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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quality, culture and opportunities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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