MBA2560 Extended Interview: Claire Baines - How to Start & Run an Events Business

0:05Hey, welcome back to the$100 MBA show. I'm your host Omar Zinhome. And today's episode is an extended interview with Claire Baines, where we sit down and chat with the CEO of Hands Across the Water, an incredible charity that Nicole and I support to help children in Thailand have a life of choice, give them education, food, clothing, be able to get on their own feet and succeed in this world. The reason why I wanted to sit down with Claire Baines and do this episode is because she's an events master. If you're thinking about starting a business that is around in-person events, online events, or have some sort of aspect of events, whether it's doing like a launch online or whether that is doing an event in person like a retreat or some sort of event that raises awareness, events are a lot of work, right?

0:53There are a lot of responsibility. There's a lot to make them successful. and she's had 15 years of experience of pulling them off. She's been highly successful at it and I wanted to sit down with her picker brain, figure out what makes a great events business. One of the things that she has to do as a part of Hands Across Water, this charity, is run a lot of events. They're almost like a tourism company to be able to raise money for the actual charity. So she's got a lot of repetition, she's got a lot of experience showing you what makes it successful, what to worry about, what not to worry about, all that and a whole lot more.

1:25So we're going to sit down with Claire Baines right now, jump into the conversation so that we can be a little bit more aware of what does it take to run a great event in person, online, whatever it might be. Claire Baines, great to have you here on the podcast. I'm so excited to speak to you because we first met just a few months ago, actually. We corresponded on email and things like that before the Hands Across the World ride. ride, but Nicole and I, after the ride, said, if there's anything we got out of this ride that was really hard on us, at least we got to meet you and Peter. That was one of the biggest highlights for us.

2:01So thanks for being on the show. We're really excited to have a chat with you. Yeah, amazing. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks. Awesome. So Claire, you're the CEO of Hands Across the Water. I spoke a lot about Hands Across the Water to my audience, but briefly, tell us a little bit about this charity that you lead and we'll go into the nuts and bolts of how that business works in a moment. But just give us a quick overview of Hands Across the Water. Yeah, sure. So Hands Across the Water, we're an Australian-based charity supporting about 350 kids up in Thailand. Our origins date back to the Boxing Day tsunami, which is 20 years this December.

2:37And it came about as my husband, Peter. He met a group of kids who had lost everything, lost their parents, lost their families. And he was over there working as part of the body identification team. And so when he met this group of kids, he decided that he couldn't just walk away from that and decided to come back, raise some money and build them a home. And so that is the very short version of the story of how Hands began. So I heard about Hands through a good friend and friend of the show, Dale Beaumont from Business Blueprint. And he invited us in In April of 2023, we were going out to dinner.

3:17He was like, I do this bike ride. It's going to be 10 years. It's for charity. I'm like, what's this charity about? He told me about the charity, Hands Across the Water. Why don't you come and join us? So call Omar. Why don't you come? We're like, okay, yeah, that sounds great. That's a year from now. I was like, you know, that's future Omar's problem. And he's like, yeah, yeah, just a small thing. You know, we're going to be riding for five days, 500 kilometers. I was like, what? Okay. I already put my pride into it. I already said yes, so let's do it. Uh, but I'm so glad we said yes, because of the experience we had learning about the charity, learning about hands across the water, learning about how much impact this has on these wonderful people in Thailand that hands across the water supports.

3:57And just understanding that a lot of people see charities as like, okay, this is a good thing to do. It's very cathartic. Okay. And I put my money somewhere good. But after the experience, I felt more like, I'm so glad I got to fulfill an obligation. I feel obliged. After going through that experience and realizing the needs of these communities, you realize, okay, it would be really ridiculous if I did not do something. You really realize that. And I'm glad that you are here on the show because it's kind of easy to lose focus on the purpose and what you're trying to do when you're trying to run the day-to-day of running a charity organization that also has built-in business components.

4:36So we're going to talk a little bit about the cause and talk about like how that all drives through. But if you can help us understand the structure of Hands Across the Water, because one of the things I love about is that when somebody makes a charitable donation, it goes straight to the children, goes straight to the people that you're supporting. And the way you guys run the organization earns its own money. So if you can, you're better at explaining. So why don't you go ahead and tell us? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much. So Hands Across House of Water, I guess, started as a charity foundation here in Australia back in 2005.

5:07The official charity was set up. And basically, it was Peter running the organization with a board and they were raising money and not a lot of overheads. So there was no expenses paid. Pete paid for all of his travel to Thailand and then started to run these bike rides, which you've had a pleasure to be part of. Then fast forward to about 2011, it got to a point where we looked at or Pete was looking at the business and saying, I can continue to raise money. We can continue to run these fantastic bike rides, which are really great fundraisers for the charity. But I need some people. I need someone to help me do that because I've still got to go out and earn income for himself.

5:47So back in 2011, Hands Group was born, and that's a non-for-profit organisation here in Australia that sits next to the charity. So through that entity, we undertake commercial activities, be it events, bike rides, etc., with any of the funding coming into that entity paying for all of our administration costs. So our staffing, our marketing, and as the business has grown over the last 10 years, it's certainly helped cover a lot of those overheads that we see in the charity space. So when you're running these events, like the bike rides, like the excursions, like the gala events, you're raising that, you're running these events so that you can be able to fund the operational costs of the charity.

6:34Is that correct? Yeah, 100%. So here in Australia, when you make a donation to charity, that donation is tax deductible. And here at HANS, all of that goes directly to Thailand. The commercial entity, so if you're paying to attend an event, if you're paying to attend a gala dinner or one of our bike rides, for example, the registration fees are what comes in into that side and that helps to cover the administration. and then you'll have fundraising initiatives attached to that. So you come and do a bike ride with us, you'll pay X amount in your registration fee that comes into the group and then you will raise$5 ,000 to complete that bike ride.

7:17And that then goes into the charity. Yeah. So what you just explained exactly was my experience. I paid a little over$2 ,000 or something for a registration fee. And then I was responsible for raising$5 ,000 for the cause. And I found that the registration rate is quite reasonable. Like I didn't have any frame of reference because I've never done a charity back ride before, but it seemed really reasonable. Then it seemed extremely reasonable when I went on the ride because of the organization of all the things that were included, the hotels, the transfers, all these people giving me water every five seconds.

7:50It was really overwhelming how much value, for lack of a better term. You know, you don't expect that. I thought it would be like, OK, we're not going to get much because I didn't pay much. how do you guys set this registration fee to make sure it's not too expensive for the person that's partaking into this event versus you know making sure that you're raising enough money to cover your expenses yeah so it's a great question and if i step back probably about 12 months and and this will sort of lead to the answer there so 12 months ago we're currently set up so we've got our australian business where we've got hands cross the water and our australian hands group back in 2022, we received charity status up in Thailand.

8:32And similar thing, what we wanted to do was create a setup up in Thailand where we had the charity and then we had a social enterprise sitting next to that charity. So similar to the Australian model, so that we could raise funds to pay for the administration. Now, the decision that we made 12 months ago was that social enterprise model was a bicycle touring business. And we had been running bicycle tours for 15 years. And so, you know, between Pete and I, we probably had about 60 rides between us. And we went, I think we can probably do this on our own, recruiting a team in Thailand on the ground to help support that.

9:09Up until that point, we had been using a third party. Just outsourcing that whole thing, like, you know. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so what happened was when we then brought that in-house, that allows us to keep those costs down. We're still running two business entities, essentially. We've got the one here in Australia collecting registration fees, and then we've got the one now in Thailand who's running the bike ride for us. But because that all sits within the group now, we're able to keep our costs really efficient for those that come on our rides. So for those rides that you're organizing in Thailand, are you running rides that are not charity rides?

9:50Like just people want to take a ride around Thailand, like a tourist, you think? Yeah, absolutely. So in its first phase, I guess the last 12 months focus for us has been our charity bike rides. So we do about four or five rides a year with different groups. We have a public ride and then we've got four corporate clients that we work with. And so in the first 12 months, our priority was just getting those groups serviced, but they're actually currently on a ride right now. And when they get back, they're moving into the day tour business. So where the head office is situated is down in Kallak, which is quite a touristy area in Thailand, in the south of Thailand.

10:28And we've got about 10 partnerships in place at the moment with hotels who come to us and say, hey, I've got a group of six people. They want to go out and do a day tour. fabulous the team go out and take them out on a tour so there's the the charity ride side of things for them but then there's also this day tour kind of everyday income for them so when it comes to the tours that are outside the charity was there a learning curve for you to be like okay how do we run this tour business outside of the scope of we're trying to do rides for charity and have it maintained throughout like having people on the ground and hiring and getting this team?

11:05Was it much of a transition or what exactly did you have to go through? Look, I guess huge transition. Starting a business in Thailand. That's very interesting. Lots of paperwork. But no, look, I think, you know, we learned a lot from the work that we did with our third party supplier. I mean, they ran an excellent business. They had their own day touring business and then ran our charity rise. So, you know, we've pretty much looked at their model and said, yeah, we can make that work for us. So there was certainly a lot of learnings from that business and then combine that with our own business learnings and experience from back here in Australia.

11:47So, you know, we've really sort of tried to throw everything in it and we're learning a lot along the way. I want to talk a little bit about building a team, especially hiring people from abroad, not in your home country. You know, many of our listeners are hiring people from overseas, whether it's from the Philippines or wherever it might be. And there are some things maybe they're caught off guard by. What are some of the challenges you found finding good talent when it comes to people from a different culture? Maybe there's some language barrier, maybe not in terms of understanding each other, but maybe just nuances that are unexpected.

12:20And then just also retention. How do you make sure you have a team that is happy to stay with you or team members that are looking to stay in the long term since you're investing so much in the hiring process and training them to do what they need to do? We are so incredibly blessed for our team. We've got a team in the Philippines and we've had them in place for about 10 years now. Irene, who's our administrator, she hit her 10-year-long service on the Business Blueprint ride that you just did. She was fantastic. Oh, she's amazing. She's an absolute blessing. You know, so we've been working with offshore teams for quite a while.

12:57I think COVID had a lot to do with bringing us closer. You know, I think that was a bit of a blessing for particularly the team in the Philippines. And so I guess the learnings from working with Irene and Adrian and then taking that into Thailand, I guess, presented, you know, there was both the learnings, but then there was also some very stark differences you know when we started to work with our teams in Thailand we obviously work very closely with the homes and I think you're always going to have you know cultural differences and language barriers and we have really with our homes we've never gone in there with the you know what we say is the right thing you know we we certainly expect the Thais to tell us how to how to bring up Thai children and you know we don't try and put our limitations or or beliefs onto them.

13:46So I think a big part of it is just working with them to understand their culture, their beliefs. And, you know, you find ways to get through those barriers around, around the language. We're fortunate in that our general manager of, of the entity up in Thailand, he speaks incredible English and he's sort of built his team locally with the people that he needs. And some speak English, some don't. So I just, my relationship is with him and, And, you know, he builds from there. Yeah, he was fantastic. He was fantastic and really great to work with and always with a smile on his face. Even when people were very demanding because they're exhausted, they're tired, they're just coming off 100 Ks or something.

14:28They're asking for, you know, some air in their tires or something. I'm very curious about how you decide where the money goes in terms of how to help the organization, how to help the children that are in the homes that don't have parents to look after them. How do you decide how to allocate these funds? The reason why I'm asking is because many businesses that listen to the show, they might be doing really well and they want to be able to give back somehow. I'm going the easy way. I know hands is great. I've had this experience and I'm just saying, okay, I want to raise money for hands. I'm creating a page and you know, some of my proceeds are going there.

15:05Some of our revenue is going there. So I already kind of have a place to go and donate. You guys actually have to decide where that money goes and how it gets spent and all that. So how do you guys come up with that decision? Are there metrics you're looking at? Are there things that come up out of nowhere that you need to spend money for? Yeah. So look, there's probably a couple of things. So we're about$1.5 million a year in operating costs. And there's a couple of different structures. So we've got one home in Thailand that is completely 100 % owned by hands and we are its only funder. So we cover all of their operational expenses and from time to time there might be a special request that comes through for, you know, fixing the roof or air conditioning repairs, etc.

15:49The other relationships that we have and the two bigger ones with two other foundations in Thailand and we're about 90 to 95 % of their funding. So we are their biggest donor and we work closely with them, helping them to manage their budgets and basically running these homes like their businesses. They've all got their P &Ls, they've got their, where's the income coming from and what are my expenses? And so we work very closely with the two partners up there just to help support them, whatever it is they need. And then again, from time to time, you do get the special requests that come through.

16:27And that's just taken to our board for consideration. Okay. And so are you doing this on the ground? Do you have a representative that you're talking to? How is this kind of all managed given the fact that you're splitting your time between Thailand and Australia? Yeah. So we've got very, very good relationships and trusting relationships with the directors in each of the homes. And, you know, we will meet with them again, thanks to COVID and Zoom. We meet with them on a regular basis and get updates on the homes and the kids and what's happening. And then everything is executed on the ground by them.

17:02So from a, I guess, from a charity perspective here in Australia, we will divert our funds from here in Australia into our foundation in Thailand. And from there, we've got someone in Thailand who can then, you know, divvy those up depending on how we structure it for that coming month. all right so you have some revenue generating activities that you do with the tours with the events so that you can fund the operations of the of the charity then you're raising capital you're raising money through the charity through fundraisers through events like the bike rides that people are raising money for to help fund the needs of these homes that you're supporting in thailand what are the biggest challenges in balancing those two kind of initiatives you're running like a full-fledged business tour company basically in Thailand and you're trying to raise awareness for a charity and you're trying to you know help people raise funds and you're trying to help people be more aware of you know the need for raising funds is it like trying to do two businesses at once and what are some of the challenges in that yeah I think there's almost five businesses at once okay tell me we're a registered charity in three countries so Australia New Zealand, Thailand.

18:10So that's your three, three charity entities, all raising money that we then send to Thailand. Then we've got the two business entities. So the one here in Australia running the events and then the one in Thailand during, during the bike rides. And I think the biggest challenge is we've only moved to this consolidated structure in the last probably 12 months. And I think the biggest challenge is working across all five, you know, budgets and P &Ls and going, you know, this is coming in here and we need this money over here. And it's just like this constant, you know, moving, hiding the P and moving the P and where does this go?

18:49And so, you know, I think absolutely like it's, you know, you've got to manage cash flow for five different entities and all while maintaining transparency, accurate reporting, you know, because if anyone is, I guess, looked at and scrutinized in the Australian public, it's the nonprofit sector, you know, so people want to see our numbers. They want the transparency around where every dollar is spent. It's a juggle. Yeah, for sure. You know, and one of the things that, you know, we don't like to bang on about COVID, but it certainly changed, changed our model, changed our thinking. So, you know, we were really fortunate going into COVID where we had 18 months worth of operating costs in the bank.

19:34So going into, you know, March 2020, we had 75 % of our fundraising was completely wiped out because of the bike rides and because, you know, charity and discretionary spending was completely canned. But we were fortunate in that we had that position where, you know, we could go for 18 months without raising a cent and not one child in our care would go without food, school, shelter. So that was really important to us. And so coming out of that, that's certainly, you know, where we're getting back to is that, you know, having that rainy day fund that if something was to ever happen again that we would be okay.

20:13But to do that takes, you know, a lot of work on the fundraising side. We have increased our team in the last 12 months. So we've certainly ramped up our resourcing as we go into our 20th year, knowing that this year for us will be a really big year and a great opportunity for us to really amplify our brand here in Australia, but also in Thailand. And so the board and Peter and myself came to a compromise around the charity dollars in that we would start to take anywhere between 10 and 15 % of our charity dollars. We would put back into fundraising administration to then help us grow our fundraising dollars.

20:57You know, it's kind of shifting that mindset from if we don't invest, we won't grow. So if we can invest 10 or 15 % of our charity dollars, then we can guarantee growth beyond what we've been able to achieve before. That's good. You mentioned brand. And I want to ask a little bit of a sensitive question because you need to raise awareness. You need to create an image, a brand for Hands Across the Water. Many of the entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast, they're doing kind of for good businesses. They want to donate a certain number of dollars or percentage of their profits. It's like the, you know, Tom's Shoes model or Warby Parker or things like that to help a cause.

21:35But it's a tough one because they need to present the cause in a way that is not depressing and a way that doesn't like taint the brand of the actual business. So, for example, like, you know, if I'm running a hundred dollar MBA and my brand is about, you know, the future and opportunity and hope and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then on my checkout page, I say, you know, X amount of money goes to this charity. Look at these sad faces. Like it just kind of, it's a tough, I'm not saying that this is not a reality that we need to face, but how do you brand or be, think about your brand, Hands Across the Water, to help these children without kind of, for lack of better terms, you know, be a little bit of a sad story without kind of showing the silver lining of what's happening.

22:20Yeah, it's a really big part of our brand not to show those sad, sad faces. You know, these kids have come from some incredibly dire circumstances and it's not serving them well for us to tell their story in that capacity and, you know, share photos of, you know, sad and malnourished kids. so for us we've always been about hope and we've always been about futures and you know we've just gone through our our new strategy for the next five years and and our focus is really around building brighter futures for our kids and it's it's always been part of our mission and you know when when we're sharing the stories you've got to find a way to tug on those heartstrings because you do want people to support and to engage and so for us we find the stories of hope that come from, you know, we can say that our kids have come from a sad background, but we focus on the education they're getting.

23:18We're focusing on, you know, kids like Anne, who she's now a trainee as part of our bicycle touring business. Right. You know, she came to Home Hug as a young child, grew up in the home, went on to become a staff member in the home, and is now doing a traineeship for us through Hands Experience is Thailand. And so it's the back end of their story that, you know, I think the funding and the donations are really helping to, you know, just helping to empower them and to give them that different life to what they could have been. I want to share my experience. At the end of the ride, we ride into the home in Cowlack and we meet all the children that we're riding for.

24:00And we get to meet the child that you're kind of riding for in the last week or so. I met mine and so did Nicole. and it was beautiful to do that. But riding in that last day, I was thinking in the back of my head, you know, what is it going to be like? I was a little bit worried that it's going to be like a little depressing and a bit of an emotional thing. And I didn't want anybody, I didn't want to get emotional and affect the children and make them feel bad. Like, you know, is my situation horrible? And you're crying because my situation is horrible. And then I was really surprised because we saw so many smiling faces and you realize that these children, despite of their past, They have a happy life and they have a great community of other children supporting each other.

24:43The older ones are looking after the younger ones. They were happy to kind of interact with us. We played Uno together and had a good time. And it was just such a surprise because I was like, they have a good life. I'm not saying that they're living it up like they're millionaires, but they have a content disposition that I wasn't expecting. you know and i that really was something i really enjoyed about the whole experience was going there seeing the kids they're doing all right it's encouraging for you to just say okay i want to continue to do this because i know that my money's helping rather than the opposite so i want to talk a little bit about your business is to help these children is to raise as much fund as funds as possible so you can help more homes a big part of that in any business is reoccurring revenue is, you know, lack of churn for, you know, for lack of a better return, but not having churn where people just donate once and they never donate again, or go on a bike ride once or raise funds$5 ,000 once and never do it again.

25:40How do you guys think of reoccurring revenue or reducing your churn or trying to get people to buy into the cost for life? You know, one of your poster people are, uh, is Dale. Dale has been doing this for 10 years and raising lots, lots of money through his organization, but how do you get more Dales in your organization to help you guys out? We would love more Dales. You know, people like Dale, and there's another one in our network, Steve Carroll from the real estate industry, you know, they have been so integral to that ongoing revenue. And I think what we've been able to provide at hands and what we're really proud of is, you know, we can provide a fantastic shared experience for individuals, for corporate groups.

26:24and you know the I guess the sweet spot and the magic for us is in the people like Dale and Steve who have their own communities and they want to create an experience like this where they can go and enjoy five days on the bike with their clients their team their closest confidants and know that you know you're not only getting that fantastic shared experience with those people but you're actually making an incredible difference to the kids so I think Hans has raised over 30 million dollars since since its inception in 2005 and i'd have to say between dale and steve they're probably close to about you know three or four million dollars with the two of them so there's that side you know there's the bike ride there's the shared experiences you know so we're constantly trying to evolve that and see how we can take that to another level and then on the other side of the coin we've got you know really strong corporate relationships and and so our our chairman who is the chairman of Nata.

27:25Nata is a retail consumer electronics retail group and they have been incredible supporters of us since 2007. But like any business and any business owner, you've got to look at those relationships and say, what are we doing beyond that? And so how do we get another Dale? How do we get another Nata? Because at any point in time, something could happen. And it's a huge risk. If either of those partners were to walk away, there's a really big, big gap for us to fill. So, you know, it's my job and it's our team's job to continue to, I guess, build our offering and try and bring, you know, more people on the journey so that we can diversify where our revenue is coming from.