Speaker 1: Welcome to the mentor. I'm Mark Boris around Henry, welcome
Speaker 1: to the Mentor.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. Mark Is, you're the.
Speaker 1: Co founder of I want to get the spelling right,
Speaker 1: the pronunciation right. I should say spellings in front of
Speaker 1: me is basis.
Speaker 2: Yes, So it's like a phonetic play on basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought so. But it's basis as
Speaker 1: opposed to bassis because I saw the sis on the
Speaker 1: end the end, and I thought sisterhood, you know, feminism,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Because one of one of the things you're
Speaker 1: really strong about is making sure that and I saw
Speaker 1: it in the brief, is helping women and girls get
Speaker 1: out of that bad cycle. Yeah, that's a big thing
Speaker 1: for you. It's not necessarily about your business, but it's
Speaker 1: a thing for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I feel like, you know, there's so
Speaker 2: many pitfalls around owning your own business, you know, all
Speaker 2: the risk and everything. But I think one of the
Speaker 2: benefits is that you do get to have a bit
Speaker 2: of autom me around doing some things that actually matter.
Speaker 2: And obviously, you know, we're in the game of selling
Speaker 2: lifestyle accessories, so we're not rocking anyone's world from that perspective.
Speaker 2: But we kind of decided this time around if we
Speaker 2: could use the business as like a vehicle to do
Speaker 2: some good on the side, that that, you know, would
Speaker 2: help us to sort of have a bit more purpose
Speaker 2: in the business itself.
Speaker 1: As in like platforming. Yeah, I mean, I mean, is
Speaker 1: this your soapbox? I mean, in a sort of a
Speaker 1: weird sort of ways, this your soapbox down the domain
Speaker 1: in the back in the seventies, when I used to
Speaker 1: go down there and see guys and girls standing up
Speaker 1: on a soapbox and yelling and screaming at any audience
Speaker 1: I could find. Do you know the domain?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you ever go there and see that?
Speaker 2: I mean, I would have been an eighties kid. And
Speaker 2: occasionally there are there are still a few stragglers down there.
Speaker 1: That not much of an audience. No, But when I
Speaker 1: was university in the seventies, it was a thing. So
Speaker 1: you went to the domain at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: Mitchell Library. There just at the bottom there there was
Speaker 1: a there's a couple of big trees right at the
Speaker 1: bottom were at dips and that's where they used to
Speaker 1: stand and you would largely get them on a Sunday
Speaker 1: and they actually had a box, a wooden box or
Speaker 1: something like that, and they get up there and they
Speaker 1: would give us a sermon and a preach about politics,
Speaker 1: the economy, religion, just whatever it was that was wrong
Speaker 1: in society and culture right, and they were quite quite
Speaker 1: They could talk for hours, literally, and it was a thing.
Speaker 1: I often used to go down there, a weird very
Speaker 1: self go down because I when I went to the university,
Speaker 1: you know, there was no to study. So I see
Speaker 1: the Mitell Library and in those days had microfish.
Speaker 2: The old you'd sit there with the thing and going
Speaker 2: around in circles forever.
Speaker 1: Everything was put on a microfish, which by the way,
Speaker 1: was pretty modern at that time. And I would take
Speaker 1: get photocopies of this stuff, and that was why I
Speaker 1: could review my notes, because otherwise I was at When
Speaker 1: I went to the university, the books always went missing,
Speaker 1: literally at the beginning of the semester, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Someone would get the book and hide it. There'd be
Speaker 1: three books on the topic, and it could be constitutional
Speaker 1: law or something that'd be taken out and it'd be
Speaker 1: put somewhere else and you would never find it. And
Speaker 1: so I would then go into the Mitchell Iban. Anyway,
Speaker 1: after when I was getting bit bored, which is in
Speaker 1: a break, would walk down to the domain and listen
Speaker 1: to people talking. Sunday was my day at the Mitchell
Speaker 1: Library and I would study and stay Lowry in South Wales.
Speaker 1: And I wonder whether today the modern version of that
Speaker 1: is something like what you're doing. We put up a
Speaker 1: business and today we can use Instagram, Facebook, probably less,
Speaker 1: but definitely Instagram and make statements about things that we
Speaker 1: care about.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, I mean definitely. But I would probably cave
Speaker 2: it that by saying that there's always this kind of
Speaker 2: tenuous balance because there's a cancel culture out there as
Speaker 2: well too, so you know, you swing to in every
Speaker 2: duration's cancel consa and so it's hard sometimes because you
Speaker 2: do want to lean into something, but you kind of
Speaker 2: you're also worried about the impact it might have on
Speaker 2: the business if you're saying something that's like contrary to like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the popular belief is so yeah, we I mean,
Speaker 2: the things that we do care about aren't that controversial.
Speaker 2: Like we want to lift you know, disadvantage girls that
Speaker 2: perhaps haven't had a good chance to just get a
Speaker 2: good education. I don't think there's anything that controversial about that.
Speaker 1: Well, there is if you blame if you blame someone,
Speaker 1: I guess if you blame a system, perhaps because the
Speaker 1: people who had to hear the system might say, well,
Speaker 1: and I believe in the system, because that outcome that
Speaker 1: you're trying to achieve is a consequence of a system.
Speaker 1: Actually that's true, and the system actually is, to be honest,
Speaker 1: is broken. It's sort of skewed in the wrong directions.
Speaker 1: Privilege tends to be a better education, and money buys privilege. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's not can be earned. Privilege can be earned, but
Speaker 1: it's not as galitarians was when I was younger. We're
Speaker 1: not in Like, you know, I going a long time.
Speaker 1: But when I you know, university was free. In fact,
Speaker 1: you know, you can get I got school I had,
Speaker 1: I got I got paid to go to university. I
Speaker 1: won a scholarship. But like it doesn't matter those that
Speaker 1: and you know I had a bursary as well. Like
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't have to pay for books, I
Speaker 1: didn't have to pay for accommodation. I got some money
Speaker 1: every week towards my education was enough. I still had
Speaker 1: a job. It doesn't matter. It was something, and my
Speaker 1: education was free. Today education is expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually that's very true. I mean my dad came
Speaker 2: from the Western suburbs of Sydney, one of five boys,
Speaker 2: the first and only one to go through to university
Speaker 2: and definitely wouldn't have gone through if it had not
Speaker 2: been for those opportunities them and it was and I
Speaker 2: feel like that obviously broke the cycle. Then that breaks
Speaker 2: the cycle then for the next gen coming through, because
Speaker 2: for us it was almost like a non negotiable like
Speaker 2: my sister and I would go to university and.
Speaker 1: No matter what, no matter what.
Speaker 2: So you're right, but it is it is a lot
Speaker 2: harder for the ones coming through now.
Speaker 1: They get university had come out like I got four sons,
Speaker 1: and you know, they come out of university owing money
Speaker 1: and they go, what's the point of that? And the
Speaker 1: thing they can constantly, you know, aggravates them is that
Speaker 1: they're was more money than earn, the more HEX they pay,
Speaker 1: like last year in two thousand and twenty two, I
Speaker 1: think it was their HEX debt, we're not by seven percent.
Speaker 1: Then the government says, well, we don't charge your interest,
Speaker 1: but we charge you inflation. But let's say you had
Speaker 1: a fifty thousand dollars hextbat. It says, so you did
Speaker 1: a five years at university doing a commercial order agree
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, you could have a fifty grand bill.
Speaker 1: Your hextet just went I buy seven percent. That means
Speaker 1: now fifty three thousand, five hundred and then next year
Speaker 1: the inflation will be calculated, so it's compounding. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a bit of a difficult thing. I feel sorry for him.
Speaker 1: And then a lot of people disincentivised to get a
Speaker 1: university they say, well I can't afford Plus you've got
Speaker 1: to travel there. You know, you've got no money while
Speaker 1: you're there. You've got to live your life. I mean,
Speaker 1: like you know, then you end up working at wool
Speaker 1: worst whilst you're at university packing shelves, and then you
Speaker 1: fall asleep halfway during your lecture, so you don't get
Speaker 1: the best out of yourself. You don't optimize. So I
Speaker 1: actually the education system is broken for everybody, but women
Speaker 1: and girls in probably particularly, I would say where we
Speaker 1: come from in the West may have it even worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think when I was when we have
Speaker 2: a really young team, where a small team, there's only
Speaker 2: eleven of us, but it's a I'm the oldest of
Speaker 2: the group.
Speaker 1: So how do I feel.
Speaker 2: I don't know, they keep me young. I'm young at heart,
Speaker 2: so you know, I think sometimes they forget that I've
Speaker 2: got a good twenty plus years on them, maybe because
Speaker 2: I don't act that way when I listen to what
Speaker 2: they talk about. You know that. I think COVID for them,
Speaker 2: really also screwed with the structure of these degrees that
Speaker 2: they're coming out with as well too, so the quality,
Speaker 2: so they're paying a shitload for it totally, They're not
Speaker 2: necessarily coming out with the skills that are helping them
Speaker 2: when they've got their first job. So it's kind of
Speaker 2: like it's broke on both sides, both on the you know,
Speaker 2: the financial side, and then also the quality of the
Speaker 2: education side. So I think a lot of them are
Speaker 2: just really frustrated, and it's really competitive because they're spitting
Speaker 2: out so many of them.
Speaker 1: So and we do have I mean not that I'm
Speaker 1: bagging in, but because my parents have migrants anyway, but
Speaker 1: we have a lot of overseas competitive competition, and they
Speaker 1: have a lot more They've got a lot more skin
Speaker 1: in the game to survive because you know, they've left
Speaker 1: another country. A lot of them and they're doing their
Speaker 1: best to survive here and their best chances to get
Speaker 1: a degree, so they're going to probably do. They're going
Speaker 1: to work harder at it. You know, they generally speak
Speaker 1: of course they're paying more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, universities, I guess incentivized to take more of them
Speaker 2: on as well too.
Speaker 1: I have to to survive because the university is getting bigger.
Speaker 1: So it's a big complicated issue. But we're moving away
Speaker 1: from So you went to university. I did, And what
Speaker 1: did you do?
Speaker 2: I did a double. I did a law degree and
Speaker 2: a commerce degree, which unit at uts UTS.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I was like one of the first to
Speaker 2: do this, this sort of double. So spat out five
Speaker 2: years later with a law degree. Wasn't really hungry to
Speaker 2: be a lawyer, but got a job at Clayton Newts
Speaker 2: because I felt like that's the thing I should have done,
Speaker 2: and got an insight into firm life and realized pretty
Speaker 2: quickly that great for some people, I'm not shitting on
Speaker 2: private practice, but for me, I just wasn't passionate enough
Speaker 2: about the law to to stick it out.
Speaker 1: So give it. You should explain a little bit to
Speaker 1: our audience what that means. So now you're a young
Speaker 1: graduate uts commerce law degree. You turn up at Clayton Newts,
Speaker 1: which is in Bly Street behind my city office, and
Speaker 1: I see them all the time. They're in the same
Speaker 1: building as the government housed with the Prime Minister and
Speaker 1: the Treasurer and every want to hanging out, and pretty
Speaker 1: fancy building. And they're a good firm, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean I know some of the partners there in
Speaker 1: the tax area, Mark Freezer for that for example, And
Speaker 1: I don't know if he's still a partner there, but
Speaker 1: he was the same law for my I was in
Speaker 1: when I was much younger when he first started actually,
Speaker 1: but he's gone to become, you know, big time partner
Speaker 1: in that firm. But I do know, because you know,
Speaker 1: I have family members who are doing exactly this at
Speaker 1: the moment, just finishing law and getting jobs in these
Speaker 1: sources of firms. I'm not saying Clayt News, but these
Speaker 1: big firms. And I do know that the expectation of
Speaker 1: the hours you work relative to the pay you yet.
Speaker 1: I mean, they get paid quite well, but the hours
Speaker 1: you work is crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And actually it's been so I'm twenty two years
Speaker 2: post that time, so I wasn't sure actually what it's
Speaker 2: like today. I thought maybe things had changed and hasn't changed.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're for a star, it's very competitive
Speaker 1: to get in if you get in one of the
Speaker 1: big firms, so you can like it's heavy, but if
Speaker 1: you get in, you don't really become a good earner
Speaker 1: until you've sort of been there for seven eight years.
Speaker 1: But the pressure on you to earn fees is crazy.
Speaker 2: It is. It was a real baptism of fire. I mean,
Speaker 2: I come from a really hard working family like my dad.
Speaker 2: You know, as I alluded to before, you know, he
Speaker 2: kind of broke the mold for what he wanted for
Speaker 2: us through sheer hard work. He was an absolute workaholic
Speaker 2: our whole lives and so it's in our dna. My
Speaker 2: sister and I wear just workhorses. So I felt like
Speaker 2: I was ready for anything. I've got that at a
Speaker 2: if you put your mind to it and just dig deep,
Speaker 2: you can really do anything. But it was a bloody
Speaker 2: rood shot and I got in there.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of not that interesting the work, No.
Speaker 2: And I was in general corporate, so I was a
Speaker 2: am I allowed to say, I'm a contract bitch, like
Speaker 2: I was just you know, a small, very small cog
Speaker 2: in a very big wheel and not getting to I
Speaker 2: guess get a sense for like the type of work.
Speaker 2: I think it would have been great for me to
Speaker 2: have had a bit more exposure to it through the
Speaker 2: course of the degree, to actually get a better understanding
Speaker 2: of what I was stepping into, which.
Speaker 1: You may not have stepped into it. Then probably you
Speaker 1: might have gone, might have tried to do something else.
Speaker 1: But a lot of times you don't have a choice.
Speaker 1: So you know, you move, you want to go to
Speaker 1: big firm because that's sort of like best on your TV.
Speaker 1: But the problem is going to get a big firm.
Speaker 1: You're one of a large number of people, and you're
Speaker 1: working for large organizations like as interns of clients, and
Speaker 1: you're going to get allocated the least risky work because
Speaker 1: they can't afford for you to stuff things up. And
Speaker 1: so that is like you're sitting right at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the tree. And unless you're patient, and I mean
Speaker 1: like seriously patient, you don't advance in the organization. Ultimately
Speaker 1: you'll leave.
Speaker 2: And there's always a degree of politics involved in there too.
Speaker 2: And I'm not really a game player. I don't invest
Speaker 2: a lot of time. I don't think I worked particularly smart,
Speaker 2: just hard, so I sort of could see what the
Speaker 2: path ahead looked like, and I kind of took the
Speaker 2: view that it was a great experience. Like, don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong, I think it just changed the way you
Speaker 2: do think even in everyday life now at basis, I
Speaker 2: sort of sometimes think to myself, Oh, I'm actually quite
Speaker 2: fortunate that I can look at this document and make
Speaker 2: a call just without needing to lean on someone else.
Speaker 2: But it's been big fees, and it's been very big fees,
Speaker 2: so we haven't had to use a lawyer. Touch would
Speaker 2: Actually I just renewed my PLAT practicing certificate. I don't
Speaker 2: know why, I'm just I can't let go so but
Speaker 2: it definitely then when I rolled out of that, out
Speaker 2: of that work environment, the amount of energy that I
Speaker 2: put into the first business that we had started, you know,
Speaker 2: working a fourteen hour day didn't scare me because I'd
Speaker 2: done a lot worse for a lot longer before that time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and that's pretty normal in the big county firms,
Speaker 1: big law firms. Yeah, really, you are doing forty nowadays
Speaker 1: minimums sometimes Saturdays, for sure. If you're working on something.
Speaker 1: There's a deadline, you just got to work Saturday Sundays.
Speaker 1: I remember my brother also worked in a law firm.
Speaker 1: He's younger than me, and I remember I was only
Speaker 1: thing about the other day. On his fortieth birthday, my
Speaker 1: brother was working on the the twenty twenty Olympic stadium
Speaker 1: at Homebush a Dog twenty twenty two thousand Olympics working
Speaker 1: on the stadium. He was part of the team doing
Speaker 1: the encyc off the building. So it wasn't in twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand. We might have been in ninety ninety eight
Speaker 1: or something in order to get it ready by two
Speaker 1: thousand and on his fortieth birthday, we were all ready
Speaker 1: to take me out to the restaurant. We booked this
Speaker 1: ural Greek restaurant. Mom, dad, me and my sister, blah
Speaker 1: blah bah, everybody else, his wife, his family, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and we all turned up at six pm. He came
Speaker 1: in at six and worked from six till seven point
Speaker 1: thirty and then had to leave because he's in the
Speaker 1: middle of documentation for something that had a deadline for
Speaker 1: the following week, which by the way, did make the
Speaker 1: deadline because everything sort of kept rolling out we're rolled
Speaker 1: over a month and I'm rolling over months. But that
Speaker 1: was his fortieth birthday, and that's pretty typical working in
Speaker 1: a law firm, and at that stage he was a partner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the hardest part is is that
Speaker 2: in that moment, you feel like the weight of the
Speaker 2: world is on your shoulder. You have to do it,
Speaker 2: you have no choice. But I don't know the older
Speaker 2: I'm getting, I mean in the last eighteen months. Sorry
Speaker 2: to take us off topic, but I was diagnosed with
Speaker 2: quite a serious illness last year and it was like
Speaker 2: I had I had cancer last year. No, that's okay,
Speaker 2: I'm all good now. But it took something like that
Speaker 2: to make me realize that, you know, there is nothing
Speaker 2: that's that important that you should be missing those types
Speaker 2: of really milestone occasions because you know, at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, you don't actually know how many you've
Speaker 2: got ahead of you, and you know, as important as
Speaker 2: that finance deal would have been at that time, I'm
Speaker 2: sure if he reflects back, maybe he wished he was
Speaker 2: sitting there smashing plates at midnight and not going back
Speaker 2: drinking beers. Beers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, it's funny you should say, because like if
Speaker 1: I then ask you, how do you How would you
Speaker 1: I'm sure it is reconcilable, and maybe you're something who
Speaker 1: can do it, but how would you reconcile? What you
Speaker 1: would say to a young woman. Let's say that particularly
Speaker 1: young woman's bride, bright enough to get ninety nine and
Speaker 1: hcor whatever they do the call of these days ata
Speaker 1: which will get you into a commis law degree today.
Speaker 1: Whether it's uts us to work, it doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: which I guess is probably close to ninety nine something.
Speaker 1: What would you say to that individual if he or
Speaker 1: she thought, I'm just gonna drag. In fact, I'm going
Speaker 1: to drag. I'm going to do this because i want
Speaker 1: to drag myself and my family. I'm a first Australian generation,
Speaker 1: first generation strain. I want to be the first to
Speaker 1: get a degree in my family. It might be just astrained,
Speaker 1: it might not be in a first generation. I'm going
Speaker 1: to do this because I want to drag my myself
Speaker 1: my family out of the quagmire of poverty. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to go work for a law firm and I'm
Speaker 1: ready to be disillusioned after my five years of hard work.
Speaker 1: What would you say to that young woman or that young.
Speaker 2: Girl that's a really hard that is me that.
Speaker 1: Is twenty five years ago. Yeah, what would you say
Speaker 1: to yourself today? I mean, because there will be young
Speaker 1: people who listen to this, and or parents of young
Speaker 1: people listen, they will say, wow, that's good advice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll.
Speaker 1: Share you with you. Would I would say to him
Speaker 1: as well? Okay, looking backwards, but you go first. Now,
Speaker 1: you go first, because the great thing about being in
Speaker 1: the chair is I get asked.
Speaker 2: Questions first, so I probably should qualify. So at the
Speaker 2: point that I had made the call that this was
Speaker 2: not what I wanted to do, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: notwithstanding that dud was we were working class family. We
Speaker 2: were working class family throughout almost my entire childhood and teenageing.
Speaker 1: Please define working class because I have a view on
Speaker 1: working class. Okay, I work for a living. They're from
Speaker 1: working class? Who myself? Boris you plenty of money? You
Speaker 1: don't work class. I work for a living, so I
Speaker 1: consider them. I still work every day, and I work hard.
Speaker 1: I still consider myself working class. So I think anyone
Speaker 1: who works hard right is working class. I think junior reinehard. Okay,
Speaker 1: I know she's rich. Woman in the country. But I
Speaker 1: think she's still working class. That's my view. I think
Speaker 1: anyone who's a straight back top has never done a
Speaker 1: day's work is not working class.
Speaker 2: So then maybe we need to coin a different term
Speaker 2: because so I guess from a socioeconomic definition.
Speaker 1: In terms of the level of working class.
Speaker 2: You know, he spat out as an accountant, so we're
Speaker 2: not talking blue collar, but but we didn't. We never
Speaker 2: wanted for anything, but we didn't have trappings. So you know,
Speaker 2: family holidays were an absolute privilege, and we never left
Speaker 2: the country because that just was financially out of the question.
Speaker 2: You know, he he obviously was taking his own risks
Speaker 2: in business. He ended up being really successful in his
Speaker 2: own right. But it meant that, you know, more often
Speaker 2: than not, for things that weren't education or you know,
Speaker 2: a meal on the table. The answer was no, Like
Speaker 2: we didn't have fancy clothes, we didn't drive fancy cars,
Speaker 2: didn't go on expensive holidays. It was but then again,
Speaker 2: we didn't feel like we were missing out on anything.
Speaker 1: I'm the same, exactly the same, actually, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was missing out on. If I'm
Speaker 1: not missing out.
Speaker 2: No, And you know, we were in the Shire. We
Speaker 2: weren't exposed to what the alternative life looked like. So
Speaker 2: you know, it was only when I actually left the
Speaker 2: city exactly and I realized I was actually the only
Speaker 2: one in my intake that came from the South and
Speaker 2: everyone else came from the Eastern.
Speaker 1: I've been through the exact exact same experience, and interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: I quickly adapted to their way of life me too,
Speaker 1: which I really pissed off about me, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: It happened, and I take it as an experience. So therefore,
Speaker 1: what would you say to yourself?
Speaker 2: So sorry, that was a really long winded way of
Speaker 2: me saying though that by the time I had done
Speaker 2: that five year stint in the firm and circumstances had
Speaker 2: changed for my family unit, I had somewhat of a
Speaker 2: safety net. So when I made the call, fuck this,
Speaker 2: I'm going to maybe try and do something for myself
Speaker 2: or try and change the path that I'm on, I
Speaker 2: had the benefit of having parents who had said, you know,
Speaker 2: we'll give you a little bit of a safety net,
Speaker 2: and that was very reluctant actually, And to be honest,
Speaker 2: if my daughter, who I have a ten year old now,
Speaker 2: was to come to me, you know, at twenty five
Speaker 2: and say I'm packing this in, I'm going to try
Speaker 2: something else. I would have like reservations. So but I
Speaker 2: think I would tell that person, have you given it
Speaker 2: enough of a shot first to walk away from this
Speaker 2: and have no regrets? And if the answer is yes,
Speaker 2: that you you know. I think as females we stop
Speaker 2: listening to our intuition quite early. It's like we're programmed
Speaker 2: early on to do things that we think optically are
Speaker 2: the right things to do, and not listen in tuitively
Speaker 2: to what our God is telling us to do. So intuitively,
Speaker 2: I knew off the bat, even when I started at
Speaker 2: the second year of UNI that this was not for me.
Speaker 2: But optically and socially, I was like, well, no, you know,
Speaker 2: I found myself here and I've been given this opportunity.
Speaker 2: I just have to keep going. So that is I
Speaker 2: guess what I would tell a younger self. Have you
Speaker 2: given this enough of a shot first that you can
Speaker 2: walk away from this and you're not going to have
Speaker 2: any regrets about the decision that you've made. And if
Speaker 2: you feel in your guard that that is the case,
Speaker 2: then roll the die and take the step.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's very interesting, I particularly for women. And
Speaker 1: I'm only making an observation because I have no daughters,
Speaker 1: but I would like to make the observation if I can.
Speaker 1: I think our society is developing into, I can, a
Speaker 1: society where there's a level of acceptance of your credibility.
Speaker 1: And one way of establishing credibility is your ability to
Speaker 1: stick to something, do something that's difficult, even if you
Speaker 1: don't pursue it, and status credibility. If you go to
Speaker 1: university and do become an engineer for arguments, assuming that
Speaker 1: you know you want to do you have the ability
Speaker 1: to do that, and you want to study hard to
Speaker 1: do that, and you have a family capacity to do
Speaker 1: that and would support et cetera engineer, doctor, lawyer. You
Speaker 1: may not become a stay as a lawyer. You may
Speaker 1: not maintain yourself as an energy. You may not stay
Speaker 1: as a medical practition because a medical priditioner is not
Speaker 1: practition is not what it used to be, and any
Speaker 1: other profession for that matter. By the way, accountant, teacher,
Speaker 1: whatever I think of a woman today, a young girl
Speaker 1: should pursue that because unfortunately society still judges you and
Speaker 1: still attaches status to you. You don't attach it, someone
Speaker 1: will attach the system, will attach status to you. And
Speaker 1: I think you need to overcome that initial hurdle and
Speaker 1: you've got to do it yourself. No one's going to
Speaker 1: give you status. You've got to your family, don't give
Speaker 1: your status. You need to establish status. It's unfortunate, but
Speaker 1: it is the way it is. But you do you
Speaker 1: three years or two years or one year or five years.
Speaker 1: Once you've qualified, once you've finished your degree, then you
Speaker 1: go up and do whatever you want to do. Yep.
Speaker 1: And there's because between eighteen the day you start university
Speaker 1: and say twenty six twenty seven, and after you've finished
Speaker 1: your course and you've done a bit of experience in
Speaker 1: that period, you don't really know too much anyway.
Speaker 2: No, and no one can take that away from it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't leave you exactly.
Speaker 2: No one can take it away from you. And I
Speaker 2: think the only thing I've actually noticed of late is interestingly,
Speaker 2: we were interviewing recently for a content creation role, so
Speaker 2: and we had a lot of twenty something year rolds
Speaker 2: coming through, and more than a handful talked about the
Speaker 2: fact that the first thing they wanted to do was
Speaker 2: start their own business. And we listened patiently. You know,
Speaker 2: I really admire you know, people coming up with, you know,
Speaker 2: that sort of an idea early early on in their lives.
Speaker 2: So it certainly wasn't something that came to me early.
Speaker 2: But I think there's a danger out there, especially on
Speaker 2: social media, that there is a business, there's an engine
Speaker 2: that is basically advertising this idea of an alternate life
Speaker 2: that involves around running your own show. And it's really
Speaker 2: bloody hard, and I feel like it's it's really it's
Speaker 2: it's almost a bit misleading, you know, to tell you know,
Speaker 2: young kids that you know, without any level of experience
Speaker 2: or any level of business experience, that you can set
Speaker 2: up your own shop, and you know that millions await you.
Speaker 2: On the other side, that that is something reserved for
Speaker 2: a very small minority. It is a total falsehood. It
Speaker 2: is it is. It's these people peddling courses, not labeling anyone,
Speaker 2: but selling a dream that really is not attainable for
Speaker 2: the vast majority of people. So I think, I think
Speaker 2: it's hard. I think you're right, you have to cut
Speaker 2: your teeth because that's where you learn the basics.
Speaker 1: And you also learn that there's not what I want
Speaker 1: to do no. I mean sometimes that's pretty important to learn.
Speaker 1: I don't really cut out for this or this is
Speaker 1: not cut out for me. I don't want to do this.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a lawyer. I don't want
Speaker 1: to work at an engineer. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: a school teacher or a university lecturer. I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. I want to go do something different.
Speaker 1: But until you know, until you try it, you don't know.
Speaker 1: And I just think that if like, that would be
Speaker 1: my advice. Not, by the way, not everybody is cut
Speaker 1: out to go to university either, because there's some people
Speaker 1: who just don't learn the way universities teach or the
Speaker 1: way schools teach. Because not everybody is cut out to
Speaker 1: learn in the way the system sets you off for learning.
Speaker 1: You know, and some people might have learning difficulties. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they're not smart or not intelligent. They might and
Speaker 1: they're not hard work him. Some people have you know,
Speaker 1: they might be dyslexic, et cetera. There's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of issues around these, or they might have socio economic
Speaker 1: environment at home where they've got to get out and
Speaker 1: get a job to help the family. That's slightly different.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about people who are privileged enough, and I
Speaker 1: don't mean they're wealthy, just privileged enough to go to
Speaker 1: the university, sit for the exams, get the past required,
Speaker 1: qualify or matriculated with the words are these days to
Speaker 1: get into a certain course and have the ability to
Speaker 1: sustain themselves during that course, either working at woolies or
Speaker 1: whatever they're going to do, but sustain themselves during the course.
Speaker 1: I think those people should do the course and should
Speaker 1: complete the course, and try and complete the course of
Speaker 1: something you have some interest in. You know, you may
Speaker 1: have been someone might have said to you, become a lawyer,
Speaker 1: because you know your dad might have been a lawyer. Alternatively,
Speaker 1: your dad knew a lawyer, You got an uncle who's
Speaker 1: a lawyer, or you had an uncle who's an architecture,
Speaker 1: you go to architecture, et cetera. I just think it's
Speaker 1: still a good process for women because women will get judged.
Speaker 1: And I don't give a damn what you say. It
Speaker 1: is the case women get judged.
Speaker 2: Oh, you won't get pushed back from me. I totally
Speaker 2: agree with you. I also think that you know the
Speaker 2: reality is from this perspective of studying for these kids.
Speaker 2: It's not even the subject matter, it's just the act
Speaker 2: of putting your mind to something following learning how to learn,
Speaker 2: learning how to learn. Yeah, and and and being aware
Speaker 2: of the fact that there's a lot out there that
Speaker 2: you don't know. The more you know, the more you don't.
Speaker 1: Know, the more you respect what you don't know totally.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's a big issue. But we
Speaker 1: probably I do want to talk to you about basis.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to go to the break. When we
Speaker 1: come back to the break, can you just take me
Speaker 1: through what your thesis was when you before you start
Speaker 1: a basis and what is the moment you decided you
Speaker 1: want to start basis and what was it that inspired
Speaker 1: you or maybe motivated you to start basis. But I'm
Speaker 1: going to go to the brain comes straight back. I'm
Speaker 1: back you with Ariana Henry and we talked about a
Speaker 1: whole lot of stuff in the in the first part
Speaker 1: of the So, but I do want to ask you, now,
Speaker 1: do you remember the time when you thought, hang on,
Speaker 1: I'm going to it up this business ultimately call basis
Speaker 1: and it's time for me to do it. And what
Speaker 1: was it? What was your surrounding, what was happening in
Speaker 1: your life that made you think that way.
Speaker 2: So without wanting the clock back too far, I had
Speaker 2: After I left law, I established a business in the
Speaker 2: fitness industry, of all things, and ran that business with
Speaker 2: my sister, who I had persuaded to come along the
Speaker 2: ride for me. She's an accountant, so the two of
Speaker 2: us cut our teeth.
Speaker 1: And you could, you could sort of compliment each other perfect.
Speaker 2: We stayed out of each other's lanes. She was all
Speaker 2: the engine room in the back and I was in
Speaker 2: the front. And we had that business for ten years,
Speaker 2: and that's where I learned all the mistakes of small business.
Speaker 2: And and you know, I can look back now and
Speaker 2: say it, you know, without coming off as sounding arrogant.
Speaker 2: But that was a a pretty special journey for her
Speaker 2: and I And we ended up selling to fitness first
Speaker 2: and exited that business at the age of what was it,
Speaker 2: thirty six, and you know, gave ourselves a pat on
Speaker 2: the back and earned the right to put our feet
Speaker 2: up for a little bit and started thinking about things
Speaker 2: like family. So that's where I was at the point
Speaker 2: in my life when the idea for Basis came along.
Speaker 2: I lasted a rite twelve months and I got so
Speaker 2: itchy and I sat there. I remember having countless conversations
Speaker 2: with my sister because she had been fantasizing about the
Speaker 2: idea of, you know, doing yoga every day and you know,
Speaker 2: becoming she's an exercise junkie, And we realized really quickly that,
Speaker 2: like so much of what gets us out of bed
Speaker 2: in the morning is like, you know, firing the signapses
Speaker 2: and having a challenge. So we knew we wanted to
Speaker 2: do something, we didn't know what that something was. The
Speaker 2: previous business was a franchise based business, so it was
Speaker 2: very labor intensive. We had really like strong relationships. We
Speaker 2: had eighty five franchisees, so it was the type of
Speaker 2: business that we knew we didn't want second time around
Speaker 2: for the next chapter of our lives. And around the
Speaker 2: same time, a very dear friend of ours who actually
Speaker 2: was our former marketing manager. She had come back from
Speaker 2: New York. Her husband's a pilot, and I remember we
Speaker 2: went for a walk around Centennial Park and she was
Speaker 2: talking about the trip and she just said, you know,
Speaker 2: over there, you know, they're far more progressive in terms
Speaker 2: of what they're doing in the retail space, and personalization
Speaker 2: is very big over there. We had a conversation about why,
Speaker 2: you know, why we thought it was taking off over there,
Speaker 2: and around the same time, I guess we had realized
Speaker 2: that there were already players doing leather goods in the
Speaker 2: personalization space. But we sort of felt like personalization actually
Speaker 2: has a role to play with everyday items. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a benefit to having your name on certain things,
Speaker 2: you know, things that you take with you everywhere, you know,
Speaker 2: your water bottle, your coffee cup, those types of things.
Speaker 2: So the genesis kind of came out of this idea of, well, okay,
Speaker 2: if personalization is a trend which is emerging in the
Speaker 2: retail space, is there a world where we could marry
Speaker 2: you know, designing really beautiful everyday essentials and then giving
Speaker 2: the power of personalization to the customer, but doing it
Speaker 2: in such a way that it's not you know, you
Speaker 2: do it you wait six weeks that we really you know,
Speaker 2: make that sort of process a short and sharp, easy process,
Speaker 2: so that it's no different to going to the shop
Speaker 2: and buying something, so.
Speaker 1: Sort of more instant yeah, which we're.
Speaker 2: Really proud to say we turn things around within three
Speaker 2: business days. So we have actually been able to achieve that.
Speaker 2: So that was that was It was a walk around
Speaker 2: Centennial Park me realizing that I was bought out of
Speaker 2: my brain at the same time that a dear friend
Speaker 2: had sort of suggested that this was something that was
Speaker 2: happening a lot more in the States than it was
Speaker 2: happening here.
Speaker 1: Did you do the usual thing though, Okay, great idea,
Speaker 1: write it down, talk to your sister or whoever you
Speaker 1: talk to about then started thinking about how should all
Speaker 1: the problems always? Yeah, did you because you know, lawyers
Speaker 1: unfortunately pull things apart, not unfortunately, that's how it works.
Speaker 1: And and then you start pulling and paying, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that could be a problem manufacturing. This could be probably
Speaker 1: like there's a series of problems. Did they become an
Speaker 1: and did any states have become overwarming? And if so,
Speaker 1: what did you do?
Speaker 2: So? Uh, the genesis of other idea from Jess just
Speaker 2: your sister, No, Jess is the friend yep. So as
Speaker 2: the conversations evolved, we decided if we're going to do it,
Speaker 2: we were going to do it as a threesome. Because
Speaker 2: Jess comes from a really strong pr background. She's a
Speaker 2: she's a marketing weapon. So we thought, okay, well, let's
Speaker 2: see if this thing's got teeth. Actually, of the three
Speaker 2: of us, I've got rose colored glasses, so I optoms. Ah,
Speaker 2: I'm such an optimist, and it shits my sister to
Speaker 2: tears because she is. She's glass half empty. She's the
Speaker 2: one that pokes the holes in everything. So very quickly
Speaker 2: she was looking basically at the products themselves and doing
Speaker 2: back of envelopes sort of gross margin and saying, wow,
Speaker 2: if we can't make a seventy six percent gross margin
Speaker 2: on these products, this is a business just couldn't fly
Speaker 2: as soon as you start layering in all the overheads
Speaker 2: and everything. And I think, for me, that's why I
Speaker 2: mean to be honest, like she's the reason we're still here.
Speaker 2: Like the first time around, she was so young, but
Speaker 2: she cut her teeth on that first business, understanding the
Speaker 2: importance of cash flow, the importance of you know, preserving
Speaker 2: things like gross margin that are coming into it. In
Speaker 2: a second time, it was almost like we had a
Speaker 2: bit of a head start in terms of what the
Speaker 2: formula needed to be. So there was a good three
Speaker 2: months of starting to familiarize ourselves with this space because
Speaker 2: we didn't know anything about it from a retail perspective.
Speaker 2: We had a really strong feeling that there was a
Speaker 2: consumer appetite for it. The problem was could the numbers
Speaker 2: stack up?
Speaker 1: Do you do research for that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we use a lot of like trend analysis tools.
Speaker 2: We did from the outset. So we sort of said, okay, well,
Speaker 2: we're only going to start with five products. What would
Speaker 2: those five products be? We jumped onto Google trends. We
Speaker 2: started to look at search volumes per month for the
Speaker 2: types of products we were looking for, and to be
Speaker 2: honest of the sort of ten or so that we
Speaker 2: had ideas for five of them, they didn't even touch
Speaker 2: the sides. I think it was like, you know, five
Speaker 2: thousand people a month are looking for it. I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: we're never going to be able to make it work
Speaker 2: with globally in Australia. Yeah, so we started with Australia.
Speaker 2: So we narrowed it down to five that had a
Speaker 2: really healthy what were they doing? Yeah? So the water
Speaker 2: bottles was one. I think this was coming into this hole.
Speaker 1: This is this comfort bottle or as a water bottles.
Speaker 2: An actual like drink bottle.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this was all around this whole rhetoric around disposal
Speaker 2: of getting rid of single use plastics, and so we're like, okay,
Speaker 2: well there's going to be potentially a drive in this direction.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should see if there's legs for it in
Speaker 2: that sense. So reusable coffee cup was one, the water
Speaker 2: bottle was the other. There were obviously some like reusable
Speaker 2: travel accessories that came up in the pipe at the beginning,
Speaker 2: and we're talking like two hundred three hundred thousand searches
Speaker 2: a month for the category, and we sort of felt
Speaker 2: like that was a safety zone for us. We didn't
Speaker 2: want to go, you know, trying to sell something to
Speaker 2: people that they weren't looking for to start with.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of the design, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that was probably the greatest, the deepest part of
Speaker 2: the learning curve.
Speaker 1: What people want, What people.
Speaker 2: Want now it's easy. So like, for example, last week,
Speaker 2: we know the product that we want to do, we
Speaker 2: put together a survey. We've got a database over one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand now, so we flick the survey out and
Speaker 2: we ask them what they want and we just come
Speaker 2: up with, you know, five really simple questions and the
Speaker 2: answer always reveals itself so clearly, and it's almost always
Speaker 2: not what I thought. So, uh, everyone jokes that if
Speaker 2: I like it, there's a very strong chance that I
Speaker 2: won't work. I'm the litmus test for what we shouldn't do.
Speaker 2: So that's that's it's brilliant now, But in the beginning
Speaker 2: it was a bit yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you're I did see in the notes
Speaker 1: that somehow Oprah winfy I had one of your drink
Speaker 1: bottles or something. What's the story around that?
Speaker 2: I know, I mean, I feel like I feel like
Speaker 2: it's one of those things that you think, oh, that
Speaker 2: just doesn't ever happen to anyone, but it actually did.
Speaker 1: How did she get the bottle? You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we haven't launched officially in the States, and
Speaker 2: we still haven't where. We don't like spreading ourselves too thin.
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is the right or wrong strategy,
Speaker 2: but we really want to nail things down hard here
Speaker 2: first before we go. So I think we're right at
Speaker 2: the cusp now. I think we've ironed out all the
Speaker 2: kinks in our so we're ready to roll. So it
Speaker 2: still blows my mind that she did stumble across it.
Speaker 2: She obviously has a team. Her event manager was organizing
Speaker 2: a birthday party for Oprah's best friend in Hawaii, and
Speaker 2: so we got a corporate inquiry because we almost half
Speaker 2: of our business now is corporate merch which is growing
Speaker 2: a lot faster than any other side of the business.
Speaker 2: And so it was an order for I think sixty units,
Speaker 2: which is not big for us. We didn't really pay attention,
Speaker 2: but it was O W Enterprises was the invoice out
Speaker 2: to get.
Speaker 1: Who picked it up? None of us, many of you
Speaker 1: where your staff, no one.
Speaker 2: We're our print manager printed Oprah to the bottle and
Speaker 2: we still didn't flinch. And then one week later, I
Speaker 2: think it was Oprah is doing a story on Instagram
Speaker 2: and she's holding the bottle in her hand and says,
Speaker 2: I've discovered one of the best bottles and it's got
Speaker 2: my name on it, and she's holding our bottle. And
Speaker 2: so the only way we actually found out was that
Speaker 2: our SEO manager rang up and said, oh, what's going
Speaker 2: on with the website, because you've just had the biggest
Speaker 2: spike of traffic. It's like the mount everest of traffic
Speaker 2: to your website. And we did a bit of digging in.
Speaker 2: That's when we worked it out.
Speaker 1: So what are your product lines now? So Manhammi SKWS,
Speaker 1: do you.
Speaker 2: Have so we're up to thirty SKUs. We've got eight
Speaker 2: coming before the end of the year, so we're really
Speaker 2: at the moment now we think that the where the
Speaker 2: growth is coming from outside of market growth is really
Speaker 2: getting fat depth of product range, because we've got a
Speaker 2: really healthy repeat customer rate and so obviously we're fortunate
Speaker 2: enough that the customers are liking what they see and
Speaker 2: so we want to hold onto them.
Speaker 1: Giving your stuff is fairly sustainable in terms of environmentally sustainable,
Speaker 1: et cetera. That sort of suggests to me repeat customers
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a thing because you make something that lasts
Speaker 1: a bloody long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, actually, so funny should say that, because one
Speaker 2: of the very first things that my sister Anthea said
Speaker 2: when we're talking about the business is she's like, it's
Speaker 2: not consumable. This is shit. Thinking that it is important
Speaker 2: to have a business that has this sort of like
Speaker 2: consumable element to it.
Speaker 1: It needs to be repeat business. That's a difficult question.
Speaker 1: Investor will say, why would your people keep why would
Speaker 1: someone keep coming back and buying more from you? Because
Speaker 1: you don't want to make something so good no one
Speaker 1: ever needs to buy another one, but just sort of
Speaker 1: do it. It's a bit weird, but from a's point of.
Speaker 2: View talking about it, it is I think, So I
Speaker 2: guess that comes back to the depth. So you get
Speaker 2: them sticky on the first product, hoping they'll come back.
Speaker 1: For more, buy one for their friend as opposed to
Speaker 1: one for themselves, or they might have lost their own.
Speaker 1: But it's not something. It's not because they've got destroyed
Speaker 1: or anything.
Speaker 2: No, and we've become a very strong gifting element, so
Speaker 2: we do. We were geeks when it comes to the data,
Speaker 2: and overwhelmingly we are a gifting product. I think we're
Speaker 2: trying to price point everything where we can fifty bucks
Speaker 2: an under because in this like in this climate, you know,
Speaker 2: the reality is people don't have the capacity to be
Speaker 2: splashing cash around, and so our premise is it's good quality,
Speaker 2: but we make it as lean and mean as we can.
Speaker 2: That's why we run such a lean chip because we're
Speaker 2: not in the position we don't want to be adding.
Speaker 1: For controlling overheads. Yeah, which means it disallows you from
Speaker 1: being able to maintain a price point, or at least
Speaker 1: being able to maintain your margine. You're seventy four percent
Speaker 1: margin and your sister likes to see. Yeah, how many
Speaker 1: past you say you had again? Coming up to thirty
Speaker 1: and you're going to release five coming up eight before
Speaker 1: the end of this year. And are we still talking
Speaker 1: about as gifting means? I could go on to your website.
Speaker 1: What's your website by the.
Speaker 2: Way, So it's basis dot com, b B.
Speaker 1: E y S Basis Basis dot com. I could go
Speaker 1: and then I could give something for well, Father's Day
Speaker 1: and Mother's Days over and most of my birthday's family
Speaker 1: birthdays are over. Christmas is coming up, I guess, so
Speaker 1: I could so corporately going there and say, let's I
Speaker 1: want to give all the staff something. What are the
Speaker 1: sorts of things that you'd be looking at?
Speaker 2: So, actually, corporate has been a real driver in how
Speaker 2: we're pivoting a bit with exkews.
Speaker 1: So I want to give everyone a Christmas present, okay?
Speaker 1: Or a gift at Christmas?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what would you typically give your.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that, so, but you know,
Speaker 1: be honestly, Okay, that job is someone in the organization
Speaker 1: and they put up four or five different things to
Speaker 1: me and say, what do you reckon? I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: get to see they'd just make the decision. But like,
Speaker 1: I'm up, what would you say?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've got practicality. It has to be about practicality,
Speaker 2: but with an edge, you know, like we're not creating
Speaker 2: products that are mind blowing or groundbreaking. But for example,
Speaker 2: so we've got tech, So we've got beautiful laptop cases,
Speaker 2: we've got air podcases. From a stationary standpoint, we've got notebooks,
Speaker 2: leather bound notebooks. But we've gone and we've we get
Speaker 2: a team of industrial designers to come up with just
Speaker 2: trying to put a bit of a creative edge on
Speaker 2: what is effecting. Make something beautiful, make something beautiful, tactile, exactly.
Speaker 1: Nice to touch, nice to look at. Yeah, there's something
Speaker 1: I'm happy to and I'm more likely like do you
Speaker 1: do a yoga mat? For example?
Speaker 2: You know what that's that's a personalized one of the
Speaker 2: ones and really, well we're debating about it. We've got
Speaker 2: do you think that's good?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I would like that. I mean I would do that.
Speaker 1: I would give that to my female Well, I give
Speaker 1: it to a male stuff? Do I would? I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully someone in your family can use this.
Speaker 2: Yea, we might need to do a mark for a
Speaker 2: limited edition.
Speaker 1: But I actually a bit a good quality one that's
Speaker 1: been like an industrial designer that what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: who can look at what is best for it in
Speaker 1: terms of yoga mat because a lot of my crap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean this is the problem now, like
Speaker 2: we've got, you know, the likes of TEAMUS hitting the
Speaker 2: of the market and really really contaminating.
Speaker 1: I get so disappointed by something I do anyway because
Speaker 1: I go, fuck, it didn't look anything like yes what
Speaker 1: I saw on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's like it's like going on a bad day,
Speaker 2: you know, going into it. And then you're like, I
Speaker 2: should have known.
Speaker 1: Anyway, we won't go down that train. But but it's
Speaker 1: it's got me plenty of times. But like it was
Speaker 1: like for me anyway, a yoga mat would be I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't make that decision in my business
Speaker 1: because I'm hopeless, so that's someone also make the decision.
Speaker 1: But I just think that would be a great gift
Speaker 1: to give to people Christmas. Even if you don't do yoga,
Speaker 1: you will know somebody does do yoga, but pro can't
Speaker 1: personalize it then, But but how would you personalize it?
Speaker 1: Does it say? Does it say, have your name on
Speaker 1: the individual's name on it. Is that how it works?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So on the on the website, you've got about
Speaker 2: we say, we've got three hundred personalization options. So you
Speaker 2: put your text in. You can pick the placement of
Speaker 2: your text, you can pick the size of your text,
Speaker 2: you can pick the font. So you know, when you
Speaker 2: put that all together, you basically, aside from the fact
Speaker 2: that you can't write, you know, love and peace on
Speaker 2: one of the items, the character limit is the only
Speaker 2: thing that really stops you from making exactly as you
Speaker 2: want it.
Speaker 1: Can you can you say a little like a little
Speaker 1: could you put a like a little phrase?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get so many phrases we actually don't have
Speaker 2: Like end of month, the fulfillment team will pick out
Speaker 2: something that you know, either made them love. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's some really controversial stuff that gets printed on our
Speaker 2: yeah I can imagine. Yeah, a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of X rated stuff as well too, which I don't
Speaker 2: know why you ever want that on your water bottle,
Speaker 2: but people do so. Yeah, so it's really anything the
Speaker 2: sky's the limit.
Speaker 1: That's good because that's funny. I went to a place
Speaker 1: the other day and they gave me I was just
Speaker 1: trying this joint out. I won't say what it's called,
Speaker 1: but I was just trying to place out and they
Speaker 1: gave me a water bottle and a water bottle and
Speaker 1: a hoodie because it was the middle of winter at
Speaker 1: the time, but they had their brand all over it.
Speaker 1: And I won't wear it for a whole lot of
Speaker 1: reasons because you know, I don't advertise anyone else's brand
Speaker 1: for commercial reasons. But if it had had if it
Speaker 1: had to be personalized to me, like if they knew
Speaker 1: I was coming, they knew I was coming to the
Speaker 1: singing they and if they have given me water, going
Speaker 1: on to your website and ordered this in advance, and
Speaker 1: then it had you know mark, you know, welcome to
Speaker 1: whatever it is. I don't know whatever they put on there,
Speaker 1: but it was more personal to me, and as well
Speaker 1: as the hoodie. If it was personalise to me, and
Speaker 1: they could have asked me, you know, perhaps what what
Speaker 1: could have asked someone in my team what it would
Speaker 1: is what I would like to have on there, for example,
Speaker 1: I would be more likely to wear it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now I.
Speaker 1: Honestly I gave it to Saint Vincent's like I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to wear that. So I had to
Speaker 1: actually put in one of those collection bins, you know,
Speaker 1: And I felt like real dead shit, like I thought,
Speaker 1: were you you but id because I've already got hoodies.
Speaker 1: But I thought ungrateful bugger, you know, like. But then
Speaker 1: I thought, no, but I'm not going to use it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to leave that story in my cupboard
Speaker 1: and never wear it. It could sit there for twenty
Speaker 1: years and there be somebody out there who'd probably think
Speaker 1: is good. So I'm also give it away for free.
Speaker 1: But it become a hassle for me because these people
Speaker 1: gave me something to become a hassle for me. I
Speaker 1: started thinking about it. I started guilt tripping about it.
Speaker 1: Then I had to go on my way to drop
Speaker 1: it off, like the whole process, and I was just
Speaker 1: thinking something. I never thought about that at the time,
Speaker 1: but what you offer, but your offering is much more
Speaker 1: practical and smarter. It's actually a better out on for
Speaker 1: me because I would have been much I would have
Speaker 1: thought that was much cooler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't know. I think there's something about personalizay.
Speaker 2: I mean it appeals to the ego, right, like we
Speaker 2: want to see out something about ourselves, like on our
Speaker 2: on you know, things that we have even.
Speaker 1: Name, but maybe something that they ring my team up
Speaker 1: and they said, my team likes Mark likes I know,
Speaker 1: Koalas or an image of a gorilla on there or something, right,
Speaker 1: that would have been cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Well, actually some of our big corporates have
Speaker 2: got cottoned onto that. So what we do as a
Speaker 2: service is we actually build a page which is unique
Speaker 2: to the corporate and so then you know, we've just
Speaker 2: finished this for a very big bank which I won't
Speaker 2: say which one, And basically they were giving four hundred
Speaker 2: gifts to employees that have performed particularly well, and so
Speaker 2: they actually just gave them all a QR code. We
Speaker 2: built a bespoke landing page for them, and every employee
Speaker 2: went on and they put exactly what they wanted on it.
Speaker 2: That's cool And then obviously that is a bit more
Speaker 2: legwork for us. But in terms of the impact of.
Speaker 1: If you charge with the bank will pay for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And at the end of the day, that meant
Speaker 2: that everyone was a winner, really, I mean, we obviously were,
Speaker 2: but it meant that the banks were not just pissing
Speaker 2: money up or wall. They were gifting something that was
Speaker 2: genuinely going to be used and valued valuab.
Speaker 1: I mean that's very interesting. Where to you from now?
Speaker 1: So you launching your new range?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we are off to the States. This is
Speaker 2: like the next the next part of the equation. We're
Speaker 2: actually at this crossroads obviously, you know, because we're this
Speaker 2: is in our first rodeo. We know it's a it's
Speaker 2: a it's a big deal. We want to get it right.
Speaker 2: We don't want to you know, stuff it up. So
Speaker 2: we're currently working out strategically who we potentially partner with
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 1: So be a collaboration in the US.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think in an ideal world, we
Speaker 2: might find an investor that helps take us there who's
Speaker 2: done it all before. But you know, we're at that
Speaker 2: exploratory phase at the moment.
Speaker 1: We're going to go in to the US.
Speaker 2: Well, we we've been using again Google as our litmus test.
Speaker 2: We ran ad campaigns actually in the top three states
Speaker 2: that we thought might be our market, and Los Angeles
Speaker 2: by far and away as a city, well California obviously
Speaker 2: as a state is by far and away. It performs
Speaker 2: like three times return on our ad spend than any
Speaker 2: other state over there. So I guess we'll go where
Speaker 2: the money is telling us off to the valley. Off
Speaker 2: to the valley.
Speaker 1: It's going to be great. But it's pretty exciting though.
Speaker 2: It's really exciting. I mean, this is the bit that
Speaker 2: gets me.
Speaker 1: Really be Seeing Clayton Utes in Bly Street now and
Speaker 1: just like signing off on some big piece of advice
Speaker 1: that someone's been seeking and charging fifteen hundred bucks an hour.
Speaker 2: I peture I wouldn't have even made partner.
Speaker 1: I reckon it would have. But like you so lately,
Speaker 1: where would you rather be?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't even know that I need to
Speaker 2: answer that question for me personally, this stuff like there
Speaker 2: is never a day I wake up and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to go to work.
Speaker 1: So well that's pretty cool. Yeah, so you actually wake up, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know we're still in infancy modes. So
Speaker 2: it's not like the like, if I can be honest, like,
Speaker 2: it's not the money that's getting me out of bed,
Speaker 2: it's this this adventure fire. Yeah, and even last year
Speaker 2: having to step out of the business to get back
Speaker 2: on top of things health wise. The thing that ate
Speaker 2: me up the most was the fact that I couldn't
Speaker 2: go in and I tried my hardest to where I could.
Speaker 1: But yeah, maybe the thing that propelled you for just
Speaker 1: continue on with getting better was the fact that you
Speaker 1: wanted to go back to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really did so well that.
Speaker 1: It's a great story. By the way, I'm glad you've recovered.
Speaker 1: You're everything's in remission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got the all clear in at the end
Speaker 2: of February, just this. Yeah, so I'm fresh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well dangerous, You're very dangerous. And that your sister outside, No, that's.
Speaker 2: Just that's the genesis of the idea, Jess.
Speaker 1: Okay. Well, and your sister's still involved with which is.
Speaker 2: Back in the office doing the month end reports, and.
Speaker 1: Well, the three of you are killing it. And it's
Speaker 1: great to see, by the way, after all this period
Speaker 1: that you're still and the trials and tribulations as you've
Speaker 1: gone through personally, it's good to see that the three
Speaker 1: of you is still involved together. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I think we I mean in terms of Anthey and I,
Speaker 2: because they always warn you, you know, you don't go
Speaker 2: into business with family or friends, and I've both basically
Speaker 2: broken both of those rules and I won't lie. There's
Speaker 2: always teething issues in the beginning, just everyone I guess
Speaker 2: getting comfortable with their place.
Speaker 1: But I mean there's no ego. Then you've got to
Speaker 1: get You've got to smooth your egos out, you do.
Speaker 1: I'm in business of my brother, and you know there
Speaker 1: are moments, but because he's my brother or I'm his brother,
Speaker 1: like we tend to forgive each other much easier where
Speaker 1: the type of brothers. But it can be extraordinarily frustrating
Speaker 1: because you know, it's a it has other consequences if
Speaker 1: you're arguing.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I mean, my sister is my best friend. And
Speaker 2: I feel like our first business experience, we a couple
Speaker 2: of times we got so close to the why that
Speaker 2: we were like, you know what, if this is going
Speaker 2: to cost us our relationship, we shouldn't do this again.
Speaker 2: And we got through that hurdle. So now we're on
Speaker 2: the we're on the home straight in terms of the
Speaker 2: business relationship. Now it's just about digging deep and trying
Speaker 2: to get this thing really churning.
Speaker 1: Well. Good luck to you, Arianna Henry. Arianna, your mum
Speaker 1: named you or Ariana because in terms of the story
Speaker 1: she told you at least, and it's a good story
Speaker 1: is that Arianna was the daughter of a goddess, a
Speaker 1: Greek goddess or something like that was one of the
Speaker 1: first feminists around or something.
Speaker 2: Like that, where that story goes, Yeah, mom, so mummy
Speaker 2: is Greek, and she she, she said, I gave her
Speaker 2: such a horrific time through pregnancy that I was going
Speaker 2: to be a ball breaker coming out, and she thought
Speaker 2: the name was appropriate.
Speaker 1: So well, good on you, and good on you for
Speaker 1: standing up for what women should be doing and what
Speaker 1: women can do and actually leading by example.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Malcome, Thanks for having me