I'm at Cowan and this is scaling up.
It's really simple to be laser focused when you're small, but
as you get bigger, I think that the focus is the biggest risk
that you have to address, and you need people in the business
that can call you out on it. So, I think it just comes down
to great, people choosing some people as well, that have that
experience that have been through that scale up Journey.
This podcast aims to educate and Inspire by telling the stories
of great growth companies As Told by their CEOs.
And Founders TDM is an Australian based investment firm
that invests globally in fast-growing public, and private
companies for more insights visit our website TDM growth
partners.com. Catherine McConnell, the founder
and CEO of bright is my guest today on scaling up, bright is
revolutionizing how Australians are financing and
decentralizing, sustainable energy solutions in their homes.
A former Macquarie banker and mother of two Catherine,
initially mortgage, the family home to go after the opportunity
of becoming the leading Consumer Finance business in the space,
and that she has bright has now. Financed 10% of the solar
installations in Australia and processed over Billion dollars
of applications across 90 thousand homes.
Recently having secured a hundred million dollar, funding
round, brightest driven deeper into the value chain, becoming
an energy retailer. This is a far-reaching
conversation from the business itself being at the Forefront of
sustainable investing. In Australia to the scaling.
Challenges of remote onboarding at scale, bright is a beacon on
so many fronts as to what is possible as one of Australia's
fastest-growing private companies.
Here at TDM, were always trying to create content relevant for
Founders leadership teams and investors alike.
And since our last podcast series, you may have missed some
of this including Harry moots. Look at why the title
acquisition by square makes perfect sense.
Despite at first glance and audio streaming platform being
bought by a payments business. Not feeling the most natural of
fits the best place to find. All our TDM content is on our
website or across our social channels.
The links are in the show notes and as always, you can get in
touch with me. On Twitter at Eddie Cowan.
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kathryn
McConnell. Catherine, welcome to scaling
up. I must admit I have wanted to
have you on this show for a couple of Seasons now, but
thankfully, finally have managed to track you down.
I would love as a great place to start.
To learn more about you, your own green Journey, your personal
background and your reason for why.
When it came to founding bright and great to be here, great, to
be able to finally have this chat.
So, I've been on this journey since And so it's six years now
that I've been the founder and CEO at bright.
And so before being the founder and CEO at this Gala, I had a
really long career in investment banking at Macquarie bank.
So I was there, 14 years in total also had worked in the
government Treasury and Department of Finance.
And so never had aspirations to be an entrepreneur and you know,
never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that?
I'd be where I am today. The background that I had in
Investment Banking, particularly at Macquarie Bank I gave me a
really strong understanding of risk structuring credit products
and particularly the area that I was in.
I had really great insights into customer problems and customer
friction points. And so, it was there that it was
really a testing ground for me to be able to develop some
different products. Be able to get some feedback on
the ground and it was there that I personally got involved in
solar and batteries. So, in 2010 at home, we got
solar in 2015, we got our first battery.
So we were there. You know, very, very early
adopters for home batteries. And so at that point, I guess by
2015, it was a combination of you know, deep technical
understanding of the energy industry, the energy financing
industry and problems on the ground combined with just
personal interest in solar personal interest in batteries.
And just the understanding of their financial sustainability
that can provide, you know, when you get that feel home.
And so, I left because I saw that, the current products on
the market weren't capable of solving the friction, and the
problems that Existed. And I was a big believer in the
future of batteries and I thought if they weren't solving
the problems of solar today, you know, batteries were never going
to be taken up. And so I left because I thought
that with my background and my personal interest that I could
could solve these problems. And the first problem I wanted
to solve was The Upfront cost. And so, if you could remove The
Upfront cost for people that wanted to make their home,
sustainable and wanting to get solar removing that upfront cost
and spreading those Repayments over time, enabled that customer
to be able to align the repayments With the Energy
savings. They be making from solar and so
it was pretty much a no-brainer, it was just, you know,
economically made sense and then it had all of these other
environmental and sustainable benefits.
And so, for me, it just made sense.
And I've been really lucky that I was able to build the business
that solved that initial challenge that customers had in
accessing a sustainable home. Well, dig into bright.
I'm going to stick with this founding story for the moment,
like so many. Founders.
It feels as though you saw the problem initially from the
consumer lens and there was a problem to be solved for the
consumer. And then your domain expertise
around financing got plugged into what became evidently an
obsession around. Solving this did you feel like a
repressed entrepreneur in many ways at any stage, nothing
smells like a vanilla corporate job.
Like Macquarie Bank in Australia.
There must have been something deep inside.
That said, I want to break free. No, I never did Lemonade's those
never never had side businesses. I was actually really happy
taking home a paycheck and a bonus once a year.
I thought it was, you know, a lot of financial stability.
There was a lot of prestige Associated working there.
And for me, you know, I would have been really happy to have
risen up those ranks to be honest.
And so it's quite interesting when I reflect on like, how I
left, why I left like, what was that trigger?
That's the most intriguing part still?
When I look back. It doesn't all make sense.
It's why I left and I know I have the raisins and I know why
I say I did it, but it's quite a powerful thing.
I guess that happened. That gave me the confidence to
leave. It was their thread of personal
values, amongst that was there something just wanting to do
something better for the world. I had a strong belief that the
benefits of solar were real and Battery opportunity and uptake
was going to be huge and I felt, I guess that at that time it was
a A fringe issue and then absolute need for this type of
product, wasn't a priority and the absolute need for why it
needed to be available at the point-of-sale, like just wasn't
understood and the risk was saying, but the opportunity was
insane. And so all of those things I
guess, made me frustrated, and it made me frustrated because
the benefit to the customer was just so real.
That the opportunity ahead was so big and I just couldn't
couldn't do my day job anymore because I just couldn't see past
that opportunity. And pass that problem.
Sorry that was really the impetus for why I made the move
in Australia and ultimately the world will be grateful for that.
Let's dig into the business. Correct me if I'm wrong but act
14 bright. Let's say the first four or five
years as you are starting to scale up was about this Consumer
Finance piece for solar and batteries buy now pay later
products for, not only those but also Home Improvements of which
you've think Finance, maybe one in 10 new residential solar
installations in. Australia, which is incredible
and now Australia leads the world in rooftop solar
penetration and you've been at the Forefront of that act to it.
Seems from the outside is not just about financing the assets.
It's about becoming a retailer. And also helping the customers
realize revenue from their solar and batteries.
And so this sort of Jen tailing is going to create a huge
opportunity. The question is massive Market
when you were sitting down thinking about bright and what
Could become was it always the plan or has it just evolved that
you really saw that the value chain was broken and needed
fixing I'm absolutely fascinated by how the business plan in a
sense has evolved over time actually found my first pitch
that I did when I was trying to raise seed investment and so
I've gone back and challenge myself, you know, because
sometimes I think you can lose Clarity along the way, but I
found it and the big story was bright.
Believes in the battery opportunity and brights, being
created to enable the acceleration and the uptake of
batteries. And so, what I believed in was
that opportunity in the benefits that customers could get from,
not just generating your own energy but storing that energy,
just that storage of the energy that everyone.
Believed in Zola everyone believed, you know, in 2010
there was a solar boom and everyone knew that you can
create your own energy but what was missing was like storing
that energy so you could save that power When the Sun Goes
Down, And you can power your own home and not just generate your
own energy during the day, but use it during the night.
And so that's what I wanted to unlock.
And when I started the business, I thought Finance would unlock
everything. So I thought the biggest barrier
was just The Upfront cost. Absolutely was for solar 3
million homes. We passed a milestone in
Australia, this week, 3, million homes have solar, but 110,000
homes, have batteries in 2021. And so, you know, when I look
back at 2015, I at 2020 would be the year would be in a battery.
Boom. And it's not happening.
And so, when I reflect on, you know, the problem I was all-in
when I set up the business, the problem I was solving was I
wanted people to get batteries and I want to remove the
friction that stop people from getting batteries and to do
that, I set up capabilities to remove The Upfront price, which
was financed. And so I thought Finance would
solve everything and I guess the realization is last year.
Finance isn't unlocking batteries and so as we dig
deeper to look at why I guess the biggest reason that I say is
that solar has a revenue stream that's packaged into that
purchase. And so you get revenue from
government STC, certificates up front set off against the out
front price. You can also earn a revenue
stream via a feed-in tariff, which is earned over time, and
that's packaged in there. You know, with high confidence
in that ongoing Revenue stream, that batteries don't have that.
And so there's a problem there that we need to solve around how
we can help our customers. I have power shift to their home
and make sure it's fair that they earn the revenue stream
that batteries can generate. And so that's the part that we
need to unlock and also just that Simplicity around how we
can just make it such a simple experience for customers.
When they buy that battery, that they can truly power their home,
they can generate, they can store and all of their energy
needs, all of the revenue, they can generate.
I just packaged up seamlessly for that home.
Love how you're thinking about it and just to kind of dig into
the business model a little Bit more and the key competitive
advantages of it and the opportunities.
As you see them, you keep calling out this frictionless
customer experience because ultimately you are a consumer
brand and so I'm really Keen to understand how you're thinking
about building a consumer brand and that's obviously the tip of
the iceberg and below. It is this really powerful
business model both on the consumer side and the funding
side. So let's kind of walk through
that but maybe to start with how you're thinking about building a
brand For bright. That was a probably a
realization last year to be honest.
And so when I started the business, I started the business
by solving the customers problems through the
distribution channel. So, developing a network of
Partners around the country. So we've got about two and a
half thousand companies that work with us and with their
team, there's about seven or eight thousand people here on
the ground who can use bright to unlock their customers sales and
Ambitions to access solar. So that was Like what we focused
on in the first phase of our growth, building up that
channel. And so, it was only last year
that we realized we hadn't really thought about brand
awareness. I think last year I'd had prior
to the start of last year I had spent 300,000 dollars in
marketing and had one and a half people in the marketing team.
And so part of our series see was to bring in the team, to
develop the brand to identify what that brand was going to be
in the value proposition. And we just a couple of weeks
ago, launched the new logo the brand.
And we've got some TV ads coming on next week, ads on radio.
So we now have our plan and we're starting to roll that out.
It's a testament to how great a customer experience.
It is to think that six years in is the first real time that
you've had to do any kind of above the line advertising that,
that speaks volumes to the product Market fit.
And you called out part of this frictionless experience is this
Marketplace of Supply being the installers and obviously the
demand coming The consumers. So not only are you trying to
scale Consumer Finance company? But there's this Marketplace
element but that, of course provides a wonderful Network
effect. Once it starts flowing, it does
you often have the Chicken and the Egg problem?
Effectively, what do you build first?
What do you grow first? Do you go first with brand so
then you can attract the partners you know or do you go
first with partners and and so that's something that I've
definitely been conscious or and I chose the former to go first.
However Are you need brand awareness to help those Partners
at the point of sale? You know, when they're saying
how about bright? And so you have to co-invest in
both sides and both sides, add weight to each other.
So the more direct relationships we have with customers.
What we do is we're able to provide qualified leads to our
vendors. That helps them increase their
sales and I was speaking to one of the vendors a couple of weeks
ago and he was saying he's getting so many qualified leads
through bright that he's stopped his Google and Facebook ads
because he can't actually service all of them.
That he's getting through now. And so that's that's where we
want to land. That's a great example, that
just that benefit that you can provide to both sides, both of
our customer bases and then how that can create network effects
effectively, and be this continuous cycle that
effectively supports and feeds, both consumers, and also
Partners who operate in that space.
Of course, the more supplies you have or Partners as your calling
and the more utility for the consumers and also gives you
more permission I guess to I add greater features and you know
that creates more utility and all of a sudden that flywheel
can really start spinning quickly and it feels as though.
That's probably where you're almost at at this point in time,
things are really getting going for bright.
I guess the only other thing I want to call out on the business
model front. We've kind of touched on this
consumer side. There has to be some secret
sauce on the financing side and that I'd call that the back end,
the less sexy stuff, but ultimately the solar or the Home
Improvements, or the batteries need to be financed.
This is where your domain expertise.
Probably shines. Can you talk through the secret
sauce of the financing? Peace, Fulbright.
Yeah, absolutely. It's like the iceberg.
What's underneath is so much bigger than what presents on the
surface. And from day one, I knew that in
order to have a compelling proposition for consumers for
our customers, that we had to have a pathway to having very
cost-effective capital. And so we also had to To
effectively own the criteria around who we can lend to and
then how we manage those customers.
So, we effectively had to build our own debt warehouse and we
have to have a pathway to public debt markets.
And so, right from day one, when I was Raising Equity, I was also
raising debt. And so when I did my first seed
round, I was also concurrently raising my first 10 million
dollar debt warehouse. And so it was only, you know, so
really three three to four years of being in the market.
We did our first 190 million Issuance.
And it's very complex. It's very expensive to be able
to put the structures in place to enable that from day one.
And you know, I can do a whole session on this round, what you
need to put up. But yeah, it's very expensive
and it's more complex actually than the equity and then
thinking through how you set up the procedures behind that.
So effectively when people give you money to be able to put in
these debt warehouses, they want to have the confidence that the
policies that you have will be executed and so consistently.
How we write our owned, how we, you know, create credit, how we
service those customers who are in our portfolio.
When people are late in paying do we follow our policies around
how we're going to collect that fun.
And then, can we keep our number of customers who are paying late
or aren't paying within the, the forecast that we've committed
to? And so there's a lot of
complexity there as an additional two regulations that
you have to follow and so that in itself is a Minefield.
But, you know, I think we're doing a great job.
Evidenced by the fact. This year, we got a Triple-A
rating in a green bond which shows it's really high.
Quality credit, you know, the underlying portfolio.
Absolutely. I think one thing to call out
that is Australia's first, 100% green, asset-backed, securitized
Bond. So not just making it easy for
the consumers, but on the financing side, you're really
breaking new ground. Absolutely.
And so, what that does is initially when I started, I was
using Equity, the McDonald family home loan, Maybe it was
dead, but so I was using equity and to be able to fund that's
not a scalable solution. Catherine, it's not.
And then I, when I raised Equity, I was using equity and
so, you know, it's fantastic to be able to access this step
that's scalable. It's cost-effective.
And then it means that the equity that I have, I can use in
other areas of the business so I can use to be able to look at
data and Automation and product creation.
It's just not sustainable having a business where you have a high
cost of funds to be able to fund your, you know, loan, And
created a lot of freedom and opportunity.
Now, to be able to use that Equity to scale other parts of
the business. It seems to me that this is
really where the competitive Advantage is driven home for
your business. Do you think that from a debt
financing point of view that in fact you are at the Forefront of
maybe the greatest Tailwind of Our Generation that is green
investing. I think there was a statistic in
The Economist the other day that investors have poured more than
500 billion dollars this year alone into energy Position.
And that's sort of shorthand for decarbonizing.
Everything from energy to transport, you name it.
It must feel as though the wind is in your sales when it comes
to the financing peace. Yeah, I remember when I started
I thought 2020 onwards. The towel wins would be there
and I think that's why I left the urgency was there that he
just had to see this in 2015 or you're going to miss the window
of opportunity that I thought would come from 2020 and Beyond.
And so, the opportunity comes on many fronts.
It's not just with our customers who Wanting to be empowered and
owning their own power, you know, they wanting to be power
generators. So it's not just with our
customers. It is also with people who want
exposure to this underlying asset class so they have ESG
requirements as companies. They may also have requirements
that are pushed on them as fart of government.
The cop 26 or Net Zero targets and then you will.
So, you know, we're really lucky because our employees
particularly Millennials and gen said they also want to Work for
companies with purpose and and they need this and they want
this. So you've got Tailwinds on so
many fronts. We've got a war on Talent.
We can actually hire the best people because they can work.
In businesses that are have exposure to sustainability.
We can actually support people corporates who want to invest in
this type of asset class by creating a machine that can
continue to deliver this type of debt opportunity and Underneath
It, All were solving customers problems and creating, you know,
greater affordability and sustainability for them.
So it's this. Triple threat and overnight
success story. Everything always is, you're
listening to scaling up with Ed coward, a podcast.
Brought to you by TDM growth Partners.
Visit the website TDM growth Partners.com or for interesting
insights and commentary. Follow us on Twitter at TDM
underscore growth. We'll come back to the the
hiring piece because I do want to carve out some time,
specifically from that. But while on the business model,
are there any other scaling challenges you want to call out
that I've kind of missed around, you know, the Consumer Finance
piece or the marketplace piece, or the energy piece.
But what have been the really big challenges that you've had
to face as a founder and as a business over the last five or
six years. So some of the challenges have
been around automation, the underlying customer demographic
that we're Dealing with and also how we've approached the market.
It's been via third parties so we weren't physically present at
that point of sale. There's a lot of risk there that
you're exposed to and as you scale.
It's not you know you know exposed to hundreds of millions
of dollars over this type of risk.
And so that's been something we've absolutely focused on as
we scale and I think it's a super power of our business but
also the automation is really interesting because a lot of the
demographics of the homeowners that we deal with, they don't
trust you. No, sir.
Where you have to do, bang, verification.
They don't trust giving their password away to their bank
account to someone. And so, you know, you do have a
lot of customers who want to interact with you and their
preferences are. I think they've been accelerated
through covid. Getting more comfortable with
digital, but it's been something that we've had to navigate and
we asked or navigating around Automation and just how to make
it easy and a great experience that streamlined and scalable
given the underlying demographics and sales
environment. So, you know, I think there's
been something we have. And we are getting better and
better at to be able to do this on an even bigger.
Scale, you know, along the way that's created different
problems and you don't want to pile on people, you want to, you
know, create automation but then how you kind of balance this
along the way when you are in this this type of growth, that's
a good call out particularly around trying to scale the
technology. It's something that I certainly
hadn't touched on and maybe we can touch on it in the hiring
peace. Let's change gears a little bit
to the scaling of the people and culture of this is Probably the
biggest scaling pain point for most Founders, particularly ones
that are going through hyper-growth like yourself.
Let's start with your own leadership.
Scaling Journey may be what the company vision for the culture
was and how those values of the business came about.
Yeah, as I've reflected along the way, a lot of my values at
bright have been formed by how I have or have not been treated
prior to starting bright in the last 11 years, I've always
worked in a team that had only males.
You know, Mauser great. But, you know, the only thing on
the team and I went through two pregnancies to maternity leaves,
I needed flexibility, after I came back and it was really a
different world than it is today.
You know, I got promoted once in 11 years once in 11 years.
And so it was quite frustrating because, you know, I had exactly
the same skill sets, then as I do today, and it's just always
amazing for me to say I'm doing today.
What I did then and won promotion.
And so I always think about fairness, you know, I always
think about fairness as I watched colleague.
Eggs, get promoted. And I felt a lot of anger, you
know, I saw my husband working and then he also would have
loved to have had more time with our kids and not to have had to
have made the choice about has to fall on one person or both
carried by both. And I also saw her along the way
that, you know, there was a period where he was able to take
some time off and be that primary care and how much
happiness it gave him and the kids.
And so I think values that bright has are based on values
and experiences that I've had to date.
And so we have value I brought it together.
How we're stronger together, we're stronger as a team.
The individual doesn't win. So you know that's a really big
one. We have one called the ball.
It's around High performing teams.
It's also around how you act when you have to drop the ball.
So you may have to drop the ball because you've got some personal
commitments that you're a high performer, but you've got some
things and you just you have to leave because you've got these
things on and you're in the middle of something and it's how
we support each other, you know, through life up and down and
life is personal. It's not just work and I think
it's creating an inclusive. Eve, and really genuine
environment where you can have a life outside of work and you can
still be a really high performer.
Awesome. Yeah, brought really has become
a beacon in this and is attracting great people because
of it, I think. And again, correct me if I'm
wrong that over half your leadership, team is female.
So that's playing out in part of your previous experience and
this inclusion piece, you only need to read through the the
reviews online, as to how you're scaling this culture, what about
your own role? How that's changed over the last
five years, as a Founder then, more of a, you're still the
founder, but more of a CEO and leader of people how that
Evolution and how you've dealt with that.
Because as it sounds, you weren't a leader of many at
Macquarie. Yeah, I agree.
I think at the end I had one person that was reporting into
me. So you've got hungry.
Never let anyone I think in that first stage of growth year and
doer and then as you scale you know you start to build teams
and I you know, so I try to never micromanage and the reason
why I Wouldn't try to do that is because I just don't have the
skills that these people have that are coming on.
Like I acknowledge that. And so, I think the leadership
Journey for me, I've been the most aware of this over the last
few years, as I'm bringing on just amazing talent into the
company. And they look up to me for
advice or direction. And, you know, you do have
moments where you question your own ability to be able to give
that to them. When you look back at your own
experience and go, well, I'm not qualified.
You know, should I have done something to have been qualified
to be able to support? Them in the way they need.
And so, you know, I think it's a really interesting challenge for
Founders who find themselves that the CEO of Staff, with 200
500, 1000 people and tens of millions or hundreds of millions
of Revenue that they're generating.
And so it's absolutely. You need to be a fast learner at
every single step of the way in every single part of your role.
And I've been lucky to have had some people along the way that I
can reach out to who've been through the same process, you
know, with my own team. I learn a lot from them every
single day but just thinking through, you know, what is
leadership? What is the job of a CEO?
And what does that mean? I need to provide the company
and just the people who report to me really practically.
It's something that I think through and read a lot on
because I want to be great at this job.
So yeah you're going to have to be to achieve the ambition and
you will on that journey. Is there one thing that comes to
mind that you are very focused on in terms of scaling, your own
leadership capability. I've started probably reaching
out Formerly. Now, so we're going through a
process in the company. We've engaged a company called
culture equation. And so, going through exec team,
coaching individual coaching to be able to just have someone
that you can speak to you, to be able to challenge you and to be
able to talk through common pitfalls of downfalls that
leaders or CEOs you know have had in the past and to be able
to you know work through. Are they blind spots for you?
So I think that's been interesting that something I've
never done before. I'm finding that useful, you
know? And the only other thing I think
everyone has an individual style and so my style has been.
I haven't wanted, you know, formal mentors, or formal
coaches. And I prefer to just reach that
ad hoc, as I have a specific need, but I think that you just
have to work out there, what best suits you you called out
earlier around the advantage of being this purpose native
company. When it comes to hiring this
younger generation, that is Certainly very focused on the
time they spend and how they're going to spend it being aligned
to their own personal values. What are the some of the
mechanics of hiring people? In this sort of purpose?
Native, driven mindset, is there anything that you'd like to call
out? I think, at the start it's easy
because I could be involved in interviewing processes or your
personal brand could be quite convincing or, you know, you
could personally influence hiring.
But when you're hiring, you know, So 50 plus people a month,
you personally can't have that impact as a founder.
And so the way you can do that is through your mission, your
purpose, and your values and making sure they're clearly
understood, making sure they lived by everyone in the company
and making sure that, you know, external in people know what
they are. And so they become, you know,
they become your scaling engine or your scaling machine
effectively. And that's what we really work
through in the last year. I think it's really easy to say,
you know, we've got these things and I can remember them and
they're written. On the walls that, you know,
we've been through a process where you know, we've challenged
them within the business by starting to do a lot of work on
what it's like when they're not lived really starting to think
through feedback and how we get much better at candid feedback
and calling out when they're not lived.
And so I think that mission purpose and values, how you can
scale the bleep, I hire amazing people and be able to attract
people that really want that purpose, that genuine purpose.
That's lived in the business, you called out just the hiring
velocity that's going on. On 50 or so in the last month.
That's insane to think that's happened.
Remotely, and so coming out of covid, is there any advice that
you have for other businesses that are hiring, you know, their
systems and processes would have changed dramatically from the
face-to-face nature to hiring a velocity under the pressure of
having to do it remotely and also the policies around, you
know what, this new age of work looks like now I've been really
fortunate to have brought in an Chief people officer Kristin
Hunter and I think it's really important to look at, you know,
who's in charge of that part of your business and make sure
you've got an amazing person. You know, you may have just
focused in other areas of the business that drove growth or
revenue or marketing, but, you know, every part of the
business, you've got to have great talent.
And then we, now, think about it.
Also, as people operations, not just people and culture and you
think about scaling the operations, you know, in
marketing or customer service, or, you know, credit, but people
operations is where you have to think about, you know, Options
as well. And so it's how you scale
onboarding and it's how you scale time to competency.
So how quickly can you actually get people, you know, ready and
effective to be able to do their job because that enables you to
be quicker to be able to support your customers and create
revenues. So I think just a lot of the top
of the funnel kind of metrics that you think about for
customers, you've actually got to apply to your own people and
really focus on those metrics and in the same way you would
Revenue growth, that's a great call out and something very
actionable for many of the founders.
The listening. What about maintaining the
cultures that have developed much of which face-to-face all
of a sudden? He finding that there's been a
shift, considering the amount of people that are being on board
remote, or is it been an effect on the organizational structure?
And, and that has had a flow down, I'm curious because it is
something that is real for every business and you're experiencing
it at hyper growth and firsthand.
So I'm sure you have some insights here.
Well, it's funny. It's all because I'm not the
tech native. I'm the finance, the banker
native. And so the preference from me,
was always five days a week in the office and even after
covid-19 0, I think I was doing, you know, four days in the
office. So this time coming back, I'm
one. No more than two days in the
office. So, for me personally, like to
huge mindset change from where, you know, where I've existed my
whole life and I challenge my own views around our people
being productive and home. You know, when we talk about
let's return The office. I'd really challenge my own
views around. What does that mean?
Why do we need it? And when we do surveys and 61
percent of our team say, they don't want to return to the
office more than two days a week, you know, do you quickly
jump to any conclusions or assumptions around?
Why they've said that will challenge that and so I found it
a really personally growth experience and really
interesting because yeah productivity is high like our,
you know, we're having record-breaking days yesterday
was another record-breaking day and I think there were like 30
people in the office and And so I think it's a really
interesting time to be able to challenge every idea you've held
around why you need to work in the office.
And then you've got to look down also to the individual level and
the team level. And normally you do it at a
company whole level and you make a policy and that's what
everyone lives with. But now you actually having to
go through at A Team level and what works best for a team,
which teams prefer to work remote, which teams actually
really hunger and crave that interaction, because they're
more extroverts. And then also, you know, their
individual circumstances for a team, they want to work for me.
But the individual doesn't have that personal infrastructure at
home to enable that. So it just adds a whole element
of complexity there but I think that it's the future.
It's what our people want and I think we have to move quicker to
enable that for them. A great answer.
Just switching tack momentarily to your Equity funding Journey.
You've raised a lot of money now from some very high-profile
investors, there must be this tension of wanting to grow.
So fast and I'm sure you have that innate desire as well, but
you are ultimately dealing in a Consumer Finance Company,
amongst other things. And so this tension of scaling
really quickly but also not breaking because to break
creates a whole range of business risk that probably are
recoverable. So curious how that tension
plays out and how you think about it as the founder.
For me, it's focus and you need people in the business that can
call you out on it because as you get bigger, the opportunity
set of what you can do. Just grows and grows
particularly when you have more capital and you just think what
I could do that, I could buy that I could you know?
And so it just gets bigger and the importance of focus gets
more and more important because when you're smaller and you know
you just laser focused on you know build the band PL business,
the solar finance and that's all you've got to do and so it's
really simple to be lazy. Because when you small but as
you get bigger, I think that the focus is the biggest risk that
you have to address and then being great at executing where
you have a few different opportunities that you're facing
and it's not their single opportunity.
So I think it just comes down to great, people choosing some
people as well, that have that experience that have been
through that scale-up journey and really can help you identify
those common mistakes that will happen because they've seen them
happen and you don't just have to go through that slow
agonizing process of learning it yourself.
Yeah. Tickling a business like yours,
you know, the mistakes. You don't want to have to learn
yourself and a great call out to get the right people for the
right stage of the journey. Some people are great startup
people, some people really thrive in this scale up time
Horizon and then of course they might not be the right people
for you ultimately to be 100 billion dollar company, who
knows. But there's no doubt in my mind
that the world needs more strong and empowered female Founders
and leaders. What have been the biggest
friction points for All female Founders to exist in Australia
or the world. And what do you think will
instigate change in this? Yeah, I think that paternity
leave policy is a really, really big point.
And so, I remember when I had kids, and I had a group of
people girls actually, and we go walking at lunch in the botanic
gardens. And, you know, we'd all had
kids, and we were back three days a week and remember, just
this conversation clearly and they all just went through.
Well, you know, when I think about my cost of my nanny or my
child care and this and there's that just doesn't it makes sense
for me to be at work anymore. And and so my husband's going
to, you know, my husband's going to work and I'm going to stay
with the kids and I remember in that group, I was the only one
who kept working, then it was because they had to make the
choice. It was because only one person
could get support with rental payments or you know the
payments weren't flexible enough to be able to enable the female
to be able to stay in the workplace and not feel stressed
and that juggle. That's so real, couldn't be
managed. And so I just think that when I
look back at my amazing female friends, some of them aren't in
the workforce so they're trying to get back in, but I had, you
know, 10 years of a gap and it's hard for them to convince people
that they have that skill. I think that's the biggest part
of the funnel where you see females drop off females with
amazing talent, you know, University degrees and 10 years
of expertise and then they drop out for 10 years and so yeah,
that's why I think it's harder to get female.
Founders would be one reason and then I think the other reason is
the capital that you need you have to be able to seed the
business. It's really hard to go and get
funding on just an ID and you've got to have had some traction,
some product Market fit. And so if you're trying to get a
female that has had some market experience and identified, a
real problem that they may be trying to get a home, they may
be juggling all these expenses or you know, juggling all these
different pressures and I was really lucky that I could get a
million dollars also home loan but my husband had a really seen
your job. It will words, you know, I was
on a fantastic package and we'd already accumulated a lot of
savings through bonuses and this and that's a we had Money to be
able to draw on and people don't have that usually.
And so I think it's hard to get experienced female, Founders,
because there are so many of these problems that I think have
existed, but I think the world is changing and I think that's
going to change the future fascinating inside.
Is there a Best in Class? Parental leave policy that you
wish was just perhaps government policy or something that you've
seen. That is inspired how you've
thought about maternity leave. So, we've just introduced a
policy in the last Month, that's 20 weeks.
Maternity leave for anyone who's been with us in past probation.
So past six months, so that's 20 weeks of leave for either
parent. So if you work for us and you
know, your partner had the baby, you can still take that leave.
We give four weeks additional for the birthing parent.
So if you had the baby, you can take the 24 weeks off.
And so I think my husband was at bright, you know, he would have
been able to have taken five months off.
And then he would have had flexibility over two years as to
how he took that leave as well. And I think, That he then could
have supported you know, he's me and you know, given me a lot of
flexibility and that could have kept me in the workforce and so
I just think those paternity leave policies a huge and we
actually backdated that when we introduced it.
So we had quite a few dads whose Partners have had a baby in the
last year and so we went to them with this amazing.
Listen, you've got some leave, you can take and the most
amazing messages on slack, we're getting and with the photos.
And I've even seen one of the dads changes email signature
Sure to, you know, Dad and they just feel it's amazing.
And that's one thing I'm really proud of actually.
So you should be you're breaking the cycle for so many and it
plays into my last question. That is around work-life
balance. You have two kids, you're the
CEO and founder of a hyper growing business.
What advice do you have of finding that balance?
That is so required to be in for the marathon.
That is scaling a business? Yeah, I think it's best.
We just acknowledging that. That Juggle he's real and so
when you're in the middle of it all like you've got a pause for
a bit and say like just your juggling all these different
things just have a think about what you're juggling.
And then just have a think about that impact on you, the impact
on your family. Someone is taking the Short
Straw out of all of this. And just make sure you're happy
with who's taking the Short Straw, I think that's the thing
you've got to think through because the momentum can really
take pace. And, you know, for me, it's
absolutely bright that I prioritized to the detriment of
other people who are really important in my life and I
think, When you reflect on that, it creates guilt, you know, and
I just think if you want this to be a marathon, not a Sprint, I
think you have to be really mindful of who those important
relationships are in your life. What you need to do to
prioritize them. And what the impact of your
journey is on them and to really think through that and, you
know, reflect on what you have to do to be able to support
them. And so yeah, that's that advice,
I'd give to be really mindful of that and to just know that it's
real and know that it's going to be there for a long time and put
in structures and things in place.
To make it work. Awesome, Catherine.
It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Thank you so much for your time. I feel as though I learn a hell
of a lot about you and the business.
And once again, thank you so much.
Thank you, thanks so much. It was fantastic.