and now we're selling at Bunnings so you know shout out to the Plant with Willow team. If you need just go to Bunnings, you can buy it. You can buy directly from the website and we're also selling in Europe, Japan. So, basically having conversations with the US. So, now we're expanding internationally

Kane: Which is really cool. So, all of that was done from within the Better Labs environment. Yeah. Wow. So, when you actually have to create the hardware, is that built locally as well?

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. So, we developed everything internally.

Kane: Because you pre-sold the products before they were made. If you then took that idea back to the funding people which is you guys if they said no for whatever reason how does that work then if you've actually presold the product to the clients.

Isabelle: So when you do a Kickstarter campaign you always highlight the risks that is involved. So if people are buying I don't know if you guys heard about Kickstarter. So, it's a it's a website that allows people to buy products before they are ready. So, you get a really good discount because you know that you're funding something that has a very big risk of not happening, right? So, people know that they are basically investing in a startup.

Kane: I was going to ask is that basically like investing then?

Isabelle: Well it is an investment because they're buying a product but they are taking a risk. And a lot of different a lot of different products start like this. They're very famous like board games for example that people just go and put in there. And so basically it's a way of saying if you if I get enough backers then I can go and build my product. If I don't get it then, you know, we'll return your money and I'm sorry, it just didn't happen.

Kane: Yes. They will get the money returned.

Isabelle: Yeah. So, they would get the money returned.

Kane: So, that Kickstarter, is that international?

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a pretty big website.

Kane: Heard of that.

Isabelle: Yeah. It's really cool. Have a look.

Kane: Yeah. So, with that the plant one then specifically? So, was that a subscription model through the app?

Isabelle: It can be. You can buy just the hardware and get the free version of the app or if you want premium if you want premium features like for example if you want access to a plant doctor where you can actually talk to a human and say my leaves are turning yellow what should I do the plant doctor will help you then you get the premium subscription

Kane: Interesting That's cool maybe we need some So with better labs funded apps is it mainly so apps businesses. Is it tech? Is that the whole idea? Is it tech businesses?

Venture studios, failed experiments and stage-gate investment

Isabelle: So, first of all, we try to find businesses that are for the better. It is RAC tagline and it is something that we really, you know, try to search when we when we create a new company, but also businesses that are scalable. And then for you to be scalable, there's usually a component of technology involved. So for example, the other one that I'm leading right now, Towns Square, is a strata communications platform. So it is a software that helps strata managers communicate better with owners. And yeah, it's it's fully tech based. M.

Kane: So when so when you do start one then do you have to hire so you hire people as employees through better labs and they're the ones that are founding that new startup?

Isabelle: Yeah. So all of our founders are employees of better labs and then they go they research and then they try to make the startup happen. The good thing about this is that it means we understand that innovation is a high-risk business and we understand that there is a lot of a lot of failures that come before the success. So even if I look at my own story, I've actually started and killed businesses before I had my success. So I had lots of ideas that either very early stage when I went and I talked to the to the first clients they're like nah your idea is horrible. It's like okay cool move on to the next. Or you know I would go I'd build a small prototype and then realize that people just didn't want to pay enough for that. So, for example, one of the one of the startups, one of the ideas that I explored is I actually find it hard. I've had a lot of issues doing deadlifts and you know, back issues for example. And I've spent quite a bit of money just in physio and PT to try to solve that. And talking to a lot of people, I realized that is actually a very common issue. Going to the gym and making sure that you're exercising with a proper form, it is very hard because it's hard for you to have full consciousness of where your body is and even just knowing what is that you need to do.

Isabelle: So we started to explore some 3D technology that was being used to develop like movies when they can record exactly in your body where you are in space and thinking can we use that to help people when they are exercising. So, we did an initial test. We partnered with a gym and we went to this gym and we ran a few tests and people tried a little bit of, you know, like a mockup technology that we had. We just hacked a few things together. The technology wasn't really there. We just got a few other technologies available, put those together, had a PT watching it, and we would give people an actual result. So let's say they did three set sets of squats. By the end of it, they were really exercising a lot better. So then we would offer a product say, "Hey, would you want to buy this now?" And they're like, "Yeah, super cool. How much would you pay?" The answer of how much they would pay was significantly lower than what we would need to make the business viable. So we learn from the test that it would just be too hard to bring this technology. It would cost too much and people were not seeing you know the value as high enough. So we decided to kill this project. I worked on it for probably I think six or eight weeks and moved on to the next.

Kane: Yeah. Okay. Is that would that be one of the longest amount of times you would spend on one before you decide to not go ahead?

Isabelle: That depends. We I spend longer because we were seeing signs and then something happened and we had to kill it. We definitely tried to fail or continue. You know, we usually say, you know, continue pivot or kill As quickly and as high quality as possible, right? The worst scenario for us is a gray zone of I don't know if that's actually a go or no go. If I have a an amazing failure, I love if I test something and it's a clear no. You know, if I go there, I build something really good, and then everyone says, I don't want to buy this. Great. I can just kill it and move on. The challenge is when you're like, maybe, I don't know. And then you don't know if you have to, you know, continue or not. Like that gra that gray zone is hard. But we definitely, yeah, fa fail fast. And I think that's something that we really live by at Better Labs.

Kane: Is there usually like a set amount of value that can get put into a startup as well before you have to start making those decisions faster?

Isabelle: Yeah. So the value like the investment that we put both in terms of money and time is related to how much we have validated. So we usually use what we like the lean business canvas that has you know the problem the solution your unique value proposition your channels. So what we say is you know I have a week to validate that the problem is an actual problem and then I have three weeks to validate that the solution that I created to the problem is a solution that people want and then if I validate that then I get more time to go and validate the channels how do I go and reach out and then I have more time to validate that I can actually build the technology so that's I we say that it's like in stages and there is a gate in every stage and it's a week 3 weeks you know two months 3 months four months

Kane: So you get more time and money the more you validate that your idea has legs I was going to say sounds like little milestones you hit that one keep going like you said

Isabelle: Yeah exactly

Kane: Continue pivot or

Open Hood and building with customers

Isabelle: Kill yeah exactly we have another cool one happening right now. It's called Open Hood. So, it's a voice assisted inspection tool for automotive service workshops and that's pretty cool because we're doing it in partnership with the main business. So a team from Better Labs embedded themselves in one of one of the RAC workshops and then they started to talk to all of the mechanics, all of the service advisors, all of the service managers to understand what were some of the big issues. So for example, when a car comes and you have to do your inspection and then you have to write down everything that is a problem. No one likes doing that. No one likes the admin work. And then also, you know, they spend 15 minutes writing down and then that paper goes to the service advisor, for example. And then the service advisor first, they need to read that letter. But it might take you some time to actually you know, then call the person and say you need to replace your filter because there's something wrong with it. And then if it's already 2 pm or 3 pm, you don't want to do that service on the same day because you need to pick up your kids from school. So you need to pick up your car, right? So what this new tool does is all of the mechanics, they have like they have headphones with a microphone and then automatically while they're doing the inspection, it already fills up everything that is happening.

Isabelle: Create a beautiful report that the service advisor can immediately see and then call you and say, "Hey, this is what your car needs. Would you like us to do this or not?" So, we make the entire process of the workshop significantly easier. And it's better it's better for everyone, every team member involved and it's better for the ultimate client, you know, the one having the car serviced. So for us this is a really clear win of how do we provide value back you know to the members to the service but also we're building something that is a problem that you know it's something that can improve our own internal processes but it's an industrywide issue the like it's not only our AC it's also other workshops so right now we already validated inside the main business, but we're also working with independent workshops and other franchises so we can launch because this is a this is a tool that we believe that we can sell internationally.

Kane: Mhm.

Isabelle: So, it's a it's basically a win-win for everyone.

Kane: So, the mechanics themselves wear the wear the microphone, earpiece, and they're talking through the job as they're doing it.

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really cool. We use we use some headphones that they are bone conduction. So the that makes it safe because you don't you don't have anything blocking. You can fully hear everything that is happening because the headphones they sit sort of like over ear and

Kane: The ones go behind your head.

Isabelle: Yeah. You go behind your head and you have a small microphone so it doesn't really impact anything like from a safety perspective is 100% fine and then it means that while they do the service they are just talking to

Kane: How did some of the mechanics go To the to New experience

Isabelle: Yeah it's it's funny because I think most of them have the same reaction of the first time they tried they're like oh this is a little bit weird but now all of them are like I never want to go back to paper ever again.

Kane: I suppose because it's they're the ones that actually have to write it down. It's actually helping them as well.

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the most important part of a startup is you have to build with your customer, right? So when we did that, our team was literally embedded in the workshop building with the mechanics, right? Was like, "What do you want? How do we change that? This is the first version." And then they would just give us feedback and then we would improve. Can you test it again? No. Still not good enough. All right, let's keep developing. Still not good enough. Okay, let's keep developing. So we built something that was exactly what they wanted. We built it for them and we build it with them. And I think that's definitely like every successful startup is building for their clients and with their clients.

Kane: Yeah, that's cool. That's such a good idea. Just thinking now How good that would be for our trades, not mechanics, but like electricians that go to site that go through either a quote or an inspection like a Home inspection. We need to check and test a smoke alarm, safety switches. Like that would be so good because no, they don't like trying to like type and stuff. Oh yeah. So we're sort of like in between. Because we I was using like voice to text within the app that we use. But again, if you can do that like in real time where you're walking through that would be amazing.

AI tools, transcription and practical customisation

Isabelle: Yeah. One of the startups there's a startup accelerator program here in Perth called Plus 8 Plus 8 accelerator program and one of the startups it's called Tradescribe and I believe that's exactly what they're trying to do. So, it's sort of like voice tool for trades to be able to you know describe their work.

Kane: Would that be the same technology then as the mechanic one?

Isabelle: Look, I'm not I don't have the details of the technology that they're using. I can't speak for them. I just know that is super cool. And I also I think there's a lot of this type of tool popping up in many different industries. So if you go to a GP right now like a lot of doctors are using similar systems that are built for doctors and they can also just transcribe your appointment because again no doctor wants to after the appointment have to write down everything that they've done. And I think this whole of like transcribing meetings, you know, like I use it all the time.

Kane: So good.

Isabelle: And I think it's also a lot about customizing it to what you need to happen after. So I have, you know, custom instructions for my meetings that I know that after every single meeting, this is how I want my summary to be organized. So I know exactly what are my actions, what are the decisions and I already have for example I always capture because I'm talking to many different startups and for me it's very important to keep track of progress so I can collect all of the progress together. So from my meetings I already have those are the key challenges, those are the key wins. So that you know every month I can just ask my agent, hey from all of my startups, can you please give me top challenges, top wins and I have a report automatically generated. So I think learning how do you customize the existing technology to what works for you today is what's going to make us more efficient.

Kane: And how hard is that to customize like you because you're not just talking about like a prompt that you use within obviously I know like AI and the transcript things can be slightly different but how much you have to customize them?

Isabelle: I don't think you have to customize much and yeah it's also it's not hard. I think you just have to again be open and ask questions because if you I personally use a lot claude and I use notion as my system of record for meetings and everything else. So often I'll just go and I'll ask it like, "Hey, notion has an AI and I like how can I customize this for me? Can you help me? Can you help me build an agent?" And I think the very interesting part of AI right now is that you can ask them in Claude, I actually when I when I started using it, I said I'm a non-technical person. When you speak technical terms, please make sure that you explain all of them to me and make everything very easy and for beginners. So it really helps you and give you a step by step and again I'm not embarrassed if I just say I don't it's a private chat right so I can just say I'm sorry I did not understand can you please explain that to me again or I got this error can you please help me solve it so I would really encourage everyone to go to your AI of choice and then just go crazy and say, "This is what I need. Can you help me build it? How should I do a ask me the right questions?" You know, and explain to them who you are. Give context and or say, you know, hey, I'm I'm electrician. This is this is the type of work that I do. This is my biggest problem. This is the thing that I hate doing and I don't want to do it anymore. Can you do it faster for me? Give me an idea. How do I build this?

Isabelle: And it will give you it will give you suggestions. So, it's it's cool because it's interactive.

Kane: There's a lot of discussions about which platform is best at the moment, but for yeah, Claude seems to be the most talked about one at the moment. We just started using it the last couple of weeks and it's it's pretty phenomenal. But yeah, having the context there in the project, we've not gone as far as trying to make an agent yet. That will hopefully be something we can one day try to learn how to do, but at the moment it's just like a project where all the context is in the history. Then obviously reads from there. So our smart fix documents will be in the back end. And Yeah, obviously us trades trying to work that out can be difficult.

Isabelle: Look, they're all I think they're all pretty good. And every week there's a different release and then something else is better. Like if using ChatGPT, Gemini, a co-pilot, honestly, I think all of them can help. So, I wouldn't be overly concerned. You know, the new Gemini is so much better. I think for what we need, you know, we're not I mean, we're not curing cancer. At least some people are. I'm not. So, like I think for the level of what I need, any model is more than sufficient. I imagine for you for what you're doing and for what 95% of the population and most people hear in this podcast today any model that you pick will be helpful. I think it's just explore and be curious but also going back to what you said before be mindful that it might have bugs and things may go wrong and it is a little bit of a black box. So, it's good for simple things. Every time that you add a level of complexity, make sure that you test, make sure that you feel comfortable with the risk that you're taking In doing that.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's interesting, especially like with Claude and how it's got the coding Section. Like a friend of mine has been trying to Been trying to make an app for a while, like an employment kind of thing. Amount of time you spent on it. I'm like, "Oh my gosh." So, I'm pretty sure there's like ones out there that do the same thing. Like, You have to be mindful not to try and reinvent the wheel because there already platforms out there just Try and keep things simple because you can go down rabbit holes. Like I went down one the other day on ChatGPT. I was trying to Build my own context background for like my personal branding and high potential and I've Ended up just ruining what we already had. We had a very simple like 10 or 15 page document And now it's probably like 40 50 pages and I didn't finish it because I was like rabbit hole that just it was so confusing.

Isabelle: Yeah, I agree.

Kane: I should have saved the original one Because now it's now we have nothing. Now we're like back at square one. We got to start again.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Town Square and industry-specific software

Kane: So what is It's a town square. So you're CEO town square. What is that?

Isabelle: So let's start with the problem that we're solving, right? So strata managers are incredibly overworked professionals, right? Imagine they are managing usually like hundreds of different schemes and buildings and you know hundreds of owners that will have different issues from I have a roof leak to you know there I have to organize an AGM to we're doing renovations like there's a lot that happens and for every different issue they will need to have different conversations with many different stakeholders. So, for example, let's go back to the roof leak case. You have an owner that sends you an email and then from that you need to contact the committee to make sure that they approve that roof leak to be solved. You have to email three different contractors to have, you know, different budgets. You may need to email your team and align what needs to be done. So that's already six or seven email threads that if you go to your inbox, they are all over the place. You multiply that for the 50 different issues that you dealing at the same time and your Outlook inbox can be absolute chaos. So what we do is we create a specific build purpose-built platform for strata managers. So we completely replace Outlook with this system that organizes everything into case files. So all of those seven conversations, they live in the same place.

Isabelle: And then because they live in the same place, we can also bring a lot of very specific things to Strata, but we connect to their trust accounting platform and we have the AI that understands the context of that conversation. So we make everything significantly faster and more efficient and easier to collaborate between the team. So that means that we help the strata managers manage their work and their communications better and ultimately provide a better service to all of the owners because if you have a roof leak, you want it solved as quick as possible. So by helping the strata managers, we provide a better home experience to everyone.

Kane: So what would be the difference with that software as opposed to just like a CRM like an offtheshelf CRM like HubSpot or something like that? Does that not do those things?

Isabelle: That's very interesting. That's I think the custom build like we understand strata, right? So we organize everything in the way that is built for the strata needs. So the main one for example is the fact that we connect with the trust accounting platform probably getting too technical into the strata world here but let's just say that we connect with all of the other systems that strata uses especially around like finances. So, if someone if an owner asks me something about a levy or something that they need to pay, I can get the answer automatically because I'm connected. Or if someone emails me without letting me know where they live, I also know that because I'm connected to other systems, right? And there's a lot of different compliance aspects that need to be followed. You know, we have to make sure that there's no cross-contamination. The bylaws of each scheme of each building, they are very different. So if someone askked you a question about can I have a pet in my apartment, it's not the same answer to every single building because buildings will have different bylaws, right? So we understand this context in a way that HubSpot doesn't. And I think that's a I'm a big fan of custo very custom like industry specific platforms because they will provide you a level of understanding of your problem that the generic ones won't. Which is the same if you think about why do I you can use a general meeting notes transcriber. Anyone can use that, right?

Isabelle: But why do you want one that is just for tradies? Why would you want one that is just for doctors? Because the more you understand the context that you live, the better you can offer the specific features that you need and that are going to be very different from someone from a different industry. So all of them have value. HubSpot is a great tool. A lot of the clients they were previously using Outlook and Monday. Com.

Kane: Mhm.

Isabelle: To generic platforms and they replace we replace Monday. Com and outlook just for Towns Square.

Kane: Yeah. And then and then you can have the APIs and stuff from the other platforms that they are required to have like you said so that it's like your single source of truth Is in town square and that can feed the data from the other platforms that they also have to use. Yeah. Exactly. That's interesting because we don't really use a CRM within Smartfix for our trade business. We use ServiceM8 which is like a service based platform but it's not specific to electrical. So there are so many like little things that are annoying because it's not c it's not customized for us and you can't customize it because they don't They don't let you do anything at all. So there's so many little things that we Would like to change but we just can't. But obviously we've looked into having one custom built for us, but for us to do that, that would cost probably 50 to 100 grand. Again, like reinventing the wheel. So for us, it's not worth that value. But Obviously it sounds like Town Square, if there's something like Town Square for like electrical specifically, We would probably pay a premium for that if it's perfect for us.

Isabelle: Exactly. Exactly. That's exactly what we do.

Kane: Can you build one for us?

Isabelle: Maybe if the market's big enough, we can we can get better.

Kane: I think there's one that's sort of making a bit of headway in Australia now from America called Service Titan. Yeah. Seems to be they're trying to make a CRM and service based business all-in one Because in theory it sounds like we probably should have a CRM and ServiceM8. But again, it's like trying to find the right CRM that can speak with ServiceM8. We're not double handling all the information. But again, it's too hard. We're traders. We just want to go and do the trade job. For that it just it becomes too hard. So we just stick with it'll do.

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. But that's it. Like if you have someone who's willing to put in the effort to really understand you, you know, what does your day look like? What are the small things that you know your pet hate or the things that you do 20 times a day that you're like, I just don't want to be doing this. Is there a way that you can do it better? And I do feel like there is space for those very you know deep expertise deep industry platforms because the big players it's just very hard for them to do this. Sometimes what the big players can do is they can offer a lot of flexibility in terms of customization. So if you look at tools for example like Monday. Com like notion which is the one that I use it's so flexible that I can build for what I need and I think it's quite interesting the idea that they have templates so you know they are very generic but then people build templates for the specific Niches so you can just go and okay I'm going to use a generic tool plus a specific template and then that works for me or I'll put in the effort to customize for my needs. So, because, you know, I'm I'm pretty particular with what I want, I've customized my own thing, but it was a lot of a lot of time spent into that. But yeah, pros and cons.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah. There's like with service again there's like add-ons. So there's other third party add-ons that you can have in there like Zapier integrations all that kind of stuff. So sometimes you just have to like bolt on.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: So at what point do you stop just bolting on and like actually move CR like moving Systems? But obviously that's a very expensive big exercise to move systems.

Isabelle: Yeah, it is.

Kane: So with Towns Square then is that a platform that any strata company can sign up for on a subscription basis the same as most Is it CRM?

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah, it is a CRM. Yeah, it's a CRM. So, CRM, inbox, and task management. And then, yeah, they just sign up with us. We do the migration from Outlook. We connect to their other systems. We offer an owner's app so the owner can see everything that is happening and receive announcements and see the tickets. So for example the committee you know that just going a little bit deeper into strata but you would have you have all of your owners from a specific scheme right and then you have the representatives of that of that scheme that they will be the owners the committee of owners and that they are usually the ones who are dealing with the issues and the situations that arise. So our app really helps them because we have a very clear way. We have like this Kanban board that has all of the open issues. So they can see this is what happening with lot three. This is what happening with lot 17. This is what happening with lot 26. So they can be on top of everything and they don't need to keep emailing the strata manager and asking Because everything is clear for them now. They can just go inside and see the details, see what has been action and see you know which trade is going there at which day. So again those very specific things you know the strata manager used to spend quite a bit of time just updating the committee. Now the committee has a tool that they can have all of the visibility and the transparency that they want. So that makes everyone's lives better.

Kane: That sounds really cool. So, is it built for real estates as well or is that a bit different?

Isabelle: Just for strata now.

Kane: Okay. Stick to the niche.

Focus, niche positioning and Smartfix’s service strategy

Isabelle: Stick to the niche until Yeah, we're we're still early stage. There's still a lot of strata management companies that can adopt us. And it's funny because we do get asked, you know, can I use this for facility management? Can I use this for property management? And we have to say no.

Kane: How hard is that saying that?

Isabelle: It's very hard when you're a startup and someone says, "I want to give you money and you're like, I'm sorry, I am not for you." It's very hard. But I think that's very important because if you say yes, one, you're not going to be servicing them that well. They're not going to be super happy because again I don't understand the nuances of property management as much as I understand strata and I'm sure that there's going to be a lot that I'm going to fall short if they start using. So they're going to be annoying because they're going to want to customize or they're going to think that doesn't suit their needs and then I'll have two choices. Either I'm going to start spending time customizing for them and then I'm going to spend less time making my product manager my product better for Strata.

Kane: Mhm.

Isabelle: Or I'm going to leave them dissatisfied. And I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of I can do everything and think that you're not choosing. You're always making a choice. When you choose to do everything, you're choosing to do less of everything, right? You only have so much time and even emotional capacity and focus and excitement. You cannot I'm a big fan of focus and going all in. And yeah, at Better Labs we like to say we don't we don't have ass things.

Kane: It's such a it's such a good topic and good timing for us as well because me is when I obviously as a young founder of my business and we grew quite fast 140 staff within 8 years. So we just said yes to everything. Anything everything like for example I'm an electrician by trade. So, for example, one day we had a roofing guy. Roof leaks are a nightmare for Strata. I can

Isabelle: We had one the other day. It's just an absolute nightmare.

Kane: So, for example, one guy rocked up to office. Said, "Hey, I'm I'm a roofing expert. I can do this. I want to work for you." I like, "Yep, sweet. Let's do it. Bring him on." We done roofing for maybe three to six months. It was really good. It Was all on him. He was the expert, not me. So, as soon as he left, we had to shut the whole thing down.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: Because it's such a hard trade to do it properly. So I should I should have said no. So then we've we've had like loads of other trades since. So plumbing like obviously electrical air conditioning, plumbing, gas, roofing, tiling, carpentry, cabinetry, ceiling fixing, painting. There's so many different things that we've just said yes to try and make my idea was try and make it as easy for the homeowner as possible. So if you have an issue in your house, Let's say you're doing a kitchen renovation, you need all pretty much all of those trades. Cool. We can do it all for you. So, I was I was thinking that it's going to be so cost effective because if you Google renovation person near me, we pop up, we don't just come do electrical, we'll do the whole job. So, that the value, the customer value for us is huge in theory, but there was so many downsides. Again, like focus is a big one for me now. So, we've basically reverted all the way back to electrical, air conditioning. We do ceiling fixing, painting as well. Yeah, we've gone from having like 15 trades to like three. And the big thing is focus. And we're our profit was like minus two to 5% last year and now we're up like 10% profit because we've like a third of the team because we're just focusing on what we know best.

Isabelle: Yeah. And you can have more efficient processes. You can be better at what you do. And I think even from a customer value perspective, you know, if you say, "Oh, those guys are good, but hey, like those guys are just the best plumbers you could ever get." Like, I think people see that differently. You perceive differently. I think it's it's like when you I don't know you want to buy a donut from a store, you know, and like you can just go and buy a donut from a bakery or you can go to a donut specific store, you know, like a gelat

Kane: Petrol station.

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. Like I think, you know, it's it feels differently if you go and you I'm just going to go and buy gelato from this gelato store. Like I think it's it's very different how you perceive value from big generic stuff. And I'm just the best at doing this one thing.

Kane: It's so funny. Like the other day, we've got a bit of an ant infestation at home at the moment and we've had pest control places out in the past. I was at the shops the other day and I saw there's a van there. It just said the ant guy.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: He had ant these big ants all over his van. I'm like it's so specific. It's so niche, but it's like let's try it.

Isabelle: You know what? I would I would trust him if I had to I don't know him but if I had to choose between hey I'm this full service provider and you know I can solve your ant problem or you want to go to the ant guy I'm I'm picking the ant guy I don't know him but I'm picking him

Kane: Yeah so how important then because I suppose there would always be I assume a risk so is that a scalable company for him obviously he might not want to be but I you mentioned something earlier Yeah, can't remember how you worded it, but I suppose it's like how many people are in the market for that specific thing? Because if he's like, I want to grow a $20 million business, but I'm just doing ants in Perth. So, he obviously has to do the research on that first of all. So, how do you do that research? How would he do that research to see if his business is scalable to become a $20 million turnover business?

Scaling, market education and first-mover advantage

Isabelle: Yeah. Well, well, first of all, you need to understand Yeah. What's the size of the ant problem, right? Like what's the size of the ant problem in WA? What's the size of the ant problem in Australia and in the world? And then if you and then you need to understand how big do you want to get because not everyone wants to be a billion dollar company, right? Honestly, like it seems like it's a dream, like the bigger the better. It's not necessarily It's not necessarily true. Like, you can definitely get to a point and have a lifestyle business and, you know, be making enough to live comfortably and still come back home to your kids. And be happier than if you were dealing with let's make this, you know, a billion dollar company and scale internationally and travel all over the world and never be home to go back to your kids. So, I think there's a personal Personal decision there and I think all options are valid. You just have to know like what do you want, what's important to you. I know. I've definitely changed my mind, you know.

Kane: I was going to say that. Do you think people know until they've actually tried it?

Isabelle: Probably no. And it's it's hard to feel the pain that you haven't lived. You can you can hear some things, but until you actually leave and experience, you know, you will also change your mind as you go. But I would say that just going back to the first point of if you have a goal, let's say you want to be a $20 million business, you have to understand would you prefer to do that by being the ant guy like let's say in Australia or in the world and you can solve the ant. I just want to solve the ant problem, but in order to make it to $20 million, I'm going to need to be solving the ant problem in Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia, right? Or you can say, "No, I'm going to solve five different things, but I'm just going to stay in Perth. So, I'm going to be the Perth guy, and the Perth guy solves those five things." So, I think there are different ways that you can grow. And again, that's just a choice and a business strategy. They're all valid as long as you know and they're going to come with different challenges.

Kane: It's it's an interesting one Just going back to how the sort of lessons that we've learned as well with smart fix like for example like electrical air conditioning is what our main service category is. So our issue now is because I'd like to have 40 vans doing that but most of our work is through Google ads. So we have a high spend cost per click, But the more you push the more you push that and you bid higher, the higher the cost is per job. So

Isabelle: Yeah,

Kane: We could probably get enough leads to service that amount of work, but we'd probably be paying $800 for a lead as opposed to 300 at the size we are now.

Isabelle: Mhm.

Kane: So then you run the numbers like that's not that's not doable. That's not possible. So in theory, we're probably sort of almost capped out where we are right now without blowing the cost per click out too much. Or we can try and pivot and look at real estate which is what we are doing with We're trying to see if we can get into that market a little bit. We are probably a little bit too much of a higher price point for them because it's a bit more competitive. So we're just looking at ways how we can pivot and like servicing is going to be a big thing for us like you talking about the mechanics and servicing. We're trying to implement something now where you service your house for the electrical smoke alarm switchboard because no one does it. It's most people's high investment, highest investment they'll ever pay for, but they don't maintain it until there's issues. So, everyone's proactive as reactive as opposed to proactive. They're trying to figure out how we can actually market that to people Because no one does it. So, they don't want to do it. But, yeah, but you service your car.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: Most cars are like maybe 50 to 80K and you spend $600 every year servicing that car without fail. Why don't you service your house? Most houses are like I don't know what the average house prices these days, but probably close to a million dollars and you don't service it. Yeah, We're trying to figure out how we actually market that to people who make it.

Isabelle: Yeah, it's it's an interesting one because every business that requires a change in behavior or market education is very hard, right? Like if people are just used to being reactive and the good thing about Google Ads as a channel is you capture that client at the moment where they want to solve the problem, right? They're thinking about it. It's annoying. It's annoying them enough that they stop their day to go and Google, I need to fix this now. So, it's a great moment to just show up and say, "Hey, I have a solution for you." Your other option is the person is just there scrolling Instagram. You interrupt their day to say, "Hey, have you thought about how in the future you may run into this issue, you know, you might want to start servicing your house now." So, you have to change the behavior. You have to make them think of something that is not a priority. So, it's definitely there's a higher cost of educating a market. It's it's a very different moment. You're going to have to do brand awareness and then you're going to have to probably show up a couple of times before they actually take an action. It's going to take longer like the conversion time is going to be significantly longer. And you may need to you may need to be a lot more creative into Yeah, it's literally a change.

Isabelle: It's a change in behavior That if it happens, it would be great because then you're going to get your first client and they're going to tell their mates and they're going to say, "Hey, I started servicing my house and you know what? I haven't had any issues in the past three years because I've been doing it properly." But it takes time. Educating a market takes time. And what can happen is you can spend a lot of money educating a market, but then the benefits are not just yours because let's say smart fix spends a lot of money in the next three years changing behavior and suddenly everyone in Perth is servicing their houses on a subscription-based right. I pay you guys an annual fee. You come to my house. Perfect. I never have any more issues. Any other competitor can now just come and sell the subscription And they will benefit from the investment that you did without having to work for the first three years. Right? So every time you have a market change it's expensive to be the first like the being the first mover people talk a lot about first mover advantages because people will know your brand and you have to make sure that you keep that advantage because first movers also have a lot of disadvantages if it involves market education And that's from a cost standpoint.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah. What's better, being the first or not? That's other people might not do it though. So, if we're like, we'll wait until someone else does it.

Isabelle: I would say that it depends on the type of business that you have and how sticky your product is. So, for example, for Town Square, being the first mover, there's no one doing what we're doing with the approach that we have. I think it's a massive advantage because there's a big cost of change. If someone starts using our platform, it's very hard for them to switch Because we're going to be the main system that they use on a daily basis. You know, as manager, they will introduce this to their owner. So, the owners are going to have an app. It's we're going to connect the APIs to the other systems. They're going to have to train their staff. So, if someone comes in after town square and decides to build town square, they're going to have a hard time convincing their clients to swap. But in your case, if someone comes and offers me a cheaper subscription saying that they're going to offer the same The same services, what's my cost of change?

Kane: Wouldn't be much.

Isabelle: Wouldn't be much. So, unless you give me a really good reason why I should stay with you, you know, c can you build what can you build in terms of unfair advantage from being the first? Is there any I don't know specific knowledge of the property that may be of difference? Can you can you hold information? Like I don't know like is it a trust? Is it like what's the relationship that you build? But it's it's a harder one.

Kane: It is for sure. One of our things was that was part of the idea of our app because obviously no one well not obviously no one else has the app yet. Obviously now AI's out there people could probably copy it. The whole idea was a subscription through our app and you get your home service history inside the app. Yeah. And anything that we service and maintain we give we give you a lifetime guarantee on the labor portion of it. So, we're trying to have like those points of difference there, which we know other people won't be able to Well, they could say they could do it, but again, because we do have good branding and everything already there, we feel like the advantage for us would be based off of our Branding that's out there.

Trust, differentiation and customer retention

Isabelle: Yeah. And if it's just easy and I feel like I have a connection with you, you know, when something happens, I think especially when you build personal connections.

Kane: Mhm.

Isabelle: Like if I have an issue and I know I can message Kane and say, "Hey mate, what do you reckon?" And I don't need to explain a lot because you already know my house. You've been there and I already trust you and I know that you're going to do a good job and I know that you know you're not going to tell me that I need to do something that I don't need to do. Yeah. So I think when you build those things and you make it very easy for me, I have no reason to go and change. But it I think it's important to stop and think and really like take note and make a list of why are my clients still with me? Be aware of those things so that you can consistently do more of them, You know. Because often we're not aware and then we let things slip.

Kane: That is true.

Isabelle: Yeah. So, you know, what are your top five reasons why your clients keep coming back? Make sure you know what those reasons are.

Kane: It's wild how you've got all the like we'd have all the information there, but yes, just those little things that you could look at which could which could change the game. Okay, well, this person uses us Every 3 to six months because of this. Is it our communication? Is it our customer service? And then obviously we just improve on that even more.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: Make sure other customers know that. Like we've just started doing video testimonials for our customers as well.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: So, we're just trying to Trying to just be a little bit different.

Isabelle: Love that.

Kane: It's hard. Hey,

Isabelle: It is a lot of competition out there.

Kane: It's fun.

Isabelle: Is fun. I love it. It's fun.

Kane: Should we turn the table?

Isabelle: Yes. Okay,

Hiring, culture and staff retention

Kane: Let's do it. Is there anything we haven't spoken about that you want to go through?

Isabelle: Sure. How about we talk about teams and how do we build a high performing culture?

Kane: That could be an interesting one. It's literally a daily subject for us at the moment, trying to find good staff and obviously keeping them when they're here. So, what's your So, you do hiring yourself?

Isabelle: Yeah. So we do advertise and hire. We do get a little bit of help also from a few recruiters, but I am pretty active in the process because I believe bringing the right people on board is one of the most important things that you'll ever do in your business. Especially having the right culture fit, the right attitude. We have a very specific set of values that we make sure that our team has and we stand by them. And I feel like if you bring someone who doesn't share the same values that can be very bad for the entire company. So, we try to talk a lot about this in terms of all of our interviews and especially around, you know, you're always going to be searching for the right skills, but I feel like searching for the right attitude is as valuable as the right skills.

Kane: Do you ever feel like it's hard to find the right person with having all that in mind?

Isabelle: Oh, yes. I am very picky. I have a pretty big, you know, checklist of things that

Kane: Do you ever lower your standard if you're really struggling to find someone?

Isabelle: No, I would just take longer.

Isabelle: I think look, I would I'm not sure if it's lowering the standards, but I would be willing to hire people who don't have all of the skills that I would like them to have as long as they have the right attitude about learning. I would never hire someone who I believe is not willing to learn, right? Or someone who's not open and has the flexibility to, for example, accept that they're wrong and try something different because they would just they wouldn't even enjoy working at better labs, right? So In startup world we are always testing. There is so much that we don't know. Our reality is every single day I'm doing something that I have never done before. And if I hire someone who's not comfortable in this position, it's not going to be good for anyone, right? It's going to be bad for me. It's going to be bad for the person. It's going to be bad for the team. So I have it very clear that the profile of a better labs team member is someone who is a hustler. They're hungry to learn. They want to collaborate. We collaborate a lot. They need to be able to work in a team. They need to be able to talk to customers. They need to be open to doing things that go beyond the scope of their work. It's very hard for me to have a specific job description because our job is make this startup work and every single person there is consistently doing things that are not within the exact scope of what they got hired for.

Isabelle: So it is it is important for us to have a very clear what is the profile of our team members.

Kane: So what kind of what kind of people do apply for jobs at Better Labs? Because the people that apply are they're the people that start the founder businesses.

Isabelle: It can be people who have had their businesses before and their businesses may have been a success or not. We do get a lot of people who used to work or are still working for big corporates and they feel restricted by what they can do and they want more autonomy and flexibility. People who want to grow in a different way. So I think usually people who apply to work with us they are seeking the excitement of high growth and they are seeking having a lot of productivity and autonomy in terms of proposing new things and they are very curious and yeah I think that's That's usually you know the type of person.

Kane: So what would the hiring onboarding process look like from a time frame point of view? Do you run like two or three interviews with different people before you bring people on?

Isabelle: Yeah. So we usually we usually start with you know the normal CV. I'm not a big fan of that to be honest. I like looking at the person's LinkedIn and we have video interviews. For me that is the actual first step. So usually between five to eight interviews where we ask questions not only about the job that they will be performing and their experience but also about who they are. What are they good at? What are they not good at? What do they do outside of work? We always have that question. Why do they want to work at Better Labs? Because we want to understand what are their skills, but we also want to get a feel of who they are as an individual. That's very important to me. So I think the video interviews help me get a sense of who they are, how they communicate and then from there we can go into the actual in-person interviews and usually they would be talking to a few different team members before they get hired.

Kane: So the video interview is more of the I suppose that's to save time doing the doing it on the video so that they don't have to come in for that first interview because you can sort of short list that way.

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. It's our way. So we have basically the initial short list from the CVS and then we get the video interviews and then I'll go and do the in-person interviews.

Kane: Yeah.

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. But I just feel that the v video interviews are a significantly better way than just looking at a CV.

Kane: Yeah, for sure. See, CVs are they're just a guideline, aren't they? Really can't tell attitude or

Isabelle: No.

Kane: And I think right now where everyone's just writing their CVs with AI,

Isabelle: Like I don't even know if you can write a CV. And honestly, I get a lot of people like randomly applying and sometimes like I'll get a cover letter and they're like, I'm so excited to work at random company that is not even my company's name.

Kane: Insert here in brackets.

Isabelle: Yeah, insert here in brackets. I'm like, you didn't even do that yourself. So it's harder to lie or get someone else to do the video interview for you. So for me that is the first actual step to get a sense of should I should I hire this person or not.

Kane: And do you ever hire from eastern states or international?

Isabelle: Yeah we the our team is actually more international than Australian. Yeah. Australians are a minority at Better Labs. We have people with all types of accents. Most of them were already living here when we hired them. But we do have people who were on a temporary visa and then ended up staying with us.

Kane: Mhm.

Isabelle: And we just yet help them get for example the permanent residency or something like that. But we are quite open and for the type of work that we do diversity plays a big role. We need people thinking differently and bringing different perspectives. So it really helps that if I look at my team we literally have people from every single continent

Kane: Really

Isabelle: And I think that is that is really cool.

Kane: How big is your team at the moment?

Isabelle: So if we look at better labs including all of the companies in every single stage probably around 50 but I'm responsible just for the early stage teams. So that would be more like 15.

Kane: Yeah. Okay. And that's here you have an office here in Perth.

Isabelle: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We have our office in Perth.

Kane: Do you think there's a skill shortage In WA? Like do you ever feel like you have to hire internationally or other states because you can't find people that meet the criteria of the skills and the attitude here in Perth?

Isabelle: I don't have an opinion on this. Like e everyone we hired here they were they were here already. They could be migrants. Most of us are migrants just like me. I have an accent. I was already in Perth for four years when I started working at Better Labs. So I think we do have a lot of cases like this. I don't think we've had a role that we couldn't fill yet.

Kane: Reason I ask is we there's a huge trade tradie shortage. Like we've been trying to find we're looking for like five electricians. We've had jobs on seek for like two months. We have the highest pay rates or on par with the highest pay rates in Perth. Pay for the premium ad. It's like $1,500 every time we have to relist. We ask our trades for referrals. We put signs up in wholesalers. It's it seems impossible at the moment. I don't know.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: Yeah. And then the whole migrant thing is quite for us it's probably a little bit too complicated. Like the rules change every now and again. The license issues. Obviously electrical is a licensed trade. So it's quite if someone comes over on a visa and they qualified in their country they come here The qualifications isn't recognized it's quite a long drawn out expensive process for like business like us sometimes that's not affordable or not an option. Yeah seems like there's not many there's obviously not many people here I don't know I don't know if that's the reason why I don't I don't know.

Isabelle: Yeah. Well, I guess they should be bringing in more electricians and making it easy to validate because Yeah, the migrant situation is interesting because yeah, if you do have if you work in a field that requires a proper license, it's just so hard to validate. And yeah, I'm lucky like for us if you tell me that you studied engineering in Uruguay that's enough for me. I you know if you're software engineer you don't need to validate anything here. If you can write if you can write good code to be honest I don't even care if you do have a degree.

Kane: I was going to ask you that. Do the degrees actually matter? Is it more like prove that you can do it?

Isabelle: I think it's more proof that you can do it. We do have people in the team who do not have degrees, but they have a super cool history of places that they've been and places that they've, you know, things that they've worked and built. And I think that demonstrates a lot more than just a degree. So I think personal circumstances. Yeah. But we again I think we're lucky in a sense that we do have a lot more flexibility than most places would have.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah. And that's because other places might be licensed or they might actually need to have a like a qualification like lawyers and stuff like that. I suppose they

Isabelle: Yeah. But I think that only means like if you do have a shortage, it only means that you need to be even more conscious of the retention side And making sure that you are offering your people what they want and what's important to them and what's going to make them stay. Because yeah, making sure that you do have the right culture. So I'm a big believer in personal relationships. So I think you know the more you love the people around you, you want to stay where you work. So we do we do go out of our out of our way at better labs to make sure that people are having the right spaces and the right interactions so they can build those connections. The way that you manage that the way that you are being managed like you know your the leadership what is the type of what is the type of performance evaluation that you have what are your training opportunities so really looking at what's important to every single team member yeah I'm I'm a big believer that you know culture is what going to make or break a company.

Kane: Yeah, I fully agree with that. Yes, you a good point before about the retention and I suppose for us the hardest thing probably is when anyone ever leaves us is either start their own business which we love we help them or they go and work up north. Yeah, They go fly in, fly out because obviously you can get Like really high money With like little no little to no training. They'll take on sort of anyone up there. So that's that's our hardest thing. So yeah, we pretty much are at a stage now where we have to Match what they're paying which again makes business difficult because then we have to charge more Which then makes us non-competitive with our competitors. So it's all fun. It's all fun in game. Yeah, staff retention has always been important to us. It's always been our two top things is customer service and staff retention.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: Yeah. So, yeah.

Isabelle: And how can you be creative? Because Yeah. Sometimes you're competing with things that are outside of your control.

Kane: Like it's hard and I know I know we can't compete with mining for example.

Isabelle: And probably you know from a from a salary perspective, right? Like which is the same with you like you cannot compete with FIFO salaries. So you need to give people money that you need to give people something that may be more important to them than money. And money is important but I also believe that it's not the most important things. Obviously situations vary, but you know for me like I was working as a consultant for mining and I left that originally to go work for like a you know head of impact programs before Better Labs. And I took a big pay cut In order to do that. And I was fine with that because

Kane: I suppose it depends on lifestyle and culture because obviously lifestyle can be very different when

Isabelle: You know like I made this decision actually a couple of times in my life like if I even if I go back to Brazil you know I was working for like mergers and acquisitions like you know finances as most of my friends were and making pretty good money. And then I dropped that because I started to work for a small consultancy doing projects in Amazonia and I wanted to work with social impact and I just thought that was significantly cooler than the stock market Even though I knew that from a remuneration perspective I would take a toll and u if I look at you know my career and my friends careers yeah, they were making a lot more money than I was, But I still think that what I was doing was a lot more interesting and a lot more impactful than the other pathways that I could have had. So yeah, I know it's not for everyone, but really understanding then, you know, what are the alternative things that you can offer to your team members because people do value those things.

Closing

Kane: Yeah, 100% agree. Thank you so much for coming on.

Isabelle: Thank you.

Kane: Where can people find you on social media?

Isabelle: LinkedIn is probably your best choice. So Isabelle Charter, say hello.

Kane: We'll put a we'll put a link in the description below.

Isabelle: Yeah. And make sure that you send a note saying, "Hey, you know, I heard you at the podcast." Because otherwise it can be

Kane: Yeah. Spammed on LinkedIn. Hey.

Isabelle: Yeah.

Kane: Stresses out sometimes. Cool. All right. Thank you so much.

Isabelle: Thank you for the invite.

Kane: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Unlocking Business. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please take a second to like, subscribe, and follow our channels. It really helps us to bring on more guests and have great conversations. If you'd like to connect with today's guest, the details are in the description below. I'm Kane Tyler Smith. I'll see you on the next one.