Episode 82: How The Laundry Lady Grew From One Mum to 550 Contractors Worldwide with Susan Toft

Welcome back to She's Making Millions, the podcast for powerhouse women ready to scale, lead, and build true wealth. If you're building a business designed for freedom, impact, and legacy, this is the space for you.

Summary & Show Notes Summary: Susan Toft never planned to build an international company; she just wanted to get her own laundry pile under control. Thirteen years later, she's the founder and CEO of The Laundry Lady, an eight-figure business with 550 independent "Laundry Partners" operating across three countries (with a fourth about to launch) and a near-20-person head office team. In this episode, Susan gets candid about the parts of the journey most founders don't post about: getting divorced and becoming a single mum mid-build, staying stuck doing the laundry herself for years because there was no money to hire out, and finally going all-in after a post-COVID redundancy forced her hand. She and Taylor dig into what it actually takes to raise investment as a woman founder, how to find (and vet) the right investors and board members, why showing up on camera is non-negotiable for growth even when you hate it, and what she'd tell herself at the very start if she could go back.

Key Takeaways:

The "overnight success" was 13 years in the making. Susan spent years stuck doing the laundry herself because there wasn't a budget to hire out  and that grind became the knowledge base her whole contractor model is built on today.

Life doesn't pause for your business plan. Divorce, single motherhood, redundancy, and debt all happened mid-build. Real scale only started in the last 5–6 years, post-COVID, when she committed full-time.

You are the marketing. Paid ads (Meta and Google) drive growth, but Susan says the founder telling her story "unashamedly" is what makes the organic side  and the ad performance  actually work.

Camera confidence is built, not born. Susan describes channeling a "different version" of herself (her own Sasha Fierce) and says the fix for camera fear is simply repetition, start small and stay consistent.

Not all investor money is equal. Susan didn't understand the difference between VC, angel, and impact investors when she started  and finding investors aligned with her values (not just her growth curve) was the real unlock.

A board changes how you lead. Bringing on investors meant setting up a formal board for the first time  and pushed Susan from "hands-on operator" toward "strategic visionary" leadership.

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