John O’Brien founded Poolwerx in 1992 and has built the mobile van business into an impressive international retail and mobile services brand. Here the Poolwerx founder talks about entrepreneurship, leadership, adversity and the business basics that form the foundation for success.
Franchise Executives
Forty plus years in business John, how did you get here?
John O’Brien
“I come from a very entrepreneurial family background and I suppose it entered my DNA around the kitchen table.
“I have early memories of sitting around the kitchen table hearing mum and dad talk about customers and suppliers and cash and bills and staff and all those sorts of things. And when it came to put those into life, into action for me, that kind of came second nature.
“But I’m a big believer that most entrepreneurial businesses, all entrepreneurial businesses are about customer facing businesses.
“And any exposure you can have, to the public to customers at an early age I think makes a huge impression on you.
“I remember our dog died from a snake bite and had all these pups. It was market day so I went out the front and sold the seven pups. I sold them to one kid on credit from school because he didn’t have any cash but he bought it back the next day because his parents wouldn’t give him money so I learned about bad debt. So all those things I’m saying, they really give you a great basis in business.”
Franchise Executives
Is that the driving force, the creation of something?
John O’Brien
“I think the burning desire to create something yourself, to not be beholden to somebody, to perhaps have the vision to see something and to create something and to be answerable to yourself and not relying on somebody else to create your future for you.
“I speak to many potential franchisees who are in their 40s and 50s, even 60s, who have had that burning desire to have a business venture of their own, but have put it off and put it off for 10, 20, 30, 40 years because they got caught up in the catastrophe of life, mortgages and family. And finally, they’ve got to a point where they’re free enough to do it. And it’s often the happiest moment of their life. You see that spark in their eyes as they start in their new franchise.”
On leadership
Franchise Executives
What does good leadership look like?
John O’Brien
“I believe very much that a leader must have a clear vision of what they want for the entity they’re leading or the people they’re leading, where they want to be in five years or three years or next month or whatever it is.
“I think they have to be very good communicators of that vision to people. It’s one thing to have a vision in your head but you’ve got to be able to communicate it with people so that they come along for the journey with you.”
“I think you need to be empathetic. You need to have a certain side of you that taps in to people, to be a people person.
“You don’t need to be a soft touch because at times leaders have to make the tough decisions. But you need to be able to pick when your people need a break, when they can be pushed, how to motivate different people. Not everybody’s motivated in the same way.
“There are many times in a leader’s journey that they’re the last person standing who believes in the endeavour. And they’ve often got to have the conviction to row their own boat, to follow their own vision, their own journey when everybody else, family, friends, abandons you and the vision.
“You need to have the courage, the resilience to see it through to the end. I suppose I’ve been very resilient along the way, stubborn and dogmatic, hard working. You need to obviously be that. You need to in business, I think, or as a leader, be prepared to work harder than you’ve ever worked before.
“Responsible. You need to be very responsible as a leader, responsible for the company you’re leading, for the assets of the company, but most of all for the people, whether it’s the suppliers, the customers, but in particular the people around you that deliver to the suppliers and the customers. You need to be very responsible to them and to their lives and their opportunities.”
Tackling adversity
Franchise Executives
You’ve talked about resilience and being the last man standing. Adversity is part of business, isn’t it?
John O’Brien
“We often talk in the business about those three foot high, one metre high penguins that used to be loaded with sand in the bottom and you’d punch them in the face and they’d fly back down on their back and they’d come back up again and you could keep punching these things and they’d just keep popping back up again.
“I think often with adversity that’s what I feel like. Every time you get back up, it’s probably one punch you’re not going to get the next time. And eventually the punches become less and less. And eventually you seem to see your way through; head down, tail up and keep ploughing through the negatives until you find the positives.
The foundations for Poolwerx’ success
Franchise Executives
What makes for business success?
John O’Brien
“The number one, which sounds obvious, but people first always and it is our number one value.
“And we do call our people franchise partners. We call our suppliers partners in profit and our support partners is our head office team, our national support team. So ‘People First Always’, our entrepreneurial value is ‘Dare To Succeed’. That’s the franchise value. It always keeps you hungry. It always forces you to choose the road less traveled, the hard road.
“We have other fabulous values like ‘Do the right thing’. It’s very simple. We have one called ‘Find the better way’, the one about best practices about never accepting mediocrity, I mean it’s an annoying value find the better way because you’d never get there!
“You never sit down and say your system’s perfect. It’s like, how do we make it better? And the final one is ‘Energise’, which was kind of the one that I love. It’s what brings all the values together. There’s no room for negativity in life. There’s no room for negativity in business. It just pulls you down. And what we say to people, for heaven’s sake, if you’re gonna criticize something, bring a better way to do that thing. It’s okay to criticise but bring something.”
Poolwerx founder on business basics
Franchise Executives
What do you need to build a successful business?
John O’Brien
“First and foremost, you need to identify an opportunity or a need or a product or a service in the marketplace and have a vision to how you’re going to deliver that and what it’s going to look like when you’re happy with it. And you need to commit that in print so that you can see it, visualise it and you can share it with people.
Plan. So many people can talk to me about their vision or the opportunity they’ve identified, but they do nothing about it. Just put it in writing to the best you can. There’s plenty of those available online today.
“We’re fanatical about planning in our businesses. There’s always a rolling three-year plan, one-year plan, one quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, every franchise partner has one, the business has one. We measure everything we possibly can.
“The other one though is cash. Cash, cash and cash. I’ve had five businesses all successful but gee we’ve sailed close to the wind many a time. And every time we’ve sailed close to the wind, it’s been because we’ve taken our eye off the cash. I’ve seen the lack of cash kill so many good businesses and it shouldn’t.
“You know, reconciling your bank account all the time, being so close, strict on your debtors and debtor control, making sure you pay your creditors on time because you’ll need to call favours from them during tough times, having strong supplier relationships because they can be a source of cash and growth funding.
“Doing your weekly cash flow forecasts all the time. Having bank overdrafts, being close to your bank manager. All those quite obvious things.
“But vision, plan and cash, to me, they’re the ways that, they’re the fundamentals that make sure that you’re profitable.”
Franchise Executives
What does franchising look like now in Poolwerx?
John O’Brien
“We’re right across Australia and New Zealand and we’re now in 15 states in the US. Our typical franchisee has three units, two or three stores and 15 vans and a revenue over three, five million, some have seven, 10 million.
“Years ago, franchising was pretty much just a man and a family in a store, a man in a van. These days, you’ve got middle level managers with university degrees who own their home, have got significant resources, that want an opportunity for the husband and wife, both with careers, with their children, they want a family opportunity, and they want to hit the ground running. They don’t want one store, one van; they want to build an empire. These franchise partners want to have a business and we’re seeing seriously educated and resourced business executives moving into the franchise sector.
“And I think that’s fabulous for the sector because it brings great level of service for the end customer. It brings great skills into the brand and it puts real pressure on the franchisor to raise the bar and to deliver to those franchisees on services. It’s really raising the calibre of franchising across the board.”
Listen to the podcast interview with John O’Brien.
