Why self-belief is vital when building a fast growth business

Clare Roberts, CEO of Kids Planet and EY Entrepreneur Of The Year UK^TM alumni, shares how quality, culture and opportunity has enabled her to rapidly grow her business.

Three questions to ask

• How can entrepreneurs overcome challenges and expand a business in a short space of time?
• What unique challenges do female entrepreneurs face?
• How can fast growing businesses scale up without compromising on quality?

As part of our Entrepreneur Insights series, inspirational Clare Roberts, CEO of Kids Planet, discusses what it takes to build a fast-growth business. Since its conception in 2008, Kids Planet has become the leading early years provider across the UK for quality and is ranked as the 3rd largest nursery group, providing childcare for over 9,000 children.

Can you tell me about yourself, how Kids Planet started and your leadership role?

I am a working mum with three daughters who are 13, 10 and 8, and CEO of Kids Planet nursery group. In 2007, when I had my first daughter, I was looking for childcare. At the time I couldn’t find a high-quality nursery which was both flexible enough in terms of opening times to fit in with my job, and was also close to where I lived.

I then took voluntary redundancy from my area manager role for a pharmaceutical company and quickly realised that I needed to consider my next steps. I’d worked in nurseries in my late teens and - after personally experiencing the difficulties of not being able to find the right childcare - I decided to totally diversify my career.

Initially with my dad’s support, we bought two nurseries. I managed one of those sites for the first year, and my eldest daughter attended there too. At the same time, I completed a postgraduate teaching degree, and from there, the company grew – opening on average two nurseries a year at the beginning of our journey. We now have 75 sites, where we provide childcare for over 9,000 children.

Kids Planet has been named in The Sunday Times Profit Track 100 list for being one of the UK firms with the fastest-growing profits over the past three years.¹ If you could choose three things, what would you say had the biggest impact on the growth of your business?

Quality, culture and opportunities.

Firstly, we have always felt very passionate about supporting growth with a strong control on the quality of our nurseries. This includes the quality of the nursery environments, and also the quality of our Ofsted ratings.

Secondly, culture is at the heart of everything we do – our ethos of delivering high-quality childcare is instilled into our senior team members, and they live and breathe this every day, alongside their teams at nursery level.

Lastly, I would say exploring and creating opportunities. I have been very lucky to have had so many opportunities over the last three years. We have experienced rapid growth within group or single site acquisitions and also developed many sites from scratch or converted existing buildings. We have done this by creating regions or clusters which are managed by part of our senior leadership team with an Area Manager, who in turn reports into Head office. This structure enables us to upscale the business as we continue to grow.

I’m proud to say we have grown by nearly 50% over the last 3 years and are committed to growing even further. We are currently at 75 nurseries and anticipate being at 200 within the next 3 years.

What do you believe are the major barriers to female entrepreneur success?

For me, I have never really believed there are barriers. The key is self-belief and courage. Sometimes women feel that they must be able to do everything required for the job or project to go for something.

Success is about making sure that women are empowered throughout school and later in life, and that confidence and self-belief are encouraged to succeed and move forward.

What were the biggest challenges you faced during the growth of Kids Planet? How did you overcome them?

With over 2,000 employees now, overseeing so many people is a challenge, alongside finding a balance so that our senior management team, across all locations, upholds the company ethos. As we grow, another challenge is making sure quality is maintained to the highest level. We are always striving to be better.

In 2020, we were named as number one in the UK for Quality in Childcare by Ofsted, our regulatory body.² Even at the size we are, ongoing self-reflection is important to consider how we can maintain and improve.

How important is team culture when growing so rapidly? And how do you adapt your leadership style to address these constant changes?

Team culture is key to making sure the principles and ethos of the company stay strong throughout any period of change. Without sticking to the ethos, things may become diluted.

I think I have quite a reflective leadership style. I give my team autonomy and empower them to grow their own teams and hire professionals within their particular fields. As they’re on the ground, they understand better than I do how to support the business as we continue to grow.

How has COVID-19 affected your business?

At the start of the pandemic, we were closed and only open to key worker families. This left us at about 9% of normal occupancy. As a result, we had to combine some of our nurseries and close about 50% of them. We have, like many businesses, had to put strict controls in place, alongside risk assessments to operate in a safe way and evaluate processes to ensure we minimise the risk to COVID-19, keeping the children and our staff safe.

Since June 2020, however, we were able to open all our sites again. We have been really fortunate that recovery has been fast in our sector– it has been challenging, but we are delighted to say that our occupancy levels are back to pre-pandemic levels.

What advice would you give to others looking to scale up their business?

Put a structure in place that is much bigger than you might actually need. There are always hiccups that you don’t anticipate, so have more manpower at a senior level to support.

Whilst in the early stages you can learn as you go and do things yourself – employing experts in their field will support any scaling up. Your job as CEO and/or founder of the business is to orchestrate. Don’t be afraid to delegate, it will be vital to support future growth and helping your business thrive.