Victoria Price meets Clare Roberts of Kids Planet

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0:48Hello and welcome to the Business Leader Podcast. I'm Graeme Ruddick, the Editor-in-Chief of Business Leader and the regular host of the Business Leader Podcast. I'm delighted to introduce you to a special series of interviews with entrepreneurs around the UK by Victoria Price. Victoria is head of private capital at Alvarez & Marcel, the consultancy firm, and has spent over 20 years in professional services in a collection of senior roles. She's the mother of three and a vocal advocate for working parents. She's also an investor in promising businesses and involved with various charities. In the second episode of our series, Victoria speaks to Claire Roberts.

1:25the co-founder and chief executive of Kids Planet, which now has more than 200 nurseries across the UK. Now, Claire is best known as the CEO and founder of Kids Planet, which is a day nursery group that looks after more than 30 ,000 children. Last year, she was awarded with an OBE from King Charles for her services to the education sector. and in addition to that she is proud mum to three girls. So welcome Claire. Hi. Now that is quite an impressive introduction. So when I kind of rattle it all off like that are you like yeah yeah yeah that's me or does it feel a little bit surreal? I think it sounds a bit surreal.

2:09It's sort of when you put it all like that it sounds like I'm either a bit of a lunatic or a superwoman. But I suppose it's been quite a long journey so I don't tend to sort of think about it all collectively but all those facts are actually correct they are all actually correct I did I did my research um and and no offense to uh the king but were you a little bit disappointed that you didn't get to meet the queen so I was awarded it by the queen but um obviously um unfortunately the queen had passed away by the time I got it so so I suppose I'm one of those unique people that was awarded it by one monarch and then actually received it by another so by by the point that I was getting the OBE and I went with the three girls to go and collect it I think I was delighted that I was being given it by King and I have to say I was really impressed and the whole thing was I know you'd expect it to be sort of very amazing but it was even more amazing than you expected it to be and of course you've got kind of the extra accolade of the fact that the last two ruling monarchs know who Claire Roberts from Kids Planet is which is where we all want to be.

3:13So before we get into kind of kids planet as we know and recognise it today I'm going to take you all the way back to the very beginning. So you grew up in South Manchester, you've got three siblings and your dad himself is an entrepreneur and a businessman so do you think that that's something in your early years that really influenced the entrepreneur that you became? I think to a certain degree it must have done because I was very aware that my dad was a chartered accountant who'd set up his own practice in his early 20s and I was aware that he had lots of other business interests. It's strange though, it's not like we were sat at home talking about my dad's work all the time but I was aware of it and obviously recognised they were his skills.

4:01I suppose it's different now, like I know I talk far more about work at home in front of my children, We just didn't really talk about work in the same way. But I suppose whether or not it's nature or nurture, I was exposed to some of those skills from an early age. But what you didn't do, which we sometimes see, is kind of go into the family business. So you very much in the kind of early big part of your life, you pursued quite a traditional academic route. So I know that from an A-level perspective, you studied theatre studies, you studied theology and you studied history. And I'm going to let you have a moment here in relation to theatre studies, because I know it's something that you are incredibly passionate about, Claire.

4:45yeah no I know I am completely passionate about it I think everything about life and certainly the way my role is is a bit of a performance and a bit of how I need to articulate and present myself and communicate and I think drama gives you skills whilst at the same time doing a subset really of English that enables you to put those skills into practice and I think particularly obviously growing up in the 90s, we weren't given skills really at school on how to present and things like that. So I think certainly when I went to uni and subsequently throughout my career, it's been a skill that's really helped me.

5:23Those A-levels, from the layman's perspective, it doesn't quite set you up for what you then go off to do at university. So I'm fascinated at how you ended up going and essentially doing IT. I'd applied to do business management at university in Leeds and truthfully I picked it because it sounded quite an interesting course but I picked it really because I thought the Leeds nightclubbing scene was great at the time I'd been out an awful lot and it was only down the road and I was like no I'm going there because that's where I want to go and we've been driving in my friend's Fiat Panda across the Pennines to get to nightclubs for the last 18 months so I'm going to Leeds and then unfortunately when I got my A-level grades I didn't get onto the course that I wanted so it's a bit like this is a bit of a spanner in the words not not really about the academic course but about what my parting plans for three years were and um I was like I really want to go to Leeds still how am I going to get myself onto the course and I think I think it was sort of I'm one of these people that if something goes wrong I don't like being told you've got to wait to try and sort things out I like to sort things out quickly because the sooner you've sorted it you can move on so I convinced my mum that the best thing to do was that we should just drive to Leeds.

6:39I'd heard whispers from someone that IT was very male dominated and that there were spare places on this IT course at Leeds Uni and I was a bit like if I go through clearing I might not get accepted or I might not get through if I try and phone whereas I knew that if I got to see someone face to face I'd be able to convince them to let me get on the course. Anyway that's what I did my mum drove me to Leeds, I found the IT department they confirmed the statistics were correct and there were only 10 females out of 120 so I suppose their their need to tick a box on their male to female ratio and my need to get on a course at Leeds University to satisfy my it was just a perfect my social life was a perfect matching I love everything about that story I think the other thing is remember at this point this was 1995 like if you had a computer in your school at that point you were sort of lucky so it was sort of like I didn't even really know what IT was all about at that point people were just getting hotmail accounts so it was like it was one of those things that I was sort of agreeing to get on a course that I didn't really know anything about and I think I think at that time in particular there were lots of people who were moving into it from other sectors whereas I don't think people I think people were just starting to understand the revolution that we were sort of looking at.

8:02Yeah. So it would be remiss of me not to ask, how was the clubbing over the following three years? Yeah, the nightlife was great. The course was probably not as great. It was fine. I think I realised quite quickly that my skills as an IT programmer were not really my strongest forte. and by the time I graduated I realised that I had some skills in IT but I was probably better suited at looking what else I could do with those skills which is how I ended up going into IT recruitment. Yeah so talk to me about IT recruitment then because I'm going to be honest with you recruiters call me constantly they're probably the one kind of set of people no offence but I I screen them unless I know them because they're very persistent, very dogmatic in the way that they go about things.

8:48So it is basically a sales type role. How did you fare in that environment? So I think I think the thing with recruitment is brutal. Yeah. And I think absolutely. So I sometimes sit back and think I'm really mean now how I approach these things and hate people cold calling me. when I think back to all the cold calling that I did in the beginning I think one of the things with recruitment is you don't turn up and become an account manager you have to do a really hard graph to get to that point like this is how long ago it was people were still faxing jobs so a lot of it was picking the phone up trying to speak to companies to find out what their needs I was lucky in the fact that obviously because IT was such an important sort of sector at that point.

9:38Obviously, remember, this is before the year 2000, where we all thought the world was going to explode. So there was a lot of people frightened about what was going to happen in their business because of that. So actually, you were playing on their fears and like, let me get you in an IT person. But I think what it did teach me, and I think this is a really important skill, is I became quite resilient and I became not bothered. Not bothered, but I could take the rejection and move on quite quickly. And I think they are skills that whether you carry on doing IT recruitment for the rest of your life or not, or you do recruitment, resilience and actually trying to be creative and trying to build relationships with people are fundamental skills that will take you far in any industry, really.

10:26And I think that's what it did for me, really. I think I was quite an actual salesperson in the fact that I was quite motivated by trying to be successful and I quite like the measured success. So just to clarify, for any cold callers that are thinking about ringing you, the fact that you've had first-hand experience of how brutal it can be for somebody to put the phone down, it's not softened you. You're still just going to put the phone down on them. I often just try and tell them the truth quite quickly rather than letting them do the spiel. Because I always feel bad if you let someone talk for three minutes and you're like, we've already got that.

11:01So I try and sort of say, oh, oh, the worst one. And probably everyone does this. I fob them off to someone else in my team. I love it. So you gain what is definitely a huge amount of experience in a short space of time in that environment. And you then decide in a fascinating move to go into pharma as a sales rep. So my first question is, how well qualified were you for that, Claire? Not well qualified at all. So I have a GCS grade C in chemistry and that is my only science qualification. So I knew someone who'd been a medical rep and it seemed quite a glamorous job where people seem to be driving around in very nice cars and not being office space.

11:43And I think I quite liked the thought of moving around and sort of building sort of relationships with people and not being restricted to an office. So I went out and shadowed someone that my mum knew for the day and thought this seems quite a good job. And to this day, I don't really know how I got through the interview. Well, I do. I got through it because I was a salesperson. But I know that they were really looking for someone with the 2-1 in pharmacology. And absolutely, that was not me. So I'd stopped doing biology at probably about 14 or something like that. But then the worst part was I had to pass some pharmaceutical exams.

12:22And this pharmaceutical exam, I know this is really difficult, isn't it? It's not like an entry level. No, no. So most people have got either pharmacology or biology or something like that under the belt already. So for anyone who's a doctor, they'll know what this is. There's something called the British National Formula, which I'm sure is now on the Internet. But back then it was like the Yellow Pages. and I had to learn three sections of it, which I think there's about 10 sections. And even my sister-in-law, who's a doctor of many years, couldn't believe that we had to learn this off by heart and nor could I as I had to learn it.

12:56But I suppose what it taught me actually was, for the first time, I probably revised really hard at something because it was totally trying to cram to get these facts in. And if you failed it, you'd lose your job. Yeah. So, yeah. Nothing like a bit of pressure. to get a good outcome is there um but you you're obviously pretty good at it because i have it on good authority and i want to get this right but i think you were the top salesperson of the year for a urology product which in layman's terms i think is an incontinence product and you were so good at it that you got taken to florence on a president's trip so so what was the trick what's the magic formula so i think it was it was all about building relationships i think i recognized quite quickly that at the time for my products I was a hospital and a GP rep so actually if you could get the key prescribers if you could get to them and talk to them about your products in the hospitals that would then filter out within the community and I think it was really more about building relationships we we had obviously this is um it's difficult to talk about this now with the Netflix series that have come on.

14:03The Purdue scandal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's incontinence. It's not quite as bad. I don't know. I also sold a drug that was cocodermol and paracetamol, so it's maybe not that dissimilar. But I think I recognise that putting your budget into the key prescribers was the thing. So me and another colleague at the time organised a dinner at the Urbis, for anyone who remembers it, in Manchester and invited all the key people in the North West to it. And I think, truthfully, that dinner is what made us be the top reps. Top salespeople. Because looking back, even now, I would sort of almost sort of be very thoughtful about organising a dinner of that magnitude.

14:50It's all those clubbing days. They go on to go, you should know how to give somebody a good night out, Claire. It obviously didn't do you any harm. So you are having a really successful career. you have your first daughter in 2007 and you basically don't go back to your job so why not so obviously 2007 2008 was a strange time in the world and the pharma industry had gone through a lot of challenges sort of um in 2006 and 2007 and we'd done a lot of restructuring and I went off on maternity leave in November 2007 and literally four weeks after Izzy my oldest daughter was born I got a call to say I was being invited to a meeting with everyone in Birmingham and was I going to attend it was something like awful like the 3rd of January or something like that and I was thinking how am I gonna what am I gonna do with a four-week-old baby to drive to Birmingham and go to this meeting when I'm on mat leave and I the old person in me before I'd had a child would have just assumed I'd have gone whereas I think I realized there's some things that you can doing some things you can't do and I joked a bit at the time with Gareth my husband talking about maybe I should take voluntary redundancy and I'd never thought about doing that ever before but I think I think I knew deep down it was going to be impossible to do so my head my company was based in Northern Ireland and every three weeks I used to go to Northern Ireland for three days and I think what had dawned on me is all the things that other people had tried to suggest to me before I'd had a child that were going to be quite impossible I suddenly realised I were probably right and I recognised that obviously I had a lot of protected characteristics being on maternity leave and I could negotiate a decent exit package if I volunteered and that's what I did I must have known because I'd looked around a lot of nurseries and never really been committed with what was going to happen to my baby when I went back to work.

16:52So I think I'd already got maybe sort of the seed in my mind of thinking, if this isn't working for me, other people might be struggling too. And ultimately, I took voluntary redundancy in the January. I sat down and talked to my dad in the March and said, look, why don't we do this together? And he said, well, go away and do some sort of homework. I can imagine your dad saying that. Totally. And so I basically decided I was going to contact all the people that sold nurseries and bring them back to them and literally presented him with a pile. And he'd go, that's a house as well. Do you have to move there?

17:25And I'd go, no. And he'd go, well, let's cross that one off then. And like not shying away from it, you know, this actually it was really important to you financially. You know, you've just taken voluntary redundancy. You've got a mortgage to pay. You've got a new baby and your life relies on there being two incomes in the family. So this is something that you're kind of committed to. you can't afford for it not to work can you i had to have a certain amount of income in order for us to have a comfortable life really and to like you say all the financial commitments that we'd made to fulfill them and it not to be that this is like horrendous moment to be in now it's interesting but we obviously decided to be a group immediately by buying those two nurseries at the same time it then happened really quickly like within six weeks of starting kids planet a building came up for sale in Lim where I live that had been a health clinic which was the same planning as nurseries and I knew all my own challenges in Lim at the time of trying to find a nursery that suited my needs etc so so probably to start with then we opened maybe or acquired two nurseries a year now somewhere in the realms of that and when I sort of think back it's all a bit of a blur really but at one point in time I had a five-year-old um a two-year-old and a baby I think we had eight nurseries as I had Tilly my youngest and that was when my sister joined because I think at that point I needed help um and and obviously that that just brings to life a huge amount of going on but I've heard you affectionately call those early years of like an episode of the British empire so just kind of like bring that to life you're like in and out with babes in arms and it was sort of looking back like I would not I would not put your baby in a drawer yeah I wouldn't encourage people really to do this but I think as an entrepreneur the problem is when you're a female and you choose to have children or you're lucky enough to have children you can't just have a maternity leave in the same way that other people do so it was it was difficult really because on one hand you wanted to spend time with your baby but on another way if you didn't go to work to a certain degree you just had more problems to deal with so I used to carry Izzy and and Scott well not Izzy because Izzy went to nursery from when we first started but certainly Scarlett and Tilly rounding car seats so it wasn't that they were in a drawer but they spent time in car seats by by my feet whilst asleep so I would time it around sleep times when I could go and visit nurseries and obviously to be fair it looked pretty sensible in the fact that what a better place to be in as an environment if you can't bring your baby to work in a nursery group when can you do it so um it's interesting what you say but almost by accident you started off with you know multiple sites and that kind of became um the way that you continued because it's a bit of a generalization But a lot of the focus is often on how do you get women to take the businesses from what's quite comfortable, what could be considered to be a lifestyle business.

20:36They do very nicely out of it, but they maybe don't have that same ambition. But that's almost the complete opposite of you. You obviously then went on to take private investment. So you took BGF on board as a private equity investor, which was hugely successful for you. And you obviously scaled quite significantly during that time period. And I'm sure there'll be lots of people that are really interested in why you went down that route when you were already growing and what the experience was like for you. So 2016 was when we took BGF investment. so really what the benefit of bringing BGF in at that time in particular was it enabled our growth plan to move forward quicker.

21:19BGF for us were a really good first stage of private equity investment they were very light touch they very much backed the entrepreneur and as long as things were going well allowed the entrepreneur to carry on running their own business and to grow it and for us that was a perfect combination of what we were doing really and obviously during that journey we went from 16 nurseries to 82 when BGF partially exited and Fremen became our main investor but I think it gave us that learning stage of how to work with an external investor we'd done things over the years prior to that point where we'd chosen to make things more formal and to behave less like family members in just carrying on with the business because I do think if you want to grow a business you've got to put some structure in place that enables when others join that they don't think it's just like a family having a little chat about a business or something otherwise you also wouldn't be organized enough and and say for us it did change things but for for the best and it enabled us to sort of really grow and they and they were very supportive as well because obviously remember during that period we had covid yeah and actually having an investor who was very supportive during covid was what everyone was what everyone needed yeah absolutely so i mean you experienced incredible growth and i think from the stories that you you've already brought to life we've established that you're pretty determined you're quite formidable you you don't sort of take any nonsense and and when you set out to do something that's definitely what you achieve And I think sometimes when women are successful, they can get kind of quite stereotyped as also ambition equals being quite a hard personality.

23:07So I like to have a bit of fun in these podcasts. And what I'm going to try and do is also bring to life the Claire that your friends see, that your family see. And I feel like the best way to do that is with a few questions. So my first question to you, Claire, is if you were a fruit, what would you be? I don't know, either a passion fruit or a pineapple or something like that, only because I hate hard fruit. You hate hard fruit. Is it like pineapples, like, you know, sort of quite spiky on the outside? No, no. Is it? They have to have been chopped up already, prepared for me, unfortunately. I'm far too lazy to...

23:47Maybe that's what it is. Maybe that's the metaphorical thing. Prickly on the outside, but quite nice on the inside. Yeah, nice and vibrant on the inside. I like it, I like it. dinner party, dead or alive, who are your guests? Three of them. Jesus. Jesus? Yeah, I'm just curious to know whether it's all true or a total lie that was created for us. No, be curious. Because you're a Catholic girl, aren't you? I am. Though I'm probably more agnostic, really, in sort of my later life. But obviously, religion is something that plays such an important part in the whole of the world. So I'd love to find out whether or not it was fact or fiction.

24:25Right, amazing. I was not expecting that. Okay, so who are you having with Jesus? I want an invite now. Can I be number two? Yeah, yeah, okay. Who would I have next? Madonna. Madonna. I've liked Madonna since I was very young, so I'd be quite interested. I think she, whether you like Madonna or you hate Madonna, she's been very driven all her life. She went to New York with nothing, didn't she? Maybe someone like Margaret Thatcher or someone like that. That's an interesting combination there, isn't it? And they've got some strong female role models there. My final question for you, very important one.

25:00Do you go into the shower face first or do you turn around? Face first. I can't understand why anyone would turn around. I actually wake up in the shower. I'm one of these people that the alarm goes off and I get up pretty quickly. If I'm not exercising, it depends if I'm exercising. If I'm not exercising first thing, I'll get in the shower immediately to wake myself up. I can't understand people who set snooze alarms and waste time lying in bed awake when they either could have been asleep or doing something productive. Yeah, I totally agree with you. So specifically when you go in face first, you do that thing that you do where you sort of like edge your head in to make sure your hair's OK.

25:38Yeah, I have to be very careful, as you know, about hair. Hair's a real problem and you can't be washing your hair unnecessarily when you've got long hair. Yeah, exactly. Also places to be don't have time for the blow dry. okay so I feel like we know you a bit better now but back to the day job I don't doubt for a second the some of the characteristics that we've talked about help you get the job done but what are you like to work for? I think I'm fair like people know I'm very driven and I think I've learned a lot over the years to recognize that if you bring people in to do a job you let them do that job I think it would be impossible to have grown to the size that we are if I wasn't able to sort of release some of the responsibility now that is difficult because my natural personality is a bit like a control freak and to want things doing the way I want them doing but I think what I've also recognized over time is actually I don't know everything and the whole benefit of being in a larger organisation is to surround myself with the talent of people that do know more than me.

26:49So I think people would say that I'm very fair. I think people know that I have really high expectations. There used to be a joke in our office that when things went bad, I'd go in the disabled toilet to almost have a word in the mirror and get my anger out of the way before I'd come out smiling. And I think I've learned that I think I'm very good at supporting people that if something doesn't go right we address what's gone wrong but we move on quite quickly I think people would say that I'm I'm fair I am I'm one of these people and I do recognize this where I have lots of ideas luckily I surround myself with a lot of good implementers because I'm quite good at coming up with the ideas and I like somebody to get it done and to sort of appear for during bits and then turn up for the da da moment at the end it's amazing it's amazing so so you're you recognize the value in in other people which i think is is a great skill in a leader um but but what annoys you in business what kind of really irritates you i'm probably which this is what sounds awful and makes me sound unfriendly i hate pointless small talk for the sake of it that does my head in so you're gonna need jesus to get to the point yeah yeah i'll probably just ask him a few key questions and then you can wrap it up you can go We all have a girls' night now.

28:09I also, I find meetings, I think meetings actually have started to irritate me more recently. I do feel that we've turned into a culture of having meetings for the sake of having meetings. And actually, I think COVID and teams have caused part of that. It's so easy now to book time in someone's diary to re-go over things. Lots of things irritate me. I think as you get older, you become really impatient about things. Things that probably didn't irritate me 20 years ago really irritate me now. And you mentioned about the team's calls and the fact that they can just sort of like fill up your diary.

28:48And I know part of that is that you're definitely somebody that believes in the power of doing things face to face and just kind of getting things sorted. So I heard a rumour about what could have been a real disaster moment for you to do with your passport. Yeah, that was a bit bad, really. So me and a mutual friend of ours, Laura, had decided to go to New York. I'm trying to think. It must have been around our 40th birthdays. So I'd gone to get my nails done in my lunch hour and we were going the next morning. And I knew my nail lady really well. And she was like, are you excited? I was like, we can't wait.

29:27And she'd taken all my nails off at this point for anyone who knows anything about nails. and she said oh it's been terrible all the things that are on good morning britain or whatever it is and i was like i don't watch programs like that i'm out the door very early in work and she was like well you know with all the chipped passports and i was like what do you mean chipped passports anyway what then i began to realize through the power of the internet was that there'd been some i think i think because of a number of things that happened at airports america had suddenly escalated the use of chipped passports overnight that within a six-week window you had to have a chipped passport to get into the US and I had a passport that wasn't chipped so this is about one o 'clock or quarter past one at this time so I was like what am I going to do the passport office is going to close at five I'm flying at nine o 'clock which means I've got to be at the airport at seven so the people it's like quite a big nail salon they were all helping me trying to find offices i could drive to which obviously by that point there's only one office you can drive to it's liverpool the only one you're getting to with any hope and hell of getting this so i'd booked an appointment for the following week because you couldn't get an appointment for that day and i decided that i'd drive there because i knew i knew where the passport office was in the centre of liverpool on hall street did you walk out with no nails on no no did a hack no So they did say, do you want me to stop?

30:59And I was like, no, no. I'm not going to New York with my fingers like this. I was like, carry on, because I knew I almost, you know, like when something bad happens, you have to have a moment to calm down. Otherwise, you're never going to find a way through it. So the appointment probably went on for another 40 minutes. They sorted my nails out. While I was doing this, I'd worked out my friend who was an accountant that was going to verify my picture. And I decided I was going to drive to Liverpool. so you've seen my passport picture and it can only be described as a mugshot for about to being arrested because I do look like a woman who's slightly on the edge and unfortunately I've now had that for a long time um so I left Lim at quarter past two with a signed photograph and whatever documentation you needed and drove to Liverpool I got there I must have left maybe at I definitely got and had parked the car and was outside the front door at three o 'clock.

31:56So then what starts is what can only be described as my Oscar winning performance of various stages through the passport office. So I was like, the only way I'm going to get through this really is I'm going to have to really bring on some kind of like waterworks or real sob story. Because if I just say this is my own admin problem and it is what it is, someone's not going to take pity on me. So I basically concocted this whole thing about how Laura and I had been saving for years for this trip. And I've known Laura and I have known Laura's truth since I was a young child. But maybe that was slightly fabricated.

32:27Anyway, the first person took pity on me, pulled my appointment from the next week through, but said there's no way you can get a passport faster than four hours. And I was like, well, I've got to. I'm on a flight tomorrow morning. She's like, well, we can try and get you through. But I think they'll tell you you'll have to come back tomorrow morning at nine o 'clock. I was like, well, I can't. I'll be on the plane going at that point. Anyway, there are about three different stages through this. And every single one, people kept going away and coming back and moving me along. And I don't know how, but somehow at five o 'clock, I managed to have a passport in my hand.

33:04It was through a lot of begging and pleading and saying, my friend's going to kill me. But it's funny. So my dad said the only person I know who can get a passport that quickly is her because he knew I would do everything in my power to make it happen. And I do think I know it's all like joking side. That's a funny story. It wasn't funny at the time. It was very stressful. So I wouldn't advertise for anyone to put themselves through that undue stress. But I do think that's a really important lesson because there's loads of things that people tell you you can't do or impossible. but if you believe that you can make it happen most things aren't achievable because you give up yeah whereas actually if you persist you can and and I know it sounds I don't mean it sound arrogant at all but when I think about sort of my life there's lots of things like that where people would have said it's not going to happen or it's impossible so taking on kind of just a slightly different types you've got three amazing girls so age between 17 and down to 11 and you do a really good job juggling being a working mum so I know that you are there on freezing cold hockey pitches you're doing drop-offs and pickups to drama clubs you're kind of out doing fun things with girls as well as obviously meeting all the demands that come with the job and you have a really healthy co-parenting relationship with your ex-husband.

34:31But it does kind of bring me on to the fact that you are separated, so you bring the kids up as a single mum. I'm just sort of fascinated when successful women find themselves in a position where they do go through a divorce. I just think it happens quite a lot. And I'm wondering, is that just the people that I know, or do you think there's something in that? I think there is something in it. When you look around sort of communities of successful females which there aren't enough of still lots of them are divorced and I try I've tried to sort of think what do I really think it is and I think it's really easy for people to say oh it's because men feel insecure because women earn more money or things I don't actually think it's that I do wonder whether in order to be successful is there a slight element of lack of in of lack of tolerability of things and also being quite selfish and maybe that's what doesn't always meet the demands of particularly male and female relationships like lots of men in particular would like females to be at home to make their lives easier and to do all those things now is that me sometimes yeah but I'd probably bring help in more to make lives easier and I suppose maybe that's maybe that's something and I think I've read quite a lot where people talk about the fact that in order for them to succeed they do make sacrifices and I always talk about kids planet of being my fourth child and I do look at it like that and I have made sacrifices in order for it to be successful maybe that's the reason why successful females end up I don't know it'd be interesting to hear what other people's views on it are but it definitely is when you look around it's not everyone of course it's not saying that you can't have a successful relationship and be successful of course you can but there are trying to encourage more women to do things there are there are there are higher statistics I think the other thing is and maybe this is another thing.

36:39I think I'm better at having help now than I possibly was at various points. But I think when you work and you've got children and you've got a really busy life, you should just make your life as easy as possible if you can because otherwise you're constantly struggling and you end up doing a bad job at lots of different things rather than supporting things properly. I think it's hard as well. Obviously having young children is a really hard thing. anyway for anyone whether you work whether you don't work just being a mum's quite a difficult thing at different stages so i think stages yeah well yeah all stages yeah because lots of people say to me now oh is it easier now i say no no not at all if anything it's it's a million times worse with people who answer you back and are very demanding it's like having your own mini company at home that you have to try and manage the personalities of um yeah i don't know it's it's difficult would i like would i like someone to take care of some things for me yeah 100 but i think i think it's difficult because you become quite used to your own sort of way of doing things as well and then probably that gets worse even worse as you get older you become more intolerant we get more set in our ways don't we for definite um but during all this time you're kind of having the children you're balancing everything the business is continuing to thrive and you mentioned Fremen already so having had a really successful partnership with BGF through what was no doubt quite a challenging time with the pandemic, Fremen then come in and are still in the business today and really you know the kind of pace of growth and the ambition you know it didn't by any means kind of dampen down, you've gone on to do great things with them alongside you as a partner.

38:22Was it any different to having BGF because you know is all private equity the same or or is it really important who you pick to partner with? I think any partnership is really important who you pick. I think the involvement and the relationship that I have with Fremen is different to the involvement and the relationship that I had with BGF. But I think that's actually been really fundamental to the growth of our business as well. You have to be in a business really sensible about how you grow. and I think I think why it's worked for Fremen and for us as a leadership team and for me in particular as an individual is that I recognize the value they were going to add I think if you take a majority private equity investment and you can't cope with someone having an opinion and being more involved in your business you're making a massive mistake taking that investment and don't get me wrong was it easy on day one no but I think you have to sort of recognize what you're all trying to do together and recognize that they so so when you're an entrepreneur you learn as you go and that's fine and and maybe some people do go on and do it forever but actually often when you look when you really drill down on it lots of entrepreneurs have had some form of investment really and it's actually recognizing the value that those investors can bring because actually that's where they add their worth if you recognize that they're going to bring you something that you didn't have already rather than being negative about it embrace it and get them to do as much as possible because it's it's it will enable your business to have a platform for growth.

40:17We've gone from 82 nurseries to 223 to date in the last sort of three and a bit years. Now that's quick growth, but we've done it in a, for some people they'd go, oh that's ridiculous, you're growing far too fast. But we've learned how to do it in a way that means we're always reflecting on the infrastructure of the business. We're not just going, oh let's just react now because we've suddenly done this we're planning and looking forward all the time and actually the other thing is as you grow there are efficiencies that you can make in terms of how quickly you can do things or the IT infrastructure you might have in place obviously that's my my degree coming back into its full use not at all um but the but the how you can do things and use get information to enable people to be better I think we've done a lot of that and I I think as a partner, you have to get someone who recognises what your values and purpose of the business are, but also says how they can support you to get the business from A to B in the best way.

41:24And I think that's what we've been able to do. So with all that growth comes lots more children. Thankfully not my own. Yeah, just the three. I stopped at three. But you must have seen something like close to 100 ,000 kids or something pass through the nursery babies and toddlers. So I've got two really important questions. My first question is, is there such a thing as an ugly baby? No, there is not such a thing as an ugly baby. All babies are beautiful and certainly all babies are beautiful to their parents. Which is the most important thing. And then the bit that interests me the most is, you know, all parents think that their children are beautiful.

42:01They think they're super intelligent. and you get these parents and even just in your social life, there's somebody that thinks that their child is like a baby genius and it just gets a little bit wearing. At that age, in the early years, can you project somebody's capability? Have you ever had these one in a million kids that come in and you just think that six-month-old baby is an absolute genius or is it just nature's way of making mothers love their babies? So it's difficult to say. So the babies, so my oldest daughter, Issy, is a great marker for our business because she obviously started at nine months old on the 1st of September 2008.

42:44So she's only just 17 now. And by the way, just for clarity, Issy's worked very hard at school, but she's not a genius either. But what I mean is if you're actually measuring children that we've had through our doors during that period of time, they're probably too young to be. Well, unless you get someone who's like a teenage prodigy, they're probably too young to be geniuses just yet. There are children that appear in front of you that are very, very gifted and able. And also, children are all individuals. so some just really arrive wanting to learn very quickly it's difficult to know do they all carry on learning at that pace or do we all end up meeting somewhere in the middle because we all learn at different sort of stages um but there are definite children that we've seen that do things much earlier than others and all the rest of it there are also parents who sort of blinded by that like we all love to think our children are geniuses and and obviously children are special and unique in every way i think sometimes some parents can put pressure on their own children by having expectations that are maybe unrealistic but equally if you don't have some degree of high expectations where does that leave you so it's it's a balancing act really But it'll be interesting to see in sort of 10 years again where cohorts of children are that have been at Kids Planet and what they've gone on to achieve.

44:19If there's such a thing as a high performing baby, I think you would have been one of them. You're a woman that has clearly achieved so much. So you've done a huge amount with the business whilst raising the girls. You've also done quite a lot of physical stuff in support of some charities that I know are really close to your heart. So you've trekked Kilimanjaro, you've done an ultra marathon, you've kind of gone through Cambodia and I know you've got future plans with some charitable events. But is there anything else that you just feel like that's been completely missing from my life? I've not had time to do it.

44:51I've got an ambition to do this. Or is it more of the same? So it is more of the same. You and I were meant to go on a track 18 months ago now to Petra in Jordan. and that was something that I really wanted to do just because it's probably one of those places that I wasn't going to think I'm going to go on a week's holiday there normally. I'm an ambassador for a charity called Girls Out Loud. That's something I'm very passionate about. That is looking at skills for girls in particular in schools who are 13 and 14 year olds. As a mum of three daughters, I think the world's a bit more unkind even than it was when we were younger in schools.

45:29So I think almost giving girls, I'm really passionate about hoping that the future has more female entrepreneurs or more senior female successful leaders as they progress. So I hope with Girls Out Loud that by supporting it as a charity, it gives girls those skills to develop and go on to be those future leaders. but I want to organize I'm going to organize um to go and do that trek in Petra in November of this year and I'm trying to as you know half of as many people to come on the journey with me and to raise money and to raise awareness of the charity as well because it is a northwest based charity which is quite a small charity and I think for me it's important because it ticks a lot of boxes and I hope that the world is a different place for my daughters when they're sat here at sort of my age when they're older, looking back and reflecting on a more equal world.

46:25With more role models around them. And that probably leads nicely into my next question, which is you talked about getting more women into business. I know that at least one of your daughters is really passionate about business. It's something that really interests her and she's got a natural curiosity. So for your three girls, but also any other budding entrepreneurs that are out there what would be your one piece of advice that you could give them if they were thinking about going into business can I can I flex it and take it go on so it's it's follow your dreams because I think that's important so people see business in lots of different ways it doesn't mean that you have to go and um set up a company you could do I think follow the dreams and something you feel passionate about but I also think never give up I think that's what my biggest skill has been in my life is even if I might not have been the most academic person at school, I've never let things hold me back.

47:22I've always had that sort of focus and drive to always want to carry on doing what I want to do. And I think that's the thing that we need more females to have. It's not to sort of just think, oh, well, I can't do that, to have that drive and determination and I try and work out is that something that you're born with or something that you can nurture I think you can nurture that into people I think it's something that's knocked out of a lot of people that actually for me that's the biggest thing that I think will make people successful is don't give up I think that's a really really nice piece of advice to to end things on Claire thank you so much for your time you've been an incredible guest we wish you every success with the continued growth of Kids Planet.

48:05And we are looking forward to seeing all those cohorts come through and especially the girls take on the world. So thank you very much. Thank you.

48:17You've been listening to the Business Leader Podcast. Our thanks to Claire Roberts and Victoria Price for that brilliant interview. I'm Graeme Ruddock. Our producer is Anushka Tate. If you enjoyed this episode, then please follow the Business Leader Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you get updates when new episodes go live.

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