#10 // Don Hett // From the Garage to an Empire + Why the Future of Cleaning is Planet Positive

Don Hett is the kind of founder who builds empires from garages. He co-founded Clean Kings in 2012, starting literally out of a garage servicing a handful of hospitality venues. Today, Clean Kings is a national integrated facility services company across Australia, with a team of more than 1,200 staff. Most recently, Don founded Earthy Tabs, a venture delivering powerful, commercial-grade cleaning solutions through one dissolvable tablet. This bold idea is cutting plastic waste and transport emissions while keeping cleaning performance "sky high". In this must-listen episode, host Marianne Marchesi chats with Don about his journey from a garage startup to a national market leader. [00:00:00] – Introduction: Meet Don Hett — founder of Clean Kings and Earthy Tabs, and the garage-to-national-scale entrepreneur [00:00:35] – The Journey Begins: Growing up in Sri Lanka, arriving in Australia with $2,500 and studying accounting at Deakin [00:03:35] – Entering Cleaning by Accident: Leaving corporate life, cleaning toilets during uni and learning the industry the hard way [00:05:31] – Starting Clean Kings: Launching from a garage and solving fragmentation in a saturated cleaning market [00:08:21] – Scaling Nationally: How Covid forced Clean Kings to diversify from hospitality into 13 industries [00:12:55] – People, Processes & Culture: Training, systems and why putting cleaners front-and-centre creates high performance [00:13:47] – Finding the Right Partners: Values, belief systems and Don’s hands-on approach to selection and training [00:18:29] – What Makes Clean Kings a Bold Idea: Looking at the market differently and delivering tailored, centralised solutions [00:21:08] – Sustainability Awakening: Growing up eco-minded and feeling responsible to improve business impact [00:22:51] – Enter Earthy Tabs: Why the chemical industry hasn’t changed in 100 years — and the moment dissolvable tablets clicked [00:26:07] – Testing, Failures & Breakthroughs: Domestic tablets, powder spills, sheet limitations and the search for true performance [00:29:44] – Measuring Impact: Building an impact calculator and uncovering 55,000 plastic cans used per year — in one business [00:31:46] – ESG & Real Results: Helping clients meet sustainability targets with measurable data across eight metrics [00:35:18] – 6Silo Philosophy: “We live outside the box” — the mindset driving all Don’s ventures [00:37:07] – Closing Thoughts: Problem-solving, courage and why bold ideas come from doing things differently Find CleanKings at https://cleankings.com.au/ and Earthy Tabs at https://www.earthytabs.com/ To get in touch, DM us via Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boldideas_au/