Hello, leaders. Welcome to Captain and the Clown. In this episode, we had the pleasure
of talking to Ben Balk, the founder and CEO of Kindicare. Ben is a disruptor who has changed
the way people find childcare and jobs in the sector and turning the early learning
sector on its head. We discuss how COVID was the catalyst for starting Kindicare and the
secrets behind such a quick journey from idea to inception. Later in the podcast, we discuss
leadership and decision making. We also discuss the challenges of a startup and insights into
where recruitment goes wrong and much more on leadership. We'd love your feedback on
our first interview episode. Enjoy.
Why did it count backwards? Oh no, we're now recording.
What? Hello, Captain. Come fly with me. Let's fly. Let's fly.
What are we going to talk about? I don't know. So leadership, life and everything
else. Yeah.
Ben Balk, CEO and founder of Kindicare. So welcome to the podcast.
Thank you guys for having me. Our pleasure.
So we'd love to hear how Kindicare started. Give our listeners a background to it.
Yeah. So the story of how Kindicare started really came out of a market need or problem
we experienced as a family ourselves. So, you know, we've got two young daughters. We
went through the childcare journey and I watched my wife going through it, my wife, Jelini,
and you know, she held a spreadsheet of, you know, the six centres we'd applied to, what
their ratings were, phone numbers, because we needed to constantly chase them to try
and see, you know, whether we had a place or where we were at on the wait list, because
she was going back to work. And it just seemed a completely outdated and inefficient way
to actually find things, particularly when people are used to sophisticated marketplaces
for everything from real estate to booking a hotel. There just doesn't seem to be that
level of technology in the education and care markets, which is why we just started to build
Kindicare. Wow. Out of the need.
Jelini sounds very smart. Yes, it was certainly her idea. And, you know,
a big part of how Kindicare started, I've been researching the market for a while. And
originally I was looking at the opportunities on the more the business side and the childcare
management software space. But when I came back to look at the market again, when COVID
hit, you know, I had a successful consulting business that, you know, larger was focused
on mergers and acquisitions and strategy consulting. Of course, with COVID, all of the work sort
of dried up very quickly. And so after six weeks of twiddling my thumbs, you know, I
re looked at the idea behind Kindicare and the issues and just started building the business.
You said you were in mergers and acquisitions, but coming up with this idea doesn't just
come, not everyone can do it. So what is your background that you were able to develop this
product and your, do you have a lot of IT knowledge? Like what's your experience prior
to this? Yeah, so I've always been working for technology companies in product sales
and marketing roles. So, I mean, I had experience in building largely B2B products. And so Kindicare
is the first business that I've pursued that is, you know, a two-sided marketplace where
you're dealing with a B2C audience and a consumer audience as well. So, you know, my background,
I guess, in product and looking at things from a market problem point of view and just
pragmatically, how do you solve that and make that a better journey? But, you know, unlike,
I guess, you know, some other elements of the market or some marketplaces where I feel
that they sometimes get it wrong is you have to treat the customer on each side equally.
So it doesn't matter if the consumer is not the one paying the bill and it's a business
side that actually pays for it. You've got to ensure that the experience is a great experience
for both sides. So you're a leader because you're the CEO of the company that you've
founded. Were you a leader in your previous roles? Yeah, I've held senior leadership roles.
You know, before I started my consulting company, I held, you know, product sales and marketing
senior leadership roles in, you know, everything from private equity owned businesses to ASX
100 or 200 listed businesses. So, you know, of course, in those sort of roles, you are
leading large teams of people. So how does it differ leading in an organization
where it's a job and leading when you're a founder? So, well, it's more personal when
you're a founder because it's not just a job. I mean, it's, I mean, when you face adversity,
when you're a leader within a corporate environment, you know, there's a lot more support you can
draw on within an organization. But at the end of the day, you know, if you go home and
the task doesn't get done or you've lost one particular person, it's not as critical as
what it is in a startup environment where every decision kind of matters. And leadership's
also I think very different because rather than taking on the leadership style or the
culture of the organization, which you kind of almost get forced to adapt to in a way
and sometimes operate differently to what you naturally would as a human, being a founder
and CEO of my own business, I run the business like I am as a person. You know, so it feels
much more natural then and I can lead in the style that works for me and then, you know,
engage people and have people in the business who are willing to work with that style.
So did you find you felt constrained when you're a leader in an organization compared
to your own business?
Absolutely, because you're often getting second guess, you know, what you think might be the
right decision. And it's not to say that it will always be, you know, the right decision.
But you know, at least you make a decision you feel is right based on your judgment.
And if you've got people second guessing that in another environment, or if there's other
political agendas at play, particularly in large corporates, you know, you can often
be left not being able to lead or do what you want as a business leader within the organization
or within your remit because of the constraints of the organization itself.
So without those constraints, and it's your own baby, is there a process or methodology
you use for decision making?
So I'm a very data driven person. So, you know, and within KindiCare, we've built a
lot of capability to capture data and understand user behavior to understand, you know, the
actual customer journey on both sides to understand what's important. So, you know, we might have
a hypothesis as a business or I might have a hypothesis from a product point of view
about what I think will work or what's the right market or the right pivot to go after
as we chase product market fit. But ultimately, you know, you use data to make that decision.
So even if we decide to create a new function as an example, we'll build it, and we'll
put it to market, but we'll actually measure the success of it to understand whether that
was actually a meaningful feature or not. And that's how you make sure that the platform
or the business doesn't become bloated with technology that's not relevant. You know,
you've got to own your mistakes and go, well, that was a good idea, but it's not working
or it's not used for whatever reasons. And if it's not used, you know, retire it off
and move on.
So you can be more agile.
You can be definitely more agile. And, you know, with being in a startup environment,
being my business, I mean, you know, you always take calculated risks in any role, whether
you're in a corporate environment or whether you're running your own business. But, you
know, I don't have to worry about, you know, a program governance committee around capital
or approval processes or, you know, from offshore or even onshore within an organization, I
can assess the risk knowing everything I do about the business and make the right call
at the right time based on the data I've got at hand. If you get new data in the future
that shows that that decision was wrong for any reason, at least you haven't had a period
of indecision and you don't have that, you know, two or three month lag in some cases
to do what you want to try and actually see if it works. And so there's a lot of resources
wasted in larger organizations just with trying to get stakeholders on board and trying to
build engagement or trying to build consensus instead of someone actually just making the
call based on the information.
Decision making in a large business is complex because of the size of organizations. You
know, the reason that startups and come into a sector and often disrupt it is because of
one thing that's very common in organizations is, you know, I guess beliefs that that end
up developing. So people will make an assumption in an organization and particularly if they're
in a leadership position, even if it's not founded in fact or proven, it gets repeated
enough times that that assumption actually drives the business and any new people coming
into the organization led to believe that's the way or this is the way a market is because
of X or Y. And so, you know, and depending on how well people within an organization
are open to new ideas or to being challenged, depending on the culture, that can really
affect where the business ends up long term. So you might not see the impacts in the next
12 months, but you know, in three or five years time, an organization could lose a lot
of market share because they didn't see what was right in front of them or actually get
the empirical evidence for the decision making that they're doing.
So being not from industry, if not from that sector has actually given you a leg up because
you can see the issues from the outside without the bias.
That's right. So, you know, when, when we came into the childcare sector, we spoke to
a lot of early learning providers, we looked at all the feedback from parents and as parents
ourselves understanding the journey that we went through to look at, well, how do you
make this a better experience? But given the lack of, you know, education technology and
technology that exists in, you know, care and education industries globally, you know,
you don't look then within the industry or what the competitors in the industry who are
already underserving the market are doing. You look at what other organizations are doing.
So for example, you know, one of the key differences with the kindy care app compared to other
search platforms out there is that we don't just start with suburban postcode and that's
the start of your entire search experience. We built the ability to search by brand, by
center name, by keyword. So there's lots of different paths for people to find their results.
But we also looked at things like, for example, Uber Eats, where I could be anywhere in the
world that has Uber Eats is, you know, operating and sitting in a hotel at 11 o'clock at night
and see all of my food options by major brands, by types of cuisine, everything contextualized
immediately for me around, you know, that particular area. And, you know, someone searching
for childcare for the first time doesn't know what quality looks like, where they should
be looking, what the types of care available are and what value for money looks like or
what they should be paying. So with kindy care, when they open the app, even before
they've done a search, they're shown who are the top brands, what are the best rated ones?
What are the ones closest to them? Who are the newest services in the area? So they're
at least given a range of options and can actually be taken through the journey, never
having any experience in that sector before.
So you're the Uber Eats of childcare.
I guess so.
I like it. I like it.
So you started out as a searching for childcare and an app that's going to help people do
that. But you've pivoted to being a portal where people can find jobs in the industry.
How do you go from targeting one aspect of the industry to then pivoting almost completely
to a new business, I guess?
So we always saw the gap in the market around, you know, the existing portals and how people
find jobs in a specific industry. And a lot of people that work in the childcare sector
are obviously going to remain in the childcare sector. So, you know, they're going to be
consistently looking for roles in this environment.
So you saw that from the start, when you started out the app?
Yeah, we actually, way back to 2018, when I first started looking at the childcare sector,
we identified careers as one of the things that could be done better. But I guess the
real pivot for us and the reason that we started working on this with such vigor was, you know,
customers were telling us that leads from parents looking for childcare isn't necessarily
a problem at the moment. Their biggest challenge is educators and staff. And the more educators
and staff that they have, the more leads they can accept from parents because they've got
the ability to obviously, you know, fill more vacancies within their centres because there
are very strict child staff ratios in Australia for childcare, which is completely appropriate.
So, you know, if you're down one educator, that could mean, you know, 10 kids that you
can't actually have in your centre because you don't have enough staff. We didn't set
out to do kindercare jobs as, you know, here's just a little add on. We set out to build
the best experience we could possibly create and invest it appropriately to do that. And
we did it in record time. So, you know, from ideation of the pivot and the decision that
we were going to pivot to jobs as an additional capability of the platform of the marketplace
to delivery took four months.
Whereas that would take probably four years in a large organisation.
Large organisations that I've worked with previously, you know, you go through a business
case round, you've got to wait for a board meeting, you know, it might take you four
months just to get approval that yes, we're happy for you to pursue the idea, let alone
actually just get on with it and build it.
So we talk a lot about leadership in this podcast and a leader is somebody that you
choose to follow, a manager is somebody who's been given authority over you. And we talk
about the character traits that make somebody the type of person you'd want to follow.
You've no doubt had a lot of great mentors and leaders that you've looked up to. What
would you say are the most important characteristics of a leader, somebody that you would be inspired
to follow?
So I think, you know, over your career and as you age and obviously go through your path
in life, the most important thing is actually finding people at any stage that you can learn
something from. So, you know, through my career, I've had mentors and leaders and colleagues
and people that I've learned a lot from and you might find over time that, you know, your
skill base and your experience surpasses people that you've learned from in the past, which
means that, you know, they don't provide the same sort of value from a mentoring or leadership
point of view, you kind of outgrow certain people that you meet through your life. But
the most important thing is at each stage of your life, you've got people that you're
learning from.
You know, the people I've always most respected that I've worked with are ones that are a
bit more selfless. I mean, they're driven. But, you know, there's almost like a higher
purpose to what they're doing. So, you know, it's not about the money, for example, or
it's not about their position in the organization and climbing the corporate ladder as being
the most important thing. It's about doing the job right to solving problems, being passionate
about what they're trying to achieve. You know, money should really be the byproduct
product of a job well done in anything. I mean, that goes from running a startup, you
know, KindiCare, who knows where we'll end up. But, you know, if we solve problems well
and if we provide value for clients, you know, the revenue will continue to grow and the
business will be valuable. And whether I'm the right person to be running this business
in five years or whether it's passing on the baton to someone else or whether it's going
after a different market, you never know until you get there. But integrity is a really important
thing and having trust in the person. That, I think, comes back to what are their personal
motivations. So, you know, I think Paul Keating once said, people always do what's most important
to them at any point in time. But the great leaders, yes, they'll be focused on the most
important issue, but it's less about them and more about what they're actually trying
to achieve. So, you're quite a visionary yourself considering what you've created in such a
short amount of time. And so, you've looked up to people who've got a purpose, a drive,
they're aiming for something and they think bigger than their role, they think bigger
than themselves. I like that. Yeah. So, you know, that sort of comes through in them being
a bit more entrepreneurial, they'll be a bit more flexible in decision making, within reason,
they're willing to accept risk and make the right decision despite what blowback or pressure
they might get in return. So, when you right or wrong, when you believe something is the
right thing to do, there has to be integrity behind that and you can't fold in the face
of opposition. And no person building a startup or no person really helping a company succeed
can be the type of person that just backs down at the first opposition to fall into
line. So, yeah, we love talking about confidence and how a confident leader is somebody who
will make the right decision, not the popular decision. Sometimes the popular decision is
the right decision, but it's about knowing when that is the case, whether you're making
the right decision based on principles, based on vision, based on purpose, or you're making
the decision based on being liked. Well, I think this is where there's a lot of distrust
of political leaders in the current environment. You know, how much do we see instead of making
the right decision for the next 20 years, people making the short term decision about
selling a public asset to get the return to buy a stadium to get the next round of election
votes or changing their position from what they believe because it's tested in media
or they've had blowback. You know, right or wrong, you have to stand by your convictions
and what you're trying to do. And if you're a political leader and people don't stand
behind that and don't see that vision for the country or aren't aligned with you, isn't
it better rather than to hold on to power, like we've seen some politicians do, not naming
any ex prime minister, then then actually talking about a needed Keating.
Integrity is really important. And you know, you can't think the population's dumb. People
see authenticity and they will see through you if it's not a genuine experience.
So Ben, what do you consider to be your superpower? What's your biggest strength?
Your leadership superpower?
I think the ability to articulate an idea and get people to follow it. And I'm a product
guy. I love you an influencer.
I don't see myself as an influencer or anything special, to be honest. I mean, I love Lego
as a kid. Kindicare just did a Lego competition. That's partly because I love Lego. But you
know, I was always a builder from a very young age and I love solving problems. And so, you
know, for me, I never knew I'd end up being, I guess, you know, in product development
or product management in my career and then end up founding a startup to boot.
A bipolar startup.
A bipolar startup. I mean, it is quite a journey that nothing can really prepare you for. But,
you know, there's just that driving me to solve problems and do it in an elegant way.
And I can't describe it any other way than that. That's how my mind works. And I just
feel I'm a natural on creating products that work for the market.
So people who are out there thinking about starting their own business, founding.
Think again. Think again.
Keep your life. So what lessons would you give to people who are thinking about starting
their own business?
It's not glamorous.
So, you know, I think people look at startups or they see a business that's been successful.
You know, typically it's an overnight success, 10 years in the making.
You know, the journey of building a business is hard. I mean, it's incredibly hard. And
from a, it's just all consuming.
So I mean, look, I've had, you know, senior corporate roles with, you know, serious pressure
behind it, but nothing compares to building a startup where you're responsible for every
aspect of it. It's your baby because it's so personal, but at the same time, you know,
it requires every ounce of energy and focus.
So, you know, the first thing I'd say to people is, you know, be prepared for the sacrifices
that will come.
You know, you will lose friendships. You will see the worst version of yourself and the
best version of yourself through the process.
It will become addictive and all consuming. And if the business doesn't come first over
everything else, health, family, recreation, time, you name it, you won't succeed.
And I know that sounds horrible, but it's what it really takes. You know, there's no
idea if I can clock off at six o'clock or maybe nine o'clock's a long night. You know,
if you have to be up till three o'clock in the morning, six days in a row to get a product
released or, you know, because you've got media attention on you and you have to respond,
you know, at a moment's notice, despite what your other plans are, you end up doing everything.
So you've been going at a cracking pace for some time now. What are you doing to look
after yourself? Because if it's like the old adage when you're on a plane, Michelle, I'm
sure knows this very well, that if you don't put your gas mask on, you put your oxygen
mask on first, you can't help anyone else. So what are you doing to help yourself so
that you can continue this hectic pace?
You know, the hard thing is when you know you need a break or when you know you've hit
the wall, you've often got no choice. So, you know, it's a bit like having kids in a
way, you know, if your kids are sick and it's four in the morning and they're vomiting and
you need to get up and you're exhausted, you have no choice. So it's that kind of thing.
Whereas if you're in a job, you know, what's the worst that can happen? You might lose
your job. It's very different if it's your business and you know, you've got critical
deliverables. So, I mean, as much as possible, I try and talk with with advisors, with friends
and and, you know, have conversations about, you know, issues that we might be facing on
a on a I might be facing on a personal or a business level.
So you've got a group of people, leaders that you reach out to, mentors?
A group of people that have been through similar situations or friends that I've known for
a long time to keep to keep a bit grounded. But, you know, getting getting exercise where
you can, I try as much as possible to do, you know, a 10k walk every day.
Well, that's clear my head. That's significant.
Much to my wife's annoyance. Sometimes that's, you know, one o'clock in the morning and
she's worried, worried about me walking on the street. And I have been pulled up by the
police a couple of times in winter whilst wearing a hoodie, wondering what I'm doing
out at that time of the morning.
So I'm going off a bit what Guy was saying about how you're taking care of yourself.
How is your work life balance going and how are you ensuring that there is some balance
and it's not tipping way too much the other way?
Look, you know, one of the things that I have to do, I have a diary booking on a Friday
night to make sure that it's family dinner and moving out with my girls.
You know, whilst it's hard to get work life balance, at least with, you know, working
from a home office and our staff is 100% remote. Everyone works from wherever is most convenient.
It's 100% flexible working. So what that does afford me is, yes, I might be working till
three o'clock in the morning, but I can do the pick up and drop off of the kids, you
know, make sure I spend time. I try and cook the girls dinner. So I'm the only cook in
the house. My wife is good at so many things, but other than two minute noodles, there's
not much in the cooking department that she can really do. So, but you know, that's important
for me because I love food and, you know, being able to cook a meal for the kids and
watch them enjoy that, you know, then they have bath time, et cetera. And once I've hit
the sack, I'm back off to work for another few hours or as long as it takes. So, you
know, I have no work life balance. I don't think it's fair to call it that way. And I
don't think Eddie founder of a startup would say that they've got work life balance, but
I think you try and make it work. And I'm very lucky that I have an incredibly supportive
wife who picks up and shoulders a load, even though she has a, you know, high profile corporate
job. You know, she picks up the load knowing where I'm at with the business and the effort
that I need to put into it. So does Jelani, do you check in with Jelani as far as because,
you know, it was basically her problem that you came up with a solution or you both came
up with a solution. Do you check in with her often or, or, you know, occasionally about
how the market solution is going and, and how she is as a parent, excuse me, and, and
how she is as a consumer, basically, although your girls are older now, to how, how it fits
in with the vision.
Yeah. So, so Jelani gets involved with ideas around the business, but not involved on a
day to day basis. I mean, she came up with the original problem set, but I guess just
like all things, our business are now scaled to a point where we've got so many inputs
coming in from parents and you know, there's 85,000 people that have installed the kindy
care app since we launched, we have a hundred thousand sessions a month between app and
website of families who are looking for early learning services. So we have a big pool of
people to ask as well as a huge wealth of data around what products and services and
features and functions are being used on our platform. So, you know, where, where Jelani's
input often comes in is just the gut feel of how do I feel about a certain thing as
a mom?
So back to your 10 kilometer walk in the mornings. Do you find, cause that's a, that's a fair
amount of, uh, meet, meetridge that you're, you're covering, no doubt, unless you're an
Olympic walker and you do it in a short amount of time. Um, do you find that that is the,
the time of day when most of your insights come to your ideas or do you find it a way
of just turning off?
Yeah, look, I try and do phone calls on the walk because I think, I think better while
I'm moving and so much of my time is spent at the desk because of the nature of, you
know, our business. So, you know, conversations are much better done when I'm walking and
I've probably, you know, just completely killed the floorboards in our home office because
I'll pace backwards and forwards when I'm on the phone. So, I mean, if I'm going to
go for a walk, I try and do a decent walk. So it's a good time to either, you know, if
it's the middle of the night, I'm doing a late night walk. That's a good time to reflect
and think, or just decompress, you know, listen to some music, you know, just do something
and be out and have some fresh air and move. Um, if it's early in the day, yeah, I'll usually
be on the phone to either advisors or investors or, you know, people that I need to speak
to, even customers in some cases. And I'll let them know as I'm huffing and puffing up
a hill that I'm out walking, um, so that they're aware. But when I ran my consulting business,
I found that, you know, the most efficient use of time. So I can get exercise at the
same time as I'm still working.
I don't use the term work life balance myself. I actually deplore it. I think it's, it's,
it's the wrong term because what it does is it implies that your life stops when you go
to work. I see work as a part of life and it's going to just integrate the two.
It's a part of life if you love what you do and do you like what you do. And I love what
I do every day. Like despite the challenges, I mean, I believe in what we're doing and
I absolutely love what I do. Um, so, you know, and again, it goes to that there's a, there's
a greater driver. I mean, I could have taken a, you know, corporate roles, earning a lot
more money with a lot less stress and pressure, but it's not about that. So, you know, for
me it's, you know, solving the problem and driving it and being able to build something
that's truly mine. Um, so, you know, but I, I saw a post on LinkedIn, I think it was actually
this morning around, you know, people that stay extra hours or work through the night
to get something done or achieve a task that shouldn't be worn as a badge of honor. You
know, you need work life balance. And I don't subscribe to that view at all. I mean, I understand
if you're an employee and are you being rewarded appropriately for, for that, but I think it
comes from a greater driver. I mean, if you love what you do, even if you're an employee,
you'll go the extra mile because you believe in what you're doing and you want to succeed
and you want to see it done.
Oh, we definitely subscribe to that, that, you know, it's the thing that gets you up
early in the morning, couple of hours before most people wake up. It's the thing that keeps
you going late at night and then yeah, it drives you. It's definitely a passion.
You know, there's plenty of people that will do whatever for a buck. Um, and I'm not one
of those people. So, you know, when I look to people that I feel I can learn from, or
I see as, you know, people I'd look up to or mentors, they've, they've typically had
that trait.
And then as you said before, when you go past them, you've learned everything and a great
leader should inspire those that they lead to become better than themselves. That's ultimately
the role of a leader.
Absolutely. So, and this comes back to your point guy around confidence. So if someone's
confident, they're not worried about hiring someone that's more capable than them. Like
if I was going out tomorrow to hire a chief data officer for the organization, I would
want someone who's more capable than me that could bring you ideas that could challenge
what we've done and do it better because what would you get someone that was less than,
I mean, you're just going to get to make yourself feel superior. There is no point to that.
You always want to surround yourself with people that you could see succeeding better.
I mean, if we're, you know, I'm 43 now, you know, I've still got a ways to go in my career.
But you know, if I was looking at someone that I'm employing to be who's younger than
me or even older than me, you still want them to be better. You want them to be better at
what they do than what you are.
And Henry Ford is very famous for, and I hope it's true because it's on the internet, so
it's got to be true. Henry Ford is famous for saying, I wasn't a brilliant man, but
I surrounded myself with them. So you obviously subscribe to the same model that you surround
yourself with people who have got.
Yeah, no one's got all the answers. And so, you know, and the other trait, I think of
a good leader is someone that you can actually listen and talk to. I mean, I would say to
my team members, you know, I'll sometimes have very fixed views and I'm always happy
to be challenged, but you know, you've got to have some backup or some proof or some
reasoning behind what you're challenging me with. And I'm always open because, you know,
if we take an idea and someone's got a better one, then it creates a better product and
it creates a better experience for our customers on both sides of the marketplace. So why would
you not want that? You know, no one contains all the innovation in their head. No one's
got all of the answers. And so you need a strong and capable team around you and you
want people that can challenge you.
Well, I think we've learned a lot about leadership today. I'd like to throw one more question.
Is there anything else, any advice you could give to leaders out there? You've now 43 years,
probably at the start of your leadership career, considering, you know, you've just founded
your own company and the headway that you've made in such a very short amount of time.
What's one lesson you can leave our leaders that are listening?
Trust your people. You know, hire the right people with the right motivations from you
personally in hiring them and then trust them to do the job.
Simple. Love it.
So Ben, not many people know or no one would know that I am actually an employee of you
and you took a risk hiring an ex airline captain, retired airline captain into an IT startup
business. So why?
I asked myself that so many times. Look, actually, again, it was one of these hypotheses. You
know, I looked at people that were being affected by COVID that were going to be displaced as
a result. So highly qualified, highly capable people, you know, with good technical skills,
with good management skills.
But again, why?
So I just, you know, people have like I didn't I guess from, you know, my lens has changed
a bit over the years. And so, you know, Australia tends to have this, how do I put it, this
precedent based recruitment. So you can't get a job easily as a chief technology officer
unless you've previously held the title of a chief technology officer. It doesn't seem
to matter what you really achieved. It's how well you spin it in the interview. And do
you have that title on your resume?
So you know, people are less hired on their outcomes and skills and capabilities than
what they are on what's on the resume and how well they can actually position themselves
in an interview. So, you know, I didn't come from the childcare industry. But I've worked
across a number of different sectors in my life, whether it be enterprise resource planning
software in, you know, hard goods in in consumables, through to, you know, information technology
companies like Equifax and Experian, etc. And, you know, you sort of learn that it's
the skills that you have as a person that can translate across industries that are most
valuable. So when I looked at, you know, Michelle, you coming from an aviation background, I
went, you know, one of the few female captains in your industry, flying, you know, aircraft
in a high pressure job with simulations and everything else you have to go through, particularly
being a female in a male dominated industry, I went, well, she's got to be capable and
handle a lot of things and being in a startup environment, because you were employee number
one, you know, you have to be prepared to work across a whole range of areas, whereas
people that are used to being in a role, you know, in a business, they're usually in a
box with a particular scope of work. And that's not what startup is like.
And do you find they come in with a lot of cognitive bias, which means that they're always
going to continue to do things the way and think the way they've always thought. But
in a startup, you need to be a lot more agile, a little more open to lots of ideas. Do you
find that's the case?
I think regardless of the willingness of the of the person to try and help out, you know,
depending on their their personal character, if you've been in a role in a larger organization,
there's still this bit of that's not my job, or that's not my area, or that's someone else.
And there's no such thing when you're building a business from the ground up, you know, and
even for me personally, I'm hands on tools, you know, if I have to curate 80,000 lines
of data to do our next pricing load, and I'm up, you know, till five in the morning doing
it, it's me sitting there doing it, because there's no one else to rely on, you can't
just say that's not my problem, the job needs to be done, no matter what. And you have to
do whatever it takes. So you kind of lose that, you know, position of well, that's beneath
me or, you know, I'm the senior, and I shouldn't have to do that, you know, it's all hands
on deck. So you want to work with people that fundamentally firstly have that character
trait of I'm willing to do whatever it needs to be done for the business to be successful.
And so how can people find more information about Kindicare? Really easy, go to kindicare.com
or go to either Google Play Store or Apple App Store, and search for Kindicare or childcare
and download the Kindicare app. So if you're searching for childcare for your young children,
or if you're looking for a job in the industry, and you want the best experience, go to Kindicare.
And Benjamin Bulk, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. You're welcome. So
Michelle, where can they find us? Captainandtheclown.com. Where you'll find links to our websites for
keynote speaking and corporate training. Yes, that's captainandtheclown.com. Well, that
was fun. That was fun. You're such a clown. The clown. Lady captain. And who's going to
listen to this? Maybe I'm not. Thanks, mom.