Extending our natural / organic offering has been something that we have been passionate about and working on behind the scenes for sometime now . With the new release of our website we thought it was the perfect opportunity to extend our vision. We have been Searching for Brands that Align with our own values as much as possible and to its truest form or natural state as possible . A beautiful natural skin care  routine coupled with nourishing beautiful natural and unprocessed food, and vital minerals and vitamins are the fastest way to restore and nourish your skin while still walking lightly on our earth . If you love natural Skincare as much as we do check out these beautiful brands that we are now offering both instore and online.   Salt By Hendrix Salt by Hendrix natural skincare is all Australian-Made and is derived from organic and raw ingredients to provide a nourishing, non-toxic skin experience. We have created a collection of products that is kind to the environment, with each product hand crafted from ingredients that are planted based, gentle to the soul and uplifting to the senses. I can see this will be such a perfect fit for your store. Willie Laine  A beautiful all Australian made  essential oils, diffusers, roll on bottles,  and room sprays. This collection was created after seeing a need ​for a natural solution to help aid stress and anxiety . These products are made from all natural ingredients .  Hermosa  ​All natural, hand-blended ingredients come together to pamper and heal new and expectant mums. Our products are all natural and may be used on any skin type, shape, or size. Hermosa selects their ingredients carefully, using only those with the ability to moisturise, rejuvenate, soften, and heal. Relax into a cloud of chamomile, or slip into a pool of acai and rosehip oil– our products will transport you to a restorative, natural state.    

    We’ve been following the Robke/ Bickley clan for a few months now, constantly inspired by Katie’s (@mumma_robke) Instagram feed. She weaves prose between pictures of their little farmhouse and children on the Queensland coast with stunning cinematography from her partner, Luke. When we watched their #capsulefilmsbydad of their son launching a play rocket into the sky, we knew we had to work with them. To quote Katie, ‘I instantly feel inspired to do better in every way, and more than ever to simplify, encourage imagination, conversation, and experience, And of course PLAY’. It was in this that we asked if they’d like to collaborate on our newest collection, Flourish. We were thrilled when they said yes, and speechless when they sent us the final product. What they produced encapsulates the entire inspiration behind Flourish – to=hat there is always room to grow, evolve and most importantly ~flourish~. We hope you adore the collection and collaboration as much as we do – it’s already so dear to our hearts. And we couldn’t have done such a brilliant release without Katie & Luke and their family, we are eternally grateful. All our love, Miann & Co.   To accompany this collection, we’ve also written a small poem to elaborate on why flourishing is so important to us: Open a door for a stranger, smile gently at the mother negotiating with her toddler in the supermarket. Pay for a strangers coffee, choose to spread words and actions of kindness, happiness, learning and growth. Ask a new mum how they are, and actually listen - really listen. Say hello to the person that packs your groceries, serves you coffee, delivers the best meal you have ever had. Say their name. Say please. Say thank you. Use words of consideration and kindness to describe actions, events, people, places. Teach our kids that words can hurt. Show that listening to difference is the way to grow and learn - really learn. Show your kids that there is never only one way to say and do. That we are all unique beings. That live different, learn different and are different. Difference is where the rainbow with the pot of gold exists and by accepting instead of challenging difference; you will flourish. Teach your kids to champion other people’s wins and celebrate everyone them, despite your feelings of loss. Show that perception is not always reality. We all have seasons of hardships and loss - its part of human nature.  A beautiful image on social might be their one moment in time of pure joy so embrace, encourage and celebrate - leave judgement behind and show mateship and kindness. Teach your kids to treat everyone with kindness; from the person you pass by on the street, to the mailman that delivers your morning newspaper. Don’t just say the words, act on these words. Show your kids that being kind to yourself and others is the fastest way to make change, make impact. Those small significant, everyday gestures, actions and words are the very things that have impact to change our happiness and our kids happiness. We live in a beautiful time of constant learning and growth - a pathway that leads us to a place, a world and an environment in which future generations can flourish. We were thrilled when they said yes, and speechless when they sent us the final product. What they produced encapsulates the entire inspiration behind Flourish – to=hat there is always room to grow, evolve and most importantly ~flourish~. We hope you adore the collection and collaboration as much as we do – it’s already so dear to our hearts. And we couldn’t have done such a brilliant release without Katie & Luke and their family, we are eternally grateful.   All our love, Miann & Co.  

    It is so important to look after yourself and nurture the whole you while being  pregnant. We have popped our top  tips we have found / experienced to assist our mums to be when being pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant.    1. REST During the first and third trimesters you are likely to be much more tired than usual. It is really important to rest your body, you owe it to yourself and in some instances you don't have choice but to slow down and rest . Growing a tiny human is a lot of work and it certainly takes it out of you reinforcing the importance to rest , future and revive . Try your best to get early nights or give into the urge for an afternoon siesta. If nap time isn't possible we find taking a few vital minutes of the day to sit quietly by yourself and recharge is also really important and oh so needed when growing a little human. 2. ACCEPT Once you have had your little bub there will be times where you need to accept help. It is also important to accept help while you are pregnant, even if it is something as small as washing the dishes. It will help relieve feelings of being tired and overwhelmed.  3. EXERCISE Rest time whilst you are pregnant is super important but exercise is equally as important .  By exercising you are strengthening your muscles - this can help your body and help ease some of your pregnancy aches and pains. Be kind to yourself if you cannot get our of bed because of morning sickness take it easy stretch and walk when you can. Going for a walk in nature can help immensley. 4. PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES During pregnancy and the birth of your little one your pelvic floor muscles will be under a lot of strain therefore it is a great idea to strengthen them as much as possible prior to this. In my first pregnancy I wasn't aware of my pelvic floor and the necessity to do these until I started birthing classes . By strengthening these muscles it will assist in carrying the weight of the baby as well as help in the mending process after giving birth.  5. SELF CARE Nurturing and take care of yourself while you are pregnant will help you embrace the growing of a new small human. Taking time during your day to do things that bring you joy is fantastic and if you can get into the habit of doing this whilst you are pregnant it will be easier to follow through with the habit after the baby comes. Indulge in beautiful natural scubs and oils to help with your itchy stretching skin . Try the hermosa Belly oil.     6. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY  It is important to be aware and listen to both your body and mind. Keep a journal of what is happening with your body and understand  and listen to your body and its amazing changes. Sometimes these changes aren't easy hello morning sickness but ensure that you are remembering to hydrate  ( if you can )  and seek medical help when you need it . 7. NOURISH Your body is growing a baby so it would only be fair to nourish it with everything it needs to feel its best during this time. First semester is complete survival and often what ever you can stomach or keep down or in is what you eat  . Be kind to yourself . 8. MANAGE STRESS Stress is a powerful thing that can result in physical and psychological repercussions so if you can avoid being in stressful situations while you are pregnant . Being pregnant  is when those mamma instincts first quick in and can make worrying a really real thing.Try activities such as gentle exercise or walk in nature and meditation. Communicate your concerns to your partner or if need be a medical professional . 9. KNOW YOUR CONTACT NUMBERS Being organised can help  ease feelings of stress and the unknowing. Pack your hospital bag that little bit earlier it takes the stress out of any unexpected hospital visits . Another tip is to having all of the possible contact numbers you need on hand and easy for anyone and everyone to access if they need to.  10. ASK QUESTIONS The unknown can be scary and being sick for nine months is honestly no joke . Ask all your questions keep a note book and journal of your questions so you don't leave doctors appointments with unanswered questions .    Enjoy the miracle and privilege of bringing new life into this world we as women all have our unique journey's and everyone's pregnancy is different . Enjoy the journey and the miracle that you create . What a privilege it is to be a mother and something that has been my greatest accomplishment . some of our favourite products are the hermosa products.

             Duration: 21:38   Terrence: Hello and welcome to another episode of our podcast, Know Better, Be Better. Last week we shared with you some of our biggest learnings. This week we thought we wanted to share with you some of our business goals moving forward and something that we have planned and something we want to strive to in 2020. Rebecca: Yeah, a new decade and the start of the year get me super excited. And this year we have some pretty big goals. We started our business based off ethical production almost nine years ago. Soon as we hit that February mark, it will be nine years in natural fibers which we feel hugely passionate about and we want to build on this in 2020 and take it another step further. Previously, we have done some GOTS products and this year we are hoping to do some more. So for anyone that doesn't know what GOTS is, it's a certification that covers the whole textile process including fair labor practices and their insurance that there is no known toxic substance used as part of your manufacturing process and therefore safe for humans, which I would also like to say we already test many of our products, particularly the baby toys and hand rattles and things like that. And we use water-based dyes. So this is something we already have been doing. Although we haven't been advertising it, it is something that we are already doing. Terrence: Yeah. And I think for us with climate change and all of that going on as well, we want to play our part and as Rebecca mentioned, a lot of these things we are already doing in terms of ethical production, natural fibers, but there is always room for improvement and we feel we can always be doing better as well and always strive to do better. I think just with the current situation in Australia with the bushfires there is change needed. I think for us as business owners as well as individuals, we all need to have an impact and make that change. So anything that we can do to make it better and also educate other people out there about climate change and the role we play in that, we will definitely be doing that. Rebecca: Yeah, that's right. So we want to continue what we are doing and that goes from everything from in our whole entire supply chain. So that is everything from starting from design. So that means designing better, making the products more economical. We already use natural fibers, which is a huge part of. We get so much feedback that our products last, and to be honest, it's also educating people about looking at the tags that they are buying. Understanding the labels, which is a huge part of investing in products that are made from natural fibers. So anything that's made from polyester will have little bits of plastic going into the water stream when they are washed. So it's understanding what those labels mean, which is like food labels to me, they can be very confusing. So it's educating people about what we have been doing and why we feel so passionate about natural fibers for the last nine years. Terrence: Yeah, and I think it's also something we've mentioned in one of our previous podcasts about knowing your suppliers, especially when you are working in the ethical trade and ethical production as such knowing where your product comes from. And with us, being able to visit our suppliers, we know for a fact that these products are being made where they said they are being made and how they said they are being made. And that's also very important for us. Rebecca: Absolutely, visiting your suppliers. We've actually been working with these suppliers for close to 10 years now. Speaking to your suppliers, visiting your suppliers on a regular basis is also crucial to putting your stamp on the ethical in my belief, because seeing is believing. As I've mentioned previously, if you want to go back to our manufacturing, I tell the story where I have worked for bigger organizations and even though the ethical stamp has been there, when you've gone out to visit, it's not necessarily that way. So that is why it is crucial to understand your supply chain, understand where your products are coming from and also as consumers to be asking the brands if they are visiting their supplies, where their products are being made. Start asking the questions. It's a great way to understand where your product is coming from. Terrence: I think it also holds everybody accountable that they are doing what they saying they are doing. Another goal for us this year that we really want to focus on is going more paperless, not just within the office, but also within the warehouse. I think all of the packing slips and order forms, that’s being printed, is something that we want to sort of eradicate within our business. This will mean implementing scanning. So there are a whole lot of systems and procedures that we need to streamline and work on getting that implemented as soon as possible, something probably we are going to look at doing over the next two months or so. But like I said, a lot of investigation on our behalf and we are super excited about starting that process. Rebecca: Absolutely. I think the point here is also it doesn't matter how big or small you are. I mean, we are only three full time staff. Yes, we do have a warehouse. Yes, we do have casuals that come in and help pack our orders. But no matter how big or small you are you can still make change. And so we've been passionate about that from day one when we were only one person in the business that working with the ethical suppliers, working with natural fibers, this was all so crucial to us. So visiting our suppliers, even when we were only one person, we made a plan and we made it work for me to be able to go out and visit the suppliers face to face. So I guess my point is no matter how big or small you are you can still make change. I think that's been a blocker for a lot of people going, "I'm only the small guy". We can all make change. And this is as a business and also personally as well. Terrence: Yeah. And I think quite often the change needs to start with a small guy. You only need a few people on board. Someone will jump on board and this is how the whole process starts. So for us, this will definitely be a big, this moving into 2020. And it's not just about what we are doing as a small business. We also want to offer our customers some solutions to minimize their footprint. We will be doing that by work by implementing some solutions at checkout where they can select minimal packaging which will eliminate a lot of paperwork and packaging as such when they receive their orders as well. Rebecca: Yeah, that's right. We are already transitioning and have been to The Better Packaging Co, which is recyclable plastic envelops or not plastic, sorry. Terrence: Probably more compostable, I think. Yes, Rebecca: Compostable, sorry. At present we 100 % recycle all the cardboard boxes that come in. They go out to our wholesalers. So theyare never a pretty box. Or if someone has received something in a box, it is from a recycled box. So 100% of our cardboard packaging already is recycled. We do have some inner plastics because we, as this year we have had our products get wet before. We've had containers leak. We've also had our products hit. If you listen to some of our other podcasts, we've talked about how one of our containers collided this year. So there is still some packaging that unfortunately has to go in it for the safety of the products that come over. But we are also working on solutions for that. There also are new compostable plastics and things that are constantly coming in. At this stage we are pretty minimal and we started our business that way and we just want to constantly improve on that. Terrence: Yeah, I think we went back and looked at how we were doing this earlier days and instead of having items individual plastic, we now only use a plastic liners which minimizes and cuts down on a lot of that plastic when we send out product as such. So there are some little things that we've already done, but like I said previously, there is always room for improvement and we will continue to strive and improve on this and eliminate a lot of those plastics and unrecyclable materials as well. Rebecca: As you've heard, the environmental impact is a huge thing that we want to focus on and improve on as businesses. But as individuals we already do a lot so far and we've implemented that into our lives. In 2019, we went to solar, we grow a lot of our own vegetables. Terrence: Yeah, it's something that we as a family get very heavily involved in as well. I think the decision that we made to go solar late last year was probably one of the biggest impacts that we made around the house as well as growing our own vegetables and the kids get involved and it's some family time as well. So you are doing your little bit for the environment and it makes you feel better as well knowing that you've got a part to play in minimizing global warming as such. Rebecca: Absolutely. I grew up in the country and I guess I grew up with always having something from the family vegetable patch or the farm on the table, so everything from down to milking the cow by hand to, preserving peaches and apricots to growing our own vegetables. So in our family, I've grown up that way. So we've also taken that with our family. Plus we really enjoy the garden. We enjoy getting the kids involved in the garden. We only live on a very small block of land, 600 square meters. So even with that, we still have vegetables, we grow vegetables and we also...Terrence: We grow some fruit and we grow some strawberries, et cetera. So it's not just about the quantity, but it's also about having a go and making sure that you do have that fresh produce. And like I said, the kids get involved. I remember as a kid growing up as well, we didn't grow up on a farm or anything. We were in town, but my mom's parents had a small little plot where they had some cattle and my grandfather grew some veggies and there was nothing better than going out there in the morning. It was always early morning and he would go milk the cow. And then I would have to watch my grandmother skim the cream off the top of the milk and she would make butter, et cetera, et cetera. I think a lot of that has sort of gone by the wayside and people are now starting to pick all of that up again and making their own produce and growing their own produce as well. Rebecca: Yeah, I guess we want to... We want to share our journey so we don't share a lot of that and unfortunately, some of our messaging has gotten lost along the way. We started our ethical journey back nine years ago and along the line we've lost some of that messaging, so we want to share with you some of the things we do as a family down to composting, all of those things and share a little bit more about that on our blog and also through video, which is one of our other big goals for 2020. Terrence: Yeah, very excited of maybe starting up a YouTube channel and also doing a bit more with the podcast as such in terms of educational pieces, but more about educating people out there about how you can play your part and how to do things as well. Certainly from what we've learned and we want to pass all of that on and make sure that we share as well and educating others out there. Rebecca: Even things, small things like sewing on buttons, how to sew a bag. We had the pre-school not long ago with my second son and I remember them putting a call out for someone to sew up some library bags. I think I took home 30 library bags to sew up and then they asked me if I would do the other 30 because no one else could sew. Even those old school traditions are being lost. So going back to, rather than throwing those things out, repair those things. If a button has full enough, don't throw it out. Repair the buttons. So sharing some of those skills that we have with people to show how your products can last a little longer. Terrence: Yeah. That almost brings us onto another point is something that we want to be focusing on as well is about educating customers too about buying smarter and buying the right pieces and buying good quality pieces. And that's something we will be working on as well in terms of our product so that you buy less, but you have it for longer as such. And you don't have a lot of clothing ending up in landfill, et cetera. Rebecca: Something else we mentioned last week was increasing greater efficiencies. I guess being a small team of three we are constantly looking at ways that we can improve the way we do things that will save us time because time, like everyone else is our biggest thing that we are so stretched on. So we are looking at increasing greater efficiencies and that is starting with a brand new website, which we cannot wait to launch. So stay tuned. We are hoping that's going to be ready around February, March. We've got some really exciting things planned for the website. Terrence: Yeah, super excited about the new website. At this stage we don't have an official launch date, but from previous experience these things can push out, but we are very, very excited about having a new website up and running, some new functionality as well and something to showcase the product a bit better too. So there is a lot that we will be working on with that in the background and that all sort of tie in with going paperless and the procedures for our inventory management systems et cetera, because they all need to talk to each other. So there is quite a lot of work going on in the background there for us. But yeah, stay tuned and hopefully, we will be able to show you a great new website very soon. Rebecca: Something else that we wanted to expand on is our charitable aspect as well. Knowing that there are so many companies... Knowing that there are so many families this year that have been affected by the bush fires, we always run a 12-days of Christmas where we donate to a chosen charity. We work with a couple of other charities throughout the year. This year we will be working on some incentives to help donate back to bush fire victims and that will go all throughout the year. Our product already is locked in until summer and we are currently working on summer. So we are currently working on some products that we can bring out and donate portions of that to bush fire families in need. Terrence: Yeah. It's something that we all can play a part in and donating a part of your profits or donating in some kind of way helps out. It doesn't matter how much it is, but every little bit helps out at the end of the day. Rebecca: Absolutely. I think we've done an initial donation, not based off sales. We made a lump sum donation and we want to continue the support that these people are going to need throughout the year. It's not just now; it's going to be years to be honest and having some things in place where we can do our part in helping these people get back on their feet. Terrence: Yeah, definitely. I think another focus for us this year would be working with more experts as well and growing a remote team of people with skills that we can leverage off and taking our team more remote rather than office based as such, which is something that we have toyed with for quite a while. And I think we've even mentioned it in a previous podcast, but I think 2020 for us is a year where we are going to make all of these things happen and be accountable for all of that. Rebecca: Yeah, that's right. We are already working with some people currently remotely, but working with more creatives as well, collaborating with more creatives on things like photography, projects, working with more creatives and experts to contribute to our blog with informative pieces about their environment and ways that we can help and do our part in contributing. I guess running a remote team is going to be new to us. So it's something that we've already got in play, but we are wanting to expand upon and learn.  Terrence: I think for us, there will definitely be some challenges, but very exciting at the same time. I think we have the opportunity of working with people offshore and finding people with certain skills that we can leverage off as well. Rebecca: Yeah. And we will still have our team here in Australia as well, but we are looking at working with different experts all around the place, both locally and overseas that will be able to help us take our business to the next level. So we are super excited about that. One of our other goals is to have more team building days with a focus on wellness. I guess last year was a big year for us in the health and we want to do a little bit more both for ourselves and also the team with a focus on wellness. Terrence: Yes. I think if you feel good within yourself and if you are a healthy that comes through. Like Beck mentioned, we both had some health issues and definitely want to put a bit more of a focus on not just being healthy, but being well as well mentally and physically. And I think if we have those opportunities in house for our staff and we create those opportunities where we can all take some time out and spend some time together and get together offsite and focus on ourselves and focus on wellness for the year. Rebecca: Yeah. So we've got some pretty big lofty goals for a team of three and we are really excited. Another exciting goal that we are wanting to get a little bit more off the ground is our onsite shop that we have. We are wanting to do a little bit more with that, hopefully some in-house days and promotions locally here in Geelong and we are wanting to expand on that shop front a little bit more. Terrence: Yes, definitely. I think there is a fair bit of work involved in that too, getting that all set up. But it's definitely an opportunity that we have where we can showcase our product for those people who want to touch and feel and see, but also more event style where we can have certain events and have people come and see the team as such. Rebecca: So watch this space. We've got a lot planned and hopefully we will be able to get to at all. It's going to be an exciting year. We are super excited about the year and if you do have a topic that you would love us to, if you would like us to cover off for podcasting, if it's something that you are thinking about getting into your business and you would like to know a little bit about, please DM us on Miann and CO's Instagram. That's where we get a lot of our questions and our main question we've already covered off, which is manufacturing, but if you do have something that you would like to hear from us about... Terrence: Or something you are curious about, yeah, just send us a DM. Rebecca: Yeah. So we are looking forward to hearing from you and that concludes our goals for 2020. Terrence: Yeah. Great. Very excited about these goals and I hope you've set some goals for yourself too. I think 2020 is definitely the year for goals and people seem to be very focused on those. So let's all make 2020 great with our goals this year. Rebecca: Looking forward to it. Until next week guys, we will see you then.  Terrence: Thanks, guys. See you. Rebecca: Cheers. Bye.  

    We were running an online business without internet for six months and we probably under estimated the effect it had, because in that time we are also growing our team… We work in a cloud based system, so all online orders come through online. All our systems work online… When you don't have internet in your own warehouse, it makes things very tricky.   07. Our biggest Learnings in 2019   Rebecca: Hello and welcome to the Know Better, Be Better podcast. We are a podcast that is committed to learning and educating others about the lifestyle and commitment of running a small business. We started our own business, Miann and Co in 2011 after our second child was born and we saw a gap in the market for natural fiber products. We are lifelong learners on an incredible journey, making a conscious effort to appreciate and enjoy every single moment of it. Join us in an unscripted conversation about our business journey, mindful thinking, ethics, business tips and tricks, travel, self-care and creativity, gaining insight from our own experience and endeavors as well as reaching out to other amazing experts in the field. We would love to offer a deeper understanding into our business journey and the business and lifestyle realm.  Terrence: Hello and welcome to another episode of our podcast, Know Better, Be Better. Happy new year to everyone out there and a new decade for us all. We've got some super exciting things in the pipeline and also an exciting podcast for you today. Rebecca: As we know it hasn't been a great new year here in Australia, but we wanted to give a shout out to all their incredible volunteers that have been working around the clock during this bushfire season. It's hard to put into words the devastation and the feeling of the devastation that you feel watching it all unfold on the news and also feeling a bit helpless. We are working on some very amazing initiatives which we hope to implement later on in the year. We work quite far in advance being a small business. If you can make a donation directly to the different funds and organizations involved then the money is one of the ways that you can impact now and we've made that donation. So yeah, if you can help these amazing organizations and all the volunteers, that would be absolutely amazing. But without further ado, we would like to jump into...Terrence: Yeah, 2020 will mark our nine years in business this year. We wanted to take a moment and reflect on 2019 and dig deep into some of our biggest learnings. We've had quite a few learnings. Obviously, we are not going to list them all for you in this podcast, but we will pull out a few of our biggest ones and hopefully we can help people out there by hearing some of our experiences and some mistakes we've made along the way as well. Rebecca: Yeah, I would have to say 2019 was probably one of our biggest years in learnings and we cannot wait to... Some of these are quite raw, so we will jump into the learnings. Starting off our first biggest learning, we moved warehouses at the beginning of the year. We had been in our previous warehouse for four years and we decided, well, we actually didn't decide to change warehouses straight away. We looked into third party logistics and this time last year we were actually visiting all the different third party logistics that were potential people for us. Terrence: I think for us, we were coming to the end of our lease as well and some decisions that had to be made. We were almost busting at the seams. The warehouse we were in was... It wasn't small, but we outgrew it over a four year period just by adding new ranges and new lines to our business in terms of women's wear and kids and clothing, et cetera. That sort of fold us up, but it was a good chance for us to sit back and review how we doing things, could we be doing it smarter? And that's how we came across a third party logistics and started investigating that. Rebecca: We had previously looked into third party logistics when we looked at taking our business into America. So we had actually seen quite a few different warehouses and we explored this option thoroughly, but we decided being a small business that the best option was probably going to be to have the control of the warehouse to be able to pivot still. And if we could find a warehouse that could house a bigger space for us, office with air conditioning and insulation as opposed to a tin shed and also a potential showroom. Because after shutting our store in town, we had a lot of requests for people to be able to touch, feel and still shop our product physically. Terrence: I think especially since we moved into clothing as such, it was more a case where people wanted a place where they could come and see and touch and feel like Rebecca mentioned. But it was also like I mentioned previously, a good opportunity for us to sit and reflect and see how we can be doing things better. We started looking at third party logistics, which we approached quite a number of companies. We got a lot of costings through from them and it was really hard to compare apples with apples, because all the proposals were different. They were charging for different things. So there was a lot of work that went into that to make sure that the will be the right fit for us cost-wise as well as business-wise. Rebecca: We made the decision, we found a warehouse. It wasn't our first warehouse and it was a brand new build, which really appealed to us. Our previous warehouse had also been a new build. So we knew some of the obstacles that we were up against, particularly when it came to connecting with Telstra, et cetera, et cetera. We did a lot of due diligence on this and a lot of research. Despite doing our research, we still had a blind spot. Terrence: Yeah. We walked into the new warehouse and it was the place that we had been looking for. It had all the right spaces, et cetera. We asked about the telephone connectivity and internet and all of this. I think prior to us even signing the lease I even rang up our internet company to find out whether they can move our service over. We were on cable at that time. They assured me that it can be done. The landlord even showed us the connection points for internet and telephone, so all the cabling and everything was there. But it was only when we tried to connect it that we found out we were a future NBN site and NBN wasn't actually in the area. And unbeknownst to us, no other services were available. We couldn't get ADSL. We couldn't get cable. So the only option we added that stage was NBN. So the process started. I think it was about a six month wait before we could even start the process. It was all done through the landlord and then the right paperwork was in fold, et cetera. We ended up having to go with something totally different in the end. Rebecca: We were running an online business without internet for six months and we probably under estimated the effect it had because in that time we are also growing our team in the creative area and we had more people. We work in a cloud based system, so all that online orders come through online. All our systems work online. We get it that way so potentially if we needed to work remotely, being a small team that you can access things from anywhere. But when you don't have internet in your own warehouse, it makes it very tricky. Terrence: Yes. Like Beck mentioned, everything is online. So from our accounting software right through to even our files being hosted in the cloud, et cetera. We were working off a Wi-Fi dongle for probably a good six months. At that time it worked out to be quite a costly solution. We were, I think going through… At a minimum, we were going through about 10 gig a day and that was minimal stuff, trying to work from home, et cetera, as much as we could as well. But all the costs added up with that too. Even the warehouse downstairs, the systems are online. If there was a lag with the internet or the signal was weak, packing the orders took forever, printing the labels took forever. It was just an absolute nightmare. Rebecca: On top of moving our warehouse and setting up a warehouse, we were also dealing with the problems of not having internet, which when you are running an online business is pretty crucial. So the first six months of working and moving into a new warehouse was quite logistically hard and quite taxing. So that brings us to our next learning, which was hire help. We tried to move an entire... By this stage, we had taken over two warehouses in the complex that we were in and we tried to move to warehouses with two people, three people. Terrence: Yeah. We were about three people and obviously the van. So we decided to do it ourselves. But it's not until you start moving your own stuff that you realize how much you've actually got. So there was myself and two other casuals. Rebecca was there helping with the boxes. Some of the logistical issues we had was obviously the pallet tracking. To avoid trying to buy a new pallet tracking we had to pretty much empty all the racking, take the boxes down so that they could move the pallet racking into the new warehouse. So the old warehouse was an absolute mess with boxes all over the place. We were still trying to pack orders. And then the process started of moving some of the boxes over. We decided to just do it all in the van and it was multiple trips. I think it took us about close to a month. We got about six trips a day in so loading one end and offloading the other end and then it all had to be put back onto the shelves as well. Rebecca: Yeah. There was a good three months of setting and moving and with a small team and children to juggle and no family support around it was quite tricky. Starting the year off with moving the warehouse was quite a learning and honestly, if we could do our time again, I think we would hire help maybe someone with quite a large truck to get it done in a few less loads.  Terrence: Yeah. Or we just won't move again. Rebecca: Oh yeah. We won't be moving again. It's etched in my mind, but very happy with our decision to keep the warehousing with us. Terrence: Yes. I think you've got more control over not only your systems and procedures, but how you want to handle your orders. If you want to make any changes, you can do that pretty much instantly, whether that be the way you package your orders or if you want to implement something else, you don't have to rely on someone else or try and make the changes. With a third party also, the costs in our experience once you get to a certain size is probably a bit lower in terms of handling fees, et cetera, et cetera. You can rely on your own postage rates and all of that. So I think we definitely made the right choice by doing that. Rebecca: Yeah. And that brings us to our next learning. We said goodbye to our first ever full time employee this year, which was super sad. She had been with us since the very beginning and she has since gone to work in London doing the working holiday thing like we did. Super happy for her and honestly knew this day would come, but it still was very sad. Terrence: We just didn't think it would come so soon. I think we were both shocked when we heard and very saddened by it as well. She was very much part of the family as such that we were trying to create in the business and always on board with everything and once you know, it's like someone leaving home. It's just very sad. Rebecca: We said goodbye to our first ever employee, but I guess one of the biggest learnings we had this year was burnout is a very real thing. You can't hustle. I actually cringe at the word hustle. The burnout took its toll on myself and Terry quite physically. I was in and out of emergency for about a month or two. Terrence: Yeah, around about close to two months. Rebecca: Yeah. I was suffering migraines. I woke up one night unable to move. I had vertigo for about three months where I could hardly lift my head. So there was a lot of… My body just said no more, basically. And I guess not having a rest after having babies and going straight back to work. As everyone knows, there is not a lot of maternity leave with running your own business. And I guess with holidays, even for both of us, it's not switch off. There are still a couple of hours of emails a day. We are quite a small team still, so there is never an off button. Terrence: No. I think when you run your own business it's always in the back of your mind as well when you are not there as to what needs to be done, what do you still have to do, what's happening at the office? Hopefully it's all right. But like Beck mentioned, I also think being tired you can often underestimate the impact that has on you emotionally and physically, especially if that's over a lengthy period of time. It just absolutely drains you. Mentally, you are probably not in the right space as well because you are tired. So yeah, it took its toll on both of us. This year and I think moving forward we will definitely try and make some more time just to relax and take our minds off things. Rebecca: Yeah. I think the work-life balance, the mindfulness is something that is a huge goal for myself this year. And I think for Terry, we really want to work harder on that and bring that back in because we just realized their importance of balance and it was a scary few months, so to come out the other end, super grateful. And if you don't have your health, what do you have? So there have been some big learnings around work-life balance this year. Even after nine years, it does catch up with you, so be careful Terrence: Yeah. I think just looking after yourself in general as well. Making yourself a priority too is probably a big learning for me as well. It's not just everyone else out there. You've got to look after yourself too. Rebecca: We expanded our team this year. One of our biggest learnings has come from this, to be honest, and it's still a little bit raw. But when you are hiring, it's really important to go through the interview process properly and make sure that when you are hiring someone they can do what you are asking them to and they are happy to do that job. Also most importantly, they are the right fit culturally for your business. I guess for us also checking references is super important, not just one, but several.  Terrence: I think that's something we've learned and we've learned it the hard way is do your homework afterwards as well. It's not just about the interview. Don't just hire for personality, make sure the skills are there as well. I think the two go very much hand in hand. I've heard a lot of people say hire for personality and the right cultural fit, but I think both of those aspects need to be present. If they don't have the skills, there will be a lot of frustration there as well as personality wise. I think it only takes one person to spread a lot of negativity.  Rebecca: We ignored some pretty big alarm bells, like talking negatively about previous employers, resistance to change, resistance to receive performance feedback. And I guess when you are hiring someone that's a little bit more experienced, you hope that the person you hire is going to take this all on board and it doesn't always happen. Terrence: No, I think especially when you are hiring for a managerial position you need to make sure that that person is the right fit, not just for the job but for the team as well, because at the end of the day, how their employees look up to managers as well. And to be honest, if you've tried to build your business and you don't have the right person in place and you don't do something about it quick enough, as much as you are building up the front, they will be breaking it down at the back. Rebecca: Yeah. Let's just say we experienced firsthand the old saying, "A rotten apple can upset the whole apple cart". And our biggest learning was to trust your gut and also take action early, which obviously with a lot of things that we had going on this year, including health being one of the big things, if you are turning a blind eye to those things, it can be super destructive in your business and it can be super destructive to your team. So this is one of the biggest learnings that we've taken away from this year, to be honest, and it is a learning that we've probably had to learn the hard knocks of. So we will take those learnings and yeah, we will build on that. But we also learnt that having a bigger staff or a bigger team doesn't always equal more productivity. In fact, we grew our team quite substantially this year and our productivity in sale, in warehouse logistics and also like the creative was at an all-time low. Terrence: Yeah, I think that's a very important point as well. I think it's not necessarily hiring more staff to get the job done. I think if you look at your efficiencies, et cetera, trying to improve your efficiencies, your systems, your procedures, streamlining, all of that you can quite often make do with what you have. I think we've just experienced as well now in our sale period where we had even less people packing this year, we got pretty much the same amount of orders out if not a few more on a day than what we did last year the same time with probably double the staff. I think there's a lot more distraction as well from, from an owner's point of view where there's a lot more people to assist, especially if you are getting in staff that don't know the processes and the procedures. So yeah, that was definitely a big learning for us. You don't need a lot of staff and make sure your processes, your systems and your procedures are all streamlined and integrated and all of that. I think integration is definitely the way forward. Rebecca: Absolutely. And I think for us, we can already see from the beginning three weeks into 2020 their efficiencies. We've got so much more efficiency going on. We are outsourcing to experts and that includes things like editing this podcast, things like graphics, things like, yeah. So we are hiring people that are quite skilled in those areas and we are noticing a huge difference in efficiency. We are super pumped to be working with some super amazing creatives and experts in 2020 because we feel like that's going to take our business to the next level. So we are super excited. Terrence: Yeah, very excited about all of that. And we've got some exciting new things to bring your way as well. Rebecca: Yeah, we've been working on some big projects so we are very excited to bring them out. One of our other biggest learnings, which I know has come from a lot of other business is how reliant we were on Instagram. We were early adopters of Instagram and I guess we sat in so many business conferences where it was pushed and one day said, because Facebook had already done it, that eventually Instagram would go to paid. So we always invested in our mailing list and things like that. But I guess we didn't realize how much of an impact being early adopters of that really did help grow our business in those early stages. Particularly with product selection and things like that as well. We could style a room and we could instantly get feedback from our community on what people liked or didn't like. And that was an amazing thing to have in our business to test products with, to move and grow with. I know there has been a lot of negativity and Instagram has changed a lot from when we first did it. I guess the visual side of it is something that I've had to let go of a little bit. And I know the move is going into entertainment and things like that, so getting to know the people behind the brand. I still love a beautiful visual image. I'm well aware that that's not always real life. It's like magazines. I used to love magazines growing up, so that visual grid for me is still something that I'm struggling to let go of with the more real. Terrence: I think we were quite fortunate as well that we've always been working on our mailing list from day one I think. We started collecting subscribers. Even our first day we had a little market that we did, our boutique market, we were collecting email addresses, et cetera, et cetera. We've continued to do that all along the way; never just relied on Instagram. However, when Instagram was in full swing for us in those early days, it was really good. But we are now in a position where the exposure is not always there for your brand the way it used to be, but we have that mailing list that we will continue to build. At the end of the day, those are the contacts that you have and you are not relying on someone else who collects contact for you that you don't actually access to, to be able to contact them any other way apart from through Facebook or Instagram. One word of advice that we have is definitely continue building your mailing list and put a lot of effort into that and make sure you collect the right customers as well. Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. Investing in your mailing list is super important and as Terry said, we did this from day one. It was a direct talking point to our customers. And again, we are looking at building on this this year. We are super excited to be building on our mailing list. We have some exciting things planned for that and we will be keeping our eye on the market for any new, maybe Tik Tok. We are giving that a whirl. Terrence: We are still trying to figure out whether that's where our audience is.  Rebecca: Yes. We will give anything a try. I guess being a small business we are always wanting to try something new and being early adopters of a platform. So the Instagram days as they call it, we are definitely over this year, but we are super excited to be working on still Instagram, but also taking things like our mailing list and things to the next level. Terrence: Yes. And improving that and making it better. We are also obviously working on the content that we will be sending out to customers to make it really relevant and speak to the audience. Rebecca: Yeah. So as you can see, 2019 has been a huge year of learnings for us and it has probably been one of our biggest years. It took us right back to the beginning of our business journey where we made so many learnings in those first few years and even nine years later, we still have years like last year where we had some pretty incredible learnings that we have learnt. I guess one thing that came out of 2019 is to really back ourselves. We know our business better than anyone. We've built it from the ground up. We have packed orders. We still pack orders and we know every inch of our business. So we need to trust our decisions. And that's everything from the creative all the way through to warehousing. Both Terry and I have done aspects of all the business, and so really trusting our decisions and our experience. I mean, after nine years there has been some experience. Terrence: Yeah, I think that's a very important point. I think both Beck and I can do absolutely anything in this business should anything happen. That has always been the case. I realized that at some point there might be a point in time where that will not always be possible to know absolutely everything, but we've never been in a position where we've had to hire for a skill that we can't or we have as such. I think being able to do absolutely everything in the business also gives you that feeling and knowing that these are your expectations and the expectations are not too high. You know how long it takes, you know what's involved and all of that. Rebecca: Also surrounding yourself with people that you can trust is also super important, who also believe in your vision unconditionally, but they are also not afraid to speak up to you and give you feedback when it's needed as well. And so that trust element for us is super important to our business culture. And there is a stage in your business where you do need to hire fully trained experts to take over the ropes and not just graduates, which we have relied on previously. I guess we were at a stage in our business where we probably underestimated how many skills had been learned and really needed to hirer up, basically. So we hired quite a few graduates this year and I guess we needed to balance that out with some more experienced people. Terrence: Yeah. I think our first ever full-time employee came to us as a graduate. That worked out really well, but I think it also depends on the person that you hire as well. If they don't have the right brand feel or if they don't have the right personality as such, it won't necessarily work out. But having the right team in place is definitely, definitely the best solution. Having the people around you to not only support you, but also be there when the chips are down and have your back. I think it works both ways in that regards. Rebecca: 2019 was a huge year for us and somewhere so looking forward to taking all those incredible earnings into 2020 and making it an amazing year. We've got some amazing new projects planned. We've got some, we've been researching some, we are trying to get off the ground and we cannot wait to share them with you. Terrence: Yes, no, definitely exciting times ahead and we will continue to learn obviously as we have been doing and making the business better as well, as well as the product and how we service our customers. That has always been a big focus for us, making sure that the customer is always top of mind and that we are servicing all of their requirements and needs. Rebecca: Next week's episode, we are going to be sharing with you some of the exciting things that we will be taking into 2020 and we hope you’ve got some knowledge from our learnings and our mistakes this year and we hope you can take them into 2020 for an amazing year as well. Terrence: Yes guys, thanks for tuning in. I hope you've learned something and I hope we've helped you out along the way as well with what we've learned in 2019. Here is to a great 2020 to everyone.  Rebecca: Don't forget to subscribe or leave us a feedback and we will see you next week.  Terrence: See you next week. Rebecca: Thanks guys. Thanks to everyone for tuning into our podcast, Know Better, Be Better. If you liked our show, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. It would mean the world to us. If you would like to find out more about our small business, join us at www.miannandco.com.au. For now, keep learning and striving to do better. And remember to enjoy the journey and not just the end results. 

  Duration: 47:30   Rebecca: Hello and welcome to the Know Better, Be Better podcast. We are a podcast that is committed to learning and educating others about the lifestyle and commitment of running a small business. We started our own business Miann and Co in 2011 after our second child was born and we saw a gap in the market for natural fiber products. We are lifelong learners on an incredible journey, making a conscious effort to appreciate and enjoy every single moment of it. Join us in an unscripted conversation about our business journey, mindful thinking, ethics, business tips and tricks, travel, self-care and creativity. Gaining insight from our own experience and endeavors as well as reaching out to other amazing experts in the field, we would love to offer a deeper understanding into our business journey and the business and lifestyle realm. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Know Better, Be Better. I have another exciting and inspirational woman that I'm interviewing today. This one is actually a little close to my heart as I've been asked to speak at one of Katrina's events tonight. So I thought it would be great opportunity to sit down and have a chat and talk all things business. Katrina is part owner of Barham Avocados and they are doing some amazing things in a small community. I sat down with Katrina to chat all things business and running a business in a rural community. This chat is hugely inspirational and also gives some ideas for anyone that's inspired to run a business in a rural area. Buckle in. I can't wait to share this one with you. And without further ado, I'm going to turn over to our chat.  Rebecca: Hi Katrina and welcome to know better be better. It’s so good to have you here today. Katrina: Hi Bec. Thanks for having me. It's lovely to be here. Rebecca: A pleasure. Well, let's start off with you telling us a little bit about yourself and where you grew up and what you study. Katrina: My back story. Rebecca: Yeah, your back story.  Katrina: You never know how detailed to go with this, I suppose. But yeah, so I grew up... We are actually recording today at my house which is lovely, so on the farm. I grew up here on the farm and in the same town as you.  Rebecca: Yeah. Katrina: Barham, went to school in Barham and yeah, sort of... I actually went off to boarding school and then went off to uni in Melbourne and studied Ag science and then actually also did a masters in environmental management and sort of global studies, sort of like, it was a pretty broad sort of masters really. It was awesome though.  Rebecca: I didn't know that. Katrina: Yeah. So it’s called International Urban and Environmental Management.  Rebecca: Amazing. Katrina: Yeah. It was very broad, but it was really good. It was actually really interesting because while I was studying, that was by correspondence, we also lived in Bangkok for a year. Tim worked with an NGO and I did volunteering with an NGO. It was really interesting because I was sort of studying stuff and learning about NGOs and how they operated and then we were kind of living it as well, so seeing how it actually played out in reality. So that was really interesting because there is a lot around how the world bank operates and IMF operates. It was just fascinating actually, and the bureaucracy that NGOs have tied up with. So that was really fascinating. That was sort of... That was when I was a little bit older, like around 25.  So yeah, Ag Science and then lived in England for a couple of years. Tim and I lived over there. We met back here in Barham because he came to work in Barham as a local vet and then we ended up traveling overseas together for a couple of years and then back here for a bit and then Bangkok and then back in Australia again. After we lived in Bangkok, we moved back to Young in New South Wales. Yeah, because as I said, he was a vet. We were going to buy into a vet practice there in Young. And then we had our first baby, Daisy and sort of had like a bit of an epiphany of, well, hang on a minute, we really want to be on a farm, but we are never going to be able to afford to buy a farm around here.  Rebecca: Yeah, that's a hard one. Katrina: Because Young was really expensive real estate. So then we sort of thought, well, we've got two farms in the family, so maybe we should be thinking about going back to one of them. I guess the avocado farm here at Barham really appealed to us because it was avocados and we sort of saw a lot of opportunities in the future of that because, there is a lot you can do to value add and it’s such an awesome product. Rebecca: Absolutely. It's endless really, isn't it? Katrina: Yeah, it really is. Yeah. We love the Barham community and so we sort of said to mum, because she was at that time looking to sort of sell the farm anyway and move somewhere else. So we said, how about we come back to the farm? She was like, "Oh no, don't be ridiculous. Why would you want to do that sort of thing?" We were like, "No, we really do". So yeah, that was a nine years ago.  Rebecca: Wow. Has it been nine years? Katrina: Yes. It's crazy. It has gone so quickly. Like, you know, so cliché. Rebecca: It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Katrina: It really does go quickly. Katrina: Yeah. So then we moved back to the farm in 2011 or whatever or it was 2010, yeah.  Rebecca: Tell us a little bit about the journey into your own business, I guess in your own farming and how you've tackled that as opposed to working for someone else as well.  Katrina: It has been awesome actually. It was so challenging at the start, like to come back in and take over the farm and mum literally just basically... She actually ended up having an operation that first year. She had a brain tumor, not a cancerous one, but quite a bad tumor. So we were literally thrown in the deep end because she needed to go off and have the operation and she was out of action for ages. Rebecca: I didn't know.  Katrina: Yeah. So we walked back into our sort of first harvest and everything. It was just like, here you go. Rebecca: Full on. Katrina: It was so full on and I just had our second baby and it was just... It was crazy that first couple of years. Anyone in business will tell you this last couple of years is mental. You are just learning so much. And we had never run a business. That was the other thing. You think going back to a farm, I don't know, it's such a different thing these days running a farm, it's such a business. You've got to run it like a business. So that was... Not only were we learning how to grow the avocados and how to keep them alive, it was all this business and payroll and accounting and finance and tax. Rebecca: It's so much to learn, isn't it? Katrina: So much. So that was... Plus we also decided to sort of start the brand of Barham Avocados. So we developed that brand and an online shop to sell the avocado. So that was like another layer as well.  Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: The first couple of years were crazy and I don't think we had any kind of like well-being practices in place or anything. We were really just flying by the seat of our pants. But it was still awesome though. And we loved it. Tim had always been working for someone else. Rebecca: He hadn't had his own practice before that? Katrina: Never had his own practice. Rebecca: So those two years would have been massive learning.  Katrina: Totally. Yeah, exactly. But also at the same time we loved it. Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: It is awesome to own your own business.  Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: The flip side of the hard work of it is it's very empowering, but there is a whole lot of learning, how to manage your time because... And that's what Tim really struggled with at the start, was how to be efficient and to get stuff done and to manage your time so that you were being efficient. So that was a big learning curve as well, but yeah, awesome though as well. And just to have that freedom, because you can then duck off to the school assembly if you need to and you are not answerable to someone else. That’s the ying and the yang of that because it's all on you, but at the same time it's the freedom of that.Rebecca: Absolutely. It's like the positive and negative, I think always coexist in anything that you do. It's how you tackle that positive and negative as well. And it is in everything, I think. So you can either focus on the negative or positive or see that they come together and that's life. Katrina: Yeah, 100% and the learnings also in the negatives. Rebecca: Absolutely. Absolutely.  Katrina: I've learned to do that a lot more as I've grown. It's like you know, see everything as a learning, not... Rebecca: That's right, a negative.  Katrina: Exactly. So that was nine or ten years ago and we've had a lot of learnings in that time, I think, but it has been awesome. Really, I have loved having our own business. Overall it has been amazing.  Rebecca: How do you find working alongside Tim as well? You are husband and wife as well, like we are. How do you find working together? Do you bring a different skillset or how do you divide the business? Do you do similar things or how do you work that as well?  Katrina: Yeah, so that's another thing I think we've got a lot better at. In the early days it was literally just you know... Rebecca: Survival? Katrina: Yeah, survival. Absolutely. You just do whatever you've got to do and make it work. We are very fortunate. We have a great relationship and we are good at communicating. I think that's a big thing. You've got to be able to communicate well. I think I drive that a lot, but Tim is really receptive to that too. We are able to stop and have those conversations and just really... Rebecca: Absolutely. Which is so important, I think. Katrina: So important. And be clear, you know, Brene Brown, clear is kind. Don't bloody bottle things up and then you know... Rebecca: Or beat around the bush in a roundabout way that miscommunication happens.  Katrina: Yeah, just be clear. Rebecca: That's right. Katrina: So that has been good. And I think, yeah, we've learned a lot and we now do separate our roles quite a lot. I'm really good on the strategic big picture kind of... That's definitely my happy place. It's like long-term vision. Yeah, that big picture stuff. So that has been good. I'm sort of more in that role now and take and do sort of more of the finance side and the payroll, that kind of stuff. Like more of the business side, I guess and strategic side. And then Tim's really the hands on the ground day to day. We don't see each other that much. We don't cross paths because he is out all day on the farm and I'll be in, so it's pretty good now in that respect. But we also just make a conscious effort to check in and have those meetings. We go through stage, like sometimes we are really good and we will do them every month and we will be really strict and then it goes by the wayside, but just stopping and stepping back, really important.  Rebecca: So important. Yeah. Katrina: But you can easily forget to do it and get caught up in the day to day and you don't step back and say, well where are we going? And I'm really big on that. Like, hey, so where are we heading? Like what's the 10 year plan? Like what's... what are we working towards? And we want to go traveling and take a year off with the kids and go take a boat. We want to go on a boat for a year.  Rebecca: This is a dream we've had as well.  Katrina: Yeah. But it's actually really good for your business plan because it makes you, so already... Rebecca: Systemizing. Katrina: Yup. And we are putting things in place. We know we need a manager on board, someone who can run the show while we are not here. So it just makes you that much more, I guess kind of take those steps and make it easier to systemize it so that when you are not here.  Rebecca: Absolutely. Systemizing I think changes your business as well. We weren't big on that, but yeah, it absolutely gives you a lot of freedom, makes everything run a lot smoother and being able to run your business from anywhere too, I think. Katrina: Definitely. And even with a farm these days, there is so much more technology that you can do that. I mean it's still, I find it... It's hard to get Tim to systemize things sometimes, because it's, yeah, It's [inaudible 11:29]. Rebecca: I don't... I think... Yeah, I don't want to make a generalization, but yeah, systemizing is a different... It is really good on the technology side of things, but systemizing things [crosstalk11:41] Katrina: Not so much. We will have skills. Rebecca: Yeah, yeah. That's right.  Katrina: But yeah, I think overall Tim and I work well together and it does have its challenges. You've got to... I think also we are pretty good at having our own time. I'll go away and do thing and he'll do his thing. I'll probably go away more than he does, actually. I think that helps. We have space from each other. We are not in each other's pockets at all and that really helps as well. And yeah, communication is the number one thing I think when you are running a business together and just respecting each other. It's a good thing to just have that baseline of respect and try to keep things… The other thing we really try to be conscious of is keep the work discussions. Rebecca: Home and work.  Katrina: But then you go out for dinner and you ended up talking about the business. I mean, it's inevitable, but... Rebecca: Absolutely, kids are business. Katrina: Kids are business, exactly. But just try to limit that so it has its place. Again, in the early days we used to just be like... It would be chaos because you would be trying to talk about something that needed to happen in the business and the kids are screaming outside. Rebecca: Frustration, isn't it? It is systemizing things so you have that more balanced everywhere really, isn't i? It filters through to home life as well.  Katrina: Definitely and try to separate the two. That's what I do now. I used to, the kids would get home from school and I would still be on the computer doing work. It just doesn't work. So now I know, switch off if you are away, if they are around. Like you just can't... Oh I can't. I'm sure some people can. Rebecca: But you just end up getting frustrated and no one wins from it as well, isn't it? Like you are frustrated, they are frustrated and it's just not a happy place. Katrina: Yeah. So if you can separate the two as much as possible. There is always going to be times when you just have to get something done and they are around and that's... But as much as possible, try to separate the two. Rebecca: You've got four now as well. So you've got one still at home? Katrina: Yup. Henry is two in a couple of weeks actually. He does daycare, but only two days.  Rebecca: That's a lot to fit into two days, isn't it? Katrina: Yes. It's pretty full on actually.  Rebecca: Yeah, like trying to squeeze it into two days it is. Katrina: It is, yeah. But to be honest, like I have stepped back a lot more over the… like, since having Henry too. I don't know, it took me four children to just go, “Actually, I'm just going to step back and enjoy this a bit more”. I really have. It has been awesome. But now I'm like, ready to go. Rebecca: Ready to get back into the seat. Yeah. I know it is. You kind of need to recharge those batteries with those things sometimes too, don't you? And it ebbs and flows with family life sometimes that needs you a little bit more and sometimes a business needs you a little bit more. Katrina: That's probably one of the benefits of having a husband and wife partnership, is that I haven't been able to step back and Tim has picked up a bit more. But then again, it's resetting the balance again because I found like I'm doing more of the domestic stuff and I'm doing more of this stuff. So I've had to say to Tim, okay, so you've got into this pattern now where I'm doing all this stuff. If I want to step back into it, we need to reset that a bit. Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: But again, that's just about having a conversation and making him aware that this is not exactly how I want it to keep going.  Rebecca: Absolutely. Oh my goodness, yes. You are speaking my love language. Yeah. I think it's a thing, particularly when you are in business together, it is dividing all of those tasks as well. You know, home life. You don't just come home when you've got four children at home and then work life as well. It's never ending.  Katrina: Yeah. For me that's about saying to Tim as well. If someone's picking up the slack, of course the other person is going to go [crosstalk 14:56] Rebecca: Absolutely, yeah. Katrina: You've actually got to say, well, I need you to step up here. Rebecca: Absolutely.  Katrina: And in a nice way. Not in a, “You are not doing anything to help me”. That never works.  Rebecca: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.  Katrina: So that's good.  Rebecca: Fantastic. Did you always know that you wanted to go into business or was this something that after you had kids or something that kind of changed or did something change or trigger?  Katrina: Yeah, well, no. I had never really... I guess, I reckon I was floating sort of unconsciously for a long time. You know, it wasn't really... I don't know. I wasn't really... I never had this sort of super big ambition to be... Well, I always thought I was going to be a horse rider, actually, because I spent all my childhood riding horses. I never really consciously thought about what the future was career wise. I wasn't sort of career driven at all. And yeah, we just kind of fell into the business, I guess because it was coming back to a farm, which was a business, but... I think that's actually one of the things that is so awesome about a farm is that it is your own business. But yes, it never was like, well I want to start a business. But now I just love the entrepreneur world and I'm obsessed with it. I'm just desperate to... Rebecca: There is so much learning, isn't there?  Katrina: Yes. Rebecca: It wasn't really a word, I guess around when we were even at school as well, you know, entrepreneurial thing. There was small business around because we grew up in a small community, so a lot of people had their own business. But yeah, I guess it wasn't glamorized like it is now. It wasn't a buzz word, so there wasn't a lot of talk about it or support groups or things like there are now too, all the resources, internet. Katrina: Oh my goodness, and now it's like a rabbit hole for...Rebecca: It is. Katrina: And yeah, like I just I love the whole world of learning about business and I love that. So now I sort of kind of moving on to wanting to start another business. Rebecca: Yes, yes, absolutely. I think once you get into it as well, you realize that there is so many opportunities whereas I think when you are growing up or when we were growing up, it wasn't even really a path or encouraged through school. And I think it's still not. Katrina: Still not enough. Everything you read says that like the future is for creatives and it's all about... Rebecca: Absolutely, thinking outside the box.  Katrina: Yes. But you know our education system, you and I have talked about this, is not geared up for that.  Rebecca: No, not at all. Katrina: But I think, I guess at least we are leading by example for the kids.  Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: I suppose at this stage that's the best thing we can do. But yeah, the school system is definitely not teaching people how to be creative and be entrepreneurial as such. It's coming in a bit, but not enough.  Rebecca: No. No. Katrina: We didn't know about it. Like I didn't even... Apart from a farm, you know running a farm, you didn't really think that you can go and do whatever you want.  Rebecca: Absolutely. Yeah. I know. Even at uni I feel like it wasn't really discussed a lot either. For me, it has been, I think, I guess in the last nine years it has become really a buzzword. And since we've been in business... Nine years ago when we started, there wasn't a lot of resources around compared to now. I just feel like we've got so many resources as well.  Katrina: It's incredible. I was just saying this to a friend the other day, like we started the online store nine years ago. I mean, there was nothing. Rebecca: Nothing. Katrina: Even retail, like clothing retail was barely online. It was only just coming in. I started off taking the orders by email. People would email me the orders. There was no Shopify. There was no... I mean it might've been the early days in Australia maybe, but it's so much easier now all that stuff. There is so much opportunity and what you can do. Rebecca: So many opportunities, I think, for everyone it's just getting in there and wanting to do it think. Katrina: Yeah. And then it's... like I sort of tied in a little bit, like starting your own business is very much associated with having good wellbeing almost. Like you've got to be at a certain level of your own confidence and own… Yeah, like feeling good within yourself to be able to...  Rebecca: Absolutely.  Katrina: Entrepreneurship is very much linked with having good wellbeing. So that's really... And finding your purpose and your why and all that sort of stuff. It's all so linked. Rebecca: Absolutely. It is so linked. Absolutely. Katrina: Yeah. And then knowing what's out there, you know, and being able to then tap into that resource that's out there. Like you and I are in that space, so we are constantly finding new things. If you've never delved into that, you just don't know what's there. Rebecca: Absolutely. Absolutely. I guess we went searching for things nine years ago and we just... We come up stumps so many times and even community groups and things. For us, it was trade shows, like going to trade shows, doing the physical yards and meeting people through that and networking and getting information that way, to be honest, but that was such good. Katrina: Yeah. And it was the same for us with farmers market. We started out doing farmers market back then and they was a great way to learn. Yeah, that's how you sort of learn. Rebecca: It was more people resources then whereas now I feel like there is so much more online. It's involved so much more. Katrina: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Rebecca: That brings me to one of my next questions. What are some of the challenges that you have from running a business in a rural community? Katrina: This is an interesting one. I mean, it's hard to know because we haven't run a business in a city community. But I mean, I guess the main... From the online perspective, the main challenges are postage challenges, because unfortunately we are very limited. You know, Australia Post is a bit like Telstra. We don't have a lot of options up here. We don't have the competition with couriers and that kind of stuff and we can't really, because avocados are a perishable, well, people class them as a perishable, so we are very limited in who will courier them.  Rebecca: Who do you use for your courier? Katrina: Australia Post. Rebecca: Australia Post, yeah. Katrina: We do. And like it works, but it's not... It's expensive. It's a big cost and because it's a sort of a lower value product, I mean, avocado is not... Then it's hard. The postage can often be... Rebecca: More than, yeah. Katrina: And then I don't mind, because I am one of those shoppers that goes up prices, but don't think about it whereas Tim is like, “But that's $15 on top of... Why would people pay that?” Rebecca: But it is an actual cost to business, isn't it?  Katrina: It is, Rebecca: So it's really hard to educate people that, that is a cost that a business has to wear and it does come off the bottom line, particularly in rural areas.  Katrina: Exactly. Because it's so much more expensive for me and all the big companies can do free postage now, because they are doing so many and they get such good rates, but for the smaller guys, it's still a really big challenge. Rebecca: Big cost, yeah. Katrina: But overall business wise, I mean, I think you know... I mean, people go on about like it's so different living in the country, but I think we would have all the same sort of challenges is what you would have running a business in the city.  Rebecca: Agreed. Yeah. Katrina: Especially, because it's all... I mean, obviously internet access with online business is a big thing.  Rebecca: Yeah. How do you find internet access here and things like that all from the farm? What do you run off? Is that tricky?  Katrina: Yeah. We've had to spend a lot of money to be able to get internet service, basically. We get good service now in the house and we get really good service at the shed, but we've had to put on all sorts of boosters and antennas. We actually run the whole thing through our mobile phones now. It costs us a fortune. That's the only thing.                          Rebecca: We ran our business for six months in an industrial area with no internet that we couldn't go either because it was broadband and things that... We had to sell it. That's in Geelong. We came up again. We had six months where, same thing, we are running our whole business off our phone and it was... But we would also file into our Dropbox system, so that was like... We had new staff on board. We had no internet for six months, seven months.  Katrina: That's ridiculous. Rebecca: In a city. Katrina: Ridiculous. Rebecca: So there are still those obstacles I think in the city too. But internet for us is one of our major things as well. Katrina: People often say even in the center of Melbourne you get no service. So I would say like that. Again, obviously it's not a rural or city thing, it's just that's just the challenge of business, it’s having good internet access and it's something that Australia really needs to lift its game on because it's crucial to so many businesses.  Rebecca: Absolutely.  Katrina: So that a challenge. Rebecca: And encourages more businesses to the country as well if you've got those resources as well.  Katrina: Definitely. I mean, so many people are talking about it and everybody knows that we need better internet access and it presents so many opportunities. But yeah, so that's definitely a challenge. And then I suppose there is always just the... You know, making money is a challenge. That's a huge challenge.  Rebecca: I think that's an every business challenge. Katrina: Totally. You know, we've got the added variable of climate and then we've got the input of water and that sort of stuff. So trying to make sure you... Rebecca: Yeah. How do you find balancing that with all the environmental complications and the water issues? How do you find that?  Katrina: Yeah, it's really challenging, because I've been involved in the water stuff quite a lot. I'm on a committee that's part of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. They have a community sort of advisory panel, which I've been on. So it's really... It's such a huge contentious issue, water and access to water and you farmers getting enough water and all that sort of stuff and particularly hard in a drought. So we've had two very dry years, really low in flows. It's a huge divisive issue in our community, really around... So that's... but I mean, I guess we just try to run our business as well as possible. I have tried to be a little bit of an evangelist, but whereas Tim is always just like the best thing we can do is just run a good business, lead by example and just keep doing what we are doing. I know he is right. Like really, he is. We've done things like we've just put in a retractable roof greenhouse to try to... Rebecca: Amazing. Katrina: Yeah, it's awesome. So we've got a low interest rate loan through the government, actually to do it and it's... So that whole idea of that is because we know climate change is... Rebecca: Yes, a big issue, ongoing. Katrina: Big issue, less water. So we are just trialing and growing avocados under this projected cropping. So that has been really cool. So we are doing things like that and we just try to be as innovative as possible and try to stay ahead and think ahead and manage the water as well as we can and be as sustainable as possible, which every farmer is doing.  Rebecca: Absolutely.  Katrina: But yeah, so it's just another added challenge to the business. But you know, again, like every business, no matter where you are has different... Rebecca: Challenges. Katrina: Challenges and risks that you've got to manage. Rebecca: Absolutely, different economical situations. Yeah, absolutely. Katrina: So we just take that view. It's just another part of managing the business. You choose to be a farmer, so it's just something that you've got to manage. Rebecca: Absolutely.  Katrina: Yeah. And then I suppose staffing is always a challenge too. We are so lucky with the staff that we have, but it's a huge cost to the business as you and I were talking about. Yeah, the staffing is always a big, part of it, but yeah. Or just things you manage.  Rebecca: Yeah. I know. Quite often as entrepreneurs we don't stop to celebrate the wins as well. So we talk about the challenges a lot, but we don't stop to celebrate the wins. I know we don’t. What have been some of the highlights of your business journey in the last nine years?  Katrina: Oh wow. Okay. So I guess just like that we are still here and we are doing it and we are expanding. We've expanded and we've bought a new hill, so growing more avocados. So that has been really awesome just to see the business growing. It’s so rewarding to see it grow. Rebecca: Yes, absolutely.  Katrina: I’m really proud of that and doing the greenhouse. That has been... I've really enjoyed that experience because it seems really innovative. It’s something really different.  Rebecca: Are their many people doing it in Australia? Katrina: We are the first ones in the world to try avocados under a green house. Rebecca: Wow.  Katrina: Yeah. They are doing... Rebecca: That's a huge win. Katrina: Yeah, it's cool. They are doing it with cherries and apples and other kind of stuff and there are a lot of blueberries, lots of other products, but no one has tried avocados. And that could be just because it's not going to be economically... The rewards are there, but still just great to be trying something so new. I loved… Like, we haven't entered for years, but we used to be in the Delicious Produce Awards. We were like a medalist in those three times which was... Rebecca: Fantastic. Katrina: Yeah, that was lovely.  Rebecca: So where does that run from as well? Katrina: It's out of Sydney, but through the delicious, through the magazine.  Rebecca: Fantastic. Katrina: Yes. Every year they have the produce awards and you send samples in and they judge it. Rebecca: Amazing. Katrina: They've got different categories. We were medalist, like top three in that for a few years running, which is cool. Yeah. I think just, I don’t know, like it's hard to [inaudible 26:50]. Like it is really hard to think about the wins, isn't it? Rebecca: It is. Katrina: But I guess, just something I often think about though is the fact that we employ nine people. We've got four regulars and then different at different times we have more, during harvest and stuff like that. It's so amazing to be running a business like that, that's supporting people in the community as well.  Rebecca: Absolutely. In a rural community where jobs are a little bit more scarce as well, so it is great to bring that to... I think that's a big win. Katrina:  Yeah, definitely.  Rebecca: Yeah, because it's double prong. It's not just, yeah.  Katrina: Yeah, that's right. And then other little wins I guess, is just the fact that we now have... I feel like we've got... I mean, I would never say we’ve got the balance right, but we are much better. We've learned so much in how to manage our time better and just to be more productive. And especially I've seen that in Tim. His growth in running the business has been awesome and he does such a good job. So I love watching that. It's really rewarding to see what a good job he is doing and the farm looks amazing and all that. And I think we don't stop. I try to remind him because I think it's really nice to celebrate that.Rebecca: It’s even those small things and coming so far in yourself as a manager and things like that, because we are not... We haven't been to business school or there is no manager. There are courses, but it is such a foreign thing and it's a big thing as well. Katrina: I mean, because we were so lucky to come back to a farm that’s running, but you can easily run it into the ground. Rebecca: That's right. Katrina: You can easily, so... Rebecca: And the pressure is sometimes more on when it has been running efficiently rather than something that has been run into the ground that you've got the opportunity to build back up as well. Katrina: Exactly. Yeah. So it's great to see the farm looking so good and just to be doing such a good job with it. Yeah. I think it's just really important to celebrate that win, isn't it?  Rebecca: So important. Katrina: We are still here and doing business.Rebecca: And surviving. Absolutely. I think, yeah. And that's definitely something we don't do enough of either, but when we are writing our… We did our story and we were like, "Wow, we've done...” Like when you actually write out what you've done in nine years, you are like, oh, we actually have, because sometimes it feels like you are so in it, you don't get time to reflect back on and you feel like you are not moving the needle, but you really are moving the needle. You just don't reflect on that enough sometimes.  Katrina: Yes. Especially for you in your industry, to still be in your industry after nearly 10 years is awesome. A lot of businesses, you know what they say, fail in the first two years.  Rebecca: Yeah. Christie and I were talking about last week from that first trade show that we did nine years ago, there is probably only a small handful, even if a handful still going.  Katrina: See, they go. Rebecca: Yeah, that statistics is, when you actually see it in fruition as well, I think it is astounding. Katrina: Definitely. And it's something to be proud of. Rebecca: And why it's so important to support small business as well.  Katrina: Exactly. Have you seen the Bar from the Bush campaign? Rebecca: I have. That has gone viral, hasn't it?  Katrina: It is amazing. Rebecca: Amazing. It's so good. Katrina: We were on there just the start of this week actually and yeah, [inaudible 29:47] followers and heaps of orders, because we just put that online shop back up and it's fantastic. Rebecca: See one idea of how to overcome something that's negative that's turned into a positive. And you know, it's amazing.  Katrina: Yeah, I love it. That sort of stuff is so good. Rebecca: Or businesses being born out of the drought they are having to diversify or... I think it's amazing.  Katrina: It's exactly what you were talking about before, flipping it around to see the opportunity rather than just the negative side. Rebecca: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Katrina: Okay, but what's the opportunity? Rebecca: And I think sometimes when you are in those bad things, you can't think outside that, but there is always opportunity to flip it around and make it into something even bigger than what you ever anticipated as well.  Katrina: Definitely. Often the greatest things come out of the worst times and the greatest... Rebecca: Agreed, the situations. Yeah. I agree. Like the ones that I've seen, it has been something that they can't or they are frustrated with and then they've started a business and overcome that. So not just for themselves, but other people as well. Katrina: That's right because it forces you to think outside the square to overcome that or, yeah. That's that mindset stuff, isn't it? And being able to see it differently.  Rebecca: Yeah. I think mindset is a really hard thing and yeah, in business it can trickle very quickly either way as well.  Katrina: Yes for sure. And in a community too, and like culturally you can have that... It can either go, yeah. Rebecca: Absolutely. Absolutely. When things are tough it is flipping that mindset and I think sometimes having your own space so you can work on your thoughts as well is really important as well.  Katrina: Yeah. Because whatever you put out as well, that [crosstalk 31:23] Rebecca: What comes back as well. Yeah. So it's like you can't control other people, but that's right, you can still put out, yeah. Katrina: Exactly. You can lead by example [crosstalk 31:32].  Rebecca: That's right. Absolutely.  Katrina: Maybe sow some seeds and then people pick up on what you are doing and think, oh maybe I can try that. Rebecca: Absolutely. That's it. Katrina: [Crosstalk 31:38] because you can't change people. Rebecca: You can't change people, absolutely not. No. So you are heavily involved in the local community and local community groups. What tips can you give to someone looking to make the city change with their business to the country? Katrina: Ah, yeah. Well, this is an interesting one actually because it was a sort of easy, like we are heavily involved in the community, as you said, but it was sort of easy for us, like, well, I see it as being a bit easier because I was from here. So I sort of knew, I guess, what groups to get involved with and the stuff. But I imagine for someone coming up it could be like if you moved like you don't know where to... Where do I go? But interestingly, last night we did a live recording of our podcast. I've got a podcast as well.  Rebecca: Tell us what your podcast is. Katrina: It's called Spreading the Good Stuff. Rebecca: Spreading the Good Stuff, fantastic. Katrina: That I do with a couple of other girls. And we did a night of Thanksgiving and gratitude, Rebecca: Yeah. Fantastic. Katrina: And we got some of the people from the audience to come up. One of them was [inaudible 32:33] who has brought on [inaudible 32:35] and she moved up to [inaudible 32:37] 10 years ago. And she said one of the ways that she got involved with the community was by joining all the committees. So it can be a really great way to integrate yourself into a community and get involved. And people in rural communities love it. Fresh blood, new people come and help us.  Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: If you are enthusiastic and you just want to help, then people, because volunteers are burnt out in the country, because it's always the same people. Rebecca: Absolutely. Absolutely. Katrina: So it's... and we have really... I really value that because I think I grew up with parents who were heavily involved in the community as well. And so it's just something that I really value and I've made a big effort to do it. And it just, again, it really contributes to your own well-being as well.  Rebecca: I could not agree more. Katrina: Yeah. By putting, you know and giving that back to your community and feeling part of it. I can imagine it could be quite intimidating for a new person who is moving into a place and doesn't know, but I highly recommend just getting involved because people will embrace it. Rebecca: Absolutely. Totally. I think everyone embraces it in a smaller community. It's well-embraced. Katrina: Definitely. And there are always challenges. And I have to say like I've learned a lot. I'm just like, through my own growth and sort of leadership skills and all that kind of stuff by being involved with different community groups and also just different personalities and how you work in groups, you can really learn a lot from that as well. And meetings are such funny things. Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: [Crosstalk 33:58] Rebecca: It's like being in the workforce too, you know, with a varied community of people and how they say you need all those personalities to make a workplace work. I guess it's the same in a community too, isn't it?  Katrina: Definitely. Rebecca: So it's embracing all those different personalities. Katrina: Yes, and again, seeing that as a positive to build you forward rather than a negative. Rebecca: That's right. Katrina: So there is a lot to be learned I think, and you can really thrive and it helps you personally and it helps the community by getting involved. It's a great way to meet people and to feel a part of things. Rebecca: And raising kids too, I think. Like I, yeah, I can't speak more highly of growing up in the country. I think a lot of people see it as a disadvantage, but I see it as a superpower still now. I still use it as a superpower.  Katrina: Absolutely. I try to get everyone I can to move back to Barham. I think I've to get you to move back too actually. You can totally move back here too. Rebecca: I think, yeah... Some of my strongest friendships are still the ones that I grew up with and I think you can't put a value on that to feel safe and nurtured in that community growing up, especially when there is diversity or something happens. It has got its positive and its negatives, like everything, like I say, but I think, I don't know, always feeling safe and people knowing. If there is something there people pick up and carry on.  Katrina: Definitely. That support network is amazing and I think, yeah, exactly. Like I was saying earlier, I don't think it's that much more challenging to run a business in a rural area as it is in the city, but you get great quality of life. Rebecca:  Absolutely. Absolutely. Katrina: It's cheaper. Everything is cheaper.  Rebecca: Absolutely. And calmer as well, like with traffic. Katrina: Oh no traffic. If I can't park in front of the supermarket, I get very grumpy. Rebecca: That's right. So you are not frustrated or beeping horns or you haven't gone through 20 minutes of frustrated people in traffic and so you already start the day off of what calmer that as opposed to...  Katrina: Yeah, definitely.  Rebecca: What's already a busy lifestyle. I guess.  Katrina: I'm very pro trying to get people to move back. I think I've got... I've got a couple of friends back actually. Yeah, they have moved back mostly over the past few years.Rebecca: I appreciate it so much more now that I've got children as well. I think I appreciate it so much more as I've got kids and that sense of community. I think I probably underestimated it really. Katrina: Oh, me too. Definitely. Definitely. I think I really valued it after. So I lost dad to suicide when I was younger and that's when I really saw the benefit of the community.  Rebecca: Absolutely.  Katrina: They all just came together and it's so amazing. Rebecca: Meals on the doorstep. Katrina: Amazing. Helped pick all the pumpkins and all the community groups and stuff like that and then lost connection to that for a while and then like you said...Rebecca: Because you do, you don't value... It's the same as when Amelia was born and mum was away in the Royal Children's hospital for eight weeks and dad was working full time. The amount of meals that got. The amount of people that looked after us or ran us around this board or you know. I think, yeah, it's amazing that the community… It's one of the biggest strengths of raising in a small community is everyone rallying around when times are tough. Katrina: I think when you then have your own kids then you start to look for that again. Like, you want that connection.  Rebecca: Agreed, because you are like, what happens if I'm not here? How is that going to work? What happens? Where can I go? Katrina: That's right. So yeah, you can't underestimate that power of community [crosstalk 37:19]. Rebecca: Absolutely. Katrina: I love it.  Rebecca: Self-care is a bit of a buzz word at the moment. What are some of the tips or what are some of the things you do for self-care as well?  Katrina: Yep. Self-care is a big thing for me. I'm really passionate about it. It's interesting that you say it's buzzword because it is a bit, I guess. A lot of people are kind of, yeah, I don't know, maybe cashing in on it a bit, but it's actually so important. Rebecca: So important.  Katrina: Yeah. And so that's sort of like our podcast. We talk a lot about self-care and it's all about living positively and how you can sustain good wellbeing and all that kind of stuff, so really passionate about having good self-care. I think that has actually really helped us in business too.  Rebecca: Absolutely.  Katrina: Because we, you know... Particularly me, I find it a lot harder to get it in, to implement good self-care practices, but he probably just does it in different ways. Like it's not the way that... Rebecca: Is there men shed or anything here? Katrina: Yeah, there is. Well, it's more older… It's more elder men.  Rebecca: Is it? Katrina: Yeah.  Rebecca: I know it's hard for... because T quite often says the same. He goes, because women talking business and I've got a network because we are kind of in the kids space that I can ring and talk business to and he goes, “I don't have that many people on that level that he can ring and talk to about business as well”. So I think it's a gap. I think it's a gap. Katrina: Oh, totally. And women are a lot better at talking about. We go for coffees and all that stuff and blokes don’t [crosstalk 38:42].  Rebecca: No. Absolutely.  Katrina: They won't ring their friends and say, "Do you want to go for coffee?" Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. Katrina: Whereas they will go for a beer on a Friday, which I suppose is just different. It's just that that's for them, that's it. But, yeah, so I... I meditate twice a day. I do like, I exercise a lot and do... I'm really quite strict on my self-care, I guess, like looking after my well-being. It's like it's a daily practice for me. Rebecca: Yeah, it's so important. Katrina: It's really, really important I think. And it takes a lot of work. Rebecca: Yes, it does. Katrina: It's not just, yeah... Rebecca: I think that's a thing, isn't it? Like putting good practice into place is work like anything else. It's making it routine. And I think you've got to do it so many times before it becomes a routine.  Katrina: Definitely, and we talked about this last night as well, because the trouble is when... because you still have shit times and you still will have times when everything just gets too much.  Rebecca: Yeah, chaos. Katrina: But if you don't have those practices in place, because they will fall by the wayside when you have the crappy times too. Like you forget to do your things, you don't like doing it, but you've got to have all that groundwork in place. And then what you find is, and what I've found is you get out of the bad times much quicker. I think that's the goal. It is when... Rebecca: That's the key. Katrina: Because you are still going to have. It's not all about always amazing and everything's fine and you know, it's [crosstalk 39:58]. Rebecca: It's not a one pill [inaudible 40:00] fix, is it really? Katrina: No, not at all. But you can recover a lot quicker. And that's what it's about. It's about not letting those bad times overtake everything. And so that's what I've really found. Particularly this year I've had a couple of difficult experiences I guess, but I've been able to get out of them much quicker rather than wallow in it.  Rebecca: Yeah. It's a hard one, isn't it? And I guess for me, I'm finding self-care is different, looks different for everyone. Like, I was asking questions. So it depends what's filling your bucket or what works for you as an individual. It's not a one size fits all kind of thing as well. Katrina: That's so true. And we talk about that a lot as well. It's really... It's trial and error. You've got to find out what works for you. You go through different stages too. Like all of the three of us who do the podcast together. We always... You know, like at one stage you'll be doing more journaling or you'll be going through patch of practicing gratitude more. And then you go down a rabbit hole of, because once you get into the wellbeing space as well, and you learn about this stuff and you find something new here and then you try something new. That's actually part of the goodness of it too, is the learning. So yes, definitely not one size fits all. There is no recipe. And that's kind of the challenge and the joy of it, is that it's for you to discover what works for you. Rebecca: Find, discover. Yeah. It's really, because I asked Christie the same question the other day and it's probably not something that I thought of self-care, but she was saying travel because it's like that head space around and they make sure that they have a week out with their kids every school holidays. That has been a thing that's like a massive self-care thing for them. And I was like, oh brilliant. Katrina: Yes, absolutely, whatever it is. I think it's just actually consciously taking time to do self-care. And that's what a lot of people aren't doing. They are just, you know... Rebecca: In the grind. Katrina: Stock on auto pilot. Rebecca: The grind. And I think there is... I don't know, growing up in the country, I think maybe it was all about the grind and the hustle in small business and there wasn't the talk around the importance of self-care or their importance because it is 24/7 constantly. And it's putting those practices in place or boundaries in place that make that... Otherwise it can definitely get on top of you. Katrina: It's really about putting those practices in place, I guess, isn't it? Like just making sure that they are in place and they are there consistently and that you do them even more so when things are good. When things are good, get everything and then when things go bad, you'll be able to get back on track quicker.  Rebecca: I think that the thing, isn't? When things are bad, it's harder to work your way into those practices where if you've got them set up while things are great and going smooth, it's easier to maintain them as well.  Katrina: Definitely. Yeah, definitely. It's really important.  Rebecca: So what is next for Barham Avocados? Katrina: Oh yeah, so... Rebecca: [Inaudible 42:46] Katrina: Yeah. Well, that's right. I guess, like personally that's where I'm at. I'm at that point where I'm kind of wanting to do my own thing now in that sort of education space and online learning and like all about kind of empowering rural women really to have businesses and to have good wellbeing. That's sort of where I'm heading. I've been wanting to do it for about five years, but… Rebecca: It's such a great opportunity though, for people, particularly now with housing costs rising. It's more difficult when you've got high mortgages and things like that in city areas. It's easier. The cost of living is less. Some things are more, petrol. Katrina: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Those sorts of things and yeah, probably internet, but yeah. Rebecca: It is. It kind of balances out, I think always as well. And it is always less, so it is great opportunities for people wanting to start a business to move to a rural area.  Katrina: Definitely. Yeah. And I'm really passionate about that, trying to do it with good wellbeing and not you burn yourself out and not risk your family life and all that kind of stuff and have that kind of, you know, make it sustainable. So that's sort of where I'm heading personally. And then Barham Avocado is where we sort of shut down the online shop for a little bit, but we are just about to revamp that. We've got some stuff on there now, but next year we are going to give it a whole facelift and more products and have all avocado products and do also like value added stuff. I've just put on a friend. She has come to work for us, actually so she can be managing all that. So that's going to be really exciting. And yeah, we've expanded the... We are growing more avocados. We will probably plant some more next year. We are going to start to explore sort of the export market stuff and all that sort of thing as well. We've researched a lot what there is to value add like for in terms of value added products. We've been really lucky because avocados have been worth so much just as avocado, hasn't really been worth value by adding them. But prices are going to be starting to come back down and everything now because there are so many avocados being grown and all that sort of stuff. Rebecca: Is there really? Katrina: Yeah. Rebecca: Where else in Australia? Like, where is...?  Katrina: Well, they grow them all around Australia. Like in... All over Australia, you can grow them, which means we can have a year round supply from Australia, which is pretty cool.  Rebecca: That's amazing, yeah. Katrina: But a lot of people are planting them because they've seen the value in them. It's the same. Everyone is so reactive. It's like, oh, avocados are worth a lot. Let's all grow avocados and then oh, fancy that, the price comes down, so just trying to prepare for that. Rebecca; It's like having everything [inaudible 45:11] then you find a niche and you get stuck into that niche and it's [crosstalk 45:16]. Katrina: The next minute everybody is on it. Yeah, that's right. So just looking towards the future for that and then starting to do some more of my own stuff, which is nerve wracking and exciting at the same time. Yeah.  Rebecca: Where can people find you on social as well that anyone wants to follow the journey or is interested?  Katrina: Yes. Well, Barham Avocados is our Instagram. We've got Instagram and Facebook and then a website, Barhamavocados.com.au. And then my personal one is just Katrina_Meyers.  Rebecca: Fantastic. Awesome. Thanks so much. This has been awesome. Katrina: So lovely. Rebecca: Yeah. Thank you. Katrina: Thanks for talking to me, Bec. I loved it. Thank youRebecca: Wow, so many great tips. I hope you got as much out of that, listening to my chat with Katrina as I did taking away. I honestly could talk to Katrina forever. We have so much in common and I find her a huge inspiration running her business alongside her husband and with her four children, so hugely, hugely inspirational. Thanks again Katrina for having me at one of your events tonight and also for sitting down and taking the time to have a chat with me and share your story. That's it for this week guys. And until next week, that's all for No Better, Be Better. If you like this episode, please leave us a review or share it on iTunes. Thanks guys.  Thanks to everyone for tuning into our podcast. No Better, Be Better. If you liked our show, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. It would mean the world to us and if you would like to find out more about our small business, join us at www.miannandco.com.au. For now, keep learning and striving to do better and remember to enjoy the journey and not just the end results.  

Here at Miann & Co we are huge fans of a podcast. We will often be found sitting in our cars for those few extra minutes before work just to catch the last of our morning inspo! Whether you're tuning in on your daily drive, chilling out, wanting to learn something new or need some inspiration we have collated our top 5 podcasts that we think will be perfect for you! It was a challenging task but we have managed to slim our ginormous list of favourites down to just 5. We adore each of these podcasts and what they have to offer and we feel like our gorgeous viewers will benefit most from these selections. Below you will find 5 amazing podcasts covering various insightful topics. So sit back, relax and get ready to listen to some greatness! We also have some incredibly exciting news, we have just launched a podcast of out very own! It has been a dream for a very long time and we are beyond thrilled to share this with you! With no further adieu may we introduce to you, “Know Better, Be Better”. The podcast that is committed to learning and educating others about the lifestyle and commitment of running a small business. We are life long learners on an incredible journey making a conscious effort to appreciate and enjoy every single moment of it. Join us in a real unscripted conversation about mindful thinking, ethics, travel, self-care and creativity. Gaining insight from our own experience and endeavours as well as reaching out to other amazing experts in the field we would love to offer you a deeper understanding into the business and lifestyle realm. As well as our top 5 favourites we hope you find our very own podcast, enjoyable, inspiring and insightful! So sit back, relax and get ready to listen to some greatness!    1. OFFLINE "Hosted by award-winning Australian journalist and leader, Alison Rice, Offline is a series of honest conversations with the people behind our favourite Instagram accounts, and the teachers who help us on our way. Together, Alison and her guests get real about life on the other side of the filter and explore the often confronting concept of True Self. Offline exists as a resource for anyone who is ready to look past social media’s highlight reel and develop their sense of Self. These are raw, imperfect conversations, grounded in reality."   2. GOAL DIGGER "Goal Digger The Podcast by Jenna Kutcher. The live-workshop style business podcast that is helping thousands redefine success and chase bolder dreams. You can train from the experts how to dig in, do the work, and tackle your biggest goals along the way. I’m an expert at online marketing, a nerd when it comes to the numbers, and my obsession is teaching others how to make a living doing what they love (without it taking over their life)." 3. UNSTOPPABLE "UNSTOPPABLE with Kerwin Rae Podcast. The UNSTOPPABLE with Kerwin Rae podcast is for anyone who wants to push through their limits and live up to their highest potential. I interview top specialists, enlightened gurus and strategic professionals to uncover what it takes to get your business, your performance, your relationships, your health and so much more to the next level, so you can become UNSTOPPABLE."   4. ONE WILD RIDE "One Wild Ride is the exploration of a more meaningful life. A place where personal adventures collide with good business and positive impact. Here I share real conversations with ordinary humans doing extraordinary things. From Activists and Entrepreneurs to Sportspeople and Scientists, these are the people that help make our world a better place. Theirs are stories of positivity, hope, expansion and evolution. These are unscripted conversations where we deep dive into their highs and lows, their challenges and their triumphs. I’m Pru Chapman, and this is One Wild Ride." 5. DREAM LIFE "Dream Life by Kristina Karlsson. I have this big crazy dream... to inspire and empower 101 million people around the world, just like you, to write down 3 dreams, and go chase them... and I believe that it's completely possible to make that happen. I know that inspiring the world to dream will make the world a better place, for you, for us, for our children and grandchildren, and for future generations. So, don’t forget to dream big and chase your dreams!" 6. KNOW BETTER, BE BETTER "By Rebecca and Terrence Meyer. Know Better, Be Better is the podcast that is committed to learning and educating others about the lifestyle and commitment of running a small business. We are life long learners on an incredible journey making a conscious effort to appreciate and enjoy every single moment of it. Join us in a real unscripted conversation about mindful thinking, ethics, travel, selfcare and creativity. Gaining insight from our own experience and endeavours as well as reaching out to other amazing experts in the field we would love to offer you a deeper understanding into the business and lifestyle realm.”

A question we’re often asked is: “Why don’t you sell more boys clothing?” And to put it simply- we sell a lot of ‘boys’ clothing. The term ‘Gender Neutral’ may seem like a complete buzzword at the moment, like it’s simply the new and trendy thing in fashion. In the simplest of terms, it’s the movement of rejecting the extremely tired and outdated practise of keeping blues for boys and pinks for girls. |  We like to think of it as the way forward  | Yes, we do still manufacture pieces that are typically feminine- like skirts, dresses and florals. However, we don’t design these with little boys or little girls in mind. We design thinking of the child. Of those who are sensitive to certain fabrics against their skin, of those who like climbing trees and getting muddy, those who like running into the ocean fully clothed. By purchasing products that not only last longer- because they are produced ethically from sustainable fabrics- but in colours that aren’t ‘gendered’, you’re helping the earth. You’re being sustainable too. We choose to produce pieces that can grow with your children and all the seasons they go through. Clothing that can be passed down to siblings, cousins and friends without gender being a consideration. Whether you incorporate a few gender neutral items into your own or your child’s wardrobe, or start completely from scratch with all unisex colours- it ultimately helps you walk a little lighter. Let your little one be who they want to be, let them roam. Miann & Co is Australia's favourite online shopping destination for baby gifts, newborn gifts and kids and baby gift ideas. Our baby gift packs, toys and kids and baby clothes amongst other pieces are well loved locally and globally. From hand rattles and dummies, baby clothes and cute baby bodysuit to hand made soft toys, mini rattles, pram toys and much more! Large range of toddler clothes and newborn clothes.

Filename: Ep4manufacturing overseas Duration: 34:35         Hello and welcome back to another episode of Know Better, Be Better. I'm your host, Rebecca. I'm also the co-owner of Miann and Co and also the creative director. Our podcast has been created to share with you some of the knowledge that we have gained over the last nine years owning our own business and today we are sharing our experiences of how to source manufacturers. It is one of our most asked questions or DMs that we get, how do we find our suppliers and how do you make sure that they are ethical suppliers. So I wanted to share a little bit about our journey into how we found our suppliers.  The easiest and most cost effective place to start reaching or searching for supplies is the internet. Search engines such as Google, B2B, Alibaba, Global Sourcing and Madeinchina.com are all websites where you can look for suppliers. There are thousands of suppliers that are listed on these sites and they can streamline your search and increase the number of sources by filtering results for not only entries labeled as golden members, but verified suppliers as well. More importantly, you can also source with accredited suppliers.  Our preferred method, however, is finding suppliers by visiting trade shows. This is our preferred method. I really enjoy a face to face meeting and I think it's super important that you are investing in your business and taking those steps to invest in your business. So even from when we were solo entrepreneurs, I made the trip out to China to source for our suppliers. So I headed out to trade shows and there are all different kinds of trade shows. There is a Hong Kong trade show. There is Ken Chong trade show, which is huge. There are loads of trade shows. There are even local trade shows here in Australia.  So this is our first port of call where we start the sourcing, we visit stand by stand; I walk those trade fairs by myself, aisle after aisle looking for suppliers. This is super important, mainly because you get a feel for the people that you are going to be working with. I find it so bizarre that people invest their whole business, it's such a huge risk, without even meeting the people that they are going into business with. For us, the supplier is such an integral part of your business. So to start with, in all honesty, it was like our first outsourcing. So there was just me to start with and then we outsourced our production overseas. So it's super important that you meet these people that you are working with. By attending these trade shows, you get the opportunity to talk to the potential suppliers face to face about their companies, you get a feel for their companies, you see their products in person and the quality that they are producing, which I think is also super important to look through the products that are on the stand to get an understanding of what products they are producing. There is also production capacity, quality control procedures, which are super important in the kids area and if they are familiar with product testing for safety, which is super important as well. You can tell by meeting face to face whether that's something that they are all over or not and so asking that question, you can find out very easily whether they work with accredited testing houses like ITS and SGS.  You can ask about their ethical procedures, their workers, how their products are made. But I guess in this instance you won't get the response that you always want straight off the bat, but you will get an understanding to the supplier and you will get a feel for the supplier and whether they are willing to work with you or not work with you, which is all really hard to communicate over email. In the past when I've communicated over the phone or email, some things get lost in translation, whereas a face to face conversation is always so much easier. Still now when we are doing handovers, a face to face is so much easier than emails. It reduces the amount of emails and it also gives us an understanding for each other and the complications that we may come up against. I also want to emphasize that sourcing a supplier is a partnership and meeting them face to face you can get an understanding, some of the restrictions or cultural difficulties or issues that they are having that you maybe can overcome. It's a big personal belief to me that I cannot guarantee a supplier is 100% ethical until I've seen with my own eyes, until I've visited their factories and their workplaces and I've seen my products in work and can verify the conditions that the workers are working under, also exactly where it's being made and also making sure that all the safety procedures are in place, there is needle testing machines and things like that. So it's really important to go and visit these suppliers, because before when I've spoken to them, they have said they have had things or they have had procedures in place and then when I've visited the factories, this hasn't been the case at all.  There is a lot of greenwashing in the industry with ethical production. And I guess I want to give a little bit of an insight about where my beliefs come from with this ethical production and it has been a long time working in the industry as well. I've been working the industry for 20 plus years. I've been visiting factories for a very long time to understand some of what happens in the factories. This is why I believe visiting your suppliers, although you may start the research online, it's super crucial to the longevity of your relationship with your supplier and also making sure that what you are saying is ethical actually is what's happening in the factories that you are working with.  My first ever factory visit, I was a very young, naive 21-year-old and the company that I was working for sent me to the Middle East. It was Syria. That was my first ever factory visit. I was working for a large organization at the time and this factory that I was visiting was actually accredited. Even though it was accredited, there were young children working in that factory and so that opened my eyes to things that were going on. On the days that these accreditations would happen, these children would stay home.  So we would do surprise visits out to these factories and sometimes there would be children in these factories. This was the first time I've ever seen kids. To be honest, it's been the only time I've seen children in factories and they were probably eight or nine years old. It was a huge eye opener for an idealistic country girl heading out to the Middle East. It was also very difficult cultural wise. There were not many women working in the factories at that time and I was a woman going over to solve problems. Sent by myself, a young 21-year-old into a country where I, to be honest, didn't know a lot about the belief system or the religion and I wasn't briefed by the company that I was working for at the time.  When I went over I was fully covered. It was a 40-degree heat. I was visiting the factories. I was sent over to try and solve print issues and it was very difficult to be able to, being a woman, to get them to listen to what I had to say because I was surrounded by men. Even though I was in a long shirt and jeans, I was still asked to wrap up in a sheet, which was very difficult to work professionally when you are being sent over for the first time by a company and you are being asked to wear a sheet. It was definitely an experience I will never forget and it definitely opened... It was the start of opening my eyes to the manufacturing. I guess for me, a lot of things built on that for me. I knew one day if I ever owned my own company that I would want to make sure that certain procedures were in place that these things didn't happen.  I also believe that visiting suppliers in the country that you are producing is also super important to understand the production resources that that supplier may have, because from the factories that I've visited from country to country, this varies. For instance, in India and Bangladesh and less established countries, there is a lot more manual hand labour working garments, which then means that printing or other things, the quality might be, you will need to accept a different quality as opposed to in China, there is a lot more technology in factories to enable things like accurate cutting, automated printing machines, and there is a lot less manual work in these factories. So there is a lot less people working in these factories and there is a lot more automation and machines for precision work a lot better. In regards to that, quite often your print quality is better in these countries. Not saying that it will be, but these are some of the things that you need to look and see with your own eyes. To be honest, that stuff can't be explained over email. That's something that you learn by visiting the factories. I can't tell you how much I've learned from visiting the factories and also understanding the procedures that I can then or understanding the tools they are using. So when you do come up against a problem with your manufacturing, you are able to work with your supplier to solve the problem rather than not understanding why something is happening and therefore it can cause relationship breakdowns between you and the supplier and nobody wants that.  There is a lot of talk about working off your gut and meet and greet and direct interaction can help you evaluate suppliers and verify their abilities, their ethical practices, their safety procedures and most importantly the working conditions of the workers. We currently have two main suppliers who have been working for over 10 years now. One was sourced from a trade fair and the other was a working in the industry relationship that I had from the very beginning. Both suppliers have been huge extensions of our business and the quality and the output that we produce.  As I've had those relationships, it has meant that I've been able to start with really small quantities, even though we are producing in China. We visit our factories most years at least once, but the norm is normally twice a year. We go out and we time it with our summer ranges and our winter range handovers. However, we have had babies and have had operations or new babies arriving, and because of that, and we don't have family around, Terry and I both juggle the family and the business and it does get tricky when one of us is out for an occasion or a period of time. I normally head out to China solo and have done since the company was, even before the company was established. I've done almost 20 trips and Terry has manned the ship solo parenting and the business while I've been away working in China. We also do the sourcing trip when we were looking for new product categories and we have visited Vietnam and India and the kids came with us on the sourcing trip. Our oldest was six and our youngest was four, which was a challenge. [Inaudible 13:46], our eldest son, I got incredibly sick. So that was an experience we will never forget and our kids will never forget. We have found visiting suppliers face to face, catch up on product ranges, helps iron out any unforeseen issues that we can see and iron them out. Safety is always crucial for our things, like our toys and some of our homewares, so we all don't also discuss potential issues that could come up from producing my designs and what safety measures that we can put in place that it will meet ITS standing. The two recognized testing houses that we use for child safety are ITS and STS. It's really important to have accredited testing houses. I worked in testing for a year in London, which was great experience as I've mentioned before for understanding how you can produce your garments and what needs to go into your fabrics and what doesn't need to go into your fabrics.  We have managed to get our trips down to China to a one week turn around. We go out on a Monday and normally back on a Friday night or Saturday morning with direct flights to Shanghai regularly and then have a driver pick me up and take us to our suppliers. I guess being a small business, there are many misconceptions around producing your garments or products overseas. We started off sampling our own products and twirling in here in Australia, which some companies still work like this before they then go overseas to overseas manufacturers.  Some of them that are producing in China, and I guess one of the biggest misconceptions is that if you are producing in China that your products are mass produced. We get this a lot in the beginning and it was a really hard thing to swallow, to be honest. When you are a solo entrepreneur, you are a mum, you work from home, you are juggling everything, you are doing the right things by going and visiting your suppliers, testing your products, which all comes at an expensive cost and then you get someone saying that your products are mass produced. We were super proud of what we set up in the beginning. Our first business, as we have mentioned, was La De Dah Kids and it was all hand made products. Our lead times were a year. Our products weren't made in a factory. They were sampled in a factory, which after their initial sampling happened we would then write the patterns in Chinese. After that, we would then dye our yarns up at the same dye house that we have always used for the last 10 years. After that procedure people would ride in on their motorbikes and one person would get a toy and they would make numerous toys for us.  We started off doing 15 to 20 pieces of a toy. That's how small we started off. It was super small. We only had a couple of products that we were sampling at the time and testing the market. We got a lot of negativity, I guess being a small business and producing in China because the conception or the perception was that our products must be mass produced, which was not the case at all. We were super proud, but honestly, there was a lot of shaming. We were working with our consumers face to face. We were working at a lot of smaller markets and so it was really important to us to get the customer's feedback. But sometimes people would pick those products up and they would see the made in China and they would throw it down like it was a dirty rag. It was really heart wrenching seeing that and in some respects it made us feel like our product wasn't worthy, even though we put hours of work into these, trying to do it the right way, trying to source the right manufacturers, designing it all, twirling it all here, and then being a solo entrepreneur and heading out to China and meeting our manufacturers and working with them. So when people were doing that, it was actually a little soul crushing. In the beginning we didn't say anything and in the end we did, because it would be people with their made in China phones or things like that. And they would have a strong opinion about a smaller brand being made in China. This was something we had to overcome and we really had to believe in ourselves. And what we were doing was fantastic.  Our production setup was pretty unique. I hadn't seen anything from working in the industry for 20 years. How that was, was we were allowing a lot of farming areas to be able to work from home around their childcare needs. In China there was a one child policy. A lot of people would stay at home or they were grandparents looking after grandchildren. So this enabled them to both farm, because farming was a big part of there. And in the off season, both men and women were able to hand crochet our toys or products, which was amazing. This unique set up was super amazing. The product after it was finished in the homes would then come back to a factory where it was QC and also tested again. So the product would then pass through metal detectors and things to make sure that the products were safe and then they would be packaged up and sent to us in Australia. This was our procedure and we went with this for a big part of what we were doing, so we were La De Dah Kids. Another misconception is that you draw a pretty picture and then you just send it off to China and it's so easy to produce overseas, super easy. I can't tell you how many times I've heard this. If done correctly or even incorrectly, it is not an easy procedure and the risk involved is huge for anyone that's starting to undertake manufacturing overseas, especially in 2019 when cyber-attacks are happening and at an all-time high. So because of this, I would say it's even more important to go and visit your manufacturers, see where they are made, establish that relationship with your supplier. I cannot emphasize how important that relationship is with your supplier. I quite often laugh because quite often people think I go on a holiday when I go to China. Even my own mother thought that. On one of the trips that I went on my mum came with me and I think she was quite shocked at how hands-on the procedure, the designing and the sampling stage was. I think it was a big eye-opener. I think it's really hard to show that behind the scenes. We should do more with a video, but quite often it's me out there by myself and I'm busy. I'm head down working with the suppliers and going through all the colours and safety and testing. So it's quite an involved process despite what people think.  I guess I wanted to cover off some of the risks and highlight some of the risks that happen with manufacturing overseas. I want to give a bit of background into our experience with these risks and what we have experienced. One of the big things for us was copying. Trademarking is super important. Trademarking your name and in the specific product categories you are working in or you want to work in. This is super important because I've heard horror stories and each time I go to China here in new horror story from someone on a plane, but I've heard horror stories of companies that have squatters on their names in China.  Quite often bigger companies that are producing will or haven't trademark their name in a certain product category, China are quite savvy with regards to trademarking and know if they trade marked that name that they have ownership to that name and product in that product category. For instance, I've heard another horror story about someone’s shipment being stopped with their own labels sewn in and even though the company in Australia has designed and made and owned all that, because they weren't trademarked, a Chinese company has trademarked the product. They have been able to stop the shipment.  It really was a legal minefield to start out and something that was super expensive for us as a small business that we were self-funding ourselves, we really boot strapped and at every stage this was our biggest expense, was trademarking, because at that point we were in so many different categories it was a huge expense for us and we wanted to go wide. Hearing a lot of these stories as we were visiting China, we didn't want to come up against that now or in the future. So I guess we did a lot of the legwork in the beginning. I guess be mindful of where you are producing and being mindful of the trademarking issues in those countries and each country has a different trademarking rule too. Trademarking is a whole other podcast and I will go into that. If you do have any questions, do let me know.  Another big risk of exporting which I'm hearing a lot about is the risk of exporting with payments with your supplier. Payment issue is something that I'm hearing more and more and it's getting more and more common. And it is another reason why having that relationship with your supplier is so, so crucial. We have personally lost money with suppliers whose product quality was terrible. We met the supplier, we sourced, we put some product into work, we paid a deposit because every supplier has to buy the raw materials to start with, and it's also building relationship, so you always have to put some deposit down with a new supplier. And then this particular supplier refused to improve the quality and also refused to return the deposit that we had. So we had no option but to cut our losses on this product.  Luckily, it was only one product, so our loss was super small. But this is also not uncommon. I've worked in larger companies that this has happened even after all their due diligence and also being a massive company. It does happen to both the small guys and the big guys and is a big risk that you buy into when you are producing your goods overseas.  Another reason building relationships is so, so important, there is a new payment scheme circulating where company's emails are being intercepted and then gaining the trust of the business and acting on the supplier from overseas and taking payments. They are almost impossible to track down. It's not uncommon for suppliers to have money paid into different bank accounts. One of our suppliers has been changing their bank accounts quite regularly lately, which has made me super nervous. Once she said she hadn't got the payment because it had gone into a different account than she had said.  It happens regularly for us and that's why we always triple check with a mobile number. We have the mobile number of our supplier, we have that relationship with our supplier that we can just ring and say, this is happening. Please can you check and make sure that these bank accounts are correct before we transfer our final payment over. On some of our orders in those initial days, there were large quantities of money. And to be honest, for a small business, for us, it would have sent us under, particularly when we were doing seasonal drops. We were only doing two seasonal drops. We were doing that to get the quantities out. Even though it was over various product categories, we did it for... Our supplier had to pay an export license, so this all adds to the overall cost. Your raw cost that you are costing with your factory in US dollars is just the start. I think a lot of people or customers don't see all the other costs. There is duty, there is taxes, there is testing, there is the work that I put into design. I want to be paid like everyone else that gets paid for their job. The marketing, the freight forwarder, the warehousing, the distribution, the tissue paper, the envelopes, there is so much that goes into an actual cost price. So I guess that's something to be mindful of when you are purchasing from the big guys. I can't buy a lot of our products for what they retail them as. So I think that's something to think about.  I think consumers are being trained to think that products are cheap when they are made in certain countries like China and it's not the case. China is one of the most expensive countries to produce in at the moment. Their economy is growing hugely and that is why you are seeing less and less made in China tags and more made in India, made in Bangladesh, made in Cambodia because the cost of living is actually a lot less there so in result the cost of the products, the labour costs are a lot less so it brings the product costs down. I hope this gives you a little bit more of an understanding into manufacturing and if you have any other questions with regards to manufacturing, I would love to cover them off on another episode. I'm super passionate about production. It's a topic I can talk about for a very long time. A lot of my product knowledge comes from visiting the factories, understanding what patent makers they have or whether I need to give them more patent information or not. I can talk about our procedures on how we designed back and forth in another episode. If you've got questions on that, again, let me know.  But I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope it gives you a little bit more insight into the risks of manufacturing overseas, how it's not so easy and also an eye-opener into the actual costs involved with manufacturing overseas more as a small business as well, because you do pay premium price for smaller quantities. So that is something to be aware of. I won't be paying the same FOB, as they call it, as someone that's producing 30000 pieces. It just doesn't happen, so it is something to be aware of. Even though you are producing in those countries you are not comparing apples for apples and don't think that you are going to get something super cheap just because you are producing in those countries. Another point I would like to make is about the ethical side and also making sure that your factories are ethical. How do you make sure that your factories are ethical? There are a couple of things that you can do. As I've talked about, there are accreditations which we are going to look into in the future. There is not just one accreditation. It is a long list. Different people have different accreditation and some accreditation is way more than others. For me, as a small business, this is a huge cost on top of already our products and safety testing and QA and all of those other procedures. It is something that we haven't been able to venture down yet, but it is something that we are definitely looking into.  We are just trying to come up with the accreditation that will best show transparency for our consumers on every level. We already know from visiting our suppliers that they are ethical and to be honest, ethical gets thrown around very loosely. There is a lot of green washing in the industry. There are a lot of people throwing ethical around and they have never visited their suppliers. I think as consumers we need to be asking brands, how often do they visit their suppliers? Do they visit their suppliers? Because it's very easy to say one thing and see another. I've seen that from working in the industry for 20 years in bigger companies as well this happens in.  I think it's super important to do your due diligence and make sure that you are asking brands if they are visiting their factories and they can support those ethical claims, because it's super important to visit your suppliers and see and work and know exactly where your products are being made, where everything is being sourced from your dye houses through to your raw materials, et cetera, et cetera. I hope this gives you an understanding into people that are wanting to start an ethical brand. It is a question we get asked a lot and I hope this runs you through starting point through what to do with visiting suppliers. I will also say in a lot of the countries that you go to, there are a lot of visas that you do need. I found it easier with China to use a visa resource and I've built up to a one year visa now with multiple entries, which just cuts down the amount of times I have to get visas a year when I'm visiting regularly. Some years I've had to go more times because we had an issue with copying. That was huge. Because our products aren't being made in factories as such, the copying thing for our toys was really hard to police, basically. A lot of our workers were getting pictures from outsource people to copy our designs. They would have leftover yarns and then copy our products.  There are advantages and disadvantages to our production set up and there are things... These people work from home, they all have their own devices and there are things that you can't... There are things that you just can't control. So you can trademark and pay all the money for legal things, but sometimes you can't control these issues. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of more understanding. I hope you love this episode. If you did love this episode, please like our podcast and that would mean the world to us and hopefully this gives you a little bit more insight into the Miann and Co manufacturing world.  If you've got any questions, send us a DM and we would love to hear from you. Thanks again guys. Bye.   

  If Christmas has come along too quickly for you this year we can help! We are so excited to have launched our speciality Christmas packs. They are perfect for grandparents who aren't quite sure what to buy their grandchildren or for parents who are looking for the perfect Christmas day outfit for their little one. In a variety of styles and sizes we've taken the hassle and headache out of choosing gifts for you- simply pick your pack, size and you're done! All featuring one of our Miann & Co signature softie bunnies, we are sure you will find one that you love. Packaged in a large Miann & Co branded felt case! Fully lined, super soft and extremely convenient, these cases make great nappy bags for mothers on the go, for little ones to squirrel their treasures away in, or a great re-useable alternative to Christmas wrapping paper!   THE BLITZEN PACK /  1 x Short Sleeve Flowy Shirt in Spanish Villa (As per your size selection)1 x Woven Tassel Bloomer in Summer Bloom (As per your size selection)1 x Olive Bunny   THE COMET PACK / 1 x Natural Linen Crossback Overalls (As per your size selection)1 x Long Sleeve Raglan in Seagrass Gingham (As per your size selection)1 x Brooklyn Bunny   THE CUPID PACK / 1 x Raglan Flowy Shirt in Seagrass Gingham (As per your size selection)1 x Bloomer in Portebello (As per your size selection)1 x Romeo Bunny   THE DANCER PACK / 1 x Natural Linen Pinafore (As per your size selection)1 x Broderie Top in Spanish Villa (As per your size selection)1 x Harper Bunny   THE DASHER PACK / 1 x Seagrass Gingham Shorts (As per your size selection)1 x Knit Polo in Eggnog (As per your size selection)1 x Beckham Bunny   THE DONNER PACK / 1 x Strappy Dress in Summer Bloom (As per your size selection)1 x Barnaby Bunny   THE PRANCER PACK / 1 x Natural Linen Bodysuit (As per your size selection)1 x Raglan Shirt in Textured White (As per your size selection)1 x Cruz Bunny   THE VIXEN PACK / 1 x Tassel Skirt in Summer Bloom (As per your size selection)1 x Broderie Top in Spanish Villa (As per your size selection)1 x Victoria Bunny      

Filename: Ep3_our business journey prt 2 Duration: 32:44     Terence: Welcome back to our podcast, Know Better, Be Better. This is episode three, part two of our business journey and we are following on from where we left off last week. Rebecca: We are delving a little bit deeper into the [inaudible 00:51] years of the business and building it up to current day. So buckle in and we hope you love hearing our business journey as much as we have creating it. Terence: Let's get started. Rebecca: That year our property that we were in was sold and the landlord moved us into a new building. We took up an opportunity [inaudible 01:22]. I think we turned the store layout in something like two weeks. We told him we would be opening in two weeks. I think he just looked at me as if to say that won't happen. Terence: Yeah. There was a bit of a snigger, but little did he know that it will be done. Rebecca: And it was done. So we made an agreement and two weeks later we opened our store in [inaudible 01:41]. At that stage we had La De Dah Kids and we had Shelter 7 and we called the shop Shelter 7. Terence: Under Shelter 7, we were doing a lot more in sort of the homewares and adults products market in terms of decor, et cetera. The La De Dah Kids products sat really well in conjunction with that. It had a similar feel to it all along the handmade nature, the handmade nature of the product.  Rebecca: The product kind of evolved every season and we would take on more things. So it started with hand rattles and toys and then we would do new toys and then it evolved into floor rugs and crocheted baskets and decor. And then that expanded into homewares and further. Being a creative and seeing shiny new opportunities, we kind of moved with where the market was taking us. Instagram was still showing us a lot of transparency at that time. So it was great being able to test the market and show things and we really used that tool for transparency. And the feedback that we were getting was integral to our business. Terence: Yes, and I think another form of feedback we were getting with a shop as well, we had the opportunities while we were doing markets to speak to our customers and our clients, but having that shop there as well and having people come through on a daily basis and gauging their reaction and getting their feedback on the product was detrimental as well. Rebecca: We took on that shop and we were in [inaudible 03:13], I believe two years. At that stage we had the warehouse as well. So we moved our office from in town in Geelong out to an official warehouse, which was a shed. Terence: Yes. It was pretty much a tin shed, but we had a lot of space there because we were certainly outgrowing the old property that we had. There was no stairs, which was an absolute bonus and we had a dedicated little office area where we could move all of our staff into. Rebecca: Yeah. At that stage we were doing containers and containers were getting more and more difficult to unload and get up the stairs. Our freight forwarding company who had started with us from our home, delivering to our home, delivering to in town to now delivering in that warehouse was very happy that he now had space to unload into our warehouse and we are excited as well. Terence: Yes. But we needed some extra help as well. Having a warehouse is all good and well, but we employed our first ever other part time employee in terms of warehouse help and he was with us for quite a long time and became an integral part of the business as well. It got to a point where he was attending markets with me, on the stand, helping with the setup, et cetera. Rebecca: Managing two locations brought on a whole new set of... Terence: Well, I think we had three locations at that point. Rebecca: Oh, we did have three locations for a little while, which was quite challenging in itself with a very small team. So we had the shop, we had [inaudible 04:43], which we are still using as storage and a photographic studio and we had the new warehouse out in North Geelong. Terence: Yes. And that's certainly, like Bec said, came with its challenges. You had to sort of divide yourself in between most of the time, two different places quite often. The shop would ring and they are out of stock and you would have to drop everything and run some stock up to the shop. Weekends were taken up by moving the shop around as well. So from a time point of view, it was very draining on both of us. Rebecca: Yeah, it was really a seven day week. The online business and the wholesale side of the business were very separate and that was growing at a rapid rate. We also had the retail store, which was also growing. So trying to manage those, a lot of weekends was spent in the store re-merchandising, moving stock around to keep the shop really fresh. So it was a really challenging time as well as having new staff members to manage as well in the shop and in the warehouse. It was very challenging as a business. Terence: What also happened for us in 2015 was the decision that we took to rebrand from La De Dah Kids to Miann and Co. I feel that's probably something for a whole other episode because we can talk about that for hours. But I think there was a lot of shock in the marketplace as to, why are we changing our name and what are the reasons for changing the name as such? Rebecca: It was a huge decision for us and at that stage we had La De Dah Kids and we had Shelter 7. We were managing two Instagram accounts. We were managing two of everything, two invoicing systems. We were running them as separate businesses. So it was very challenging to have those two businesses on a very small team. Terence: Yes, it certainly was. I think that business structure for both of them were set up differently as well, which brought along a whole lot of other complications too. But it's almost like you had to focus on different areas within the same day, which was really hard at times. Rebecca: So we decided in 2015 that we would rebrand. There was another catalyst for the rebrand and that was because we had been on a two year journey of trademarking and we will go into great depth about that because it's some of the biggest mistakes we have probably made. Terence: Yeah, I think that's probably two episodes worth. Rebecca: Yeah. It's quite a long journey, but trademarking is something that businesses need to do. But because we were in so many product categories, it was such a huge cost to our business in the early days. We had gone down two years of trademarking and then we paid for all those outgoings and then we realized we couldn't secure the name in all the places we needed to. Terence: It's also such a daunting area I think especially if you don't have any knowledge around that area and trying to find the right information and making sure that you are working with the right people to get this all done for you. We certainly learned our lesson and learned how to do things differently along the way, but like we said, something for a different episode. Rebecca: We will absolutely be sharing that trademarking journey with you. We wanted a name that we could roll two businesses into one and reduce the amount of, well, try and reduce or make more efficient our workload. So we decided in 2015 and already started the process of rebranding on our products, because remember we were working a year in advance on our products. So labelling and all of that were already well underway. Terence: Yes, and certainly we were very scared going into this process. What if people don't make the connection between La De Dah Kids and Miann and Co?  It was certainly one of the most daunting things that we've ever had to do in regards to the business, and just making sure that people follow on from La De Dah Kids and continue to follow you on your journey into Miann and Co. We were at that stage researching a lot in terms of how do you rebrand, how do you communicate this, should you rebrand, shouldn't you rebrand. There was mixed results out there as well. Rebecca: Yeah. We went down the road of trying to do it ourselves. We looked at branding agencies that were well out of a small business reach with regards to price. It was just way overpriced. So we knew that we knew our brand, we had faith in that. Someone gave us a little pep talk, which I am forever thankful for that phone call. The person will probably know who it is, but calling again, on market people that we had met through the industry and they gave us the confidence that we knew our brand and we could do it ourselves. And we did. We were happy with the results. Terence: Oh, we definitely were happy with the results. I think the old name La De Dah Kids is still out there. You still hear it being mentioned and I think people have certainly carried over from that and started following us along on our Miann and Co journey. So that has been absolutely amazing to see. Rebecca: Absolutely. We are so thankful to all our customers for embracing the change. One of the main reasons we evolved it as well was the name was hard to spell. There were different spellings of it, so it was hard to Google. There was also another... It was very kid oriented and we wanted to be able to move into other markets, which we already had, but we had to do it under another name. So we wanted to bring everything back in under one umbrella. So Miann and Co was born. Terence: Yes. Coming up with the name Miann and Co, that's another question that we get asked all the time. To be honest with you, it has taken as a whole... It was probably a weekend process where we tried to lock ourselves in a room and the kids were running around and all of this, but it's pretty much a made up name. Rebecca: Absolutely made up for trademarking purposes. My advice to anyone trying to trade mark a name is make it up, because it is not easy to trademark globally. Terence: Do your due diligence before, because if you are trying to trademark a name that has been taken by someone else and you haven't picked it up before, it's pretty much like starting over again. Rebecca: That moves us into 2016 when we did launch the rebrand to everyone and everyone embraced it so well. The feedback was really positive. We launched our first clothing brand. We started with knitwear. We did a really small sample range. Again, tested out the market, got feedback at markets and used the whole approach that we had previously. Terence: Yes. And I think we saw some big changes in the business from that moment onwards. Wholesale was [inaudible 11:34] for us, but we now had another category that we were adding on to our business as well. So that almost changed a lot in our marketing approach as well in terms of what we are putting out into the marketplace when you are known for a niche kind of product, but you've added a different range too to your product set as such. Rebecca: We really wanted to extend the natural fibres. We believe so passionately in natural fibres for so many reasons, particularly when it comes to kids' clothes. It's the durability. It's also the recyclability. It's also… so many things with natural fibres. I could go on and on, again, another podcast. But yeah, natural fibres we feel so passionately about. So we had started doing homewares with natural fibres and really wanted to extend that over into clothing as well. Terence: Like Rebecca said, it's something we are really passionate about, working with natural fibres, the handmade aspect, helping people in other environments and also sustainable living, which is something that we will always continue to focus on and where we are taking the brand as well. Rebecca: We are absolutely, we are continually growing and learning in this realm and I can only see it getting bigger like it has in the last 10 years. Ethical wasn't even a word, that was very rarely being thrown around 10 years and it has grown so much in that time. So it's a great thing, I think, the industry evolving. That year we also took the kids on a sourcing trip to India and Vietnam Terence: And that was an experience. Rebecca: That was an experience. And our kids still remember that trip and [inaudible 13:24] has asked that he never goes on another holiday like that again. Little did he know that it was a sourcing trip. Terence: We all had fun, but we all got sick as well at the end of the day. But once again, the importance of going to meet and see your suppliers, knowing where your stuff is produced, how it's produced and by who it's produced is extremely important. Rebecca: Yeah. So that summer we spent going to India, which was great. We were sourcing, looking for new, different products, visiting some factories that we were looking into. We weren't actually working with them yet, also Vietnam as well. We were looking at moving into Vietnam as well and we were doing a little bit... We are doing baskets with Vietnam at that stage. So again, meeting our suppliers and learning a lot about the new product categories that we had anticipated for that year. Terence: That's right. And trying to see where the business will grow from there and what other categories we can add on. So yes, those two trips were certainly beneficial in the direction of the company. Rebecca: Later in 2016, I became pregnant with our third child and at that stage we decided that we were a super small team. We were still only four people and we had some casuals coming in to help with picking and packing, and so we closed. At that point we decided to close the shop. I had intense, intense morning sickness. So trying to merchandise stores with morning sickness was very challenging. And so we made the decision to pull back on some of the areas that we were doing, and the shop was something that went.Terence: I think the shop was a very obvious reason for us when we were looking at our business model, when we actually sat down and crunched the numbers to see where the money was being made, where the money was being spent, time-wise as well. I think the decision for us was pretty easy to stay in the online market and within wholesale as well whereas the shop was extremely labour intensive, but also a lot of additional outgoings that you don't necessarily always have in the online area. You certainly have some outgoings, but it's totally different areas and it's a lot easier to work into your product as well. Rebecca: 2016 was challenging for a lot of reasons. We decided to close the store down and move back just to online. It was also the year that we had a huge issue with rip offs. Terence: Yes, rip-off. That's a totally different area. Once again, going back to what we said in a previous episode, it's so easy to source products these days. You've got online avenues. You can find something so quickly, but you don't necessarily know what you are buying. And we have had it on occasions where people have bought products that were actually a rip off of our product, not knowing what they had bought. Rebecca: It was huge for us. To be honest, it was a real dagger. We had everyone from people in Australia, big retailers in Australia copying us to people on Alibaba and then smaller Australian shops importing those rip offs or counterfeit products in. It was a real challenge for us to navigate legally as well as emotionally, being pregnant. So I headed back to China to try and understand how our product was being ripped off. Terence: I think for anybody who has been in that situation it's only then that you understand all this hard work time and effort that you put into designing a product, coming up with the idea transforming it from 2D to 3D and getting it out into the marketplace. All of that hard work that you have spent on that product has literally just been copied by somebody in a matter of probably hours and then put into manufacturing. And it's out there for everyone and anyone to buy and sell on. Rebecca: I think it was the year that we sent them most legal letters out too and the responses were honestly interesting. We had a lot of local shops which we were trademarked and we had rights here locally. China was a little bit more tricky with Alibaba. We were writing Alibaba, we were having our photo shoot campaigns that we were investing in ripped off. We spoke to Alibaba stores and pretended to be big retailers and some of them were selling copies of our designs in large quantities to overseas. So it was really tricky for us to navigate that. And because our product wasn't seasonal, we weren't moving that fast with the market as well. So it did really affect our business.  It was a tricky area to navigate and I guess because our products weren't being made in factories, so I saw firsthand it being done. We went to the people's homes that were making our products and if there were yarns leftover, they were translating these into designs for other people. And to be honest, when you've got people working from home, it's really hard to control that. So it was quite a challenge for us to navigate. Terence: So by this time, we've grown the business into a few different areas. We've got hand rattles and soft toys, some baby products as well as decor. We had some homewares in there along with some furniture. We started on baby clothing and kids' clothing and 2017 saw us add a woman's wear to the mix as well. It was also the year where we closed down both of the retail areas in town and it was the year that Coco, our third child and our first daughter was born. Rebecca: Navigating that was the next step. Juggling a third child as well as a business was quite challenging, another challenge or a new challenge Terence: Definitely a new challenge, yes. Rebecca: She entered our life and we hired a designer to help out with the design because we were moving into women's wear at that stage and launching women's wear. So it was quite challenging having a newborn. I think having a bit bigger of a gap between our kids, I think we had forgotten what it was like having a newborn again. Terence: Yeah, I can hand on heart say we forgot about the early days and the toddler years and the sleepless nights and just everything that comes along with a baby from day one when they come into the house. Rebecca: Yeah. So that year we were navigating, there was not really any maternity leave, so we were navigating a house reno as well as we were busting at the seams. We didn't have a spare room for the baby, so we renovated our house that year and we were also navigating juggling a newborn baby, two other children and a business at the same time. Terence: Poor Coco didn't even have a bedroom when she came into this world. We pretty much... When we bought our house back in, I think it was 2008, it was a small three bedroom house, one bathroom, one toilet. There was obviously myself, Rebecca and the two boys living here. We were on top of each other and in waltzes Coco. So we had to jump. We've had these plans in mind for quite a while, but it was now time to jump into action and certainly make some other dreams for us come true in terms of our home and where we live. That was very exciting as well. Rebecca: That was our first ever home. We've stayed here. A lot of our money has gone into our business. Our business is personally funded. So nearly everything we've made has gone back into the business. We didn't take salaries for a very long time. It has only been the last two, three...Terence: About three years now that we've been taking a salary. Rebecca: Yeah. We signed up to that initially. So I guess when people say you've got to love what you do, you really do have to love what you do because you are paying other people's salary before you are even paying your own salaries. Terence: Yes. And I think as a business owner, there are always these ups and downs. Even now, some weeks we probably don't take a salary because you've been hit with some bills or some unexpected costs. But you've got all these other people relying on you as well. You've got families relying on you for an income. We pay our staff weekly as such, but we've certainly had our fair share of lying awake at night worrying, how are we going to pay our staff? We've always been alright which has been really good, but there is always those added stress, et cetera that comes along with owning your own business. Rebecca: So that year we renovated. We set up a cot in the office, so Coco was coming to work every day and it worked really well when she was a baby. Terence: Until she started crawling. Rebecca: Until she started moving and it was a juggling act. So it worked really well as a baby. She slept, we fed and work continued on as normal. We've always worked every day in the business, both of us. We are not part time workers. We work most days in the business. I think we've had one holiday in the 10 years where we haven't checked emails every day. Terence: Yeah. Most holidays are work trips for us. Or if we go away we end up working too, but we have had the opportunity to take a holiday and not have to spend too many hours on emails, et cetera. Rebecca: I think that's a blessing of modern day and it's also a curse that you can take your business wherever. So we can take our business with us and work online. We can talk to our factories online. We can visit our suppliers. So it does work really well for us to be with family overseas to be able to transport our business. Terence: Yeah, that's right. So back to 2017, we've now added women's wear to the mix. That's certainly a category that we've seen grown over the last couple of years as such. And definitely something that we are staying excited about. Once again, an area that we are also passionate about and once again, working with natural fibers, ethical production and sustainable living, which is something that's really big out there in this market as well. Rebecca: Absolutely. Natural fibers, extending it to women's wear has been a little bit more challenging, I'm not going to lie, in getting the right drapability, but we were super passionate. There wasn't a lot out there in the natural fiber market for women's wear. There is the odd piece, but not whole collections. So our whole collection has gone around natural fibers, which again, for durability and quality is really good. We also started it because we were sick of buying knitwear that would peal or get little holes or the amount of knitwear that we had that had shrunk. Yeah, so being able to provide an all-natural knitwear alternative in winter was huge for us. Terence: Fast forward a year and we find ourselves towards the middle of 2018 realizing that we've probably outgrown where we hire at the moment in terms of warehousing, adding on women wear has certainly taken the business up another level too. So it was time to try and find somewhere else or see what other options were. At this point we were already spread across two warehouses on the same property as such, but still just having stock in two different locations made it quite tricky in terms from a picking and packing point of view. So yeah, 2019 we found ourselves moving into a new warehouse. Rebecca: Yeah, that's right. We were exploring lots of different options. Our lease was up in our current warehouse and we also really explored the option of third party logistics, which nearly happened. We were tossing up between third party logistics and removing, not removing our team, making our team more remote and not having an office space. We looked at moving to another warehouse. We were exploring lots of different options for the business and we thought it was time for change. Terence: Yes, we certainly did. We explored a whole lot of different avenues before we decided to move into the warehouse. We thought, is a warehouse really necessary? Can we outsource that whole side of it? Look, for some businesses it works. For us, it wouldn't have worked. I think it's due to the nature of our product and being in clothing as well, you've got one product, but that product has probably got eight different sizes when you add it up between babies and kids and then women's wear as well. So the number of SKUS that you carry, my advice to anybody wanting to do third party logistics is, do your homework. Make sure that the costs are transparent because for us, it would've certainly blown out. But yeah, certainly for other businesses, it could definitely work depending on the number of skews that you have, how many orders you are shipping, et cetera, et cetera. Rebecca: Also I guess the volumes of your order; that was another problem. Our products were quite bulky and so the amount that our products would take up in another warehouse was quite substantial. So we went with trying to find a new warehouse, which in itself was really challenging because we had a big wish list. We wanted to be able to have a bit of a retail space. We wanted a decent office space with really good heating and cooling and we wanted a really... We needed a bigger space to outline the warehouse how we wanted it. Terence: That's right. I think in terms of location, we were also looking for something that was maybe a bit closer to home as well, which certainly helps when you are commuting from home or you need to run home quickly. Being in town has certainly helped as well. I think this space that we have at the moment is just being enjoyed by everyone who is there. Rebecca: Absolutely. I think having decent heating and cooling. Our last shed got very hot in summer, even with air conditioning and it was very cold in winter, so it was quite challenging. It wasn't very insulated. It literally was a tin shed and that's where our office was. We covered the floors with carpet and made it as comfortable as we could possibly, but it wasn't insulated, so it was very cold in winter and very hot in summer. So our new premises is lovely and air conditioned and heated. It's actually... Yeah, it's a pleasure to go to. Terence: It definitely is. It's also lighter and brighter. We have a dedicated kitchen area, et cetera. It's just all those little luxuries that we haven't had before. But once again, you can't have everything from the beginning. I think when you work hard at it those things will come. Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. Writing the outline for this podcast topic was really interesting. I think we don't take much time to reflect on how much we have done, how much we have achieved together and juggling the kids. It has been a ride and it is a journey. I think our kids talk about that journey too, and we are really glad that they could be part of that. They see that mummy and daddy have worked really hard at this thing that has been building over time. Terence: Absolutely. By doing this podcast, I think we've also realized there is also something that needs to be addressed and that's the fact that we are not as big or we are by no means big. I think there are a lot of companies out there that call themselves small businesses and they have got employees of a hundred plus. I mean, our team consists of five people and that's including Rebecca and myself. So we are really still a small business. Just because of our profile on Instagram or something like that, that by no means, means that we are a big business or we are bigger than what we are. Rebecca: I think perception is sometimes not reality. I know that we don't do a very good job of portraying that on Instagram. That's the designer in me. I love pretty pictures and I absolutely agree that the push at the moment is to show more behind the scenes and more transparency. That's partly our fault for not showing the transparency. But we are really small team. Even things like photography and I think staff members even get surprised when they enter our business at how much stuff we do, do in house. Terence: I think this brings us to the end of this episode on our business journey. I hope that it shed some more light on the Miann and Co story and how we grew the business. Rebecca: Yeah, it has been... Some days it feels like we've been in this business forever and other days it really feels like we are just getting started. It really is an exciting journey. It's a long journey and we are it for the long-haul and it is an exciting journey. So I guess hopefully, we can inspire people from everywhere to look at starting their own business. There are so many times that people say to us that they wish they could start. And we are like... Our biggest and best advice is to just start. Terence: Yes, just... If you've got a passion, if there is anything you want to do, you've got to start somewhere. I think these days the community is so big where you can get the support and all of that. We've certainly seen that along our journey. Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many resources out there these days, the internet, the podcasts, the books, reaching out to other brands. There are so many opportunities. We hope to hear of your business journeys in the coming months. Thanks guys.  Terence: Thanks guys.    LISTEN HERE 

  Do you need some help with stocking fillers & gifts this Christmas? Here are some of our top picks ( arranged for your visual pleasure, in a rainbow! YAY! ) Merry Christmas everyone! Love Miann & Co xx   1. cream fringe moccasin pre-walker | 2. cross-back overalls | 3. eggnog knit bloomer | 4. linen pinafore | 5. eggnog wrap knit bodysuit | 6. natural linen bodysuit | 7. short sleeve frill top | 8. mustard floral long sleeve bodysuit | 9. natural rubber soother | 10. bow bodysuit | 11. frill sleeve dress | 12. explore the unseen t-shirt | 13. kangaroo t-shirt | 14. mini kangaroo sleeveless suit | 15. portebello woven bloomer | 16. deer hand rattle | 17. portebello wrap knit bodysuit | 18. cheetah lace up pre-walker | 19. spanish villa frill bloomer | 20. elastic waist pant spanish villa | 21. pink suede lace up fringe moccasins | 22. explore t-shirt | 23. spanish villa wrap overalls | 24. harper bunny | 25. seagrass gingham woven bloomer short | 26. kangaroo hand rattle | 27. secret garden floral long sleeve dress | 28. light grey suede classic t-bar pre-walker | 29. secret garden floral raglan shirt | 30. tiered boho dress | 31. lavender grey floral short sleeve suit | 32. lavender grey gingham short sleeve top | 33. lavender grey gingham woven bloomer shorts | 34. lavender pinafore | 35. lavender grey gingham frill bodysuit | 36. lavender grey floral sleeveless suit | 37. grey stripe elastic waist pant | 38. mini kangaroo short sleeve suit | 39. emu t-shirt | 40. grey stripe cross back overall | 41. kenzie kangaroo | 42. grey stripe shorts | 43. melange green monkey | 44. fog green wrap knit suit | 45. fog green sleeveless suit | 46. wanderlust t-shirt | 47. fog green knit bloomer | 48. fog green short sleeve suit