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Helen Cattell from Good Hope Pottery
40 Plays1 year ago
Helen Cattell from Good Hope Pottery shares the experiences and learning from her many years in business, 32 years in fact, as owner and operator of a previous business in the busy city of Sydney… then the journey of her new venture a handcrafted based business which she runs with her daughter Danielle, now operating from the remote location of Good Hope in The Yass Valley.
In this episode she shares:
- Her business background story & the support she received from family.
- The challenges she faced moving from busy Sydney to the peaceful & serene countryside, as well as the hidden blessings.
- The delightful surprise experienced in finally making their tree change, especially the difference between visiting the property they’ve been custodians of for 25yrs and now living on the property full time.
- How everyday in the country is full but not busy.
- How cold plunging in the dam has become a regular practice and why?
- Why she loves to run workshops and what was unexpected outcome of doing so.
- How being willing to step outside her comfort zone has led her to create a life she absolutely loves.
- And so much more…
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Sponsor - Hum Sound Therapy
https://www.instagram.com/humsoundtherapy/
https://www.facebook.com/hum8soundtherapy
Events & Workshops through Creators Nest
https://creatorsnest.com.au/collections/workshops-events
Good Hope Pottery’s Online Store
Embodiment Coaching Service
https://creatorsnest.com.au/pages/dharma-coaching
Creators Nest Online Store
https://creatorsnest.com.au/collections/all
https://www.instagram.com/creatorsnestyass/
https://www.instagram.com/bymarienicole/
Intro & Outro Music: Shaman Dance by slavamusic
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By accessing this Podcast, I acknowledge that the entire contents are the property of Marie-Nicole Roberts, or used by Marie-Nicole Roberts with permission, and are protected under AU and international copyright and trademark laws. Except as otherwise provided herein, users of this Podcast may save and use information contained in the Podcast only for personal or other non-commercial, educational purposes. No other use, including, without limitation, reproduction, retransmission or editing, of this Podcast may be made without the prior written permission of the Marie-Nicole Roberts, which may be requested by contacting
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Transcript
Introduction and Vision
00:00:00
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
00:00:31
Speaker
through being uniquely you. After all, it's the unique thread that we each contribute to the collective tapestry that creates the whole.
Sponsor Highlight: Hum Sound Therapy
00:00:44
Speaker
Before going into today's podcast topic I'd like to share some information from our sponsor, Hum Sound Therapy.
00:00:52
Speaker
Peter and Connie have been sharing their passions together for the past nine years, developing a unique heart-based sound experience, expanding hearts into the benefits of sound and energy healing, using a variety of instruments, including crystal singing bowls, gong, Native American flute, didgeridoo, drums, chimes, and more. Peter is also a biofield practitioner.
00:01:17
Speaker
working one-on-one in-person and distance sessions. They are both passionate about sharing sound vibration and creating an environment where you can drop into your heart and feel.
00:01:28
Speaker
enabling a full-bodied experience, a quote from these beautiful-hearted humans themselves. Our work is to be of service, to share our love, guide and nurture you back to your inner wisdom and reclaim your personal song through sound and energy dropping into your heart, raising your hum of life. I can personally vouch for the truly magical and healing experiences you will receive
00:01:54
Speaker
through their sound journeys and biofield tuning sessions. So to connect with them and their offerings, visit their website and follow their journeys on social media. Links are in the show notes. Thank you, Hum Sound Therapy, for sponsoring this podcast and now for today's episode.
Interview with Helen Cattell: Business Journey and Inspiration
00:02:17
Speaker
Today's podcast guest is Helen Cattell from Good Hope Pottery. Good Hope is a stunning location in the Yass Valley nestled in a hidden oasis on the edge of Good Hope Dam. It's off the beaten track so not somewhere you'd just stumble upon in your travels. The view of the dam and its surrounds provides endless inspiration to Helen and has done so for the last couple of decades. Her family have been custodians for the past 25 years.
00:02:44
Speaker
but have only recently made their tree change from Sydney and are now permanent residents of the Yass Valley. We met when Helen stumbled across my bricks and mortar store and after a couple of visits asked if I'd be interested in collaborating with her hosting workshops where she guides participants through the process of hand building their own pottery pieces in the beautiful back room of Creators Nest.
00:03:08
Speaker
Together we created an experience that was not just about learning a new skill, but it was also connecting with their own creativity and others in the community and beyond. All while being inspired by the atmosphere and unique experience creators Ness had to offer. So we're now hosting them in the new inspirational space in Yass called Tiger Gallery. We asked Helen to be a guest today so that we could get to know about her, her journey, background story adventure, Good Hope Pottery.
00:03:37
Speaker
that she has created alongside of her daughter Danielle. Together, they create the most stunning pieces out of their studio shed. In a not so easy to access location, it's truly inspiring to see what they're achieving together from a location that could seem impossible to operate a business from. Welcome to Business to Your Own Beat podcast, Helen. I'm sure listeners will be keen to hear about your story. Thank you, Marie Nicole. You're welcome.
00:04:06
Speaker
So tell us about your background in business and what led you to starting Good Hope Pottery, leaving Sydney and moving to the Gas Valley. OK, well, I have been in business for 32 years prior to Good Hope Pottery. We had a packaging and assembly business in Sydney. I started that when I was very young with a two month old son, our first child.
00:04:35
Speaker
And that business was very successful and we did very well. When COVID came along, it was quite a struggle as it was for many businesses. And we had started, Danielle and I had started doing pottery about five years ago. And I think our love of pottery was growing and we were getting better at it and really enjoying it. And while I was still working in Sydney, I stopped in at Merchant Campbell in Yass.
00:05:05
Speaker
and asked if she might be interested in purchasing some of our pottery, which she did. Margot has been an amazing support for just the building confidence to be able to do more production pottery and have somewhere to put it rather than keep handing it out to family as much as you can. So that was in the background and I was absolutely loving the pottery
00:05:34
Speaker
the business was getting harder and harder to work with. And then Adam and I decided that we just, we wanted to move down here. We have always wanted to live here, but we were never able to because of the Sydney business. So yeah, so we took the leap and we couldn't have been happier. We've just loved, absolutely love living down here and the people, the community, everybody's been amazing. That's beautiful. So how long have you been here now?
00:06:05
Speaker
We have been living permanently here for just on one year. So it was the middle of July last year. So yeah, nearly our anniversary here. Feels longer than that, doesn't it? Yes, it does. But we were coming, we were traveling backwards and forwards from Sydney for a good 12 months beforehand on a very regular basis. And then once we sold the house, yeah, we moved here permanently.
00:06:31
Speaker
What has been the biggest challenge that you've had to overcome with the transition of operating a business in the city to now a remote location?
Challenges and Opportunities in Business
00:06:40
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The biggest challenge, to be honest, I know I've mentioned this a number of times to you, but to be honest, it's been the road out of here. We have a dirt road that travels around the dam and it's nearly 10 kilometres long.
00:06:59
Speaker
And it was so severely damaged in the rains last year that the trip in and out is physically exhausting. It's like you've been on some sort of a rodeo bull or something traveling through. So we've really had to limit how often we come and go from the property because we are concerned about the damage to the car and the time it takes and just the physicalness of the travel.
00:07:28
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I think that's probably been our biggest constriction in business. I'm not really feeling very restricted to be honest. I feel like right now the world is our oyster and we can travel on whatever path we want to. And the road is being repaired as we speak. So that's been a bit of a journey trying to get that happening. And that's taken up a lot of time working with the residents and the council to make that happen.
00:07:58
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But I think that there's really nothing stopping us from where we want to take this. Brilliant. What's the greatest gifts that you've got out of making this change that you didn't expect? Wow. Nature. Nature. We have always loved coming down here, but I think living in it is completely different than visiting it. Being able to just,
00:08:27
Speaker
walk outside and just be amongst such beauty. And the beauty is everywhere all the time. It could be in the smallest butterfly to the most beautiful sunset, to the stillness of the lake, to the moon rising over the hills that looks like it's just enormous. Or seeing the moon rising as the sun is setting, we see that as well at certain times of the year.
00:08:55
Speaker
And the freedom, I think the freedom of time, I found with the business that I had, even though I had a good team of people working with me in Sydney, which gave me some flexibility, there was still, there was still very, very pretty, pretty strong timelines as to where I had to be when in certain amount of hours, I would leave home at a certain time, come back at a certain time, mostly.
00:09:23
Speaker
I had some flexibility, but the flexibility I have here is just, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen here in the mornings. I ferment a lot of food and I'm getting more and more into that. I'm drying, we're drying food over the fireplace. We go foraging to pick. I've got some mullion leaves over on the fireplace drying at the moment for our tea. So I spend a lot of time in the morning here
00:09:53
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preparing foods and doing things in the kitchen. And then maybe we'll go for a walk if it's a beautiful day, or maybe I'll go up to the studio and start to do some pottery. I think it just depends on the day and what the weather's doing. And yeah, and then we're only a couple of minutes walk down to the water. So we go for a swim in the afternoons. Not as much during winter, but we have been doing our cold dips, which has been pretty cool now that we're in July. I did one two days ago, so yeah.
00:10:22
Speaker
All these things, it's just the flexibility and living here is just amazing. That's beautiful. Being immersed in the
Family and Collaboration in Pottery
00:10:30
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cycle of nature is very much a gift. I've got a question about your family. So how has creating this business worked in favour for your family, especially Danielle? Well, Danielle and I, we did a very short pottery course about five years ago. It was two, three, two hour sessions on the wheel, throwing
00:10:52
Speaker
trimming and glazing. And we both fell in love with pottery then. And I think it's enabled us to share. And the reason I wanted us to do this in the first place was we were learning something together and we're able to share something together and share our knowledge. Danielle is an artist. I don't know if I can say, if I'm allowed to use the word true artist, but
00:11:18
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She has been an artist from day one. She has always done either drawings or pyrography or so many, a huge range. So what she brings to the table with our little business is, I think, very different to what I bring. I have a lot of business experience. I guess I'm very much
00:11:44
Speaker
I want to chase every opportunity that comes. That's just the way I am and the way I have been in business. And I think that's why our business survived so long in Sydney, wouldn't survive it thrived in Sydney. And Danielle brings this knowledge that she has on creativity and she's got an eye for things that I haven't developed yet. I think eventually over time I will, but I can show her something that I know isn't quite right.
00:12:12
Speaker
And she can say, I think maybe this needs to be more rounded or those colours don't quite go together or you need another colour in or like she just, she's just got a very deep knowledge. It sounds like complimentary skill set, but it doesn't mean you need to develop what she does. It's just together you create the magic. Yeah, I think, I think our crossover has to grow a little bit more. I have to, I have a lot of learnings to do from a creativity side.
00:12:42
Speaker
And she has some learnings to do from a business side to learn some of the things that I know as well and being able to, like Danielle attends meetings now, if we have a meeting with a new client, like the cafe in town, Danielle and I both attended the meeting. So those sorts of things are new for her, something that I've done a lot in my lifetime, but that's something that she's adjusting to as well while I'm adjusting to looking at something and trying to work out
00:13:12
Speaker
how it's gonna look the way it should. Beautiful. So your businesses, have they always been such a family affair? Absolutely. Adam, my husband, he was the other director in the business and I handled the office and the managing side of the business and the staff and Adam handled all the equipment and the machinery and
00:13:39
Speaker
repairs and what machines to buy. We had a lot of gear with the other business. My eldest son, young Adam, he was our sales manager for a period of time. So he was in the business from the age of 16. Jenny off a period of time was working with us in the office and in the warehouse doing different things. And Matthew, my youngest son, he was involved in marketing. I think he worked there probably for a period of about two years.
00:14:10
Speaker
So he did marketing, Matt's a photographer and he got very involved in the brochures and involved in contacting clients. Yeah, he was fantastic as well. So we've all been very much spent a lot of time together at our warehouse in Sydney. Yeah, and beyond my immediate family, my family, my mum and dad were massive support when I was younger and the business was starting.
00:14:38
Speaker
My eldest brother, he was our accountant for the whole period of the business. My eldest sister, she was our office manager for I think almost 20 years. I've got another brother that I would go and talk to about speaking to clients about production and I learnt a lot of him in the early days as to how to, I guess he gave me confidence to go and meet with clients and help
00:15:08
Speaker
me feel like I could do it. So I've had support not just involvement with my immediate family but my bigger family as well. That's actually quite rare to have that many involved in your business activities.
Advice on Embracing Opportunities
00:15:21
Speaker
So what advice would you give to anyone wishing to make a tree change or start a business but are hesitating because of the fear of the unknown?
00:15:30
Speaker
I would definitely recommend a tree change for anybody that is able to do it and not just visiting the country, even though it has its own magic, but definitely being able to live in the country. It's a change of pace. Life just slows down here and there's not so many things pulling at you all the time. We just have time. Our days are,
00:15:58
Speaker
In Sydney, I would have said my days are very busy, but here my days are very full. I go to bed at night very tired, but it's not because I'm busy. It's because I'm doing something I absolutely love. And even if I'm not in the studio, then we're off walking or having a cup of tea down the bus or something, but very full days, but at the same time, they don't have to be.
00:16:24
Speaker
You had another question. There was a second question to the first one. Before I go back to that question, I just want to say, when I first moved here from Sydney, and we used to say, you know, we've moved here for slow living, and while it wasn't busy in terms of hectic, like we experienced up there, we felt like our days were so much fuller that we're like, it's not like we're lying around in the hammock all the time, you know, there's busy living into the fullest.
00:16:50
Speaker
Well, I guess I spend a lot of time preparing food now. Everything we eat here is pretty much from scratch. And if I find there's something like, a simple example is tomato chutney that I bought a little jar and we loved it so much, I thought, well, I'll make chutney now. I've got the time to do that. So I do spend a lot of time preparing food, which is different than being able to make a phone call to get food dropped off. That was a little bit of an adjustment. We didn't have much takeaway food,
00:17:20
Speaker
in Sydney, but knowing if we had a really busy day and we were tired that we could order something. That's just not on the books anymore. So collecting firewood, clearing areas of grass, like bushfire safety. There's lots of things that you have to do here that we wouldn't be doing in Sydney that do make it a day that's full of other activities. But they're activities that I would say that have a lot of depth to them and meaning because they're all about our
00:17:50
Speaker
essential survival out here, I guess, to some degree. Yeah, absolutely. The second part of my question about people starting their own business, but hesitating because of the fear of the unknown, what advice you would have for them? I would say just do it. I know that's probably something that, you know, a lot of people say or a lot of people probably tell you not to do it, but
00:18:16
Speaker
I think if you've got an opportunity to do something either that's going to put you in a better situation financially or emotionally, that you can work in a space that you're going to be happier in. If you've got an opportunity to create your own business, and it's not going to be easy. It's not an easy thing. I don't know that I would ever say to anybody, having your own business is easy, but being your own boss, that's an incredible thing to have an issue of.
00:18:47
Speaker
It's up to you. I've been working for myself for so long that I don't really know what it would feel like to have someone else being in control of what I can or can't achieve. So being able to say, okay, business isn't doing well, well, I better do something and doing it. And you're in control of that. No one else can take your job away from you.
00:19:15
Speaker
Well, that was how I believe that you should build a business so that you've got multiple customers so that no one customer can take it away from you. I just think the opportunity to have your own business is well worth the effort and the time and I don't know, the freedom. So sometimes you may not feel like you have any freedom at all. Like we wanted to move down here and we couldn't, but that was a choice we made. That's not a choice anyone else made for us.
00:19:45
Speaker
Um, so you may feel like you don't have freedom because it's up to you to do the work and there's no one else that's going to do it at the end of the day. You are the, even though I had a team of people, you are still the last person that has to make things, make sure things are happening and sales coming in. Um, it's worth it. It's just worth it. And it is difficult. And, um, I know I mentioned, I've had a lot of support. I say, get a mentor, get someone to help you. I had.
00:20:13
Speaker
When I was in my early 20s, I was a teacher for, I trained as a teacher and I was teaching for a number of years before I had my first son. And the opportunity that was presented to me. So what happened was I had, I was teaching and then I felt pregnant. And so I had a couple of months between leaving teaching and having my first child. And my brother was packing CDs back in the days when it was all done by hand.
00:20:42
Speaker
And so I thought I could do that. I've got nothing else to do. So I started packing CDs at home. And then when my first son came along, I just continued to do it, but it was very hard doing physical work at a table with a baby in a bouncer trying to keep him happy. So, and then the production manager at the company that I was doing this work for wanted someone to hire other people. And that's how our whole business started.
00:21:11
Speaker
I took the opportunity. I didn't even know what a tax declaration looked like. So I went to my eldest brother, the accountant, and I said to him, Andy wants me to do this, but I don't know how to do that. I'm a teacher. And he said, I'll help you. I'll show you how to do it. I'll show you what needs to be done. So I think having support and grabbing an opportunity and that one offer that was way out of my
00:21:38
Speaker
ballpark. I had no idea about any of it. I was a teacher as far as I was concerned. But I thought, what have I got to lose? I'm going to try it. And I had a two-month-old baby. And I had to go and hire people. And I just did it. I took the opportunity. And that grew into a 32-year-old business that has been our living for my whole family and friends, friends of my children.
00:22:07
Speaker
everything has sort of grown from that and a lot of other opportunities. So I think if an opportunity comes along, grab it. I've forgotten you were a teacher beforehand. And my next question was going to be about the fact that creatives often like to make for the pleasure of creating and they'll sell the work that they create, but often they don't necessarily want to teach others.
Teaching and Community in Pottery
00:22:28
Speaker
And I was curious about what made you want to run workshops rather than just produce and sell your goods.
00:22:33
Speaker
and you've answered that question, but is there more to it than that, when you were a teacher? What is it about the teaching? I love teaching. When I had my warehouse, we would have a job that would come in. It might be putting items into a box and putting a lid on and packaging it up or whatever. And we had very simple tasks and very complex tasks. And often,
00:23:02
Speaker
I knew throughout that journey, I was always teaching people how to do assembly, how to put things together. That has pretty much been my career and then managing people. Then when we started doing pottery, family and friends were all pretty keen to sit down at the wheel and have a go as everybody, most people want to have a go at some clay on a wheel. And I love teaching people and I'll just sit back and on the wheel, for example, and just show them
00:23:29
Speaker
what to do and how to do it. And I love it. I've always loved teaching. And I've always loved getting my hands in things, whether it's sewing or gardening or painting or anything, and being able to share that with someone else. I think there's something pretty special in that, being able to teach someone how to create something beautiful. I think that's pretty special. Yeah, absolutely.
00:23:56
Speaker
Now, what have you noticed in the participants? What do they get out of it when they attend the workshops that you hold? I think that's been the biggest surprise of all. Something my sister-in-law said to me when I told her I was going to do some classes and my sister-in-law is very active in her community and I can't go, she lives out at MonaVale and we can't go anywhere in MonaVale without her knowing everybody that we pass by.
00:24:25
Speaker
And when I told her I was going to do classes, she said, oh, you're going to be able to meet people. This is a good way to meet people. And I said, well, you know, I'm fine. I don't need to meet a whole bunch of people. But gosh, I wasn't expecting exactly that, that it's a place to meet people. And the classes tend to be a small group of people. I think because we've got such small classes of only eight people,
00:24:55
Speaker
that there's a comfort zone there and it's a comfort zone for me as well. If it was a class of 20 or 30 people that wouldn't be my comfort zone. But having a small group is very comfortable and intimate and I'm finding that people are talking about unexpected things in the classes that they're just feeling like sharing and I think it's an opportunity to
00:25:21
Speaker
to share how you're feeling about something or not. You might be someone that sits there and just listens and creates. And there's a sense of joy in that. And I always go home with really sore jaws because there's so much laughing and smiling that my face is always sore at the end of three hours of creating with our hands and laughing and talking. And it's just beautiful. It was very unexpected.
00:25:48
Speaker
An unexpected side piece of what I thought I was bringing to the table, really. So tell us about your next workshop. What are you offering? So our next workshop is coil pottery. So with coil pottery, you basically create a long snake of clay by rolling it out. And then you keep bringing it around and pushing it down into clay to create slowly build up vase.
00:26:16
Speaker
And the reason that I want to bring this new class into our classes is because I've been working on coil pottery since December. And I'm feeling confident now of what my results are. And I can see the beauty in what you can create with the shapes from coils. It's very different to the wheel. There's certainly shapes that you can make on the wheel
00:26:44
Speaker
But there's something very, I don't know, I just really love, I love the feel of just that continual momentum of moving your hands around the clay and slowly something keeps building out of that. It's lovely. And it's easy enough for someone of any age to do. And the reason that I'm calling it a beginner's class is that I know that you can really do some bigger pieces
00:27:11
Speaker
There's just some knowledge that you need to sort of start with on smaller pieces, which is what I did to start with before you can move on to the bigger things. And I'm thinking that having a class, we're just letting people know that there are complexities. It seems simple, we allow the snakes to get together. There's complexities in it that enable you to keep something going vertical and not go out. Yeah, which is similar to our tea bowls. You need to know how to go up and not out. So yeah,
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's the beauty in the pieces that you can create with a coil pottery at a table with just your hands. So Helen, is there anything you would like to share with the listeners about creating a life that they love or anything through business or everyday living practices?
Personal Growth Through Challenges
00:27:58
Speaker
I think creating a life that you love, you need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. When you asked me if I wanted to do a podcast, I thought,
00:28:10
Speaker
Okay, I'll do it. It's the same as with Martin at the Tiger Gallery. He invited Danielle and I in for a meeting and he said, if you think of anything else we can do with the gallery, let us know. And to bring people in to the gallery and using the space. And straight away I thought I could sit in there
00:28:38
Speaker
maybe I could sit in there and do some pottery in there. And then I rang you not long after. And so what do you think about maybe classes in there? Like none of this is comfortable having to go to someone and say, what if, can I, may I, would this be okay? I think getting used to asking the question and seeing what the answers are, even going up to you and saying, do you think you might be interested in doing
00:29:07
Speaker
pottery classes here. That's not an easy thing to do. My first phone call to Margo, I can still, when Adam and I drove past Merchant Campbell and I said to Adam, gosh, that's a beautiful store. Do you think, do you think maybe I could put my pottery in there? And he says, well, why not give it a try? So when we got back to Sydney, I sat at the phone thinking, okay, I got to make the phone call. What's the worst that can happen here? What's the worst that can happen? She can say no.
00:29:36
Speaker
I picked up the phone and she said, yes. And then when I had the car loaded up, when we came down here with all my samples and I was sitting in the car really nervous, I've done a lot of sales meetings, but this is very personal to me. Cause I had personally, this was my stuff that I had made. So it was a step up for me into my uncomfortable space. And I was sitting in the car and I'm thinking, it's okay. What's the worst that can happen here? She can say no.
00:30:04
Speaker
But we'll do it anyway. And I came out of that meeting with an order for 150 pieces of pottery. I'd never done, I'd never done that many pieces. I had never replicated something before. So even during the meeting, I'm thinking, okay, it's gonna be challenging. But I didn't say no to it. Because what's the worst that can happen? Nothing's ever failing. Yeah, it's not failing. Yeah.
00:30:33
Speaker
It's okay. So I guess I'm comfortable with uncomfortable. And the reason I do my cold dips in the lake is I have come from a very challenging time before we moved here, very challenging and difficult. And here isn't so difficult for me anymore, which is what I'm loving. We've created a life here that isn't so difficult. It's slower. It's easier. We're keeping the calm.
00:31:04
Speaker
But I still want to be challenged. And to me, besides my pottery, walking down to that lake when it's cold, and it's been cold since March, and now it's really cold, that to me is a challenge. And that to me, for my brain, is saying, be comfortable. With the uncomfortable, you can do this. And I talk to myself all the way down. It's only a short walk. But I'm telling myself all the way, you can do it. You can do it. And when I'm in the water, up to here,
00:31:32
Speaker
Every day, not every day, every time. Every time I do it, I say, you did it. Look at that, you did it. So to me, it's getting comfortable with the uncomfortable and reaping the rewards of what comes with that. And I also see that as the contrast is what actually creates the beauty in things, like without the light and the dark and without the texture or shape, we don't appreciate it as much.
00:32:00
Speaker
Not saying we should torture ourselves, but getting too comfortable can actually make your life a little boring because then you become resistant to trying something outside of that comfort zone. So good on you. Cold plunging is not something I've done yet. But for me, cold plunging is getting out of my bathroom and going to the bedroom to get dressed. Because it's pretty cold between the two.
00:32:30
Speaker
I definitely hear that. Yeah, you should try. I must say that we've been doing it. We started going, what's really interesting is all the years we've had this property, a lot of the time the lake has been down and we have a dam on the property we would swim in. But a few years back, there were some leeches in the dam, which was the first time that that had happened. And that sort of, I didn't want to swim in that anymore.
00:32:56
Speaker
So I hadn't really been swimming here in the last few years that we've been here. But we've never really swam in the lake because the lake was never high enough. But it's been high for the last three years. And it's been high since we've been living here. So to me, having such a beautiful thing two minutes away, how could we not appreciate it by immersing ourselves in it?
00:33:25
Speaker
I can't describe the beauty down there late afternoon, which is when we go, but we've been doing it since December. And in December, we were saying we should try and do this all year. So we've deliberately kept doing it so we'd acclimatize ourselves to being able to do it in at this time of year. So I guess that's another goal setting thing, isn't it? Where if you want to get to that point,
00:33:50
Speaker
start doing this so you know you will get there.
Goal Setting and Achievements
00:33:53
Speaker
And that's the same thing with our pottery. One of our goals this year, Danielle and I, I think we might've mentioned it maybe in April or May, maybe April, when I was starting to do these bigger pieces. I said to her, my goal this year, I think our goal this year should be to get ourselves into an art gallery. And she said, that's a good idea. We should do that. And I said, well, that's our goal then, to at least make contact.
00:34:17
Speaker
And within a couple of months, we'd had a contact from Martin. We'd had a meeting with him. We're going to have some pieces in the gallery in August on an exhibition. And I've already got some pieces in there now from another opportunity that came up. He asked, have you got some pieces? Well, yeah. I could get some ready again. I'm not quite there yet, but what have I got to lose here?
00:34:47
Speaker
You know, it's just that always, what have I got to lose and what have I got to gain by just jumping in and doing it? So yeah, opportunities are everywhere all the time, all the time. Just embrace them. Yeah.
Conclusion and Encouragement
00:35:04
Speaker
Thank you so much, Helen, for sharing your story and your time. It's very inspiring. And I'm sure that the listeners are going to take a lot of inspiration from this because people
00:35:15
Speaker
are often delaying what they want to do, waiting for that right time, right scenario. And from what you described through your journey, it's actually just putting it out there to begin with the idea that you will take on the challenge when it comes and when it arrives, just step into it. You're never going to be fully ready until you actually take the steps towards it. 100%. I am to make sure that people know how to connect with you, not just through the workshops, which
00:35:43
Speaker
People probably already heard me talk about on the podcast, but we do run the workshops through Creators Nest, so you can book through there. So on the Creators Nest website, you can go to the events and workshops page and see what's coming up. We do have one scheduled at the moment, but there will be more. There's always going to be more. And if you'd like to find out how to acquire the beautiful pieces that Danielle and Ellen create together, then be sure to visit the Good Hope Potter website and see where you can find their pieces
00:36:13
Speaker
ordering online, do you guys distribute outside of Australia? Yeah, I actually just put that up on our website a couple of days ago. Again, that was another, this is scary. And my husband said, when are you going to do this a little while ago? And I said, yeah, so I just did it. I put it up. Yeah, big thing though. So that's really good. So if you're overseas, you can still purchase from afar. Don't hesitate.
00:36:38
Speaker
So in the show notes, I will include the links to the websites and anything else that we've discussed today. And so until next week, be sure to stay inspired to create a business and life that you love and take inspiration from Helen's story, Obstacles Only Slow Your Progress. They don't stop you from achieving your long-term goals and bigger picture vision. Thanks so much, Helen. Thanks. Thanks, Marina Cole.
00:37:03
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.
00:37:33
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.