How SILK Laser grew from a garage to 200 clinics with Martin Perelman

I'd rather own 10 to 15% of a massive company or massive or large company versus owning 3 or 4 or 5 clinics just in Adelaide, but being 100% owner. People don't really invest in the company. They invest in management's ability to execute that plan. We never let profit, for example, get in the way of putting in those resources because we knew if we had the resources in, as we added more clinics, the profit would come. The Noti presents Growth Diaries, the fascinating stories behind the best brands in beauty, wellness, and fitness. Hosted by Sudhir Koneru. Imagine you pooled your savings with your friends to start a business together in your garage. Fast forward to today, that dream has transformed into one of the largest and most respected names in the cosmetic and wellness industry. Our guest today, Martin Perelman, co-founder and CEO of Silk Laser, turned that dream into a reality. From pursuing golf in college to selling watches and ultimately building an empire of over 100 clinics, Martin's journey is nothing short of exceptional. With a focus on expansion, customer service, and community, Martin has redefined what it means to look and feel good. Today, we'll explore his remarkable path of growth, the pursuit of quality, and the art of franchising that helped shape his success. Welcome to Growth Diaries, Martin. My absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Great. So first, Martin, I did want to start off with, you have a wonderful story about how you started off and there's color to your career prior to starting the business in terms of what you did. So maybe you should give a little color as to how was your career prior to starting Silk and doing this. Look, I've been working with Silk for just over 16 years now, since I was about 30 years of age. Before that, I was just starting out my career. So for about 10 years before that, I was living in Sydney. I was working in a completely different industry. I was working in Swiss watches. So working in a variety of different sales roles, selling watches, sort of cut my teeth into how business works. I very quickly knew after working in that industry for 10 years, working for big corporate Swiss companies, that my ultimate goal was to start my own business and run a small business. And so that was sort of my motivation of not really wanting to be in big corporate was sort of my motivation to opening my own business. Cool. So how did the laser thing come about and how did you, you know, obviously, you know, it requires a lot of investments over the laser stuff, but how did you decide? This is an area and how did you get started? Um, I sort of fell into it, to be honest. I was living in Sydney with a couple of other roommates, both of them from Adelaide. We're all sort of friends working together. One of my friends was working in the industry, but working on the laser repair side. So he was in between jobs and he took a job for 6 months, um, fixing lasers. And this is all the way back in 2008, 2009, where really the start of cosmetic lasers for hair removal was only just sort of starting in Australia. He sort of saw the business starting to grow. He was 29, I was 30. He wanted to do a one or two laser clinics as a pure laser hair removal play for us to sort of start our own first businesses. I was 30 years of age, had not done anything like that before. And thought, yeah, I'll give it a go. And it was just, it was just something as small as that. Yeah. Great. So, and I think to get this off the ground in terms of the funding, the money, because you both were pretty early in carriers and how did you, you know, bring it all together to say, let's get this company launched in terms of— We operated off a shoestring budget. So there was 4 of us. We all put in $50,000 each. I did not have $50,000. I borrowed $30,000 of it from the bank. So rule 101, not to do that, but I did that. With our $200,000 between the four of us, we brought in two secondhand lasers and fixed them in our garage in Sydney, which my roommate was doing laser repairs, so he knew where to source them, etc. We did the design through my sister, who is a designer based out of Melbourne. We did the logo and website through my best friend from school. Who I was still in close contact with. I think we did the website and logo for $8,000 in those days. And we got up and running. We advertised for our first staff in the newspaper. That was in those days, you had to put it in the newspaper rather than online. And we started with two girls working in the clinic and, and a website and away we went. Great. Great. So that's of course adventurous in terms of early days. Most people are afraid about doing that kind of a leap into it. But how did you go about finding, because you were not from the industry, you were not working in the laser clinic and you had a whole bunch of people you knew to bring. How did you find customers early ka days? Yeah, look, we took a real focus on digital as our strategy back in those days. And I know that's a word that's taken for granted now. Everybody does digital. That's the standard process. But back in 2009, there was so many traditional marketing methods. We really took a focus of ensuring everything was software as a service, digital based, so that we could advertise for ourselves. We really started with family and friends as a first point. We did a small street, high street location here in Adelaide in Hyde Park. And the first few weeks was really about doing local events in Adelaide. So we'd do the Tour Down Under, we would do local areas using family and friends, word of mouth. Basic Google review and starting of social media, but not a lot in those days. And we just grew week by week. As we then started to grow, we made a strategic decision. This was 3 or 4 years later where we started to move into shopping centers where you then have high volume traffic and you started to get lots of eyes on your brand. But in those early, early days, it was just ensuring that we were growing week on week through a very small marketing program and through family and friends. Cool. And when you moved into the shopping centers, you were still on your own. It wasn't like you were funded, but did you have trouble convincing people saying, hey, you should trust me to give this space? It was a pretty big leap for us to go into a shopping center. And the reason I say that is the rent discrepancy between a high street and a shopping center is significant. So we always sort of avoided shopping centers in those early days because they were just so expensive and the sales you would have to do to make a shopping center work was so much more dramatically higher. And so we made the decision to try one or two in the local shopping centers here in Adelaide and take a plunge, but knowing that there would have to be a significant step change in the way our sales were presenting. But we needed to start with one or two and try them. And so we did. And, and then since then, we realized that that was going to be our next sort of foray into growth is going into the big centers. And we quickly realized where we wanted to be in the center, specific locations that cater to our demographics. So for example, our classic shopper is, or a customer for us is a mom, you know, probably a mid to late thirties who's just starting to age a little bit. Doesn't look like she's in her twenties, got a couple of kids. And so we focused on where that is for us and being near, for example, grocery store, Coles, Woolworths. Was an important one because that is our core demographic that visited that. It also allowed us to trade late at night because Coles or Woolies in Australia are open till 9 PM every night. So we'd be able to stay open till late and service those clients after hours as well. Great, great. I think I've seen that some of the successful brands have chosen locations very carefully after understanding the demographic of the customer. And as you said, in the US, for example, some business, I forget, they were close to Whole Foods because Whole Foods met their demographic kind of thing. And so the same way, looks like It was always our key. We didn't always get that opportunity, but it was always our number one. If we could pick anywhere in the center, it'd always be near grocery if we could for late night trade and for core demographics to work past us. And look, shopping centers didn't want us to be in the fashion run, for example. So being in the service run, which would be near grocery, actually ticked a lot of boxes for them too. Yeah, great. And I think that's good advice for most other people as well as they look at their brands and they're growing, figuring out where their customers are and if they can make a simple association, like you said, like grocery stores or, you know, this brand brand customers or our customers really simplifies marketing. I mean, it was, it was an important part of our growth. We knew that to build a brand in a local geography, you needed to get the brand becoming a household name. So we really focused on concentration in each of our markets. So ensuring that we grew in each state or geography that we were in, that we had quite a lot of saturation so that Avocanaim became a household name. So then if we wanted to see growth outside of that, we could then start to move more onto high street because people already knew our name and our brand. And now also just seekers through alternative ventures, walk-by traffic, for example. Cool. So at what size did you decide to start franchising? You had, how many stores did you have before you started? Uh, it was pretty early on. I think our first franchisee was around clinic 8. Oh, I think 7 or 8 or 9. You know, in the first early days, we were opening roughly one clinic a year, purely in South Australia. So quite slow. And by about 2009 to 2015, we had about 6 clinics in Adelaide. We then decided that it was an important part for us if we wanted to keep growing, but some of our original founders wanted to exit. So we brought some external investment on, and with that first initial tranche of external investment came franchising skill and expertise. So we sold 40% of the company to high net worths in Adelaide, and one of those investors was a very successful franchise, franchisor through a different brand they had. And they wrote our first set of franchise docs and then brought some franchising expertise in and we franchised our first clinic. Great. Great. So that's good. So you had both, when you found the investor, you found also the skill sets of franchising along with the investor, which is quite convenient because I was going to ask, like, lead you to saying, how did you learn about franchising kind of thing? And we knew nothing about franchising early on. So we brought in expertise to help us with that. I think we quickly realized that in our industry, a corporate model is a very challenging model. And what I mean by that is we're a service-based business. We're not a classic retail that sells whatever it may be, clothes or whatever. We are focused on service. And so having a franchisee that is an owner-operator working on the tools, working in front of house, being the HR manager for the, for the team in clinic was really critical to quarantining that talent. Uh, we do a huge array of services and ensuring that that talent doesn't walk down the road and open their own business or go to a competitor was really important to keep that talent in our business. So partnering with franchise partners was a critical key for our growth story. Cool. That's good. Because I think a lot of people, when they're selecting franchise partners and franchisees, you know, knowing the profile of who you're looking for, in your case, I think you were very clear that it has to be owner-operator who's very hands-on, who protects the business, grows the business and is well invested in it. We weren't doing it for the money. So an important thing for us was we weren't doing it, we weren't looking to fund our growth through franchisee investment. For us, it was how do we make a long-term sustainable business and picking the right franchisee talent was critical for us. So for us, we didn't want to have something like financial burden get in the way. So for example, what I mean by that is if we had, let's say, a nurse injector or a clinic manager who was excellent talent that we wanted to lock into that business. Quite often we would potentially be the bank and vend all them in. Now there would be a loan created, but instead of them having to go to the bank or having to raise capital to do that, we would often lend them money at commercial interest rates that would then be put against the business. And then that business would pay them off or pay the loan off first before they would see any type of dividends or something after that. So again, we would try and find ways to lock in talent, talent being number one more than let's just grow at all costs, no matter what the franchisee. Cool. So that's interesting. It's not just owner-operator, but owner-operator with expertise really in the business really pays off very well. I'm sure because they know your business so well, they probably increase the likelihood of success. We wanted to look at what's our long-term sustainable growth model. And we knew owner-operators working in the business was the path that we wanted to go down. So We then were, what do we need to do to ensure we're locking in that talent? And we'd always look inside our own business first through key managers and key nurse injectors, et cetera. Okay. So as you grow as a franchise business, this is a service business, not just a service business in your kind of thing. There's a lot of regulatory stuff and the customers can get, in terms of if the services aren't done right in terms of laser, how did you make sure as you were scaling that there was consistency in what your brand stood for? It's probably one of the most challenging areas of the businesses as you continue to scale to ensure you get a consistency because you still can get pockets of poor quality coming out depending on how well that business is being run, how well they're utilizing education resources. I think, you know, businesses go through these step changes where you sort of have a certain amount of head office resource managing a certain number of clinics. And then when you bump up, you've got to put the resources in first. So you create this step up and then it flatlines again. So I think that's where a lot of businesses I found or understood have fallen over is they don't see the resourcing requirements when you make the step change in number of locations. So we always made sure that we would put in that step change of adding an extra level of resources ready to go. So for example, on your question around compliance, we have a lot of different compliance we need to deal with. There's laser hair removal compliance on a state-by-state basis. There's medicines and poisons compliance for injectables on a state-by-state basis. There's TGA for advertising of their sport medications. So we would always ensure that we're building those resources in advance. Sometimes we were a little bit thinly spread, but we never let profit, for example, get in the way of putting in those resources because we knew if we had the resources in, as we added more clinics, the profit would come. Cool. I think, yeah, that's one thing in franchising, as you said, often people don't invest adequate amounts because it's hard to predict what's coming, but those who make those investments, I think, make sure they protect their brand. And it's really challenging, right? Because you don't know what you don't know, right? We were very fortunate in that when we did our second tranche of investment to private equity, and then we created a new board, they were really strong in helping me understand that. And they had seen it with so many founder-led businesses and where businesses had fallen over of going from sort of 8 clinics or 8 stores to 15 to 20. You really need to build in a step change of resource management to do that. And it wouldn't make sense on paper because you're like, I've got almost the same number of staff as I do clinics, but you've got to realize that needs to be in place before you add the next 10 to 15 to 20 clinics. And so they really helped guide me to understand that. And now it makes so much sense, but at the time it just financially, like, what am I doing? But it's an important part of our growth story. And, you know, we're moving offices. Our last day in the office, I, you know, it was our third time we've moved offices. Every time we move, my team go, what are you doing? I'm going to this office that is so much bigger. We're going to have not to do with ourselves, but every 3 years, like we're bursting at the seams. So again, it's about making sure you're forecasting. Your growth or where you want to achieve and take it and making sure you're putting that in place beforehand. Comes with a cost, I understand, but if you can manage that cost, then you will reward yourself at the end. Cool. And that's, I think, good advice because usually a founder understands the business very well, the service itself very well. But if you can find an investor who brings certain value to the table beyond money, like helping you to scale or understand franchising, in your case, it seems to have worked out well that you're in a great relationship. It's pretty easy to find dumb money. We didn't want dumb money. We wanted money that came with expertise that could help us. So when we did our second tranche of investment to private equity, there was quite a few different private equity investment firms, but we chose the one that had a really good reputation with working well with management. And we had a, what I would consider a wonderful private equity experience. Great. Great. Awesome. So then as you've grown, how have you seen, we talked about marketing and finding customer customers in the early days, but as you've grown, how have you seen various things contribute to your, you know, finding customers, marketing, and how, you know, advising your franchisees and how they work? Yeah, I mean, look, our business has evolved a lot over the years. You know, we were originally just a pure laser hair removal play. Price points were very, very different to what they are now. And so in those early days, you could be very, very successful because high margin product, high margin service. Price points were, were very, very high and labor was a lot lower and rent was a lot lower. As we moved into shopping centers and concentration and competition came, price points came down, but higher volume came up, but not necessarily more dollars. So your margins got squeezed, your rents went up. And so we knew we had to sort of start to pivot and expand our services instead of just being a pure laser hair removal play, have a full range of services. So with that came new service offering, cosmetic injectables. So things like Botox and dermal fillers. Became a part and parcel of introducing that on a volume scale in shopping centers, et cetera. We expanded our full range of skin treatments. So I think we have, I don't know what the number is, but well over 30 to 40 different skin treatments and services that we offer. We then started to create the vertical margin through product so that we could make our own skincare that we would then sell to our franchisees, but they would also have it enjoy a nice decent margin that they would then sell to their customers. So as service offering evolved with that, then all of a sudden you've got a lot more contributing to the pie, which allowed you to have a full range, what you would call a Laser Clinic today. It definitely didn't look like the way it did 10 or 15 years ago, but we are sort of the new medical version of a full range beauty clinic. So, you know, ensuring that we're taking our franchise partners on that journey is really important. They look for us for evolving our service mix and new product development and ensuring that that continues to contribute to their profitability. Yeah, so I think that's common that as you said, early days margins are high, then you get compressed and you expand and people who have survived have explored and found other services to add to keep increasing the revenue. And that's great, but you make it sound, of course, pretty easy. You just add services. But in terms of how do you add, like you, you built an expertise in laser, you understood your friends head repair shops, and then you figure out everything. Now you learn about injectables. So how did you go about picking one at a time and figuring it out? I mean, in those early days, as we added services, it wasn't anything revolutionary. It was just start really small and then learn and build. So, you know, with laser hair removal, we started with two girls, and then we added a third, and then we added a fourth, and we added a second clinic, and we added one, etc. With injectables, we started with one doctor, Dr. Zoe. She's still with us today, 16 years later. And that was in 2010. And then we were just doing it very, very light. And then in 2014, '15, we brought in 4 full-time nurses that we worked 38 hours a week and we had no real team, one staff member. We relied on our suppliers to build out these 4 people up. Again, started very, very slowly. So first week I'd have one appointment a day, then the next week it'd be two, then the next week it'd be two, then maybe three. And all of a sudden I now have 250 nurses. So it wasn't anything more special than that. Start small, learn, understand, evolve, work on smaller margins, then start to bring in more talent. And as they see their client base building, then we would see our success as well. Skin product was the same, bring in talent. I brought in a head of skincare, a head of, um, skin treatments. Started with, you know, 3 or 4 services, just microdermabrasion, skin peels, the basics. Then we added LED and people thought, what's this? Then we added microneedling and now we're adding SilFirm, RF needling, and all of a sudden we have a full range of services. But again, started very, very small and humbly and then just built up from there. So in the industry, it's a very rapidly evolving industry with so many new services and you just shared a slew of new services you've added. The, how do you stay on top of all that's happening and how do you evaluate, is this relevant for me or should I not? Yeah. I mean, look, in the beauty industry, you're 100% right. There's so much offering and always what's next, what's next, what's next. We take a really pragmatic view that we want to have services and we don't want machines that are dust gathering the business. So we focus on efficacy of results. We focus on return on investment. Cost of CapEx, cost of consumable. So there's a whole variety of things that we will look at. I think we're in a very fortunate position now where, you know, across Australia and New Zealand, we've got just shy of 200 clinics. So we have a real opportunity that new products and services that come to market, we are a logical option for them should they want to get a national footprint. But again, we go through our own internal testing. So even if we've got white papers or whatever it be saying this machine does X, Y, and Z, we will do all our own internal testing. So for example, an injector You know, there's dozens of new products being launched in Australia every 3 months. We have a full new product development area that will focus on everything, look at efficacy of results over a 6-month period before we will launch anything. So we don't like to be the launch unless we have exclusivity. Otherwise, we're happy to be second to market, but then launch it on a mass scale. Cool. Sounds good. And in terms of marketing, while you did this in the early days, which is local community marketing, even now when you launch a new franchisee there are elements of digital you do, the franchisee does, and the location. Maybe you want to elaborate on what do you expect the franchisee to do? We try and create a library of local, a variety of different, like a whole library of marketing opportunities for our franchisee. Our franchisee, it's all up to them on how they want to market it. So we'll give them the core basics. So what I mean by that is obviously location is really critical on walk-by traffic and things like that. We will obviously give them their digital presence through social media advertising, et cetera, and pushing people to the website. And having a nice convenient location that's easy to access. But then you've got your whole slew of local area marketing initiatives. It's really critical that our local franchisee pushes their local community to ensure that they are a household name and being sought after in their market. So we have a library of local area marketing content through that might be VIP events. It might be sponsoring local events like Fashions on the Field at a community horse racing event, or it could be doing local festival. So there's a whole variety of things that we will do. They might join the women's association or whatever it might be. They need to understand their core demographic and we will supply all of that local area marketing for them. Almost as a library plug and play type of thing. Cool. So I think I've seen this with multiple brands that even when they become big, they don't lose the focus on the local marketing because I think starting off, that seems to be very important. To establish every store. You've got the big corporate chain, which people sort of see us as. We try and get away from the word corporate and we try and get them that we're a whole group of small franchisees and small business owners is the area that we want them to focus on. Is there any particular trait of yours that stands out that you think has helped most in your success in your journey? It's a good question. It's a hard one to answer. I think my biggest strength is my way of working with my management team. I'm very good with people. I've been very, very fortunate in keeping my management team together. I think since we started our really strong growth story back in 2017, 2018, that same management team has been with me all the way through to 2025. So we're still coming up to almost 10 years now. I think really ensuring that you know how to pick good talent, build a high-performing team around you. And then making sure you lock that team in. I think it's probably one of the biggest challenges as businesses get larger is people want to move on to their next idea and opportunity or the next part of their journey. I've been very, very fortunate in that my team are really enjoying the journey with myself. So I'm only as good as my team around me and my success is their success. So ensuring that we're all enjoying the success. Both at a career perspective and a financial perspective as well. Yeah, great. And I think I've seen that the ability to retain talent and leadership for long terms makes brands stand out kind of thing, you know? It's the number one thing that if anyone wants to get out of there is, as you're growing, you need people around you to grow and be successful. And that comes to talent and, you know, where businesses fall over is where they have high turnover of talent because all the IP goes out the window. And I'm not saying the next people that come through, they just don't have that IP. It takes a long while to scale up again. So ensuring you're locking in the talent, sort of that anchor point that has all the IP of everybody, but all of them are the key people that run on with small businesses and use me as sort of a sounding board. Cool. And if somebody today were trying to start off a business in this space, what would you advise them today? Don't start in my space. No, look, I think from our perspective— Which is valid advice. Don't start in your space because it's too late. Yes. You know, fix something. We're doing great. No, look, I think for people, wanting to start their own business, just work within your skillset to start with and understand what you're good at. And then ensuring you have a really clear goal of what your growth story looks like, what your exit strategy could look like. A lot of people go into business not knowing what an exit strategy could look like. And maybe you don't have one. Maybe you want to buy a career. So I think having a really key focus of what you want to achieve out of it and what you want growth to look like, and then making sure you are planning planning and planning. You know, I never really appreciated about how simple something is, is writing your 3-year plan on a page and having that at the front of your board packs or whatever it is every month of what your goals are and having something. So I really thought it was like a to-do list of what I want to achieve. We found that really, really key for us. That's good advice. In fact, I'm also in the process of writing like my 3-year plan again, saying, you know, we can, because it changes as you grow. Correct. You're spot on. So, you know, always redoing that and ensuring you've got a really clear path of what you want to achieve, I think is really, really critical. And then making sure you put talent around it. Yeah. Cool. And as you've, in your career, is there a company that you've seen that you've admired or looked up to that you have learned from? Look, there's heaps of different companies. Mine's not really around companies. Mine's around people. I've been very fortunate in that I had a really supportive board around me. I had a wonderful chairman with me for 10 years who was sort of my mentor in business. Outside of my dad from a family perspective. So for me, you know, there are lots of great companies and they've all got different things, but for me, it's all around people. And my admiration has come through working around good talent. As you've grown, you, of course, there's people and the organization has grown. How have you leveraged technology to power your growth in terms of your business? Yeah, I mean, look, technology is critical to our business. Obviously when you've got locations all over Australia, a lot of them in very, very hard to reach locations, very regional locations, it's critical that you have all of the things set up so that you can manage them remotely or as best you can. So ensuring that we're continually staying on top of all the different technological software as a service programs to ensure that you're getting consistency in all of those locations. I mean, we have a fundamental goal that if a customer walks into a clinic in Darwin, Cairns, or all the way down in Bunbury in Western Australia, that they theoretically had the same service everywhere. So technology plays a critical role to that. I mean, our technology wasn't anything more than just a point of sale to start with, but now we have so many different technological advancements that plug into all of those to make a really clean, seamless experience for our clients. And more importantly, really seamless, clean, and plain experience for our franchisees and staff that are on the floor. Yeah. Great. Great. And in terms of, you know, building a company is always a hectic life. I mean, you know, and a lot of stress and anxiety, whether things are going to work out or not, et cetera. How do you personally take care of your personal wellbeing in this journey? Yeah. I mean, look, I think understanding what your motivation is, is critical. My motivation for success was always around my family. So the way I look after myself is through my family. I've got a beautiful wife and 4 crazy kids at home, so I work for them and enjoy my career for them. I think earlier on when I didn't have as many children, you know, I was highly ambitious to be just successful in my own right. And as success sort of came, you know, my focus has now been to look after them. Outside of that, I'm an avid golfer, so trying to get a bit of time to myself is really critical. So at the moment, it's very hard with 4 kids. So my EA now knows that from midday onwards on a Friday, that's my DND, everyone calls it, do not disturb. And I head to the golf course from around 12:30 till 5 until the wife calls me and goes, where are you? And then I, that's my sort of 4 hours to myself where I can tune out, but think about wife, kids, work. And I just, just myself in the golf course. Nice. Nice. I do that when I go for a hiking alone and then it's like time to reflect on a lot of things. It's funny, I never really appreciated until I'm now in my 40s of how much I enjoy that. Because, you know, when you're in such a busy, hectic growth time, as you would know, starting a business and you're in a business, you think about it 24/7. It's always in the back of your mind. But I've now managed to get to myself to a stage now that when I go to the golf course, nothing else. I only think about myself and the golf or something that I want to do personally. But I put everything else aside and, and it's amazing at how much more refreshed I am by my Sunday night if I've had that on a Friday. Nice, nice. I think for everyone, something has to be there in their life which enables them to be refreshed and regenerated. Otherwise— Recharge yourself. Yeah. Just mini recharges. So yes, I find if I don't do that, I'm a little bit snappy and grumpy by the end of the weekend. So it's a really important piece to have that just for me. Cool. And if you had to tell a customer what Enes, in a few words, Why should someone choose to visit Silk Laser? Oh, look, I think that's a pretty easy one for us. We have a great reputation for giving great quality service, efficacious results, and really knowledgeable staff. So I would say, you know, come to us for a really good understanding of what your journey is, and we will try and do everything we can to make sure you achieve your outcomes. Cool. Sounds good. Martin, even in my own business, I've always had to struggle knowing when to raise money, when to bring in capital and drive our business. And you've actually been very successful successful, as you said earlier, in finding a great private equity partners, et cetera. But maybe you can expand more on when did you have to engage with investment for powering your growth and the choices you made along the way? Yeah, it's probably the question I get asked the most. Look, the first part when we got investment was almost a forced investment. And what I mean by that is our original four founders were starting to want to have exit strategies. So we brought in the first investment Ad Nauseam, we sold 40% of the company and that was to high net worth wealth. After that, when we had a really clear growth path of what we wanted to achieve, it was really clear for us that we would need external investment along the way. And obviously financial investment is a vehicle for us to achieve our end goal. So being really clear on what your end goal is and how big you want your business to become is really helpful in then an understanding of when you need to bring investment on. We quickly realized as a board that we could see ourselves being a, a national player with well over 100 locations in Australia. And so we knew we needed to bring in big investment for that. So we brought in private equity that grew us to sort of 50 to 60 clinics. We then, we knew to go to the next tranche, which would either include much bigger growth or acquisition. We needed more investment, so we listed on the ASX, and that was a very interesting journey and, and learned a lot. We were there for 3 years, but that allowed us to acquire some of the biggest East Coast players, which then took us to well over 120, 130. From that, then we were acquired off the ASX by Wesfarmers, who is a top 10 ASX company in Australia. So all of those have been financial investments to take us to our next growth story. I think for me, my biggest learning was we knew we wanted to be large. And we knew we needed an investment. And although my shareholding theoretically diluted, I would rather have been part of a bigger story for us. And here I am 16 years later doing that rather than having 3 or 4 or 5 clinics just in Adelaide, but being 100% owner. So I'd rather own 10 to 15% of a massive company or massive or large company versus owning, but that was the path that we chose. So I think it's really important for people starting their own businesses of what do they want to do, and that will help them allow to select when they need investment and they've gotta be really comfortable that with that comes dilution, but also comes a bigger piece of the pie. Yeah. Cool. And I think knowing that there's an opportunity in the business model you have to say, hey, this can be a 200 stores in the country. I can see that. And so why shouldn't I be that one? And look, 100%. And, and what do people invest in? I think that's probably one of the key things is I find in my journey, people don't really invest in the company. They invest in management's ability to execute that plan. So whether you are selling a widget or whatever that may be, it's not quite often about what that widget is. It's about how good is management and how good are they executing the plan that they're going to deliver. And I think for people that want a growth story and need private investment, you are the talent and you are the talent telling that story. So you are in the ultimate position to continue to be a benefitter of that. And be able to tell your story. And because with private equity, boy, it's a very low chance that they're going to say, now we want you to leave. We want you to now run the company and we're giving you the resources and you've got an opportunity to go again. So with this comes more opportunity. Yeah. And an investor usually is very dependent on the founder to run the business. They're not looking to say you should go on. They're not operators, right? Yeah. And it's the piece that founders probably don't get their head around is, yes, I'm giving up a percentage, but I'm also getting an opportunity to get capital to grow and actually now get a bigger piece. And I'm the key talent to execute against that as well. Yeah. And the point you made, which is investors are always investing in talent and great leaders and management team because something shit always goes wrong along the way. Something goes wrong, but good management teams know how to navigate tough times. Even caught me off guard. Even when we listen on the Australian Stock Exchange, you got all these analysts doing analysis on your company, but people that make investment decisions where you're talking to all these institutions, Yes, they'll have a model behind on your thing, but again, it's about investing in the talent to execute against the story. And do they believe in that talent? It's still uncanny. I find that true all the way through. So looking ahead, how do you, how do you see the future of your business now? Yeah, really, really strong. We're going through at the moment, we're still going through a really big integration with a competitor that Westfarmers had called Clearskin. So they'd now become part of our division. We're now the Westfarners Beauty Aesthetics division. Uh, we're working through the integration. Business this year is very strong. We're having a really good year. Uh, we're still looking for further growth. Once we get through this integration, we're going to continue to grow in Australia and New Zealand. And so, yeah, everything's looking really rosy for us. We're in a really good place. Great. Great. Cool. So that's good. Martin, thanks a lot for spending the time and sharing all the insights. It's of course very inspiring to see. I think your execution has been really about being heads down, paying attention to detail, and making results happen matters kind of thing with the right people surrounding you. So, you know, wishing you all the best in continuing to grow your business and taking it to the next level. Thank you so much, Luke. I really appreciate it being here. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell my story. So thank you. Great. Thank you. Growth Diaries is brought to you by Zenoti.