Take a Step Back: Interview with Rune Sovndahl, CEO of Fantastic Services

I recently went one on one with with Rune Sovndahl, CEO of Fantastic Services.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Rune: I’ve had a range of different jobs over the years. I worked as a chef and in digital marketing, but I’ve always had that entrepreneurial spirit. In fact, as a child, I was gifted a desk for my birthday and I would pretend I was a businessman, making calls and tidying my ‘office’. 

It usually takes something random to spark an entrepreneurial idea, and that was the case for FantasticServices.com. One evening I spilled red wine on my cream carpet, so I began calling around cleaning companies to try to resolve the issue, but couldn’t get anyone to come at such short notice. A few days later I spoke to my friend (and co-founder) Anton Skarlatov, who ran a cleaning company at the time, about my lack of joy in getting my carpet cleaned, and that’s how the company was created.

Being an entrepreneur is all about hard-work and continuing to battle on in the face of adversity. Growing the business, developing new capital avenues and getting ahead of your competitors is crucial to success. Our hardest challenge came when we started out, and it was learning to employ enough staff to keep up with demand. It’s understandable that you have to wait for money to come in before you spend it, but not having enough staff to cope with new enquiries wasn’t great for our brand. We had to work hard to put it right.

Of course, COVID-19 was a huge challenge, and to a certain extent, continues to be a challenge for the business. And when you face challenges you have to measure success, observe and scale back when necessary. Luckily, we were able to do that due to our Australian model experiencing COVID-19 setbacks before our American and UK counterparts. We were able to limit the damage to the latter businesses, enabling us to stay afloat, where many others ceased trading. 

Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?

Rune: When growing a business, you have to act fast to demand. Failing to react to unforeseen business demand will result in you losing customers and damaging your brand. But it’s also important to test certain services in certain areas before expanding them to the whole country. 

Of course, some of our traditional services suffered under COVID-19, but on the flip side, the mundanity of the pandemic forced people into spending their money into services they wouldn’t have otherwise. And we had to capitalise on it. We’ve always reinvested our profits back into the business to provide better services, and this is true of post COVID-19 times. We’ve invested in better training and better systems, and we’re continuing our growth through this expansion of traditional services and new consumer areas like our mobile massage and spa treatments. If you don’t expand, you’ll fall behind and lose to your competitors.

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Rune: As a leader, you have to do exactly that and take the lead. You have to show up for your employees, so they know where they stand – this is especially important when your business is going through hard times. Take the pandemic for instance, our staff were understandably worried, so I went on Facebook Live every day to update every staff member about what’s going on. As well as that, we would hold company-wide video calls and take Q&As from all areas of the business to help put people at ease. 

Business isn’t always plain sailing, so when the going gets tough, you have to keep going. You have to be transparent with your staff and be honest. Anton and I worked tirelessly to keep the business going, and as a leader, you can’t expect your staff to do the same if you’re not putting in the hours. 

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Rune: It’s important to remember that a good leader needs to take a step back and let people do their job. Give them the confidence to do what they’ve been doing all along , but guide them and inspire them along the way. 

Being an entrepreneur is worlds apart from being a leader. You can have a great idea and it can have relative success, but if you’re not willing to lead your company and inspire others, your success will be limited.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives and civic leaders?

Rune: 1 – You have to be adaptable. Being proactive is key to success, but being reactive to unforeseen circumstances is crucial. 

2 – Try to stay calm and be as honest as you can with your staff – they’ll appreciate it, and it will help to keep staff morale up. 

3 – Work hard and never give up. Being an entrepreneur or leader wasn’t meant to be easy; if it was, everyone would be doing it.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading and managing teams?

Rune: Always inspire your team and put in the hard work, but as I said earlier, know when to take a step back to allow your staff to work with confidence and autonomy. Staff will see through disingenuity, so make sure you speak with honesty and put in the hours – you can’t expect your staff to put in the hard work if you’re not doing the same. 

Try to get straight to the point, so your team has direction. Being vague or unclear in uncertain times won’t be helpful to anybody.  

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing and branding?

Rune: Marketing and branding is essential to business success. It’s hard to measure the success of certain marketing activity, but undeniably it needs to play a huge part in your business. It’s essential to enable you to stay ahead of the competition. 

When done well, marketing and branding will resonate with customers, and this is especially important when it comes to our franchisees. As a franchise, we need to be able to sell our brand as a package, and we need the right comms and systems in place to help deliver that consistently. 

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Rune: I’ve been given plenty over the years but one of the best pieces I’ve been given, and one that’s fairly simple, is to choose the right people to help you achieve your goals. Train them up fast, and most importantly, when they’ve earned your trust, make sure you delegate tasks to help relieve yourself of pressure.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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