00:00 Today I'm talking about, alongside my wife,
00:01 I guess, starting a small business.
00:03 We both have our own respective small businesses.
00:04 So I run a social enterprise called Homey,
00:07 which is a streetwear clothing label based in Melbourne.
00:09 My wife runs a gumboot label called Merry People.
00:12 So we're gonna be doing a bit of a Q&A on stage,
00:14 interviewing each other about, you know,
00:16 starting a small business and growing that into a medium,
00:18 and then scaling and all those kind of different things.
00:20 So the highs and the lows and everything in between
00:22 is sort of the premise of the Q&A,
00:25 which is happening very soon.
00:26 And then this afternoon we're doing bespoke workshops.
00:29 So Dani's really focusing around sort of marketing the product
00:32 and I'm focusing on sort of elevating social impact
00:34 within your business.
00:35 - For me, I grew up in country.
00:37 I grew up in Langothera in Hippsland.
00:40 And for me, I never saw myself as someone
00:43 who would start a business.
00:45 And even when I had the idea initially for Gumboots,
00:48 people thought I was crazy.
00:52 But I think it is kind of similar
00:54 to Alex's session this morning,
00:56 that why not me and why can't I be the person that does this?
01:01 And I think it's really great for regional people
01:04 to potentially see regional problems
01:06 and be the people that actually ask why not,
01:10 or what if it happened like this?
01:12 And maybe just investigate,
01:15 well, what could that look like if I did that?
01:17 And have the confidence that they could also start a business
01:21 and grow it to a scale of their own.
01:24 - Yeah, so basically, I came up with the idea
01:26 to make a statue of the Ngunnaw moment
01:28 where he pulled up his jacket,
01:29 one of his skin and said, "I'm black and I'm proud."
01:32 So I worked with a mate who just had this idea
01:34 and started a crowdfunding campaign.
01:36 It took us two and a half years,
01:37 but we got a statue made of Ngunnaw
01:39 that stands out on Ngunnaw land in Persepolis Stadium now.
01:42 And it's just an amazing thing to be a part of.
01:44 It's a real dumb idea to try and get a statue made
01:47 when you have no idea how to make a statue
01:50 and you've got no experience with getting a body
01:53 to raise hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars
01:56 to make it happen.
01:57 So it was like, but it was a really good idea.
01:58 So I just had to figure out.
01:59 So we just tried lots of different entities.
02:01 Like we started with a crowdfunding campaign
02:02 and that raised a little bit of money
02:04 and got us a good profile.
02:06 And then we found another woman at the AFL, Tanya Bosch,
02:08 you could actually get behind it.
02:09 And she got Gillian McLaughlin involved
02:11 and she got sponsors involved
02:12 and all these sort of things just to make it happen.
02:14 And it's just like, it's a really,
02:16 thing I'm talking about today is about
02:18 why doing dumb stuff could be the smartest thing
02:20 you ever do.
02:21 Because we all have these amazing ideas
02:23 and we don't do anything with them.
02:25 But if you just go and make it happen,
02:27 something that seems really dumb
02:28 could actually turn out to be really amazing
02:30 for yourself and the people that you're trying to help.
02:33 (music fades)
02:36 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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