Sarah Stowe
So Warren you’ve recently been inducted into the Franchise Council of Australia’s Hall of Fame congratulations and in the process you’ve joined an illustrious group of franchisors and franchise professionals who’ve been recognized for their contribution to the industry. What does the recognition mean to you personally?

Warren Ballantyne
Thank you very much.

I’ve given that a lot of thought and what does it mean to us and I really accept this on behalf of Anne and I rather than just me because I didn’t do this on my own and what it means I’ve really struggled with this right from when I first was asked would I accept the nomination

I thought, yes, I’ve never really felt worthy of that. I mean, that sounds a bit apologetic. It’s not meant to be. We’ve never done it for the accolades. We’ve always done it because we’ve loved the business model and we love the people that we’re dealing with. So what it means is, okay, we’ve been recognised by our peers that we’ve done a good job. And we’ve done it in the spirit of franchising.

and the spirit of franchising is, you know, it’s where we do care about the people that come on board. So that’s what it means to me. I think we’ve possibly got it right and we’ve been recognised by those around us that we admire.

Sarah
So 30 years you’ve been in business, that’s a significant milestone. What, do you think of the key lessons from that 30 years about, about business? What have you learned?

Warren
I’ve been very lucky. We’ve been in business for 50 and a half years actually. 30 years with Guttavac and the years before that we had Ballantine Plumbing. So we had a plumbing business. you know, the story was married at 20, 20 and a half we went into business. I had a plumbing trade. We started Ballantine Plumbing and the two of us just worked on that and worked at a school plus did the books and the weekend and nights. And I was the plumber.

Probably for us, the good thing about that was that we made a lot of mistakes. Well, I made a lot of mistakes. So we took all those mistakes and when we started franchising and said, let’s see if we can fix them up. So our operations manual and our processes were really one, to run a good franchise business, but two, not to make the mistakes we made for 20 odd years.

It was really about the administration of the business so it wasn’t about the customer service. We were great at that and we loved doing it and that’s what we bought. But it’s things like we used to have job cards and so I’d write the jobs down and I’d bring them home and sit them on the desk.

And then in about three, Anne had said, you need to do the job card so I can send invoices out, know, keep the cash flow going. And I go, yeah, yeah, I’ll get that done, I’ll get that done. Anyway, it got, used to get to the point where she’d come out and say, well, we’ve run out of money, you’re gonna have to do those job cards now. So that was the motivation for me to go and sit in the office and rip through these job cards. So here you go now, send the invoices out. So we were then poor for a couple of weeks until people started to pay us.

And that curve of I’m rich and I’m poor, we saw that in ourselves and it’s something we’re trying to avoid with our franchisees. So one of the things we did is we made our reporting system in the Guttavac franchise weekly. So…

Franchises don’t pay their royalties or their costs monthly, they pay it weekly. And if to do it weekly, you have to send your invoices out. we put things in place that we should have done. And that’s what we did. We found all the faults we made. We tried to find a way to fix them, implement it into our operations manual and our processes. And I must say, most, know, 99 % of the cases, it’s been successful.

Sarah
Why did you choose the franchise model as an expansion model?

Warren
That’s a great question, not a lot of people ask me that. So here’s the truth without a filter, Sarah. I thought, you know, this is in 1997, once we’d sort of done the back end of it before we went to actually selling. I this is great, if I get 10 franchises paying $200 a week royalty, that’s 100 grand a year.

I just play golf three, four times a week, do a bit of this a couple of days a week and what a life. 100 grand a year in those days was a lot of money. And it just seemed that was to do. And I looked at McDonald’s that were in Bundaberg and they’re a franchise system and how hard can it be? So we went down the path because we saw it as a great way to expand the business without having any money to have to do it.

nothing could be further from the truth. You know, yeah, just that’s the reason we did it. That was the philosophy behind it. And we soon realized that that whole thought pattern was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So then it took us the next 30 years to get it right. And we’re still trying to get it right, you know.

every day in some way in this business we’re hopefully making it better and it’s an evolving thing. We’re just changing the whole fabric of the business as we speak to meet the market and the demands that are out there.

Sarah
And what are those kind of changes that you have to do?

Warren
The big one is finance. New franchisees coming from green fields, they are struggling to get money. banks, and I understand where the banks are, but they don’t take many risks and that’s okay, that’s fine. But you get a young couple that don’t have mortgage, they’ve got no equity.

they struggle to get money. So what we’ve done is we’ve said, let’s put our money where our mouth is. We’ve set up a rental system. So reasonably low entry price, come in that covers your training and small gutter vac fee, really small. But we then rent all the equipment for over the five year period. So the great thing about that is that all the rental comes off taxable income.

So they get the GST back, get the rental off their taxable income, and it’s not on their balance sheet, so it’s not a debt because they’re renting. We get the depreciation, so we have a win. Everybody has a win, but they can get in pretty quickly and without too much.

They don’t have to get vehicle finance and bank finance overdrafts or all the things you need in a business. They don’t have to do that. Really, sort of eliminated it.

Sarah
That sounds like a great initiative. You started out with innovation. I Gatavac was based on the idea of something different, right? So how important has it been that you kind of kept bringing in new ideas and innovations as you’ve gone through those years?

Warren
Absolutely. So don’t take me wrong here. I think all the good brands have continued to do that, I think.

The strong brands that have succeeded and gone forward have always been innovative. a lot of people come up against an obstacle and they will fight it and stand there and fight it. Why would you just go around the obstacle and find another way, another path, you know? So you do it in a car. If you come up to where there’s an incident, you find a detour. That’s all we’ve done. We’ve said, here’s an issue. Here’s a problem. It’s stopping people from doing what they want to do.

How can we fix that? So we sat down thought about this is how we can fix it. I think all little good brands do it. Of course they do. Which restaurant doesn’t change their menu? know, that’s all we’re doing. We’re changing our menu.

So innovation, adapting to the world’s changes. We had no internet when we started this thing and mobiles were very early. We used to use UHF radio. That was our communication. So you can imagine when we turn around and look back to where we come from.

Sarah
What would you do differently now if you were starting your business?

Warren
listen to people more, stop being such a smarty and I always know everything. It’s a trait that my personality has and I was trying, people were trying to mentor me during my growth and I ignored them. So that was, and I accept that, full responsibility for that and it slowed our growth down, it slowed the business growth. Admittedly we’ve still got there so in spite of

my inability to listen to advice, we still got there. And people found a way to give us advice different ways. So no, listen to mentors, that’s what I’d be doing. Find somebody you trust and you like that knows more than you and listen to them. Listen, listen, listen.

Sarah
What do you think are the challenges now for startups if you’re starting off a business that may be different from when you’re right?

Warren
Money. Yeah, money. Go back to when we first started. Banks were still pretty happy to lend money. Of course, to be fair, back in those days, you could get a mortgage, not too difficult to get a house mortgage.

So that was the rock that everyone based their lives on. Now if you live somewhere in Brisbane, unless you’ve got two million bucks, you can’t buy a house. So if you’re earning $100,000 a year, you’re never gonna be able to buy that house, ever. So there’s been a quantum shift of the way people establish their lives. And quite frankly,

I don’t have an answer for that. We’ve tried to find a way that a young couple that have come in that have got not a seroton of assets but got liquid, they got cash and they’ve got good jobs and they can make money. I’ve got a way for them to come in. But gee whiz.

you wouldn’t, mean, who can afford to buy one of the top end food outlets for two, three, four million dollars? It’s only people that have got a lot of money. we’re not a credit card business, but we’re around the $150,000 mark. it’s still a struggle.

I know, I can’t answer the question. I’m sorry, but I wish I did have the answer that. We think we’ve made it different for our business, but society, I don’t know what’s going to happen with that.

Sarah
And how do you maintain that? How do you work to maintain the profitability for your for your unit profitability? I mean, obviously, it’s dependent on the performance of each franchisee, but as a as a model.

Warren
Yeah, yeah. Well, we’re in the customer service business and we just happen to collect gutters. So, you know, being in the customer service business and that goes from hamburgers to dresses to lawn mowing to gutter cleaning, everything where you’ve got a customer that they’ve got to hand over hard-earned money is customer service.

We just happen to be in that field. So how we’ve kept the unit value up is you’ve got to do the customer service.

You cannot let down a customer ever. sometimes that happens. But you’re driving KPI as customer service first, second and third, then the rest will come. So as I say, build it they’ll come. And nothing’s truer. You give great customer service, people will look after it.

Sarah
Is your customer service the thing that differentiates you? I how do you the brand in the market? You’re saying it’s customer service, but there’s a lot of customer service brands out there, right? Maybe not a lot of gutter cleaning, but how do you make yourself special?

Warren
Good. Great great question so when we started there was virtually nobody doing this at all and Actually people laughed at us and they said how much to clean the gutter $85 You’ll never get anybody to pay that well the same house now is probably $480 so yes, they will How do we differentiate ourselves? We’ve got a second company called Ballantine safety and Ballantine safety was a company that was born from Gutter-Vac. So we working on government buildings, vacuuming gutters, and the guy said, what are you going to do about safety? What about safety?

You’ve got to do something. We went, really? No one’s worried about it up till now. So we then set up Ballantine Safety. We’re an RTO, so we’re registered training organization. We’ve invented and manufactured and sold safety equipment. So that makes us completely different to the young guy or anyone that’s out there that jumps up a ladder, throws it out by hand or a blow and then walks away.

We vacuum, we take the rubbish away, we have safety, so we’re a differentiated business. And that gives us then a lot of respect from the big clients, know, the big corporate clients to supply services to people like the fence or hospitals, nursing homes, retirement villages. So they’re happy to use us because we provide all the relevant safety and compliance.

That’s where we’re different. We’re very compliant.

Sarah
What do you think your strength is as a business owner?

Warren
Mine personally? The other 15 people in the office.
Honestly, I know my wife will argue about this but I’m possibly the least important person in the business, in the building and in the business even though when I’m needed, what I’m needed for is really important. So I’m always available for that and I’m here, I’m always here. People keep saying, when are you going to retire? say, never.

I’ve just got great people around me and our franchisees have been the thing that have helped us grow this business. So they come to us and say, listen, what do you think about this? And we go, that’s a great idea. Let’s do that. So we’ll implement it. That’ll go into the operations manual. It’ll become part of the business. So it’s a bit of a joint venture between everybody in franchising world and in head office support world.

I’ll sit in a meeting, you know, even though I seem I can talk underwater and I can, but I’ll sit in a meeting and I’ll have very little to say unless there’s an issue I’ve got to deal with, but everyone else in the meeting will come up with the ideas and we encourage that. So no, it’s very collaborative and I think

In most cases, on most occasions, franchisees find it easy to deal with us and to bring suggestions and talk to people.

Sarah
So we’ve touched, you’ve mentioned this briefly, but you are known in the industry for being a plain speaker, sort of unfiltered sometimes. How does that fit in with franchisees and the collaborative approach? Do you keep that under control or is that part of your style people come to love you for?

Warren
Love or hate. Possibly I wouldn’t be great at a… No, I’ll turn the filter back on. it depends. I can adapt to who I’m talking to. So, if I’m out in the field with the guys…

I can swear as good as anybody can swear and I can put them all together and make it sound great. And I don’t do that deliberately, it just happens. It’s one of those, you know, it’s one of those things. You’re out in the field and you’re talking about stuff and you go da da and you don’t feel uncomfortable, they’re not uncomfortable, but I can’t bring that back into the office. So as a plumber when I was on the tools, the language out on site was…

Terrible. Even though we never saw it as terrible. But in the meeting, it’s different. And, you know, I can sit down and talk to a politician or or, you know, or I can adapt. Very adaptable. And I think you’ve got to be and it depends on who comes on board. We have a lot of partners, lot of men and women come on board. So you’ve got to treat everybody with the respect that they think they deserve and they probably do. So yeah, very adaptable.

Sarah
So looking back at your time with Gutter Vac specifically, but I mean, guess overall your 50 years in business, what have been the highlights? What have been the achievements you think?

Warren
Selling the first one and selling the last one and all in between but I absolutely still get thrilled to bits when somebody says we’d like to go ahead and become a gutterback franchisee.

It still gives me a tingle and I love it because I think a couple of reasons. wow, you like our business and I’m so proud that you want to come on board and that you believe in it. And then secondly, that they come in and they achieve what they hope they’re going to achieve.

Some need a bit more help to do that, some need less help. And some are just born entrepreneurs, know. I’ve got a guy that’s in the system, been in less than three years and he’s got five territories. And he’s making money, you know, he’s successful.

And we were at a function actually with the awards dinner. He was franchisee of the year and he was nominated for that with the FCA. And he just leant over towards me and he said, know what, two years ago I was a boiler maker in a workshop and he said, tonight I’m eating caviar. How good is this? I nearly wept.

They’re the highlights. But as I said, the first one, absolutely thrilled to bits, obviously. And then of course, one that happens as they come.

Sarah
Do you think you’ve got better at picking good franchisees?

Warren
They pick us. This is not a business that we can sell to somebody. They’ve got to want to buy this business.

There’s a lot of things that would stop you from wanting to buy gutter vac and that is you work outside and you work on a roof. neither of those things are that appealing and yet we get people who come on board to go, listen, I’m sick of doing what I’m doing. I wanna work outside, I wanna talk to people. I’m not as scared of roofs and you’ve got good safety systems. Away we go, so, yeah.

Sarah
Your wife Anne, we mentioned Anne at beginning, she’s been integral to the journey. What’s been the key to a successful life and business partnership? That’s tough, working together.

Warren
Tolerance on her part. She’s very tolerant, she’s very thorough, she’s been a very… her consistent message here is continuous improvement. So she is always trying to keep things moving in an improving way. She’s good with people, she’s firm, but…she’s very precise in what she does so she looks after the books and she’s always done that right from the word go and she comes up with some really good ideas which at first I normally go that’s not good and then after I think about it for a minute I go okay but she she’s always supported me I’m you know she’s the she’s the grounded one I’m not I’m learning tech off doing things and let’s do this try that try that and she just goes yeah okay let’s try it and if it doesn’t work.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard I don’t I haven’t ever heard her say it I just thought of this she has never said to me I told you so so there you go very good yeah I’ll go up and thank you for that later

Sarah
Has it ever become tense. So over the years, mean the times when…

Warren
Never had an argument. That’s an official lie. We have had some absolute bottlers. Yeah, I mean we’ve had plenty of arguments and plenty of door slamming and stuff. And anyone that tells you they don’t, they’re a liar. It’s impossible to work together for somebody.

We’ve worked together in the same building every day for over 35 years. you know, anyone that tells you that they’ve never had any crosswords, no, it’s not possible. Well, it’s possible if one person completely dominates the other, but I don’t think you can do that for 35 years. So, no, no, we’ve had plenty.

Sarah
And so is home about work or do you manage to separate the two? Because I think that’s always the challenge.

Warren
That’s another really good question. So we, it’s not unusual for us. It’s less and less now. But in our earlier days, if we go for dinner somewhere, it’d be business. We would talk about business and what’s happening and what’s happening. At home, we would do the same. So we were both really connected to the business 24 hours a day.

It wasn’t an argument about who’s right and wrong. It was usually all about what we do to either solve a problem or, you know, how good was that meeting today with Joe Bloggs? He’s going to come on board and that’s great. We’re very excited. Yeah, you know, that’d be great.

thinking about changing the machinery to do this, what do you think? Well, you tell me, what do you think? So we would discuss stuff and that was maybe the reason we’d been married 50 odd years. We’ve had a common topic to talk about.

The most difficult, I can tell you now, is when Anne doesn’t come to work, has a few days home, and then I come home from the office, what happened? So I’m over it, I’ve done it, you know, let’s not, I don’t want to talk about it. That causes angst. So I think when we go, we’ve both got to go at the same time, we’ve got to walk out the door at the same time, otherwise it’ll be difficult.

Sarah
Well, that leads nicely to my last question, which is what next? Because it’s a founder business. Perhaps unusually, you are still there after all this time, after 30 years, right? I know you’ve said you’re not going to retire. There has to be some sort of succession plan. What is that?

I’ve got to say, I’m the one that’s struggling with how’s this gonna pan out if I don’t come in. So I won’t retire from the business, what I’ll do is I’ll do other things as well as a bit of business. So we’ve established an advisory board now, they’re a really good group of people. I imagine I’ll come into the office a couple of days a week maybe until they change the locks and that’s when I know it’s time to…

go somewhere else, they’ve changed the locks. yeah, I love a bit of cruising and I’m not a buy a caravan and go around Australia guy, neither of us are. I’ll go in a caravan as long as every night and I stay in the Hilton or the Marriott, shower and a toilet.

Sarah
So, so the business there will be at some point a transfer of of business, right? Business ownership. Yeah, it has to come. Right.

Warren
Yeah, well we set up a legacy business. We got the kids involved. Our son is director of operations, he looks after that. Our daughter is in US. Her husband’s a tax lawyer, a tax accountant lawyer and he’s on our advisory board. As a family, I see them being part of the legacy.

And as long as we’re well, mean, lots of things can change because you don’t know. We’re lucky, we’re blessed. We just don’t have any issues with our health or all the business.

We’re one of the lucky ones.

Sarah
Fantastic. Well, look, it’s been great having a chat with you, Warren. Thank you for that. And some great insights into business.

Warren
Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate it.