Latest / Stronger Business Together / E23 Break the Overwork Cycle with Stu Richards

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E23 Break the Overwork Cycle with Stu Richards · Stronger Business Together

• Granger Forson: Hello, this is the Stronger Business Together podcast, where business owners learn from each other. No theory, no gurus, just conversations of overcoming hurdles and understanding each other's journeys. I am joined by Richards Nomadic Washrooms. who, like any business owner, he's in that middle of building things, fixing things and growing something that really matters to him. So, Stuart, welcome. Stuart Richards: Hi Granger. Granger Forson: Awesome! let's get going. Act 1. All about your business. ⁓ in plain English, Stuart, what does your business do? Thanks for spending your time with us today. Stuart Richards: So my business is called Nomadic Washrooms Limited and it is a toilet hire business but a little bit different your normal toilet hire business in that we specialize in shepherd's huts. We've grown over the last five or six years to be the biggest shepherd's hut toilet hire. Granger Forson: We're on a mission to make business owners stronger together. If this conversation has helped you, please like, comment and follow on whatever platform you're using. About 60 % of our audience hasn't done that yet, and those small actions will help us reach more business owners just like you. Stuart Richards: in the country. We expanded to include ⁓ a of the business which now builds the trailers for ourselves, third parties, and we also set up a small franchise and we have three, four franchises now on board so we cover the whole country. Granger Forson: If you want to join the conversation, or if you have a hurdle question for us to use in a future episode, do contact us at info at strongerbusinesstogether.com. Now, go make your week really successful and we'll see you next time. Cheers! Fantastic! So what's the difference between toilet hire and shepherd hut toilet hire? Stuart Richards: Well, Toilet High, I everyone's standard toilet when they think of is a festival loom, one of those plastic little joms, as they call them. that's the bottom end of the market. The mid end of the market, I suppose, is the ⁓ that you see about the place, the white and green box trailers. We went one step further and created a shepherd's hut on wheels, which is also a loop. So they are top of the range and targeted at the very top end of the market. So we stand, that's our differentiator, I suppose, makes us stand out from the rest. Granger Forson: Okay, so we can probably guess what they're dealing with or their requirements are, but typically who are your clients? Stuart Richards: So yeah, our clients, so 90 % of what we do are wedding couples, people getting married. We generally operate a core season between April and the end of October. Like I say, 90 % of those people are people getting married. They can be your run of the mill wedding client or they can be top-end celebrity type wedding clients. We also do a small proportion of festival work on pop-up campsites as we also have showers. We have started getting into the corporate world doing events and things for the likes of Google and whatnot in London during the winter. Granger Forson: Well, excellent, excellent. when did the business start? What was that original spark that got it all going? Stuart Richards: So yeah, so Kate and I, my wife Kate is my fellow director. We set the business up in 2019 and it all came about as a result of us getting married ourselves. ⁓ were going to have a marquee at home and the one thing we couldn't find that sort of ticked our rustic wedding theme was the toilets. we ended up getting married in a venue actually and they had converted their stables into toilets and it sort of got us thinking. So a business plan or anything like that we ⁓ invested our first loo which we designed and had built. That was early 2020 and it's grown from there. ⁓ greatest sort of start in terms of how to start a business with active business plan, but we managed to do it. Granger Forson: Well, we often just need a really good idea rather than a business plan maybe. The business plan often comes when you actually want to and borrow money rather than actually grow it. So what does your business look like today in terms of shape and size? Stuart Richards: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so we have three businesses basically. We have a group company, we have three businesses and the group turned over about 1.25 million last year. We have the hire element which is our hire business. We have two yards, we have one in Mid Wales and one in Oxfordshire. We run about 20 toilet trailers ourselves with 10 employees. Those employees also support the franchise network. So there's another 20 trailers split between four franchisees, dotted about the country, one in Somerset, one in Yorkshire, one in Essex, and one in East Sussex at the moment. And we also have the workshop where we build Shepard's Hut toilet trailers and Shepard's Hut washrooms on traditional Shepard's Hut chassis. ⁓ for campsites and clients all around the country. So that's what we look like today. We've grown from a husband and wife partnership into a group of companies ⁓ about five and a half years. ⁓ Granger Forson: why your customers pick you then? How do delight them? Stuart Richards: I think there's two elements to it. It's the product because there's nothing else really like it on the market, although we do have a few copycat businesses that have set up since we have. So number one is the product, and number two is how we approach. the industry. The toilet industry is one of those industries where there are a lot of people doing it who haven't come from a ⁓ background. They're more hands-on so they're not as good customer facing but whoever ⁓ to Novadic washrooms to hire a toilet or deal with us in any way will always feel like they are being treated fairly and that they're part of a big family. We treat everybody exactly the same. Doesn't matter who they are, because everybody has to go to the toilet. That's all they all want to. And yeah, think everyone works for us has the same ethos ⁓ and to ⁓ how speak to people and how they deal with people. ⁓ the feels valued from the minute they enter. negotiations with us to us removing the toilet from their field and sending them a review email which we hope to get a five star. Granger Forson: Fantastic, yes. And I know you talked about the ethos there of your business and I've really enjoyed working with your team as well as we've been exploring lean implantation and thinking about how we improve everything that we do within the team. So fantastic. Yeah, it is amazing team. mean, give a customer success story that you're really proud of. Stuart Richards: Yeah, mean, there's so many. I mean, there's a lot of customer success stories I can't talk about because I'm under NDA, because of the type of client we work with. mean, one of the things I'm most proud of is really, because we... We've been going to Glastonbury for three or four years, started off with two trailers quickly expanded into last year we had 13 trailers on one site and... It was for a 650 person glamp site and single person who used the loo it was the best camping experience they've ever had at Glastonbury. And was as a result of them being able to use nice toilets and nice showers and those showers being cleaned and kept well every day and never breaking down. And I just think that that's something I'm really proud of because It's not just dropping the loos off and leaving them there. It's making sure they're always working. It's keeping on top of it. It's all the things that go in behind the scenes to make the customer feel like it's seamless, which makes me proud because they don't know what we have to do. ⁓ back end of the toilet trade is not the most pleasant because we have to deal with the sewage, but no one sees that. yeah, comments like that from big jobs like that make you feel pretty proud of what you've achieved. Granger Forson: Fantastic and I know you're award winning too so what are the awards you've had? Stuart Richards: Yeah, so we've been quite lucky on the awards front. won So for the last three or four years, we have had a Platinum Rated in the Lou of the Year award, which is a little sort gimmicky award that we get. It's the top rating you can get. won the Startup Awards for Wales, ⁓ the Startup Awards. We've ⁓ won Powys Business Award Startup category. ⁓ And and I won Entrepreneurs of the Year at the Entrepreneurs of the Year awards in London two years ago. year we were put forward ⁓ the Small Business Award category for Powys Business Awards and won that as well. So we've gone from start-up winners to now Small Business category winners and as we grow we might get into the enterprise level next, who knows. Granger Forson: Who knows? Really exciting. Brilliant. Stu, every needs leads and leads then convert into sales. ⁓ How you go about generating leads? Stuart Richards: Yeah. on Leeds, ⁓ two or three ways we do it. mean, our website is our number one go-to. We've invested quite heavily in it and we've just gone with a new digital marketing company to promote that even further. ⁓ rank number one on Google. We've had our website optimized so that when people search for toilet hire, they... Stumble across us because people wouldn't necessarily know that Shepard's up toilets exist So we've had Google CEO optimized so that they find us if they they search toilet So that's how we initially got it out there. We also attended the National Wedding Show in Birmingham We've been going to that Consistently for the last five years, although we are going to drop it now going forward because we don't need it anymore And that's been very good. But one of them biggest sort of lead generating tactics now is that we put business cards in every unit and if we've got 40 units out on hire every weekend we can have anything from 5 to 10,000 people going through those trailers every day and it only takes 10 % of them to pick up a business card and 10 % of those who picked up the business card to book us for us to have a full year's worth of bookings which we pretty well have year on year at the moment. Granger Forson: Brilliant, mean those are self-referrals, even just client referrals. like that, that's fantastic. ⁓ are you and your wife aiming for in the next 12 months for the business and why? Stuart Richards: Yeah. So yeah, I think the aim now is to continue on our growth trajectory. I mean, five years ago, we turned over 130,000 and we've grown to over 1.2 million. We'd like to get that up to 1.5 this year. Sales this year are already at 900,000. That's what we've got booked in. So, and that will keep growing as we go across all businesses. yeah, we would like to see our franchises grow with us. So two them are growing. They've had more trailers this year. The other two are new. So we'd like to see them expand with us. Instead of taking on more franchisees, we'd rather have our existing franchisees with us to cover the areas that we cover. ⁓ And then next step, I think, is ⁓ look at Europe. We have been very fortunate over the weekend to get our first instruction in the south of France with a toilet trailer, so Kate and I driving that down there on Monday. that's our next goal. There is nothing like what we do in Europe and that's where we would like to see ⁓ units ⁓ out if we can, week in, week out. ⁓ Granger Forson: Wow, brilliant, fantastic. I'm really looking forward to seeing that growth and that development and moving into Europe as well. Look out, look out, here we come with the lose. So let's go on to act two now, ⁓ business journey. Over last ⁓ few describe some of the highs and some of the lows of running the business. Stuart Richards: Yeah. I think any business owner will say that your highs and lows, you have highs and lows day in day out. But some of the biggest highs, one of the biggest highs actually that we've ever had was the response we had to the idea right at the beginning. We brought trailer on a whim, we've done no market research, we just thought it looked good. the national wedding show and it was just before Covid hit but we had probably 100 to 150 inquiries as a result of that first wedding show of which 30 of them turned into actual bookings. Now unfortunately Covid got in the way and they were postponed but they were all fulfilled. COVID for us actually, we're probably one of the only businesses that COVID was a blessing really, because it enabled Kate and I to continue working in our previous employed roles whilst growing the business. We had none of the grants or fundings that were available. We just marketed it through COVID. We very fortunate enough to get the BBC contract, which paid for a second trailer to be built. After COVID finished, we were in a position where we knew that we had bookings for five traders. So we had the revenue streams coming in to give us the confidence to buy those five traders. And actually COVID as a result was a great thing for us. And yeah, just seeing the business build is one of the greatest highs. Some of the lows, I mean, We had two years ago, we had one of our drivers managed to roll a toilet trailer on the road, which was obviously the most stressful thing I've ever had to deal with. Thankfully, everyone was all right. There was nobody else involved. And we to ⁓ get trailer, salvage it and repair within ⁓ two weeks it was out of my job at that point. you know, that was a low that turned into a high, I suppose. And then I suppose the lows is the, with being a seasonal business, it's watching the cash in the bank skyrocket and then plummet and then thinking how are we going to get through this winter. And so you get really low and down and depressed about it. And then all of a sudden you get a big contract in and the deposit comes in and sees you through. So it's all these bits and pieces that all the other business owners listening to this will be aware of. But generally, conclusion, setting up this business ⁓ becoming my own boss is the best thing I've ever done. Granger Forson: Fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing that. you running a business, ⁓ can get hard. It can be really hard work. What have you discovered about yourself when times have got hard? Stuart Richards: Yeah. It's interesting actually. have become, or I've realised that I've become quite a hard person in a way. am ⁓ pleasant to everybody and treat people how I would like to be treated in return, but when I was younger the slightest ⁓ would upset me and worry about it and I'd never sleep. But now my mentality has changed a bit and there's no point in sitting worried about it. Get on and sort it out and find a way. There is always a way to sort something out and make something right. you just take a step back, look it as a and think about what you do before maybe jumping in with a response that isn't quite right. And that's one the things I've learned a lot. myself in the five or six years that I've been doing this is that I know I can do things if I challenge myself and running a business is a massive challenge so I'm constantly challenging myself and Granger Forson: Wow. you so much. That's an amazing share. Yeah, I totally agree with that as a small business owner myself. Anything be resolved. Sometimes it takes a bit of time. Sometimes it takes a bit of ⁓ in-depth and thinking. Sometimes it's just talking. Other business owners can help do that. So yeah, ⁓ brilliant. Stuart Richards: Yeah. Granger Forson: At The Stronger Business Together, we believe in simplification. So give us an example of maybe something that you've simplified within the business to bring energy back into it. Stuart Richards: Yeah, I mean one of things that we've introduced or been working with with Granger is the of lean and two-second lean ⁓ and whole concept of lean thinking is to simplify things and make it easier ⁓ and been a whole across all the free businesses looking at ways to do that. I mean one of the things that we've introduced is so so part of lean is that you try and have a morning meeting every morning and everyone meets and they talk about their the blockers things that are going to cause issues in the day and the plans for the day and we talk about key wins and improvements, but that's really difficult for us because we are on the road constantly we have three or four different teams working in different areas. So what we've done is set up a group chat and Every meets for 10 minutes in the morning, then they summarize in the group chat so that everyone can hear what's going on. For me, ⁓ been fantastic. It's simplified things because I'm not having to have five different phone calls every morning. I just listen to five minutes of WhatsApp. I pick up what needs to be dealt with and I deal with it. And it's made my life so simpler. And that's only happened in the last two, two, one month probably. That's we've started doing that. So yeah, and then obviously the lean improvements that you can make and you encourage your staff to make. a great example of one that's on the yard right now and being actioned is when our toilet traders come in, if we have 20 in the yard, no one knows if they're clean or dirty because you can't see inside them. So Camdys, one of my employees, came up with the idea of putting a big ⁓ magnet on it. And if there's a red magnet on it, it means it needs cleaning and it shouldn't be taken out. There's a green magnet on it, means you can take it. It's just so much easier. That's going to save half an hour per delivery, easily. Granger Forson: Yeah, ⁓ love the video that she made of explaining when she came up with the idea and what they've done on that. And Stuart, little summary ⁓ that out on your WhatsApp group after your morning meetings, I think is just genius. You ⁓ you and were debating how to do this. You came up with the idea and I said, just give it a go and find out. ⁓ It's absolutely ⁓ It really, does work at such a high level and such capable activity. Yeah, that's absolutely brilliant. So implementing Lean has helped you make some significant changes ⁓ growth. What you learned about people over the last few years? We believe in growing people and developing them. ⁓ What you discovered? Stuart Richards: Yeah, so we've been on a journey with people. we first started, ⁓ I, didn't have, the business have the money to employ good people, so we just employed people. ⁓ And we've that actually it caused more hassle than it was worth. ⁓ And as we've we've been able to invest in our people. We've got the right in the right place. And we have never had anyone leave the company. I think is great. So the we've taken on and have fitted the role have never left. But it's always say, and both say that the most enjoyable period running this business when it was just her and I. But now... ⁓ My role has changed from the hands-on person, which I always am and I love doing. ⁓ mean, I'd probably say 60 % of my time is spent managing those people and sure that they can be as efficient as possible by having the information and the resources they need to do what they need to do. We have in quite a good structure. think people know their roles and What I love about where we're at now is that previously, up until probably a year ago, I knew every single job that was happening and I who was delivering it and I knew where the trailer was going. Now, I haven't got a clue. That might sound really bad, but from my point of view, that's brilliant because I know that my staff have got it covered and it's happening and I haven't got to worry about it. So yeah, ⁓ people can be, it can be the bane of your life, but if you get the right people, which I think we've got now, they make your life easier. ⁓ everybody in team is on the wavelength. They all want the business to succeed because they see it, ⁓ if it they can succeed, which I think is a great sort of team spirit to have. Granger Forson: Brilliant, yeah, no, that's really good. seen your journey ⁓ the last 18 months with your people and how you've developed them. But while I think it's so true, as you said, when you find the right people, they don't leave, the turnover is very low, because not just about finding the right people, it's also the culture that you've created and built in your organization. So, well done, you. products change time in any business. what's changed in your product range and how have you developed it over the years? Stuart Richards: So yeah, I mean, suppose we were, we could be seen to be a bit of a one trick pony with just having Shepards Huts. So we've done is ⁓ we've it and we've developed it over the years. So to start off, had Shepards Huts toilets and we just doing toilets. Then we saw a bit of a gap in the market for showers and toilets combined a lot of people getting married have... a glamping weekend so they need showers so the showers have been really popular. Then we saw a gap in the market for the festival showers which need to be bigger and more fruit put so we built some of those and those have always been out on hire. And as we've grown, we've expanded the hire fleet that way. But a couple of years back, Kate and I sort of sat down and said, all of our eggs are in one basket here. It is just Shepherd's Lou hire. And is Shepherd's Lou hire going to be, is it a fad? Is it going to disappear? No, I don't think it is. I think it's here to stay. But we did want to diversify our income streams. So we've done a couple of things. recently, our new modular toilet concept which ⁓ Not new ⁓ Concept terms modular vacuum loose, but the way we've done it is completely new We've gone sort of country bathroom high-end toilets. There's nobody else doing it in the marketplace And we've been quite successful for it with it. It's our first season. We've got it booked out about 10 or 15 times, which is fantastic the revenue for one weekend is six to 10 grand on that, whereas a toilet trailer goes out at about a thousand pounds. So there's more work involved, but it brings, we're hoping it's gonna bring in over 250 grand a year extra turnover into the business. So we diversified that way. We've also started working with Henry Naturals, who are a cosmetics company, our own brand soap. So like I say, with 10,000 people going through our washrooms every weekend, there's opportunity to cross-sell. So we our own soaps and there's an opportunity for people to scan the QR code and buy our soaps from us online if they want to. So that was another kind of diversification we went into. And then finally, I suppose, is the building of the Surge. always been able to build Shepard's Hut toilet trailers, legal, but thought well why not offer these things to campsites on ⁓ steel which we started doing. These ⁓ units designed for hard plumbing but we doing this last year. So far we ⁓ think we've 20 for non-franchise related companies. B2B. ⁓ we're hoping to continue growing that, keep the workshop busy all year round. Granger Forson: Brilliant. And what I like all about that is extending your ideas, but you're extending them based on ⁓ the marketplace is looking for and thinking about. So you're not ⁓ different, but you're actually significantly different in what you're trying to do and grow. So love it. ⁓ So ⁓ move on to Act 3 now, our hurdle. ⁓ have you chosen as your hurdle us to discuss today? Stuart Richards: Yes. So my hurdle is I think that all small business owners will be ⁓ of and ⁓ an opinion on. It is all to do with time ⁓ ⁓ lack of time. So as our business is growing, I am finding that there simply isn't enough time in the day to do everything I need to do. Even if I work 60, 70 hour weeks, still can't get things done. ⁓ it's becoming a problem. I've got ideas on how I can overcome it. We've put in place ⁓ of those ideas and they are working, but that's my hurdle. It's my biggest challenge ⁓ the moment. Granger Forson: Okay, so we were defining it before we came on the call. the business is growing, ⁓ workload seems to be growing ⁓ than decreasing mixing between lots of different people. ⁓ right, let's start, let's just dream forwards. If you could fix this in the next six months, ⁓ what would future ⁓ role for be in the business? Stuart Richards: Yeah. So think my role would be ⁓ as true managing director. So, you making the big decisions ⁓ on ⁓ as arise. But also I like to get back to a little bit of the stuff I love which is going on site, meeting the clients because like I said at the beginning our business is built on Kate and I, I think and it is what I love. So being able to go and do that when I want to. but also grow the business and make these big decisions and not get involved with a lot of the nitty gritty like I have done today. For example, today I have spent the morning doing the bank reconciliation, which is a nightmare. Yesterday I spent the whole day booking ferries and doing the customer excise stuff to get this trailer out to France. That's stuff that somebody else can do, but at the moment there's nobody here who can do it. Granger Forson: Yeah, but that specific one is something new for the business though, isn't it? You're still learning and understanding. There may be people out there separately that could help you, but it's still, the expansion activity. You've got to learn it. You've got to find out how to do that. ⁓ the day-to-day activity is the thing that we need to focus on change. ⁓ ⁓ condition, today, take us through last 48 hours. Stuart Richards: It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, my day starts about, ⁓ get up at six o'clock, I take the dog for a walk. I want to walk for longer, but I can't because I know I've got to get here to start work. So ⁓ try and get here at of half seven ⁓ then I go through all my emails ⁓ my emails consist of quoting for New Hub builds. I... I all of the ordering for the building materials. I'm in charge of all of that. I do all of the drawings for the shepherds' huts. spend a lot of time doing bank reconciliation with Lauren, whose it's not Lauren's job, but she does it. She's our office manager. And ⁓ I a lot of time on the telephone dealing with not staff issues, but issues that staff have. head gasket on the truck the other day. So I've got to sort of getting that truck back to Whelford to get into our garage to get it fixed. So that's what my day looks like. then spend quite a lot of time on the phone with suppliers for big jobs, which again is something I enjoy doing but something I don't necessarily need to do. The jobs that I really need to be doing seem to put off. For example, end of year accounts, they need to be done and there's a bit of work to do it and I haven't been able to do it because I've been firefighting all this other stuff. yeah, that's what my days look like at the moment. Sat here quite a lot of the time unfortunately. ⁓ Granger Forson: Yes, okay So that's got a sort of understanding of where are now. ⁓ End year accounts, that's your responsibility, ⁓ absolutely. ⁓ just through some of those elements for it. Let's first of all talk about headcount. So what was your total headcount at the moment? Stuart Richards: In terms of employees, we have 10, including me and Kate. Granger Forson: All right, you're at that natural transition of bringing in now a second leader within the business to run either operations or sales or type activity that you want to take. Now, I Kate runs sales and ⁓ marketing already as a ⁓ of the leader of the business. So need some sort of then ⁓ middle sort of general manager type activity taking place because the day-to-day activity that you need to be able to hand over to those people are those general things like dealing with the head gas gig issue, dealing with ordering materials, etc. So are you ⁓ trying to find somebody that could do that? Stuart Richards: So our initial idea was to get that exact person that you've just chatted through. So what we are now thinking though is that we have identified several people within the business already that we think might be able to step up. So we're a little bit different in that we have these three separate businesses. They're related, but they can be unrelated when it comes to people. Our idea is to ask one of our workshop assistants actually who we took on as a temporary employee who is going to come on full time and is fantastic to basically take on the ordering the materials and the quoting and manage the workshop essentially. So I think we've got that side covered which is great. a sales of things in terms of the hires Kate and Lauren are completely on that and happy with that. it's the operations side of it, which we probably need to look at doing something on, and the account side. So we are interviewing tomorrow for a new part-time bookkeeper slash account assistant, who is going to... The idea is that she takes, or he takes, all that burden of financial reporting off myself and Lauren. Lauren, who is office manager, basically probably spends two days a week even on top of this chasing receipts etc where she should be selling that's all she's been doing selling and getting bookings in so we want to free up her time and free up my time that then gives me more time to do the bits that I need to be doing it still leaves that little void in that people are still going to come to me for the head gasket problems for though we haven't got enough toilet roll problems So it's either I teach them that actually I'm not your first protocol, the office is your first protocol, we put somebody else in between me and them. Granger Forson: is another alternative. Now, ⁓ agree with people. There are times when we need the right people. So you're financing, ⁓ activity. Definitely, you need that skill set to bring somebody in that can grow with the business, can really help ⁓ and sort that all out. But I'm thinking here as well is this idea ⁓ is the process should actually deliver the solution rather than the people. mean by that? So for instance you talked about toilet rolls. So if somebody is responsible for ordering toilet rolls, how do they order? Where do they order from? Because it's in your head at the moment. So you could move that to somebody else's head, but it's still why are you running out of toilet rolls? That's got to be a staple thing for a toilet company, toilet hire company. Stuart Richards: you Granger Forson: going wrong is the method and the process that you've put in place to help ensure that you never run out of toilet rolls. Within Leanworld, we call that a Kanban replacement system. ⁓ the process ⁓ the activity. So same with the ordering of your materials for your shepherd's hut, having a standard checklist that you go through for all the requirements that you would need for each of your designs. The sizes might change and the quantities might change, but you've already pre-prescribed everything that you need. So often in businesses what we sometimes fail to really understand is actually if we could fix the process, we probably only need to fix the process once and it can run on itself be able to make happen. Now once being, you know, there may be a few iterations to get it right, absolutely, ⁓ once it's fixed, it'll just run itself and you won't have those then disturbance situations that are coming through. ⁓ ⁓ does that strike with you? Stuart Richards: Yeah, definitely. think you're 100 % correct there. The Kanban system from Lean is something that we're looking to try and introduce. everything you said has been swimming through my brain. The Shepard-Sutt material ordering system, i.e. there's a list. Someone just orders what it says on the list. Yeah, all of those things. do think the systems need improving because it is all in my head or Kate's head and needs to be simple. needs to be, ⁓ we run out of toilet roll, this is what you do. And just happens. It doesn't need me to intervene. It shouldn't need me to intervene. Granger Forson: Absolutely. And you're starting to see that with some of the update meetings that's coming out on the WhatsApp group. You're starting to see that because you've even said that ⁓ of the teams have come closer together because of that. Even though they're miles and miles apart, ⁓ helping each other. We're starting to see that take place. ⁓ it's then thinking about the process operation. I'm not meaning writing down processes. Red green stickers, magnets, sorry. Stuart Richards: Hmm. Yeah. Granger Forson: magnets, green magnets, that you've put on the shepherd's huts, instantly it solves a massive problem that we've got in place. So it's finding those simple ways of doing. When we think about standardised work and writing things down, start with checklists. Checklists are the best things because it gets that knowledge out of your head, gets that knowledge out of Kate's head, gets it down on a piece of paper and just says to someone, look, next time you do this job, just go through this checklist. sure you've done everything that's on here. Tick it off if you need to, but just go through this checklist. that can help you do it. Next time you're ordering materials for Shepard Hutts, here's a standard build. All you need to do is write the quantity against each one and hand it over to Lauren and Lauren orders the materials. I mean, I'm not sure how the process works, but it's that type of activity that we need to do. It's step by step saying, this went wrong. How can we fix the process to make sure that we don't have these problems again? And that will reduce. Now it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen overnight, but it'll slowly build. more and more strength into the business and people will trust the processes and then things start happening. Brilliant. on that type of thinking, yeah, we need more people, yes, but we also maybe think about process activity. ⁓ one experiment that you're doing the next week to see if you can start to reduce ⁓ process issue that keeps coming up? Stuart Richards: Yeah, I think one of the things I could do is write down some of the stuff, some of these things, write down the checklist for let's say ordering toilet roll. Let's do that. That's a simple one. Very simple one. It's very easy. I can write it down and see if it improves things. Granger Forson: Fantastic, yeah. And it's that, that's just start of doing it. And I know you and I are going to be having a conversation about Kanbans and stock replenishment systems to make that happen. Brilliant. So if you start eliminating some of the process problems within your business, you know, in the next few months, it takes effort. Don't get me wrong. You have to put the effort in to build the improvement that needs to take place. But we've been learning that our lean journey together. If you start putting these things in place and start eliminating those, what will that allow you then to do, do you think, going forwards? Stuart Richards: it would definitely free up some time, free up time and allow me to do the things I need to be doing to grow the business. Granger Forson: Brilliant. Super. Okay, well, good luck on those steps. Let's move on to Act 3. I'll wrap up and close. So what have you said today that maybe surprised you? Stuart Richards: Thanks. have I said today that surprised me? Yeah, probably I don't actually ⁓ stand and really think about how proud I am of what we've achieved and talking about that at the beginning, I am proud of it. It's been a long, hard journey. It's been a sacrifice. We've not friends, but we haven't seen some friends in a long time because of what we're doing. When you look back and reflect, I'm proud of being able to say I've done that and I've built this. For sure. Granger Forson: Brilliant, know, credit where credit's due for everything you've done ⁓ to build business, You and Kate been amazing. So ⁓ finally, Stu, ⁓ can people hold of you to learn and follow more about your journey? Stuart Richards: Yeah, no, they can obviously have a look at our website, is www.nomadicwashrooms.co.uk everything is on there, everything we do. Our Instagram, ⁓ at Nomadic Washrooms is the place to see what we're up to day to day. Videos, content, us our expeditions all over the world as it seems to be now. And then, yeah, if they want to get in touch with me personally, they can email me. info at nomadicwashrooms.co.uk Granger Forson: Stuart, thank you so much for our fantastic conversation today. Thank you for being so honest with us. Stuart Richards: Thank you, Grainger. Yeah, it's been really good. Thank you for having me.