How The Laundry Lady’s Susan Toft turned her washing into a global brand

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0:33Susan Toft: A two-sided marketplace. Like I never realized that that was a hard business until I started raising for investment and everyone told me that's a hard business. I was like, oh, I thought this was easy.

0:50Hello and welcome. Budra Gamawara from the Gadigal lands here in Sydney. It's time for Startup360, our weekly podcast, more founder fun than founder mode. I'm Simon Thompson, editor of StartupDaily.net, and I'm joined by the effervescent, ever-sparkling and super-intelligent, think about that, Donald Trump, super-intelligent started here with the one, the only... Now I say my name? Yes. Julie Trell. Great to have you here. How has your week been and life in the Midwest? It's been good. A new commute, different commute, different kind of. I got some great birds. Hershey's enjoying it in the parks.

1:31I did the Tramp Shed Walk. Around the waterfront. Isn't that beautiful around Blackwater Bay? It is. It is a little bit of paradise. Now tell me, who is our guest on the show today, Julie? Today we have award-winning on many fronts, Susan Toft, who is the laundry lady. Incredible story. Of course, she recently won the Marketing Award and Startup Daily Best in Tech Awards. But I reckon has a pool room full of so many awards. It's been such an incredibly successful business. Really hit its straps only in the last few years. She'd been doing it for more than a decade and then really got cracking on it.

2:12Did a big raise last year. But she's kicking goals around the world now. It's an amazing story. I love how she started as a sole trader to solve something and create work for herself. And now it is global and has scaled successfully. And sure, by all means, put people on Mars if you want, but you've still got to get the bloody laundry done. Correct. And it's like until they figure out how to get laundry done on Mars, I'm not sure we will survive on that planet. So the fact that Susan and her team are solving that problem here on planet Earth is a very important one. Are you saying there's always going to be dirty laundry?

2:46uh well certainly if you have teenage children uh you will really know about it but uh yeah i don't know about you but i try to change my underwear at least once a day um so yeah there will always be laundry yes um but before we go any further i do want to say that startup 360 is supported by deal hire manage and pay anyone anywhere which for this week leads me to the deal a spill and really there's only one thing I want to talk about because as we record this uh on Thursday we're a little bit late this week uh because our fabulous producer Maddie has uh been going through the ringer a little bit uh but we're glad to have him back and always appreciate having him with us in the room and healthy and healthy well healthier than he was at the start of the week uh like I said I think it might have been the daylight savings that threw him out it's the the lost hour of sleep that just puts everyone out and probably his milk is curdled and his curtains are fading.

3:48But he's back, which is good. But let's go back to Thursday. Overnight news that the firm is float. They've cut the share price from$11, which was the original plan, to potentially$9. There are even reports of$8.25. And then there are reports that the IPO, which is due to kick off on the ASX on October the 23rd, may even be put on hold. Now, this is the second attempt for this business. And some of the numbers around what's been happening have just been extraordinary. So I do want to unpack this for a second because I've been writing about it every day on StartupDaily.net. Kicked off, you know, a couple of weeks ago and they've been working on the book build this week.

4:36Prospectus is due to drop on Monday. So the company was valued at$44 billion with a plan to raise a little over$7 billion at$11 a share. Now the company only two months ago in early August raised$2.85 billion at a$15 billion valuation. So we are looking at trebling the value of this business in two months. now there's talk that it might be worth only 30 billion it was interesting that one of the four brokers uh who are asked to set this whole deal up with i think something like a 270 million payday shared between them at the end uh we're talking uh that it might be worth 60 or 90 billion which for a business that has 42 megawatts of compute in market 42 of those are down in melbourne at a CDC data centre and another four or five are up in Singapore and Meta is the client at this point in time.

5:45They want to build another 850 megawatts of data centres in Malaysia, in Indonesia. There's a$43 billion project in Bataan, just off the coast from Singapore, that they're doing with NVIDIA. NVIDIA is central to this story as well, along with OpenAI. there's a$51 billion build in the next two years and estimates that they will have$20 billion of contracted revenue off the back of that. Now the numbers are a little bit mind-boggling and very hard to get your head around but then the other thing that happened this week is Rampart's podcast spoke to the founder of CDC data centers. Been doing this for gee 10-20 years and that was the partnership that Firmus struck 12 months ago.

6:36$73 billion they're going to spend on building data centres all around Australia. At this point in time, there's the co-location in Melbourne, which is about 2.5 % of that ambition. Of course, Firmus is also building a couple of data centres down in Tasmania at the moment. One is underway, one they've just got approval for. They're also trying to get one up and running in Taylor Bend in South Australia. So there is a long way to go on all of this. As I described it, they basically have the stock of a corner store, but they are valued more than Woolworths at this point in time. It is astonishing.

7:12And now it seems like the landscape is shifting by the hour. But all we know at this point in time is that demand is not necessarily there from international investors and retail investors. I got a broker pitch this week. $5 ,000 is the minimum investment. So if you really truly believe that this is a great idea, then you can sling 5 ,000 at it and have a crack. We'll see what happens on that front. Maybe I should. It could have been NFTs. It could have been all of that great web three-point whatever that everyone was banging on about years ago. But everyone's been talking about an AI bubble with Anthropic underway in the US at the same time.

8:01This is the put up or shut up moment. And we're about to see, I think both in the US and here, how much the picks and shovel side of AI is worth. Because this is an infrastructure play. It's not AI per se. They're supplying, again, the metas of the world and there's a bunch of other companies who are swirling around wanting to be this. And then NVIDIA, of course, is supplying the chips that are going into these, what Fermus likes to call AI factories. So, so much to play out here. I did say it looked Herculean at the start and now it's looking a little bit more like Icarus. So we're really going to see how this one plays out in perhaps the next 24 to 48 hours.

8:47The situation may be completely different when this goes to air tomorrow. but by Monday we'll have a much clearer picture of whether this project is going ahead as an ASX listed company, whether this project is going ahead at all and what the future will look like for data centres in Australia. Of course, there's been a massive inquiry this week from Parliament looking into AI. OpenAI was there, Anthropic was there, Microsoft was there, Google was there. Firmus was going to be there this morning but pulled out. I can understand why. A few other pressing matters to deal with. But everyone, 540 submissions to this inquiry.

9:31So another massive amount of public feedback on what's going on as the government and the parliament tries to sort out the way forward for AI in this country. So plenty to talk about, plenty of debate, but you can read about it on startupdally.net. I think I'd rather talk about laundry. Just to clear my head and be fresh and sparkling and brighter and shinier. So, Shell, we take a quick break. We'll be right back to talk with Susan Toft from The Laundry Lady. Don't go. Founders scale faster on Deal. Set up payroll for any business in minutes. Hire anyone, anywhere and get visas handled fast so you can stay focused on scaling.

10:14Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits and compliance, so your team can grow without borders. It's why more than 37 ,000 fast-growing companies trust Deal to move fast. Visit deal.com slash 360. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash 360. Bye. Welcome back. Here we are. about to introduce an amazing guest that I'm excited to know. An award-winning guest. An award-winning guest with an amazing career trajectory also solving problems that have been successfully being solved. And with that, I would love to introduce Susan Toft, the founder of The Laundry Lady.

11:04Susan Toft: Hello. Yay. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thank you for coming. She has a 25-year experience across government. And when she was let go from government, she saw a problem that she needed to solve in the laundry space. Yeah, right? From government. I'm sure there's stories in there of what you have learned from. And I'm going to let her tell her story about The Laundry Lady, how it got started. Another little teaser is she created some technology for The Laundry Lady platform. and that's now useful and white-labeled for other organizations, for other companies in the double-sided marketplace, if I'm not mistaken.

11:43And also, spoiler alert, she was on the Shark Tank and did very, very well. So I am really excited to hear more about that. So, Susan, welcome to the Startup Daily podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

11:59Susan Toft: It's nice to be here. Yes. Okay, so a little bit of the origin story from Austrade to the laundry. Yeah, from a government desk job to doing laundry, it was a bit of a pivot in life for sure. But I had been working in government for eight years and in senior marketing roles for almost 20 years by that point. And I was a brand new mum. I had a little, my eldest son, Noah, who was just a little toddler at the time at home. And I think, you know, many women can understand this. You know, we go through this real like transitional period when you've had a career and then you become a mum and how you're going to juggle all of that and be the mum that you want to be and how you're going to get them to school and pick them up in time and, you know, get time off to get to their sports days and all of those kinds of things.

12:55Susan Toft: And I certainly, you know, as a working mum was really struggling with that after my son was born. So when the redundancy came from my government job, I decided it was time to start something new and do something where I could be at home so that I could be there with my son. And it was probably the worst possible time in life to start a business because it was just after the GFC, there was, you know, property prices had plummeted. We'd just literally built a brand new house and doubled our mortgage overnight and lost all of this income. And so what better time to start a business? But I and I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

13:45Susan Toft: I had thought about doing something marketing related because that was my background and what I was really strong at. But, you know, post GFC, everyone was putting their marketing budgets off. And so I thought, you know, I need to do something really, really different. And I was literally walking past my spare bedroom looking at the clothes piled very high on the spare bedroom. I think everyone has a picture in their head right now. A big pile of laundry waiting to be folded. And I thought I could have really done with a service like this when I was working and just, you know, overwhelmed as a mum.

14:21Susan Toft: And so I thought, oh, what about a laundry service? So it was a little bit off centre to anything I'd ever imagined I would be doing. but jumped in and became the original Laundry Lady. How epic is that? It is epic. And talk about solving a problem. This is a massive problem for any household. Massive problem. And just to fast forward from the GFC, what is that, 15, 20 years? 15 years? It was 2012. Well, it was 2009 it kind of hit but by the time it hit Australia it was, yeah, 2012. So that was when I began the Laundry Lady. And the first five years of the Laundry Lady journey was really a sole trader journey.

15:04Susan Toft: So it was me as the original Laundry Lady. I was living on the Gold Coast then and would go out and pick up the laundry in my local area and take it home, wash or iron it, take it back to the customer the next day and, you know, have my son with me. My second son was born on the day that I was doing iron. I had to drop ironing off on the way home from hospital. And, you know, and it was... So women can always do two things at once. Exactly. And I just, you know, even after coming from this corporate government marketing role, like I just absolutely loved it because it just gave me so much freedom and flexibility to, you know, pick my kids up and do all those things.

15:47Susan Toft: And so I knew really early on that it would be a business that could scale and that it would be an opportunity that I could bring to other people, particularly women who are caregivers and need to be earning an income, but also want the flexibility to be at home. And so, you know, that vision was always there right from the start, but it just took me a long time to be able to, you know, start bringing the model into play to be able to do that. yeah no I love it Soul Trader Gold Coast doing the pickup and the drop-offs all yourself and now you're in what four countries about to launch in a fifth yes that's right so we're in three countries about to launch our fourth and then our fifth is in the planning stage for for about it about 12 18 months away so and and now our headquarters is on the Sunshine Coast so still southeast Queensland, but moved coasts.

16:41And just share that scaling, how that happened from one solopreneur mom who had a baby on in transit, it sounds like, to launching into four, almost five countries now. So what was that scaling? How did you scale?

16:56Susan Toft: Yeah, there was so many things along the way that kind of put it on pause or stopped it and all of those things. So I had actually gone back to work around 2017 to clear some debts. I'd got divorced and had to, you know, start life again. And then after COVID, that was kind of the opportunity to come back to the business full time. And, you know, I'd sort of dabbled a little bit in having some contractors before that. And we had about 10 at that stage. But I really didn't have the resources or know, where or how I was going to do it. But after COVID, it sort of pushed me with another redundancy to come back to the business and really go, it's now or never.

17:39Susan Toft: And everything has really happened from then. So in 2020, I put on my first head office staff member, Jane, my marketing manager, who's still with me today. And then we decided to start recruiting contractors in Melbourne, because Melbourne had the least amount of lockdowns. And then that quickly changed. But we found contractors there really easily because they loved the fact that this was giving them an opportunity to get out of their house during lockdown periods because we were an essential service so we were still able to operate. And so it quickly kind of grew from 20 to 50 and then to 100 contractors and we started to put some head office staff on.

18:25Susan Toft: We had no technology. We just were using off the shelf platforms. So we're using off the shelf scheduling and payment platforms and, you know, had them all kind of mixed together to be able to grow the business. And that got us all the way to a$6 million business before we were really starting to struggle with that technology and needed to have our own platform. So that was kind of the next big transition of the journey was finding the resources and know how to be able to create that platform. So it would have been a very different growth journey if I had clawed way back in the beginning and could have just built myself a platform really easily.

19:05Susan Toft: but that wasn't the reality back then. So, yeah. I just, I just want to pause here. It was, sounds like the perfect storm of things that happened for you because it's no small thing to get, have to get divorced, another redundancy, COVID lockdowns, and it, it seemed to work in your favor. So I just want to pause in and celebrate all of that, how you worked through it and got all of the contractors and founding, cause you're also creating more jobs as well. which is a really important part of the story of this double-sided marketplace, in addition to an amazing platform that others can use. Thank you.

19:44Susan Toft: Yes, it's actually... Yay! Yeah, thank you. It's actually the thing that's the most important to us is the business opportunity that it offers for our laundry partners. So we have over 600 laundry partners now, and all of them have come to us for the same reasons of wanting flexibility in their lives, because maybe they're looking after kids or looking after elderly parents or just need more balance in their family life or, you know, all kinds of things. Eighty five percent of them are women. So, you know, that's something that we're really proud of and something that we've always stayed really true to in our model, because, you know, you get lots of stakeholders who try to say, well, why don't you have premises and why don't you do this and that?

20:29Susan Toft: And, you know, for us, it's really always been about what we're, that business opportunity that we're and the impact that we're giving to our laundry partners who join us. So, you know, that's always been our primary goal and will continue to be. Now, Susan, you launched an app, I think, last month. And we had a great story that Kate wrote on Startup Daily and in Smart Company about what you're up to. Was it the opportunity around the technology and the build that led you to decide it was time to raise in 2025? And how did you come to that decision? To raise? Well, I've still got a bit of PTSD from raising for the first time.

21:12Susan Toft: But, you know, I think it was we had bootstrapped all the way. And I think, you know, a lot of it is fear of the unknown, right? Like I didn't have access when I started the business. There was no accelerator programs and, you know, all of that really cool stuff that people that founders have access to now. And so, you know, if I'd had all of that in the beginning, it might have been a really different journey. Maybe I would have gone down the investment path earlier because I would have understood what that looked like. I might have started building the tech earlier because I would have understood, you know, what a tech team looked like.

21:45Susan Toft: But all of those things I just had to really learn along the way. And, you know, for a long time I held off on getting any investment because I just, yeah, fear of the unknown, not really knowing how or where to start with that process. But eventually, you know, I really like, you know, did start to get access to people who were in that space and just thought, you know, this is really going to help us build this business bigger and faster and, you know, invest more in our technology and all of those things. So we'd still got, you know, the first stage of our technology platform up and running before we ever got investment.

22:26Susan Toft: So that was a pretty big effort to be able to get to that stage. You know, I'd found an amazing developer who's now our CTO and, you know, he worked on the, you know, scraps of is he going to get some ESOP in future and all of those things. So we had some tech debt with him that we fixed up later. But, you know, he worked with me to really create that platform. And, you know, without that, I think the business was really going to start to struggle because there's so many complexities in the way that we, you know, have to pay our contractors their commission and help them manage their business.

23:06Susan Toft: So I think, you know, the app had really been on the cards from day one back in 2012. I just really had no idea what that journey was going to look like. You know, I remember going to a designer in the first couple of years and saying, look, I want this Uber-style platform and I want it to do all these things and have an app and I've got a$5 ,000 budget and he just laughed at me. Was that your whopping Queensland Government digital grant? Yes, that was a whopping Queensland Government digital grant for$5 ,000 and I went to him and he went, well, Well, even at mates rates, this is going to cost a lot more than that.

23:43Susan Toft: So and that was when we'd patched together, you know, all of these off the shelf systems to make it work for us. But, you know, so it was always on the cards. It was just really getting to the point where we had the resources to be able to do it. And even then, you know, we couldn't develop everything all at once because we just didn't have the money to do that. So and we were trying to retrofit, you know, a technology platform onto an existing service business. So we had to do it in stages. So the first stage was really focusing on replacing what we had. So being able to pay our contractors on time, giving them the tools and a partner portal so that they could manage their business.

24:21Susan Toft: And then, you know, over the time, that's, you know, we've now added, we've been able to start focusing more on the customer interface, which has included a customer app. And, you know, we've built a whole technology team behind us now. So, you know, it's really been a big transformation, I guess, for the business from being what was a service business into a technology business that has that platform there to be able to support the international scaling. So it's been a long journey. So you mentioned Uber before, and I'm thinking about a decade or more ago when other companies like Freelancer and Airtasker were being born and developed.

25:03what did you learn from your build on a double-sided marketplace along the way? What were the pitfalls, the lightbulb moments that came from doing that and figuring out how will the pieces fit together so that it's successful for everyone?

25:19Susan Toft: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the real benefits was that I did this myself, you know, as a laundry lady in the beginning. So I really knew very deeply what our customers needed and how that worked and how, you know, from a contractor perspective, how scheduling could work and how we needed the payments to work and what the complexity of the payments were for our customer types. You know, we service NDIS, which is a super complex administrative from an administrative point of view in terms of payments. So we had so much knowledge before we even started to create our platform, which I think was a real advantage for us in a lot of ways because by the time we built it, we knew exactly what we needed it to do, which, you know, we might not have known that in the beginning if we if we'd built that before, before we kind of really tested the market, tested the market for a long time before we got to that stage.

26:13Susan Toft: So I think that has been a big advantage for us. And, and, you know, a two sided marketplace, like I never realized that that was a hard business until I started raising for investment. And everyone told me that's a hard business. I was oh, I thought this was easy. But it's, you know, I think for us, our marketing has been such an important part of that. And it's been about really understanding what our values are as a business and breathing that into everything we do. And we're really lucky that, you know, the two different sides of our marketplace, the values are actually quite similar. You know, it's about freedom and flexibility and time.

26:51Susan Toft: And, you know, we're creating time for our customers, but we're also, you know, creating that flexibility for our contractors and they tend to be, you know, the same kind of demographic often as well. So, you know, really leaning into those values as we've marketed has been, you know, a real strength for us as well as, I guess, really leaning into, you know, building a really big public profile. So, you know, we don't enter all these awards and wear wear pink for no reason. Like it's all part of our PR machine, which helps us to build, you know, a really strong online presence, which gives us really great SEO results and gives us really great AI search results.

27:33Susan Toft: And, you know, they're the things that have really helped to drive our business and the two-sided marketplace model. So, yeah. I just want to quickly jump in with the hard-hitting question because it has been on my mind, pink. How did that come about and why? Yeah, I don't know that I had so much pink in my closet before, but now it's in there so I've got to just roll with it now. Now if I don't wear pink. You're amortising the cost. If I don't wear pink now, everyone complains. So, yeah, look, I mean it's a colour of our brand and I just, you know, started wearing it. And being on the Sunshine Coast, we don't really wear black too much, black and beige like people do in Sydney and Melbourne.

28:12Susan Toft: We wear a lot more colourful colours and the pink just evolved and so now it's, yeah, if I don't wear it, there's complaints. So I picked my pinkest dress for you today. Soapy. Yeah, Noosa Sunset Pink I'm going to call that colour. Yes. Do you have any impact stories of how your services has helped change lives or some aha moments and breakthroughs? Oh, we have testimonials that come through from customers all the time and, you know, like you'll get customers who have tears in their eyes because they're like a new mum and they're dealing with like washing, they just can't even barely pick up, let alone look at, and, you know, how much that can mean to them.

28:52Susan Toft: And, you know, people who are living with a disability who physically or mentally can't do their laundry and how much that means to them to be able to do it. We just did some videoing with some local businesses not so long ago and one of the customers, she runs a small business in allied health and she also has three kids at home and she was just telling us, you know, how much it means to her in terms of how much time it's saved in her business. You know, she's only like she doesn't have staff all the time. She can't afford to be doing the laundry all the time because she just doesn't have that amount of time in addition to running her business and keeping her three kids, you know, up in family life.

29:35Susan Toft: So, you know, I think those kinds of stories are really special for us in terms of what it does for our customers. and likewise for our contractors, you know, our laundry partners, they're always telling us, you know, stories about like how it's, you know, helped them to have flexibility around being a mum or, you know, helped get some extra earnings into the house so they can pay the mortgage or, you know, or also just be part of a brand and a business model that they don't have to do anything, you know, like it's all there set up for them and they can just plug in and get started. And so, yeah, those stories are really special to us and something that keeps us all going all the time and keeps us on the mission to keep expanding.

30:20Now, I'm going to give a quick plug for the business too, because if you are parents of a newborn, you do do a service that you can get and give to people as a gift, don't you? That's amazing. I think that is the best and easiest thing. It's either you bake and cook and bring stuff around for people so that they can actually eat because, as you know, when you've had children, if you can get your clothes on before midday or at least have a shower, then you've had a pretty productive day. So, you know, the washing on the Maslow's hierarchy of desperately needed things is a little bit further down.

30:54Susan Toft: It definitely is. You don't realise how many little items there is that can add up to a lot of washing. So, yeah, we absolutely do give vouchers on our website, which, you know, lots of lots of people love, like new parents and, you know, people who might be going through like cancer treatments and things like that. And also we get a lot of mums whose sons have just moved away from from home for the first time who also like to buy gift vouchers for their for their sons. Susan, I am very interested in your experience on Shark Tank. I know that was two years ago. I watched it. I loved it. And how are you feeling going in?

31:37What was your thinking before going in and the whole experience?

31:41Susan Toft: Yeah, my gosh, it was almost three years ago now. It was such a crazy year of the Laundry Lady journey. But, you know, we didn't, like I'd always watched Shark Tank growing up. And, you know, it's an exciting program. And it hadn't been on TV for a while. It had stopped airing for quite a few years and we saw some social media posts that it was coming back and there was all new sharks. And I love Jane Lou from ShowPost, so I was really excited. And we just jumped in and applied and didn't really give it too much thought, which in hindsight was a really great thing. Because I think if I'd had a lot of time to think about it, I would have been like, what?

32:19Susan Toft: I'm not doing that. because, you know, a lot of businesses who go on are quite early in their start-up journey. But for us, we were already a$3.8 million business. We had, I think, about 150 laundry partners at that time. So if it had gone badly, it could have been terrible. So it was really good to not have a lot of time to think about it. And literally from when we applied to when they rang up and said, you're on the show, it was only about a month's time. So it was it was quite good. Your storytelling was brilliant. Your responses was brilliant. And how you integrated all of the sharks into the story was also, you know, know your audience, which was fantastic.

33:02And I'm just always I know there's a lot on the cutting room floor. So just, you know, I'm just like, oh, what is she thinking there? What was her what were your assumptions and what was your floor price or your top price or what would you say yes to or no to?

33:14Susan Toft: And how did you prepare for that? It was, yeah, I think I was in there for about 30 minutes and they use about nine minutes of it, so I don't even remember what was cut from it. But, you know, I'd never, ever pitched the business before to investors, to anyone, so it was the very first time I'd ever done that. So great time to do that on national TV for the first time. And all I was thinking about was I need to remember this three-minute pitch and do it perfectly because if I don't, they're going to cut it up and show it terribly. and I had tonsillitis. I couldn't remember it. Like I was just, it was terrible.

33:51Susan Toft: But I got in there and I did it and it came out perfectly and so that was the most stressful part really and then after that, you know, they just jump into questions. So the sharks absolutely have not seen anything about you beforehand. That was my question. They don't know anything at all. So the questions came thick and fast and, you know, I actually, it was, it's interesting because I actually really relaxed at that point, even though that, you know, for some people that's probably the most terrifying thing. But I just forgot the cameras were there and relaxed into the questions because, you know, they were asking me all this stuff about the business.

34:30Susan Toft: And I loved the business and I knew all the numbers and things that they were asking. And so I was excited to be able to answer all of that, that they were shouting over each other. and, you know, it's not as quite calm and spread out as what it seems after the edit. It's just, you know, lots of questions that go from one topic to the other and back. And so, yeah, so it was really just answering all those questions and then, yeah, and then all of a sudden it's, you know, are they in or are they out? And your heart's pumping going, oh, what's this going to be? But it was never really about getting the investment for me.

35:07Susan Toft: You know, it was really about just bringing exposure to the brand and so you know it's and it's absolute marketing gold and we could never have really like understood just how much that the strength of that would bring to the business so even now when we run you know reels and and social content that is using the Shark Tank imagery it just we get so many more clicks and hits and you know it's like an award kind of recognition it gives you a bit of credibility to have that as seen on Shark Tank in your marketing. And so that was the real benefit for us of going on. And certainly post going into Canada, again, so the shark who, you know, had made the offer to us, Robert Hajarviki, is Canadian.

35:57Susan Toft: And so going into Canada, we were on trade shows doing, you know, at women's expos and things like that and showing the Shark Tank. video content and they'd see Robert and they'd recognize him. And so that was, you know, again, amazing recognition going to a brand new country, brand new environment. And people are already like, oh, we've seen you on Shark Tank, even though, you know, they probably haven't, but they just see that recognition of it. And so, yeah, that has been what was, you know, so positive about that journey to kind of, you know, bring attention to the business. Yeah, I'm curious.

36:32So you went in there with an offer of 750 for 10 % and he offered a million for 30%. And did you practice any of that? What went through your mind when that offer came out here? Did you do any math in your head or was it still like it is a minute? First of all, you were exceptional on there. I want to say you were very, very exceptional with and marketing nailed it. But I'm just curious about the numbers part of it.

36:55Susan Toft: Yeah, look, I don't think I really understood anything about valuations and equity in business and things like that at that stage. And I remember my accountant just going, don't go above 20%. And, you know, and I felt like when they when he made the offer, it's sort of, you know, one of those amazing things that you can't really say no to on TV, you've just got to go with it and see what happens. And, you know, and it's a big journey afterwards as well that, you know, like, because they haven't looked at your business, they haven't gone through due diligence. So the offer that you see on TV is not, you know, what happens afterwards.

37:29Susan Toft: It is still a reality TV show and all of those kinds of things. But, you know, it was... Then there's actual reality after that. That's actual reality, yes. But yeah, it was, you know, I think for me, the most amazing bit of that offer was just that someone, you know, in this, in 30 minutes, I'd convinced, you know, really thought the business was an amazing thing and to be able to make that offer because I'd never really had that kind of validation before, you know, being a sole founder, you know, that stage we were only a very small team. I think we were six people. I didn't have an ops manager.

38:07Susan Toft: I was still doing all the day-to-day operations. Like, so to have someone externally come in and give that validation, like that was just such an amazing part of, you know, the experience for us and for everyone involved in Laundry Lady. So, yeah. Susan, I want to get into the raise, the seed round shortly, but we're just going to take a quick break and we'll be right back to find out what did leave you with PTSD after doing your own$1 million raise. So don't go away. We'll be right back. Welcome back. You're watching Startup360. We're here with Susan Toph from The Laundry Lady. And Susan, we were just talking before the break about your time on Shark Tank and Robert putting a million dollars on the table.

38:55A couple of years down the track, you decided it was time to do your own raise for one million dollars in the seed round. And you mentioned earlier that you weren't across the whole valuation and what it all meant and how it all worked. Take us through the experience once you decided to raise.

39:12Susan Toft: Yeah, well, I think the first thing was getting someone to help me through that phase. And so that's what I did, you know, because I'd never put together a pitch deck or a data room or any of those things. I didn't know what any of that looked like. Like, you know, if I had done all of my time again, I would have gone through accelerator programs around all of that. But I think every accelerator program I have done, I've done about three years too late and learnt it afterwards. But, yeah, so I got, you know, an advisor who could help and went through the whole process. And it took around nine months to do the raise.

39:51Susan Toft: And actually we did it over two rounds to get to the full million. Plus we got some government grants as well. So it ended up being around 1.4 by the end of all of that. But, you know, I went down a lot of paths that probably shouldn't have, like not understanding that as a two-sided marketplace model, a lot of VCs are not really interested in that type of business. And, you know, really like learnt a lot about the importance of pitching the technology because, you know, I'd always pitched it as a service business because at heart it's, you know, the service part of what we do and the impact of what we do for our contractors.

40:31But, you know, obviously the technology is very,

40:35Susan Toft: very important in investor land and so I had to really pivot the way that we talked about the business and pitched it around all of those things. So that was a really big learning for me. And, yeah, it was a long and brutal process. and you know particularly as a as a solo women woman founder I had no one on my cap table I had was selling laundry to investors who are you know a lot of men who may not may or not may not do their own laundry or understand the real problem of laundry and so it was a really I have a laundry So it was a really interesting process and yeah, definitely a lot of learning.

41:21Susan Toft: And I think, you know, when people ask me, what's the best thing that you learn, you know, to give them advice for them, it's like, you've got to really understand what type of investor is right for you. And, you know, and for me, I didn't understand that until the end of the nine month period. And I've been really lucky that I've got the right investors through that. But I think, you know, if you don't understand that, then you can waste a lot of time going after the wrong types of investors who are just, you know, you might not be the mold for that type of investor. And so I think that's probably the most important thing that could save you time and a lot of grief through the process.

41:58Susan Toft: So we're about to kick off our small Series A investment, which is exciting and terrifying at the same time. But I think I'm in a very different space now. We know the business in a different way. We've got a board. We've got, you know, some really incredible business intelligence now that we've been able to create through our, you know, AI reporting. And so all of those things I think will make it. She said the magic word, AI. AI. There you go. You're already halfway through the race. So, yeah, so I think it'll be a different experience this time. And, you know, and we understand a lot more about what type of investors will be interested in us as well.

42:37Susan Toft: but, yeah, I still have a little bit of PTSD about the experience. So ask me in six months' time when we've closed that how I feel. I'm going to come back and ask you whether the second race is a little bit like having the second child. You kind of have a vague idea and whether it's just as difficult or you're a bit more relaxed about the whole process. Yeah, I think so. They just slot in that second child, right? So I think it'll be a different journey. You know, like even just the like professionalism of how we were able to forecast where we're headed and all of those kinds of things for the business now, like the plans we have in place, the playbooks we have in place for going international and how we're going to expand and all of those things.

43:20Susan Toft: Like we're so much more, you know, like strategic around that now and have a much better understanding. So, yeah, I think it'll be a really different kind of race this time, but we'll see. Time will tell. Can you articulate, you mentioned like there's the right kind of investors and the wrong kind of investors. Can you articulate what it is you look for the investors and what it is that will keep you running from an investor? Really important to articulate that because there might be some investors listening now who want to reach out to you. Yeah, I remember someone asking me that in the very beginning when we started and I was like, what do you mean?

43:55Susan Toft: What type of investor? Like ones that have money? Like, so, you know, I think you've got to learn a lot along the way. And, you know, I think for our business, like we're really very focused on our values and particularly, you know, what that looks like for the laundry partners that we recruit and how we, you know, support and grow that. And so, you know, having investors that understand that, that understand the impact of that, I think is an incredibly important part of it for us. Because, you know, we don't want to have, you know, VC money that wants us to just focus completely on growing 10 times and having lots of profit and just, you know, like get premises or do something completely different to our model.

44:40Susan Toft: Like our model is really important to us. And so I think, you know, definitely having investors that understand that and are a bit more patient capital, I think, is, you know, something that's really important for us. and we had to make a lot of decisions around how we grew the business and was it going to be focused on taking our platform and turning it into a SaaS platform for other industries or was it going to be taking Laundry International and growing it that way? And I felt very strongly that with my background in international marketing and the fact that we know laundry really well and the fact that there is so much opportunity in laundry and it's such a big market, that was the path that we decided to go down.

45:27Susan Toft: So, you know, in future there might be a different plan around SaaS and turning our platform Time Boss into a SaaS product that we can sell to other industries. But at this point in time we're really, really focused on just growing internationally and growing into new markets and bringing that opportunity that we bring to our laundry partners to a lot more of them. So we have just over 600 laundry partners at the moment And our goal in the next five years is to get it to over 5 ,000. So, you know, and what that means to them. So that's, you know, what we're really focused on. Do you have any questions or how do you suss out with investors that meet your values or laundry partners that meet your values?

46:12Do you have any, what is the secret question or sauce to be able to uncover that?

46:18Susan Toft: I think you learn pretty quickly just from talking to them about, you know, what their investment strategies are and who they invest in and what that looks like. And certainly looking at the other companies in their portfolio always really helps to see, you know, because it's really easy for investors, I think, to say, oh, we're sector agnostic. We invest in this and this news. And then you look at their portfolio and you're like, I don't know that this matches that completely. So, you know, I think looking at that is something that's really important. And I think you learn a lot just in the communication process with them as well.

46:55Susan Toft: You know, I often compare it to dating. Like we got ghosted, we got breadcrumbed, we got all of those things. And so, you know, I think that teaches you a lot about the type of investor that they'll be when you see those kinds of communication patterns. So, yeah. Swipe left. And I think also, you know, talk to the other people who are in their portfolio because that's a great way to kind of see what are they really like, you know, after the investment comes in. So, yeah, I mean, all of the first believers in Laundry Lady were, you know, angels in mostly in southeast Queensland. land. We actually have one shark from the show who was one of the sharks who said no on the day, but she came back later, Catriona Wallace, and invested in us.

47:45Susan Toft: So, you know, we love having her on the cup table too. And I would love on the next round to definitely find some more women investors, which is definitely a hard thing, but that is something we, you know, feel really passionate about as a business that supports over 85 % of people who are women. So yeah. Keep saying it out loud. Keep saying it out loud. They'll show up. And Dr. Kat knows a bit about AI too. So I think she does. She's the pioneer. Yeah, absolutely. The one thing I wanted to ask you, going back to that investment side, of course, part of the conversation comes to exit. It strikes me that this is not a business you're looking to build and sell.

48:24This is going to be a long-term passion for you. And, yes, maybe Time Boss on the side could be the other opportunity. What is your thinking?

48:35Susan Toft: I don't know about that, Simon. I'm just thinking about sitting by a pool in Bali and drinking cocktails in the next, like, decade and moving into that life. No, we'll see, we'll see. I think, you know, I'm very connected to the brand of Laundry Lady, the way we recruit our partners, the stories that we tell to our customers, it's very linked into my story of why I started it in the beginning. And we use that a lot in our brand and our marketing. So my feeling is that I'll always be connected to that in some way. But, you know, I also understand that, you know, at some point there's probably a better CEO out there who can take the, you know, phase after that.

49:22Susan Toft: So we'll see. But, yeah, I think I'll probably be connected still in some way. It's still nice when you're by the pool having your third cocktail at lunchtime when your phone goes ping because the royalty check's just dropped. So that's the only observation I make. I don't think I'll be sad. No, I don't think I'll be sad for that life. Now, I do want to ask because Laundry Lady won the Best in Tech award for marketing. It was the first time we'd done it and you were a standout entry. Probably could have won Get Shit Done as well. But I want to ask you about marketing because it's such an important and one of the reasons why we did this award is to recognise the effort that goes into it.

50:06Tell us a little bit about how start-ups and founders should think about marketing as one of the core aspects of their business.

50:13Susan Toft: Yeah, I feel like you created that category just for us so we could have a win, which was nice. So thank you. Yeah, marketing is something that we're, you know, we are really good at. And again, I think, you know, as I've said, it comes down to understanding your values and really leaning into that in the way that you market. And, you know, I've certainly had to put myself at the centre of the brand, which was not my comfort zone. I wasn't, you know, wearing pink and being on video and talking all the time. But that wasn't something that I ever envisioned doing as part of the brand. But, you know, you have to, I think when you have a business, you have to get out there and spruik it every opportunity you can because you're not in business not to tell anyone about it.

50:55Susan Toft: So, you know, that's what I've always really focused on in terms of how we do our marketing. But, you know, I think for a lot of businesses, particularly in tech, where the founders have come, are tech founders and, you know, are thinking more about the problem they're solving or the tech solution that they're building, like they get to that point and then they have no idea how to market it. And, you know, if you don't know how to market it, then you're never going to get customers, which is the most important part, right, of building the business. So, you know, for us, I think we started with the marketing and then had to learn how to do the tech later.

51:34Susan Toft: So it was kind of in reverse for us. But yeah, we have a lot of digital strategies and it's changing all the time. So we're learning all the time and upgrading our thinking about how we do that and how we deliver all of that. But it really just comes down to find a contractor, find them customers and repeat. And that's what we keep doing and doing and doing. So that was my question. Also, your contractors or your partners, aren't they also partially your marketing also if they're looking for customers and they help promote in order for them to get? Yeah, absolutely. So when they join us, they buy a starter kit, we sell them product as part of that starter kit.

52:19Susan Toft: They also get marketing flyers and magnets for their car and all of those kinds of things. So they can do lots of local on the ground marketing, they get referrals for that. And that definitely helps them to build their business. But the majority of customers really come through our digital marketing. And that's where the strength of it is. So, you know, all of the things that we do online, like if you look at my LinkedIn, it's super, you know, we're posting all of the time. We do enter lots of awards, which is it all feeds into, you know, our AI search and how we're ranked online and how we, you know, attract people to our website.

53:00Susan Toft: It's all part of that. And so, you know, that's something that we spend a lot of time doing and as well, you know, doing a lot of digital paid advertising to support all of that. And that's really what drives the partner applications and drives the customers to the business. So you explained how Laundry Lady worked. We talked a little bit about the boss, Time Boss. I'm going to give you a time to pitch that because maybe there's those investors also listening to what that does. And if it if it's in their niche of what they want, of how it solves other people's problems and what they want to invest in.

53:39So tell us a little bit more about Time Boss and how that works.

53:41Susan Toft: Yeah, Time Boss handles so many things. And, you know, it's everything from the online booking right from when you as the customer go online on the web or now the app as well and make a booking. And then it has some, you know, really sophisticated AI sequencing around matching those customers to the contractors that are in their area. Because obviously location is very important in our business because, you know, you don't want someone in Brisbane to come pick up your laundry in Sydney. So we've got to, you know, that sequencing of location is super important. Our contractors have the full ability to be able to set up their own rosters and timing and locations that they want to do pickups in, so it handles all of that.

54:29Susan Toft: All of the invoicing, payments. Payments is really quite complex for a global organisation because we've got to have different currencies, but we've also got to have different tax systems. And going to Canada, every province has its own tax set up, which is super complex in terms of, you know, how we administer that and the way that we connect, you know, straight into AI to be able to do that reporting now. It's just giving us so much, like the insights into that, in particular as we scale globally, are so incredibly important. Now, Susan, your pink has just reminded me of a massive problem that we sometimes need to solve that AI can't.

55:17So I'm going to use your actual intelligence to fix this one. When you have a load of whites and you accidentally put a red T-shirt or towel in with them and it all comes out pink, can you get it back to white?

55:32Susan Toft: Some people wonder if that's why I wear a lot of pink because we've mixed the red and whites together. I mean, you know, I think you've probably ruined it at that point, Simon. You should have just booked in with Laundry Lady and started there and it would have, you know, solved all your issues for you. So do that next time and you won't have to worry. But, yeah, we can't reveal all our tips and secrets. You have to book in with a laundry partner in your area to get that. Fair call. Now, I also want to ask Noah, what's his take on mum? What is, you know, teenage boy now sees you busy running this incredible empire and winning all of these awards.

56:17How does he feel about it?

56:18Susan Toft: Yeah, I've got two boys now, Noah and Ruben, so 17 and 12. So they're teenagers, which should say it all, really. So they, you know, being boys, they're not as excited as if they were, So, you know, my marketing manager has a daughter who just thinks that the Laundry Lady is the best thing ever. When we went on Shark Tank, she was out handing flyers to all the kids at school and telling them all these amazing things about Laundry Lady. And my kids turned up and went, wait, what are we doing here? What is this for? Like they just had no idea. So, you know, I think as much as they try to tell me I know nothing and then, you know, and mum's very cringe and, you know, Noah's learning how to drive now and learning in a very pink branded car, which is completely mortifying for him.

57:09Susan Toft: And he just did Year 10 last year and in Year 10 they show our Shark Tank episode, which again was like the most cringe thing ever. So I had to have a sick day that day so he didn't have to watch it. So, you know, they certainly don't like give me a big ego. They keep my ego in check, which is great. which is great. But I think, you know, I think somewhere in there it's sinking in because I sometimes hear them, you know, like say something to someone and I think, oh, yeah, this is this whole, you know, entrepreneur business, you know, that you guys are giving it to me over all the time, you actually are understanding and it's rubbing off in some kind of positive way.

57:52Susan Toft: So that's all I can hope for really. I hope both Ruben and Noah think that you're a massive dub. with laundry lady. Exactly. You're going to bring it home? Bring it home, I'm going to ask your question. The question. The question is, Susan, what brings you joy? What brings me joy? Look, I think, you know, as much as my children, you know, are teenagers and don't really talk to me as much anymore, you know, being able to be there with them and, you know, have that flexibility around them. And it's not easy. It's not like, you know, you work nine to five and can switch off at the end of the day.

58:30Susan Toft: It's, you know, I'm working all of the time and it's hard and all of those things. But, you know, I get to choose if I want to be able to pick them up and take them to footy training. And I get to choose if I want to, you know, spend the weekend with them not touching my phone. I mean, you know, and that's what I think, you know, really brings me joy and the feeling of success in the business is being able to do that with them. So, yeah, but, I mean, it depends what day you ask me that. Some days it might not be them at all. I'll tell you it's my fur babies that give me joy. Amazing. Well, Susan, you've given us great joy today.

59:11Thank you so much for joining us on Startup360. can't wait to hear how the raise goes we wish you all the best with that and uh will actually i'll certainly be handing out laundry lady vouchers to the newborn families that uh i met along the way because i think it's such a brilliant idea thanks for joining us on the show thank you thanks for having me and make sure you download the app as well yeah i haven't done that yet so all right absolutely got to give that a crack okay please do is that what you're going to be doing this weekend. I will be downloading the Laundry Lady app and going to see a Swans game with you at Henson Park.

59:48I know. I'm very excited about you coming along with a few other friends. Great. The Swannies are playing in the Pride Round at Henson and I hope it's going to be a big crowd. I've already checked the weather. Last one was very wintry this weekend. It's going to be a beautiful 25 degree Sunday. So that should be fantastic. What can I bring? Ah, well, we'll figure that out the next couple of days. Firmish, yes, that could be the interesting one. But we'll wait and see what happens. But that is it for this week. This show, of course, is a Smart Code media production produced and edited by the fantastic Matt Jackson, who I have to say came back from the dead this week.

1:00:29He was a little bit crook after the long weekend. Maybe the daylight savings threw him out. I don't know. That missing hour kills me all the time. You're an absolute legend for coming to do this with us. Thank you so much. Thanks also to Ella, to James, and of course to Deal for their support. You can subscribe to Startup360 on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. And don't forget to head to startupdaily.net for all the latest news, of course, everything about firmness as it unfolds, for so many other great stories, including The Laundry Lady. So it's absolutely free. We'll send you a couple of emails a week to keep you up to date with everything that's happening.

1:01:06Hopefully you'll love it. But for now, have a great weekend. We'll see you next Friday. Bye for now.