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00:00:01
My Journey
81 Plays1 year ago
In this episode I share some background information into my journey of ‘Business to My Own Beat’
Giving a historical account of the various businesses I’ve established based on my unique gifts, interests & skills… and what led me to establishing each one.
Now as the Owner/Operator of a unique retail store offering which is still today evolving, and Dharma Coach I hope to facilitate and support others in realising their dreams of creating a life they truly love, doing work that aligns with their values and unique skills.
Book an immersive shopping experience at Creators Nest, a space showcasing handcrafted wares of professional creatives locally & beyond.
https://creatorsnest.com.au/pages/about-us
Find out about Events & Workshops offered
https://creatorsnest.com.au/collections/workshops-events
Learn more about my Dharma Coaching service
https://creatorsnest.com.au/pages/dharma-coaching
Join me on this wild ride - looking forward to drumming, dancing or soaring alongside of you…
connect via instagram
https://www.instagram.com/creatorsnestyass/
https://www.instagram.com/bymarienicole/
Intro & Outro Music: Shaman Dance by slavamusic
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Transcript
Introduction to Marie Nicole
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Speaker
Do you desire to turn your passion into income? Connect with other creative souls who also dance to the beat of their own drum?
00:00:08
Speaker
I'm Marie Nicole and I'm devoted to combining beauty, uniqueness and connection in everyday living experiences. As a creative professional and Dharma coach, I help people connect to the truth of who they are and facilitate them in embodying their uniqueness. It is my hope in this podcast that I inspire you to live your life on your terms and earn your income through being uniquely you.
00:00:33
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After all, it's the unique thread that we each contribute to the collective tapestry that creates the whole. So here we go, episode one.
Early Entrepreneurial Ventures
00:00:46
Speaker
In this episode, I want to give you some background knowledge into my journey. And I'm talking about creating businesses to the beat of your own drum. And that's exactly what I have done from day one. So when I was
00:01:01
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younger, let's start when I was a child, I actually started out by plaiting raffia and making hats and selling them to order. That was my first business, which is hilarious, but didn't last very long. But anyway, not very sustainable, let me say. Then I went to university and I did my degree in visual arts and design. And while I was doing that degree,
00:01:29
Speaker
My lecturers told me that I should actually do education and become a teacher as a fallback. There was always this thing of a fallback, like it would be safe and secure. So I actually postponed and I deferred my degree. I started doing education and I crammed in all of my subjects so I could fit in.
00:01:54
Speaker
the education degree within the four years because my Bachelor of Arts for three years and I wanted to extend it out to complete within the four years. So I did that and then towards the end of my cramming of that final year to get my education component, I actually I got the opportunity to teach.
00:02:13
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And at that time, if you were far enough along in your studies, you could actually teach in a school. And so I did that for a term at a time. I did two terms, and I taught art and history, and then I taught food tech and textiles and geography. They were the areas that I ended up teaching on behalf of teachers who were on leave. Now, in that experience, I very quickly realized that I didn't actually want to be a teacher.
00:02:42
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not because I don't want to teach other people it's not it wasn't the teaching it was actually the system and it was the institution and and it was also seeing teachers who were teaching visual arts design textiles and food tech but were not actually engaging in their passions they were just following a curriculum and that just did not suit me so I didn't complete my education degree I was quite stubborn I decided to just
00:03:11
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graduate with a visual arts and design double major and so visual communications ended up being the final piece and then I just decided to start my own photography business and I always loved photographing
Innovative Photography Journey
00:03:25
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as a child. My father had an SLR and so I used to use that and so I just started photographing. Now when I say I started a photography business there again I did not want to be
00:03:38
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like everybody else. And not not intentionally, I was not trying to break the norm, but it just wasn't in my nature. So I was photographing portraits of Latin and ballroom dancers. And I had friends who were Latin and ballroom dancers. And that's how I got into that industry. I never did it myself. But I very quickly discovered that Latin and ballroom dancing had a very, very stringent way of photographing.
00:04:05
Speaker
for their portraiture and it was it was backdrops and it was all staged and it was that didn't capture the essence of the dances so I took my subjects out on location we went to the ocean we went to cliffs and you know big parks where there was lots of wind and I had them draped in fabric and their fabric was blowing in the wind while they were dancing to their music
00:04:34
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So we brought a portable speaker with us, or at the time it probably was like a little portable CD player, because we're talking like 25 years ago here. And I had captured the essence of their dancing. That was what I was about.
00:04:47
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It's always been what I'm about. Capturing the essence and the beauty of living was what my photography was about. I also did family portraiture. And again, it wasn't staged in front of a backdrop. It was out on location or in their homes. I love photographing in people's homes. And back then, 25 years ago, that was not a common thing for photography. So I captured the beauty of living through my lens. That was my byline.
00:05:16
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Now I did that for nearly 10 years. It was just under 10 and I ended up having, well, I had my first child about four years into that business and I dragged him around as much as possible with my
Challenges of Wedding Photography
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work. I wanted to work for myself so I could have a family and be available for them. However, I did end up in the wedding industry and that changed things. And I started that just before I fell pregnant with my first actually.
00:05:45
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And the reason that changed things is because it was very restricting. It was, I would photograph sometimes four weekends, four weddings in a weekend. It could be Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday weddings and for eight to 10 hours. And it was really long and traveling a lot. I did it from the Hunter Valley down to Wollongong and everything in between. And one weekend it was literally from the Hunter Valley to Wollongong and everything in between for four weddings in a row. And that was pretty exhausting.
00:06:15
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So when I was unable to have a second child I ended up letting go of my wedding photography business even though it was quite successful and I had weddings booked two years in advance.
00:06:26
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So while I was again doing things to the beat of my own drum I was still confined and restricted and that's just not what I wanted for my family life and I really wanted a second child and I was struggling to have one and I was quite stressed and working ridiculous hours and so I decided to let go of the photography business and just become a freelance photographer and just
00:06:50
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photograph for the art sake of photography and that's when I worked on this process of what next. It needs to be that I do something that I can truly do within the constraints of my young family and lo and behold I felt pregnant with a second child just after I decided to let go of photography and I was gifted with a beautiful second young man in my life and yeah
00:07:16
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so proud to be parents to these boys but that's not the point of this conversation it's about the journey of business and so I started then looking into what can I do working truly from home without having to travel as much and be away from home for as long as I did to be able to capture the the raw materials because as a photographer I literally could not do it unless I went on site.
Success on Etsy
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So I started to go back to my design
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skills and I did screen printing and I set up a at home I set up a studio at the time it was in an enclosed veranda and I started printing on beautiful linens I'm very passionate about natural fibers and sustainability so I spent a lot of time researching which fabrics to use and then I did that and I traded through shops and I started an online store not that I intended to sell online I actually started my Etsy store
00:08:15
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This would have been back in 2007, 2008, 2008. I started an Etsy store just so I had an online catalog. Because I had a photography business with an online, with a website that was so intensive to maintain and to upload photos for galleries. And the internet wasn't as easy to work with back then. And the space that things took was a lot.
00:08:41
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So with my products, I decided I would set up an Etsy store because it was easy. If people wanted to buy, they could, but I didn't expect them to. I actually really did expect that people would want to touch and feel and smell and handle the products. But no, it's amazing. I actually started selling in the US. Etsy wasn't even popular in Australia at the time. It was hardly even known in Australia. And before I knew it, I was selling across the world. And so then I started to do markets and I was
00:09:11
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selling in person, directing people to my Etsy store and directing shop owners to my Etsy store to see the style of work that I actually created. And again, you know, it was a journey of discovery and just doing things to the beat of my own drum. One thing I started to notice is that screen printing became really popular and every second person was screen printing. And I did these really intricate
00:09:38
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designs where I end with scalpel, I was cutting by hand. And so it was quite labor intensive, which was much like my photography. So in the end, we moved down to Yas, the Yas Valley. And that would have been 11 years ago now. And I had an open workshop in the back of the farm that we were renting on at the time. And cows and sheep used to get in. It was very dusty. It was not conducive to screen printing.
00:10:07
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Plus the winters here in the Yas Valley were super cold. I mean, they still are, but it was new for me because I'd moved from Sydney. And so I pivoted again and I still wanted to do things that were truly based from home and could take me to markets, but I just went, you know what? I need to introduce a new product line that I can do inside the house. And so I set up a studio inside the house with, in one of the rooms of the fireplace. It was beautiful. And I started working with recycle blankets.
00:10:36
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and making guitar cases and ukulele cases and then with the leftover pieces I made a range of bags and that became my new product range and that was rescued and repurposed and I also started working with kangaroo leather because living on farms I saw and in the area not necessarily on the farm that we were on but in the area there was a lot of culling and dumping of kangaroos which was really disheartening not only was it
00:11:05
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toxic and not great for the waterways but you know that's just not great use of material so I started working with kangaroo leather combined with the blanket to create truly unique products and I sold at markets and I sold online continued to build my Etsy store ended up becoming
00:11:24
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one of the first Etsy stores in Australia to be featured on the global site as a shop feature, which was really exciting. And that process was invaluable because Etsy actually connected with me with a consultant through Etsy to refine my store and to really tweak it before it went global. And that was amazing. I learned so much through that process. And then,
00:11:51
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takes you to now.
Farm Life and Business Evolution
00:11:52
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So I was working from a farm and then when we bought our own place I was working on that property alone and I really started to suffer from isolation because I spent most of my days in my shed producing, photographing, trying to connect with people through the internet and I volunteered a lot. I volunteered in organisations like the
00:12:16
Speaker
local community arts organization and the preschool as a fundraiser on the committee and so I did that but I couldn't afford to keep volunteering and actually sustain my work so I ended up letting go of the volunteering and just focusing on my work but it also meant that I wasn't in contact with as many people during the week and I started to struggle with that
00:12:39
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and so on the weekends I wanted to go to markets and so I would pack the family into the car and we would travel for a weekend to Newcastle to Milthorpe and to the south coast, well not the south coast so much, to Cold Coast and we we would just go on adventures and that was great and my kids loved it, I loved it, I love road tripping and I love visiting new places but it did mean that there was a day of packing up
00:13:09
Speaker
a day of unpacking, a day of actually trading, and then the day of exploring. And so four days went into this. And what it ended up doing was meaning that when we put our own place, there was no time to actually work on our property. And one of the reasons why we moved to the country was to live more sustainably and to live off our own land and to grow our own food and even process our own meat. And so that was not
00:13:36
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sustainable for the family.
Establishing Creators Nest
00:13:38
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So I had to stop traveling to trade as much as I did. I only did a little bit and actually work more from home. So that's when I decided to open up a store. Something unique, again, of course, because that's what I do. I do things to the beat of my own drum. I always have, even outside of business. And so I opened up a creative co-working space
00:14:04
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integrated workshop and retail store all in one and that was fantastic. I brought friends on board who were also mums working within the constraints of their family and wanting to build their own brands and I opened this store and it was a lot of work
00:14:21
Speaker
I actually went to study collective entrepreneurship while I was doing this because I was so used to being a service-based provider in my business. I was used to being mostly a sole trader. I did work with subcontractors in my photography business, but my artisanal brand
00:14:40
Speaker
It was just me, and I was doing everything myself. And I just wanted to work out how to build a group of people that could work together. And so I studied collective entrepreneurship, which was a fantastic experience. And then I opened Creators Nest. Now Creators Nest has been open for nearly six years now. The first location was a small introductory location, which I'll see for just over a year. And then I moved into this beautiful heritage building that I'm currently in now,
00:15:08
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which is a lot bigger and can fit more products in it and the workshop space is much bigger. And so it was great. It was such a great way to reduce the isolation and connect people. Cause that was what my business was all about. It was about connection. And that's what I'm about is connection, connection to ourselves, connection to nature, connection to each other.
00:15:33
Speaker
And by creating this space where makers could come together and could actually connect with each other, but also customers could see products being made on site and they could connect to the products and the makers. That was a really big part of it. But I also wanted to be able to run workshops and connect people to their own creativity and
00:15:53
Speaker
That's when COVID then hit a few years later, as we all know, and a lot of that had to be put off to the side and even the people who were working in here as creatives were no longer working from here because they were then at home schooling their children instead.
Becoming a Dharma Coach
00:16:10
Speaker
And so I pushed on and I kept the retail going, but did it all online and local delivery, contactless delivery and focused heavily on the retail.
00:16:21
Speaker
Now, once COVID dissipated and we were able to open up properly, the changes were already in place and it ended up just being me back here in store. But while I was in isolation, like everybody else during COVID, I also then started my Dharma coaching certification. And I wanted to bring coaching into this business model right from the start, but I didn't want it to just be about
00:16:50
Speaker
business and not just about how to make money but I wanted it to be about how to connect to the essence of you to be true to yourself to live in a holistic way that fuels and ignites your passion for life and so that's why Dharma Coaching ended up being my the perfect solution for what I wanted to do because I wanted to be able to genuinely support people in thriving not just surviving which I saw a lot of through the retail
00:17:21
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It ended up being a lot of people would come in and they would share, share their stories, share their journey, share their struggles. And I would be facilitating them, not charging them for it, but I would be facilitating them in how to process those next steps. And so that made me realize that there was something in this gift and I really needed to take that another step. Dharma coaching was the way to do that. So now,
00:17:50
Speaker
I am back to just mostly me in store. I do have other people that come in and still stay connected. But this year, I have changed the way that I operate the store. I've actually running it by appointment. And so people can book a session and come in and I because I make garments now. I phased out the blanket work or
00:18:13
Speaker
reduced the blanket work. While I was in store here, I found it very hard to source blankets and to get the range that I was previously able to offer people in terms of colours. And when we're working with a recycled material, you really need to be out and about sourcing it regularly. So I went back to
00:18:31
Speaker
well, not went back to I, as a child, I did a lot of sewing, my mum's a seamstress. And so I sewed my own clothes. And while I had my market stall, I would have a mannequin there with a garment that I had made and just to display the bags and people would ask me about the garment and I ended up selling garments as well as the bags, but it wasn't my intention to just sell garments. And also with the kangaroo leather that I was working with, with my bags,
00:18:59
Speaker
in combination with the blanket. I loved the leather so much that I decided to do full leather products. And so again, my range pivoted to suit what was going on at the time and to suit the development that I needed as a business owner and to keep it sustainable. Having a commercial space and paying weekly rent and all of the extras that come with that
00:19:27
Speaker
with not just insurances, we're talking about point of sale systems, staffing, all of that, they came with it. And then I really needed to be able to expand my offerings.
Custom Garment Design Focus
00:19:37
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And so working with natural fibers, natural sustainable ethically sourced fibers became a big focus, especially not being able to get out and source recycled materials. So I work with premium quality linens and natural and fine merino knits.
00:19:56
Speaker
and then the kangaroo leather. And I also work with feathers. Like I said, we wanted to process our own meat and we had a lot of poultry and I had a lot of feathers on the property that I would collect and wash and then use. And that opened up a whole new range as well. So in the end, what I'm trying to say is I've changed things this year. And again, doing things at the beat of my own drum, I have decided to run the retail buy appointment
00:20:24
Speaker
because with my Dharma coaching, I have been running and facilitating more workshops and personal development workshops and heart-centered based workshops, crafting as well. I have other people who run their crafting workshops. We have pottery classes in here on Saturday morning, so I'll be opening the retail store while somebody else is running a workshop. But if I'm facilitating a workshop, then I obviously can't
00:20:48
Speaker
open the store so there's still an opportunity for people to connect and just off the cuff randomly general public kind of connection. But if outside of those hours they can always come in by appointment and with my my garment work I actually make things to suit people. So I have a design that I've created and if they need the armholes to be
00:21:13
Speaker
in a different location or the neckline to be wider or lower or hemline to be up. There's just tweaks to make it suit the person and also colors to suit them. So there's the whole customization of colors and design components to suit their style, their physique within my design range. So that's why running in by appointment retail space works better for me and for the customer.
00:21:42
Speaker
because we get to do that uninterrupted.
Launching a Podcast
00:21:45
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And so I started this podcast because I really want to encourage people to take the plunge, to do things that may not seem like textbook, you know? And through my market days, through my store, I have met so many people that operate businesses that are truly unique, truly unique to them, their journeys in life,
00:22:12
Speaker
And that's why I wanted to start something that encourages those who are afraid to take those steps and to create something that is unique to you. It needs to fuel you. Life is for living. It's a journey to enjoy. It's not a journey to endure. So I'm here.
00:22:31
Speaker
trying to encourage you through this podcast. I will also be sharing the stories of other people, but to begin with, I'm going to start by sharing what I have learned, all of the lessons that I have learned over the last 25 years in business and so that I can help you expedite your learning too. So I look forward to taking this journey with you and thank you for your time.
00:22:57
Speaker
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is and I hope you got value out of listening to this podcast. If you are looking for a coach to support and guide you through your own unique journey of creating a life you love, then reach out for a connection call. And if you'd like to connect with other creative souls in person by joining us at a workshop or retreat or to book a unique shopping experience here at Creators Nest, I run those by appointment. So check out the website for more details. The link is in the show notes.
00:23:27
Speaker
Oh, and please leave a review. I'd love to hear any insights or inspirations that were activated in you from this podcast. And I look forward to drumming, dancing or soaring alongside of you.